Matthias – Page 34 – Eternal Storms Software

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November 12, 2018

Yoink v3.5.2 for Mac now available

A maintenance (and minor feature-) update for Yoink for Mac is now available on the Mac App Store.

What’s new in Yoink v3.5.2?

– Support for system services (right-click a file or Stack in Yoink and it will show the available services for it)
– Yoink’s optional menu bar icon now also accepts drags
– Improved support with apps Discord, VSCode and Photos
– Improved Yoink’s Share extension to better handle text and other content
– Many bug fixes and improved support for older versions of macOS

New Usage Tips

On this website, I collect useful tips to get the most out of Yoink for Mac – I’ve added a couple of new tips to it!
Tips are also available for the iOS version of the app here.

Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle

New on the Mac App Store are bundles. Yoink is part of the “Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle”, where you get Yoink, ScreenFloat and Transloader at ~25% off!
You can check it out here (macOS Mojave required – though apps purchased with a bundle on macOS Mojave are available on earlier versions of macOS for free re-download).

Yoink Overview

What is Yoink?

Yoink offers a temporary place for file- and app-content drags to free your mouse so you can more easily and quickly navigate to the actual destination of your drag.
This is especially helpful when it comes to moving and copying files between different windows, spaces or (fullscreen-) apps.

How does Yoink fit into my workflow?

Yoink stays in the background most of the time, waiting for you to drag someting. The app fades in at the edge of your screen when you start a drag, like a file in Finder, or app-content like an image from a website, or text from a document.
Drag your files to Yoink, and your mouse is free for you to navigate more easily and comfortably.
Yoink will hold on to the files you drag to it until you drag them out again.

The app can be customized in a number of ways. You can set up where it should appear (at either side of your screen, top, center or bottom; or at the mouse cursor), when it should appear (when a drag starts, or when a drag reaches the edge of your screen) and what apps it should (or should not) appear in.
If a file drag contains multiple files, a Stack is created so you can drag them out together again easily.
Stacks can also be split up if you’d like to drag out one specific file in that drag.
QuickLook is available for all files you add to Yoink, as icon previews for quick identification and as full previews for a detailed look. A keyboard shortcut lets you hide Yoink if you currently don’t need it, and show it again when you do.

Pricing and Availability

Yoink for Mac is available on the Mac App Store for the price of $7.99 / £7.99 / €8,99, with a free, 15-day trial available on its website.

Yoink is also part of the “Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle” – together with ScreenFloat and Transloader at ~25% off on the Mac App Store (macOS Mojave required – though apps purchased with a bundle on macOS Mojave are available on earlier versions of macOS for free re-download).

It requires at least macOS Lion 10.7.3, macOS High Sierra 10.13 or newer is recommended.
The app is localized in English, German, French, Italian, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil).

Yoink is also available for iPad and iPhone, exclusively available on the App Store for the price of $5.99 / £5.99 / €6,99.

Links

Yoink for Mac – Website
Yoink for Mac – Mac App Store
Yoink for Mac – Usage Tips
Yoink for Mac – Press Kit
Yoink for Mac – App Preview Video (Basic Functionality)
Yoink for Mac – App Preview Video (Today Widget)

Yoink for iPad and iPhone – Website
Yoink for iPad and iPhone – App Store
Eternal Storms Software – Website
Eternal Storms Software – Blog
Eternal Storms Software – Twitter
Eternal Storms Software – YouTube
Eternal Storms Software – Facebook
Eternal Storms Software – Instagram

I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing what you think about this update. I hope you’ll enjoy it 🙂

If you have any feedback or questions, please don’t hesitate to write me!

With warm regards,
– Matt

October 19, 2018

Developer Tip: Custom Icons for Quick Actions

When creating a custom Quick Action for macOS Mojave’s Finder, you have the option to supply a custom icon:

Creating a custom Quick Action in Automator for macOS Mojave

Selecting an icon in Automator

But this is what happens when you supply an ordinary image in Dark Mode:

A Quick Action's icon without adjustments

or Light Mode:

Unmodified Quick Action icon

(in Light Mode, it’s obviously better, but still not as subdued as it should be, which is more grey than pitch-black, or whatever color your original icon file might have).

Tip #1 – Getting the icon’s color right

The trick is to have the file end in ‘Template’, like ‘MyWorkflowIconTemplate.tiff’. But that’s not all there is to it. When you add a custom icon through Automator, it automatically gets renamed into ‘workflowCustomImage.png’. So no matter what you name your file, it won’t matter.

To fix this, add a custom icon to your Quick Action in Automator, save, switch to Finder and navigate to /Users/yourname/Library/Services/, where your newly saved Quick Action will end up.
There, right-click your Quick Action, select ‘Show Package Contents’, and navigate into Resources, where your icon file will be. Rename it to ‘workflowCustomImageTemplate.png’.
Now, navigate into Contents and open Info.plist. Look for <key>NSIconName</key> and change ‘workflowCustomImage’ to ‘workflowCustomImageTemplate’. Save.

Now the icon will look like this:

Modified Quick Action icon in Dark Mode

Modified Quick Action icon in Light Mode

That’s much better. But there’s another issue we need to take care of:

The icon’s a bit too large, even though in Finder and the “More…” menu, it looks well-sized.

Tip #2 – Getting the Touch Bar icon to play nice

I thought I’d be smart about it, since the “append ‘Template’ “ trick worked, I’d have three differently sized images and append @2x and @3x. But it didn’t work.
The trick is to have a TIFF file with 2 (or 3, to be on the safe side) representations – one at 1x, one at 2x and one at 3x.
And voila, it worked:

To create the TIFF, I wrote a small app that takes my icon file, creates three NSBitmapImageRep objects from it and adds them to an NSImage instance. Then it writes the NSImage object’s TIFFRepresentation to disk.
Open that file in Preview.app and you’ll notice all three icons inside that one TIFF (you might have to select View – Thumbnails in the menu to show them)
Select the first and select Tools -> Adjust Size… in the menu bar.
Resize the image to 16×16 (which I found to be working nicely) and set its resolution to 72, if it isn’t already.
Select the next thumbnail and resize it to 32×32 at 144 DPI, and the third thumbnail to 48×48 at 216 DPI. Save.
Now repeat Tip #1 with this new file and you’re all set.

I hope this will save you some time, as it cost me plenty 😉

_____
Matthias Gansrigler | Founder & Developer – Eternal Storms Software
e: blog@eternalstorms.at
twitter | facebook | instagram

September 25, 2018

Developer Tip: Today Widgets and macOS Mojave’s Dark Mode

When testing your Today Widget on macOS Mojave and you see something like this using Dark Mode:

don’t fret, there’s a rather easy fix.

In your Today Widget’s Info.plist, in NSExtension > NSExtensionAttributes, there’s NSExtensionPointVersion.
For the widget above – with the wrong appearance – the version was set to 2.0:

To see where the problem might be, I created a new widget under macOS Mojave, and it turns out, it uses version 3.0, which also fixes the appearance issue:

and voilà, it worked like a charm:

Compatibility

I’ve tested back to macOS El Capitan 10.11 and it worked, it will possibly work for earlier versions of macOS, too.

Hope it helps 🙂

September 24, 2018

Yoink v3.5 for Mac – Handoff and Clipboard History

Yoink for Mac App Icon

I’m very happy to announce the immediate availability of Yoink v3.5 for Mac.
It’s a free upgrade for everyone who has already purchased the app and brings two great new features, as well as compatibility improvements and bug fixes.

Yoink Overview

What is Yoink?

How does Yoink fit into my workflow?

The app can be customized in a number of ways. You can set up where it should appear (at either side of your screen, top, center or bottom; or at the mouse cursor), when it should appear (when a drag starts, or when a drag reaches the edge of your screen) and what apps it should (or should not) appear in.
If a file drag contains multiple files, a Stack is created so you can drag them out together again easily. Stacks can also be split up if you’d like to drag out one specific file in that drag.
QuickLook is available for all files you add to Yoink, as icon previews for quick identification and as full previews for a detailed look.
A keyboard shortcut lets you hide Yoink if you currently don’t need it, and show it again when you do.

What’s New in Yoink v3.5?

Yoink Clipboard History Today Widget

Today Widget in macOS' Notification Center

Yoink offers you a history of your clipboard’s contents with a convenient, out-of-the-way Today Widget. With it, you can copy previous items back to your clipboard, or send them straight to Yoink.

Handoff

Yoink's Handoff on macOS

You can now transfer files between Macs, iPads and iPhones (separate Yoink for iOS app required, available on the App Store) using Handoff. Selected files are transferred right away, whereas if there’s no selection, you can pick specific items on the receiving device.

Compatibility Improvements

Aside from improvements regarding the compatibility with various apps, Yoink also now fully supports macOS Mojave 10.14, including its Dark and Light appearances.

Yoink on macOS Mojave in Dark and Light Modes

This comes with an override where you can explicitly choose Yoink’s dark or light appearance, ignoring the setting in System Preferences.

Pricing and Availability

Yoink for Mac is available on the Mac App Store for the price of $7.99 / £7.99 / €8,99, with a free, 15-day trial available on its website.
It requires at least macOS Lion 10.7.3, macOS High Sierra 10.13 or newer is recommended.
The app is localized in English, German, French, Italian, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil).

Yoink is also available for iPad and iPhone, exclusively available on the App Store for the price of $5.99 / £5.99 / €6,99.

Links

Yoink for iPad and iPhone – Website
Yoink for iPad and iPhone – App Store

Eternal Storms Software – Website
Eternal Storms Software – Blog
Eternal Storms Software – Twitter
Eternal Storms Software – YouTube
Eternal Storms Software – Facebook
Eternal Storms Software – Instagram

I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing what you think about this update. I hope you’ll enjoy it 🙂

If you have any feedback or questions, please don’t hesitate to write me!

With warm regards
– Matt