User Experience

 

Yoink for iPad and iPhone Usage Tip #7

The following explains how to use Yoink on iPad in Slide-Over or Split View.
For more Usage Tips like this, click here.

It seems quite a few people have been getting new iPads recently – to those, I say: congratulations on your purchase 🥳
Coincidentally, that’s probably why I’ve been asked quite frequently lately how to use Yoink in Slide-Over or Split View.
Here’s a quick guide on how to do it.

1) Use Yoink in Slide-Over

– With a full screen app open, swipe up from the very bottom of your iPad to reveal the Dock
– Drag Yoink from the Dock to the side of your iPad’s screen

In Slide-Over, you can reposition Yoink to either edge of your iPad’s screen, or dismiss it by dragging it all the way to the right.

2) Use Yoink in Split View

– With a full screen app open, swipe up from the very bottom of your iPad to reveal the Dock
– Drag Yoink from the Dock to the top right of your iPad’s screen
– Alternatively, If Yoink is already in Slide-Over, drag the its top horizontal indicator to the top right of your iPad’s screen, and it will enter Split View.

In Split View, you can adjust the size of each Split view app by dragging the indicator between them.
You can remove an app from Split view by dragging the top horizontal indicator of the app.

Further Reading

Apple’s iPad User Guide
Use Multitasking on your iPad
Open an app in Slide Over

 

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Yoink for Mac Usage Tip #14

The following explains how to make Yoink automatically pick up any new file added to a specified folder.
For more Usage Tips like this, click here.

 

Yoink 256

If you’d like Yoink for Mac to automatically pick up any new files you download or save into a specific folder, here’s how it’s done.

Automator Folder Action

Automator, an app that comes with every Mac, allows you to create Folder Actions, which are small programs that run every time files and folders are added to a folder you specify.

I’ve prepared such a Folder Action for you: Download (direct download, ~42 KB)

Installation
  • Download the action above, then unzip and double-click it. It will prompt you with this:
Screenshot of Automator Installer 13 10 2020 14 39 16

Choose the folder you’d like to attach this action to and click on Install. The action will then be moved to /Users/yourname/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions/Yoink Save Folder.workflow
If you ever wish to uninstall it, just delete that file.

  • With the Folder Action installed, whenever you download or save a file into that folder, it will be added to Yoink, like you can see in this video:
  • To create multiple of these, all you need to do is unzip again, change the filename of the Automator action, double-click it and follow the instructions above
Details

If you’re curious about what the Folder Action actually does, it’s this:

Screenshot of Automator 13 10 2020 14 35 23

The action runs this shell script

open -a Yoink “$@"

any time new files or folders are added to the specified folder, which instructs macOS to open the specified file with Yoink (which ultimately results in the file being added to Yoink’s list).

Advanced

You can edit the shell script anytime (by right-clicking onto the Automator file and selecting Automator):

Screenshot of Finder 13 10 2020 14 54 50

which would enable you, for example, to tell the action only to add files of a certain file type, or with a certain file extension.
The following script sample shows how to make the Folder Action only add PDF files:

for str in "$@"
{
   filename=${str##*/}
   pathExt=${filename##*.}

   if [ $pathExt == 'pdf' ]
   then
      open -a Yoink "$str"
   fi
}

Enjoy 🙂

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ScreenFloat's Mac App Icon

Since I’m having trouble with the macOS Catalina-compatible ScreenFloat v1.5.17 update getting through review, I thought it’d be best to publish a quick note about how to make sure ScreenFloat works for you on macOS Catalina. Otherwise, you’ll probably end up with screenshots of your Desktop, instead of the actual windows you’re trying to take a screenshot of.

  1. Quit ScreenFloat if it’s running
  2. In Terminal.app (in /Applications/Utilities/), type the following, followed by enter/return: 
    tccutil reset All at.EternalStorms.ScreenFloat-appstore

    This resets all of ScreenFloat’s permissions on your Mac (the only one it uses is the Screen Recording one). If you’re using the demo, replace ‘-appstore’ with ‘-demo’.
    At this point, a restart of your Mac might be necessary.

  3. Launch ScreenFloat and take a screenshot.
  4. If a dialog appears asking for screen recording permissions, click on Open System Preferences and select ScreenFloat in the list that appears
    If the dialog doesn’t appear, launch System Preferences, select Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Screen Recording and select ScreenFloat there.
  5. Restart ScreenFloat

Now ScreenFloat will be able to create screenshots again.

My apologies for the inconvenience. I’m hoping to have the update for it out soon, but currently, I’m at the App Store App Review’s mercy.

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About Oskar

Oskar is an independent Mac developer who is committed to enhancing the Mac experience.
Since founding Cindori, he has designed, developed and released several popular apps such as Trim Enabler, Disk Sensei and VR Desktop.

About Disk Sensei

Disk Sensei helps you monitor and analyze your Mac’s drives, enhance your Mac’s performance and clean your system safely and efficiently.

Info

What Oskar particularly likes in Disk Sensei:

Liked by Oskar

“Disk Sensei is all about optimizing your Mac performance, so I knew I wanted a way to let users find and delete large old files.
After settling on the idea to build a sunburst chart to visualize the file system hierarchy, I struggled for a long time to build something that was responsive, performant and beautiful.
Eventually, I turned to an unconventional solution: I built a component using D3, a JavaScript visualization library, and integrated it in Disk Sensei using a web view.
The end result was a beautiful sunburst chart with slick animations, at the cost of only a few hundred lines of Obj-C.”

and particularly dislikes:

Disliked by Oskar 1

Disliked by Oskar 2

“Disk Sensei offers features that are related to both hardware and software. In some cases, this means that the user must select the storage drive for which he wants to display data or perform actions on.
For example, the Health feature, which displays diagnostic data and predicts the remaining lifetime of your hard drive or SSD.

To avoid having to select a storage drive over and over when switching between features in the app, I opted for a global option and put a drive selection button right in the menu bar of the application window.
This made it very easy to toggle between drives from any view in the app. But it also created several problems:
It broke the conventions of the menu by having the button look like it’s supposed to behave like a menu option.
It created even further confusion by being accessible while using features that wasn’t related to the currently selected drive. As if that wasn’t enough, the button was just too small to fit the full drive name, creating cryptic titles such as “APPLE”.
All in all, this was a poor solution.”

Thank you, Oskar, for sharing 🙂

About the “Show and Tell” Blog Series

Show and Tell presents developers’ and designers’ most and least favorite elements of UI/UX in an app they helped create or design.
If you’d like to share, submissions are open! Submit your app here!
Thank you 🙂

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