Eternal Storms Software's Blog – Page 2 – by Matthias Gansrigler, an indie software developer

April 8, 2022

[Development Journal: ScreenFloat 2] Entry 1 – Fundamental Decisions

ScreenFloat 2 has officially entered “production”.
Apart from a bit of prototyping of various new features over the last couple of months and years, not a lot has happened in regards to ScreenFloat. But I feel now is the time to finally get it done.

ScreenFloat lets you keep visual references to anything you see on your screen floating above other windows using screenshots. It’s also a screenshot organizer.

Disclaimer: Estimated Time of Arrival, Pricing

I don’t do ETAs for my own products.
I’m a solo developer, I have multiple apps that need maintenance and updates, there are just too many moving parts for me to be able to estimate basically anything. And while that may be a serious lack of managerial skill: I accept that flaw and ignore it 🤷‍♂️.

Regarding pricing, I don’t know what ScreenFloat 2 will cost yet. But I am resolved on its upgrade path: existing customers of ScreenFloat 1 will receive ScreenFloat 2 for free.

About this Journal

I thought it would be fun to chronicle my progress, struggles, successes, failures, struggles, failures, break-throughs, failures, and random stuff while developing ScreenFloat 2. That’s all.

Fundamental Decisions

Before I can start coding, there are a few decisions I have to make in order to be clear on where I want to go and what I want to achieve.

Decision 1 – Build on ScreenFloat 1’s code base, or start from scratch?

I began work on ScreenFloat 1 on March 11th, 2010.
Memory is still managed manually ^{(for you youngster coders out there: google retain / release to know what I’m talking about)}.
Objective-C’s @property wasn’t even available yet back then.
It’s ancient!
In addition, it was one of my first apps, so ScreenFloat 1’s code is all over the place. And while I don’t think code has to be “pretty”, I do think it has to be readable and understandable; ScreenFloat 1 is neither.
So yes, I’ll definitely be starting ScreenFloat 2 from scratch.
Which my next decision factored into…

Decision 2 – Objective-C, or Swift?

Swift, of course. I love Objective-C (it’s got me this far), but I think by now it’s clear that the future is written in Swift. That’s not to say that if there wasn’t Swift, I wouldn’t love to continue working in Objective-C. However, with more and more frameworks being Swift only (for example, Widgets), I need to move on as well.
While this decision is of no consequence to users of the final product – a feature in an app should work no matter what language was used to program it -, it is quite consequential to me.
I began learning Swift earlier this year – my freeware developer tool BackLog is a first result of that – and I’ll continue to learn. For me, the easiest way to do that is “on the job”: to actually work on something I’m going to ship. Two birds with one stone.
Will that increase development time? Possibly.
Is it worth it? I believe so.

Decision 3 – Keep old storage model, or migrate to Core Data?

ScreenFloat 1’s “storage model” was two plist files (one for the shots library and associated metadata, and one for categories the user created in the Shots Browser) and a folder full of image files.
It worked ok, but I’d like something more sophisticated, robust and scalable.
That sounds like Core Data to me.
It’s not a new framework to me (thankfully – it is a lot to learn). I’ve been using it for a couple of internal tools, and for apps I’m maintaining for third parties.

As a side note, I do want to keep the “folder full of image files”. It makes them accessible in Finder, instead of being stored somewhere on disk in an opaque Core Data storage file.

Decision 4 – Core Data with CloudKit, or Core Data with custom iCloud/CloudKit sync?

I recently took to twitter to see what other developers thought about Core Data with built-in iCloud sync. The consensus was pretty much to stay away: it can be slow, very opaque as to what it’s doing, and thus difficult to debug.

Synchronisation is difficult to debug as it is, so I don’t want to make it any harder than it has to be.
Over the years, I’ve gained quite a bit of experience when it comes to syncing with iCloud / CloudKit (I manually sync with iCloud using CloudKit in Yoink for iPad and iPhone and Transloader), so I’m confident I’ll be able to write my own custom CloudKit sync solution for ScreenFloat 2.

Decision 5 – macOS, sure, but what about iOS/iPadOS?

ScreenFloat 2 will be available for Mac, as well as iOS/iPadOS.
So some code (most notably storage and sync) has to be able to run on all those platforms – something to consider going forward.

As with all my other apps, ScreenFloat 2 for Mac and ScreenFloat 2 for iOS will be developed for and tailored to each respective platform mostly separately, and so they will also be sold separately.

That’s it for this time.
Thank you for joining me. Feedback, input and questions are welcome: mail me, tweet me.
Take care! 🤗

April 4, 2022

Yoink for iPad and iPhone v2.4.1 now available

Yoink for iPad and iPhone v2.4.1 is now available on the App Store.
It’s a maintenance update, improving its Clipboard Monitor, certain areas of its UI, as well as general performance and stability.

Yoink is a file- and snippet “shelf”, in a “hold this for me while I do something else for a while” sort of way.
Anything you can drag, copy, share or download, you can store in Yoink.
When you eventually need it, you can access files either directly from within the app, Yoink’s custom keyboard, and Siri Shortcuts. It also syncs across your iOS devices via iCloud.

What’s New in Yoink v2.4.1?

+ Improvements to Yoink’s Background Clipboard Monitor

When active, the Clipboard Monitor will save anything you copy or cut in other apps, even if Yoink itself is in the background.

v2.4.1 now allows you to start, pause, update and end your Clipboard Monitor sessions with Siri Shortcuts.
By “update”, I mean you can change its timeout, and which data type it should look out for (everything, links, texts or images).

In Settings.app > Yoink > Clipboard Monitor, you can enable Display Last Saved Item, which will show the item the Clipboard Monitor last stored in Yoink in its Picture-in-Picture overlay.

Also in Settings.app > Yoink > Clipboard Monitor, you can disable Confirm Monitoring, which, when starting the Clipboard Monitor from within Yoink, will forego all confirmation dialogs and start the Clipboard Monitor right away, as requested by a number of users.

The Clipboard Monitor can now be started from Yoink’s Home Screen Quick Actions

Lastly, instead of terminating the Clipboard Monitor entirely when a time out occurs, it now pauses instead, making it easier to restart it.

+ General Improvements

Downloads now show their state if Use Small Previews is enabled in Settings.app > Yoink > Appearance
Downloads now show the size of the download, if available
The UI for renaming files has been revamped to use more space
Editing a URL now refreshes its icon
Yoink’s Share extension now works faster
Maps/Location items are now a separate option in Yoink’s filter (accessible by tapping Showing All at the bottom)
Many bug- and crash fixes

Where can I get Yoink?

Yoink is available for iPad and iPhone on the App Store – a one-time purchase of $5.99 / € 5,99 / £ 4.99.
It requires iOS 14 or newer.
To sync across your iOS devices, an iCloud account is required.

I hope you enjoy Yoink’s recent updates. If you have any feedback or questions, don’t hesitate to mail me, I’d love to hear it!

Stay healthy and safe!

March 30, 2022

PSA: Get and stay organized: with DEVONthink and Yoink for Mac – at 20% off

For a limited time ^{(ending on April 9th, 2022)}, you can get DEVONthink and Yoink for Mac at a 20% discount!

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With its powerful tools and custom A.I., DEVONthink enables you to collect, organize, edit and annotate documents of any kind, and have them automatically analyzed, connected and filed. And even better, everything is securely synced between your Macs, iPads and iPhones.

For example: Set up a smart rule to watch a folder for added files. With its rich set of options, the app will automatically import matching files and sort them appropriately – a huge time saver for receipts, for instance.

DEVONthink is a file and media browser, but doesn’t stop there. It’s a snippet keeper and note taker, but doesn’t stop there, either. It’s a database and organizational tool. It’s what you need it to be to get stuff done.

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Yoink – Simplify and Improve Drag and Drop

Yoink offers you a “shelf” for files you drag from Finder, or app-content like images from websites. It frees your hand and mouse cursor to let you more easily and quickly navigate to the destination of your files.

Use Yoink to get even more files into DEVONthink, even easier and faster 😎