I’ve got a couple of updates for you today: Yoink for iOS has been updated with new widgets and Control Center access, Tameno gets new Control Center and watchOS widgets, and Yoink for Mac gets a brand new Clipboard History widget.
Yoink for iPad and iPhone
Yoink for iOS – your files and snippets shelf for anything you can drag, copy, share and download – gets a couple of cool new widgets for your home screen and, on iOS 18, your Control Center, while fixing a couple of issues along the way.
What’s New in Yoink for iPad and iPhone v2.5?
+ iOS 18 Control Center Widgets
These allow you to: – start monitoring your clipboard with Yoink in the background (configurable with a time-out, and a filter (save everything / only images / only texts / only links) – Paste your clipboard into Yoink manually – Scan a document with Yoink – Sketch in Yoink
+ New File List Widget for your Home Screen
Get quick access to everything you stored in Yoink. It’s configurable, so you can let it only show images, or links, for example. Additionally, you can set it up to open files in Picture-in-Picture, so you can open a PDF, an eMail, or even a website and have it ready in any app you are in the PiP overlay.
+ Bug fixes and improvements
I’ve also fixed a couple of issues with Yoink’s keyboard – which allows you to access files stored in Yoink whenever you’re editing text, the clipboard monitor, and the main list display of items.
Availability and Links
Yoink for iPad and iPhone is exclusively available on the App Store in English, German, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese and Korean. It’s a one-time purchase at USD 5.99 / EUR 6,99 / GBP 5.99 .
Tameno – your auto-repeating tapping timer – now can be started from iOS 18’s Control Center, and has a new interactive widget for your watchOS 11-equipped Apple Watch.
What’s New in Tameno v1.2?
+ iOS 18 Control Center Widgets
Get quick access to your last used and your favorite interval, right from your Control Center.
+ Interactive Widgets for watchOS 11
Set an interval right from your Smart Stack and off you go!
There’s also a new “Recent Intervals” widget, giving you access to the last three intervals you used.
Availability and Links
Tameno is available in English and German for Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV as a universal app on the iOS and Mac App Store. A one-time purchase of USD 3.99 / EUR 3.99 / GBP 3.99 gives you access to all of them.
Yoink for Mac – the app that drastically improves drag and drop on your Mac – has a new Clipboard History widget, making it easier and quicker than ever to re-copy something, place something in Yoink, pin it, or remove it.
What’s New in Yoink v3.6.93?
+ A New and Improved Clipboard History Widget
Click on the image or the file title to copy the item, press the pin to pin, the Yoink icon to send the file to Yoink, or the x to delete it.
Availability and Links
Yoink for Mac is available in English, German, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese (Simplified) as a one-time-purchase on the Mac App Store (USD 8.99 / EUR 9.99 / GBP 8.99), or part of a Setapp subscription.
Let’s take a tour through ScreenFloat and see how it can power up your screenshots, too.
ScreenFloat for Mac – Your Screen Capture Power Tool All-Rounder
ScreenFloat powers up your screenshots by allowing you to take screenshots and recordings that float above everything else, keeping certain information always in sight. Its Shots Browser stores your shots and helps you organize, name, tag, rate, favorite and find them. Everything syncs across your Macs. Extract, view and copy detected text, faces and barcodes. Edit, annotate, markup and redact your shots effortlessly and non-destructively. Pick colors any time. And more.
Part VII – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight
ScreenFloat integrates perfectly with macOS, so you can easily and comfortably capture and access your shots any way you want to. Read on to learn how.
ScreenFloat offers you a number of widgets, ranging from quick access to capturing your screen and managing your floating shots, over quickly accessing your shots, to folders and picked colors.
Command and Control
These widgets allow you to control all aspects of ScreenFloat – capture new shots and recordings, manage your floating shots and open the Shots- and Tags Browser. These might be especially useful placed on your Desktop, if you’re on macOS 14 Sonoma or newer.
Quick Access to Shots
With “Shot”-family of widgets, you get quick access to:
Favorite Shots
Recently Captured Shots
Shots in a specific folder
Recently closed floating shots
Shots tagged with a specific tag
Clicking a shot will reveal it in the Shots Browser.
Tags and Colors
And lastly, you can have quick access to your favorite tags, and recently picked colors. Clicking a tag in the Favorite Tags widget will reveal it in the Tags Browser. The color widget allows you to copy a color’s hex-, rgb-, float- or hsl values, or a sample color image.
Siri Shortcuts
To integrate capturing your screen into a Shortcut, ScreenFloat comes with a couple of useful Shortcuts to help you do that.
Here are ScreenFloat’s shortcuts available to you:
Capture Shot Allows you to automate capturing a screenshot, timed screenshot, or screen recording.
Options include:
Float shot whether to float the new shot after capture or not
Title
Notes
Tags
Recapture previous area if, instead of starting a new capture, the last known screen area should be preselected for the capture
Add to Folder select a folder to add the newly created shot to
After Capture what should happen right after capture. Current options are: do nothing, Annotate Shot, Crop Shot, Resize Shot, Reduce resolution, Trim Recording, Cut Recording, Create iCloud Link, Create ImageKit Link, Create Cloudinary Link
New Shot from Clipboard Create a new shot from the contents of your clipboard: images, videos, or text.
Import Files Import specific image or video files into ScreenFloat, with the same options as Capture Shot.
Hide / Unhide Floating Shots, Close All Floating Shots Manage your floating shots’ visibility.
URL Scheme
ScreenFloat’s URL scheme gives you access to all of ScreenFloat’s capturing functionality from the comfort of a URL, allowing you to automate captures in your own style.
For all the available options and instructions, please click here.
AppleScript
ScreenFloat allows you to run Application Scripts (AppleScripts that reside in a special folder on your Mac) as a double-click workflow, passing in a copy of the double-clicked shot, along with a couple of other parameters. For all the details and instructions, click here.
This opens up a wide possibility of options to you, like creating your own Link Share service, uploading the shot to your server and copying a link to it to your clipboard, or direct-pasting shots into the active app’s window.
As coincidence has it, here are, coincidentally, two sample scripts that allow you to do exactly that.
Sample AppleScript to upload the double-clicked Shot to FTP server and copy link to pasteboard (direct download) Uses the passed-in fileURL and uploads it to your FTP server, copying the link to it to your clipboard afterwards
Sample AppleScript to direct-paste the double-clicked Shot into the active app’s active window (direct download) Emulates a command-v keypress for the active app. Best used together with a Copy Shot double-click action so you don’t have to copy the fileURL in the script.
You can also run Shortcuts with your shots as a double-click action. Read on for more information on both AppleScripts and Shortcuts as Double-Click actions.
Double-Click Workflows
From time to time, you’ll find yourself doing something over and over again, like resize an image before you send it in an email, or crop an image before you annotate it, or duplicate a screen recording before you remove its audio tracks. ScreenFloat speeds that up by providing customizable double-click workflows for your floating shots.
Setting up Double-Click Workflows
Double-Click workflows are set up in ScreenFloat’s settings. You can reach them by clicking on ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon in the right portion of your menu bar; or by right-clicking any floating shot; or by pressing command (⌘) – , in the Shots Browser. Select Floating Shots, and you’ll be ready to get going:
You can set up double-click workflows for different mouse buttons, and different modifier keys on your keyboard (command (⌘), option (⌥), control (^), shift (⇧) and fn). For instance, you can set up workflows for your left mouse button with no modifier keys pressed (a simple double-click onto the floating shot), or your middle mouse button with command (⌘) and shift (⇧) pressed. This allows you to set up not just one, but multiple double-click workflows, tailored to different situations or requirements.
To add a double-click action to a workflow, hold down the modifier keys of your choice (or none) and press the mouse button area at the top of the list with the desired mouse button. Then press the + button at the bottom of the list to select actions you’d like to perform on the floating shot you double-click.
Switching through a couple of double-click actions for different mouse buttons and modifier keys.
The – button allows you to remove selected actions from the current workflow, remove all actions from the current workflow, or completely reset all your double-click workflows.
Available Actions
Actions in a workflow are performed in the order they appear in the list when you add them. This order is more or less pre-defined and cannot be changed: for instance, the Duplicate Shot action is always added to the top of the list, and thus, performed first when the double-click workflow runs. On the other hand, Copy as File is performed last, so you can have a double-click workflow where you crop, resize and annotate a shot, and after that, that newly edited shot is copied.
Here, we set up a workflow for when we double-click a shot with the middle mouse button and the option modifier key pressed. It will duplicate the shot first, then allow for cropping and annotation, then copies the resulting image file.
Let’s go over the list of available actions.
Some of these actions are only available when image shots are double-clicked: – Reduce image resolution – Annotate Shot while others are only available for screen recordings: – Copy Still Image from Video – Create GIF from Video – Trim Video – Cut Video – Remove Audio (All, System, Mic)
Let’s go over them:
Copy Shot Copy the shot as a file path, or as data (in the case of images)
Copy Clicked Text (Additive) When you double-click a text line in a shot with this active, that text line gets copied. Double-click another in the same shot, and it gets added to the previous copy.
Copy Still Image from Video Copies the currently displayed frame in a floating video shot.
Open Copy With Allows you to specify two apps: one for image shots, and one for video shots.
Export to Folder Lets you select a folder on your disk to save the double-clicked shot to in its native PNG format right away.
Run AppleScript Run an AppleScript with a copy of the double-clicked shot. Read instructions here.
Run Shortcut Run a Siri Shortcut with a copy of the double-clicked shot.
Resize Shot Allows you to specify a percentage to resize to (25%, 50%, 75%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%), or to resize it manually.
Rotate Rotate the shot clockwise, or counterclockwise.
Mark up with Adds the selected symbol (checkmark, xmark, or smart numbered list) to the shot at the clicked location.
Redact Redacts the clicked information, text, barcode or face.
Rate Shot Specify a rating to give the shot when double-clicking it (from no rating to 1-5 stars).
Add to Folder Specify a folder the shot should be added to, or let the double-click show the folders menu so you can select one on the fly.
Add Tag Specify a tag to tag the double-clicked shot with, or show the Tags menu to select one on the fly.
Toggle Opacity Between 100% and Select an opacity level all the way down to 40% to toggle between with a double-click.
Ignore Mouse Clicks Makes the double-clicked shot ignore mouse clicks until reverted.
Toggle Visibility Between Everywhere and Select “Current Space” or “Currently Active App” as an option. Double-click to set it to, say, Currently Active App, then double-click it again to toggle it back to Everywhere.
Resize Floating Shot Window Allows you to resize the floating shot window down or up in increments, or reset it to 100%.
Some actions are mutually exclusive. For instance, you can’t have both Copy All Detected Text and Copy Clicked Text in one and the same action, because one would override the other, and only the last operation would “take”.
Running a double-click workflow on a floating image shot that automatically reduces the shot’s resolution to 72 dpi, then asks me to resize it, then to crop/fold it, and then shows the Share menu.
Spotlight
ScreenFloat optionally indexes your shots and their metadata with Spotlight, so you can find them system-wide.
ScreenFloat Shot search results in Spotlight
The neat thing about this is that it not only allows you to search by shots’ metadata (title, notes, tags), but also their detected text/barcode content, as well as any text annotations you have made.
Selecting a search result reveals it in your Shots Browser, where a double-click onto it, or the enter/return key on your keyboard will float it right away if you like.
Application Services
ScreenFloat comes with a couple of system services that make it easier to import and float image or video files, even text, or extract still images from videos.
Float Image/Video File from Finder
To float an image or video file in ScreenFloat (and import it along the way), select the file(s) in Finder, then select Finder > Services > Create Shot From Selected Image and Video Files in your menu bar.
Create a Floating Shot from Selected Text
Quickly make a floating note of some text with ScreenFloat – select the text and select Services > Create Shot from Selected Text in the application’s app menu. (By the way, you can also do this for text copied to your clipboard from ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon.)
Extract Still Images from Movies playing in QuickTime Player
It’s easy enough to just take a screenshot of the player window with ScreenFloat to capture a still image of the playing video, but it’s even easier with ScreenFloat’s service. Select QuickTime Player > Services > Extract Still Image From QuickTime Player Movie and ScreenFloat will create a still image of the playing movie at the current playback position.
Capture menus and submenus
Capturing a menu and its submenus on its own has become increasingly difficult – perhaps even impossible – with the more recent versions of macOS. It’s very tricky to capture the menu itself without its host window. ScreenFloat offers a system-wide service that allows you to capture a menu and its submenus in its entirety, or just specific submenus, when you don’t need the entire hierarchy.
Note on how it works: After you select the service “Capture Contextual menu…”, ScreenFloat will wait 10 seconds for a menu to appear (if there’s no menu after 10 seconds, ScreenFloat will cancel the capture). Once a menu appears, you have 3 seconds to navigate to the next submenu, and then again 3 seconds to navigate to the next submenu, and so on. After 3 seconds of no change in menus, the capture will be made.
That’s a Wrap
Whew, what a journey. Congratulations, you now know everything there is to know about ScreenFloat – you can now get the most out of it, I’m sure! Consider these posts living documents that I’ll keep up-to-date with the changes made to the app, so you’ll always know where to go if something’s unclear. Speaking of unclear, if you have any feedback or questions, please do not hesitate to write me – I’d love to hear from you.
Just a quick note that since the betas (!) of macOS Ventura 13.0, configuration of 3rd-party widgets is broken, which, of course, means that Yoink’s widget’s configuration does currently not work, and I cannot do anything about it. Let’s hope Apple fixes it soon, macOS 13.0.1 didn’t bring any improvement in this regard.
Here’s a quick video of what I mean:
Again, in my testing, this not only was the case for Yoink’s widget, but a widespread issue over all sorts of 3rd-party widgets, although I do believe that dynamically app-supplied values work. It might only be static values that are affected by this.
At some point in iPadOS 16’s beta, this same bug occurred, but that was fixed before release. I guess the fix didn’t make it into macOS. Maybe it’s time for another “Back to the Mac” event.
UPDATE (Dec 14th, 2022)
This is still an issue on macOS 13.1 (22C65). Quite embarrassing for Apple.
UPDATE (Jan 24th, 2023)
macOS 13.2 (22D49) seems to have finally fixed the issue – although it *did* take an initial
killall Notification\ Centre
to kickstart the widgets after adding and configuring them. But after that, it seems to work reliably.
Yoink v3.6.5 re-introduces its clipboard history feature and the accompanying widget. Here are a few details about its implementation for macOS Big Sur and newer.
The No-Button-Action Conundrum
Widgets on macOS Big Sur and up (and iOS, for that matter) can’t really react to a user’s click on them by themselves, so you cannot run any logic from a user’s input. A click onto a widget will always bring you back to its containing app, where you can then run logic accordingly. On iOS, that’s obvious, as it’ll open up the owning app and put it front and center. On macOS, that can be a little more subtle, because macOS allows apps to run in the background (like Yoink does, mostly).
When you click on an item in Yoink’s widget, it’ll tell Yoink to run the logic to copy the clicked item (or pin it, or add it to Yoink, or reveal it in the browser, depending on the modifier key you pressed during the click).
But there’s a problem with that in the case of Yoink:
The Foreground Conundrum
No matter where you click on a widget (either the background of it, or a SwiftUI Link() object), it will bring its containing/owning app to the foreground. For many apps, that will be fine. But Yoink is an app that runs in the background and only very rarely needs to actually become the active, keyboard-input-accepting app.
So I thought, perhaps I can have another application inside Yoink’s app bundle, which is LSBackgroundOnly, with a custom URL scheme that would be called from the widget using a SwiftUI Link() object. An app that has LSBackgroundOnly set to YES in its Info.plist cannot present any user interface, and cannot become “key”, even if the system tells it to. But there’s another roadblock – even though only the secondary app inside Yoink’s app bundle should be able to open the custom URL scheme, the widget will send that Link() to its containing/owning app only, no matter the url scheme. In this case, the main Yoink app.
The point of the widget is to quickly re-copy something and then paste it somewhere right away.
Say you're editing text in TextEdit, then open the widget, click on it to re-copy something and then press command-v to paste it into TextEdit only to hear a beep because the app isn't active anymore (because Yoink is). So you have to click into the TextEdit document to make it active, and only then can you paste. That can (and will) become annoying very quickly.
In order to have Yoink never become the active app from a click on its widget, I’d have to move the widget plugin/appex bundle out of the Yoink app bundle’s PlugIns folder, into the secondary target one’s. Only that way would the widget attempt to make the secondary target(and thus, not Yoink) frontmost – and fail because of LSBackgroundOnly, leaving the currently frontmost app active – and send the custom URL scheme link to it. The secondary target would then forward the link to the main Yoink app bundle.
Tada, it works. But that lead to yet another problem. (When did “it just works” turn into “it just won’t”? And while I’m at it, what’s with those widgets? They feel quite… neutered to me compared to what they were able to do before.)
The Widget Recognition Conundrum
So far, I managed to have Yoink not become active when an item in the widget is clicked. But now, with the Yoink app containing the secondary target containing the widget, macOS was unwilling to recognize and show the widget in Notification Centre. Interestingly, a double-click onto the secondary target in Finder would make it show right away. Infuriatingly, launching the secondary target quietly from within Yoink at launch won’t – and I had a lot of different approaches: – Launching the secondary app directly with NSWorkspace’s -launchApplicationAtURL:… – Launching the secondary app via its URL scheme – Having Finder open the secondary app – Running an NSTask open -a <secondaryapp> /path/to/somefile – Registering the app using LSRegisterURL
None of it worked. I figured, the problem was that it was Yoink launching the secondary app, not the “system” or “user”, like it was the case when double-clicking it in Finder.
Which made me think of login item helper apps. Inside the macOS app sandbox, an app cannot set itself as a login item. It needs to have another “helper” app inside its Library/LoginItems folder which it designates as a login item, and that app will then in turn launch the containing app. Nuts, but there it is.
The point is, the system launches those login item helper apps, not the containing app.
Heureka. In Yoink, at launch, I set my secondary app, which contains the widget bundle, as a login item with SMLoginItemSetEnabled, causing the system to launch it. Now, finally, Notification Centre recognizes and shows Yoink’s widget.
