yoink – Eternal Storms Software's Blog

October 7, 2021

Yoink for iPad and iPhone v2.4 – Improved Background Clipboard Monitoring

Yoink for iPad and iPhone v2.3.5 introduced Background Clipboard Monitoring, which, if enabled, stores anything you copy, even if Yoink itself is in the background, effectively giving you a clipboard history.

With version 2.4, I’ve improved it by adding the ability to only monitor for specific data types, and to temporarily pause the monitor.

Background Clipboard Monitoring in Action on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15

^{Captured on my iPad using iPadOS 15, lightly edited for brevity but otherwise unaltered}

^{For demonstrative purposes, I kept Yoink in the foreground as a Slide-Over app, just to show what gets added when.}
^{But all of this works even if Yoink is not visible on your display and put in the background.}

In the video above, I enable Yoink’s clipboard monitor and consecutively copy an image, a link, and some text; all get stored in Yoink.
I then use the Picture-in-Picture’s fast forward button to tell Yoink to only watch for text. With that option set, I again copy an image, a link, and some text; this time only the text is stored in Yoink.
I click the fast forward button again to make Yoink only save links, and repeat the copy-procedure of an image, a link, and some text; now, only the link gets stored in Yoink.
A final time I click the fast forward button to have Yoink only watch for images and – you guessed it – when I copy an image, a link and some text, only the image is added to Yoink.

Next, I pause the clipboard monitor by using Picture-in-Picture’s Pause button. Now, Yoink does not react to any copy events at all. By pressing the Play button in PiP, I reactivate the clipboard monitor.

Notes on the monitor’s behavior

The clipboard monitor attempts to ignore sensitive data, like passwords. For this, it refers to the pasteboard data types proposed at nspasteboard.org, and checks if there are any password-type app names contained in the pasteboard data types, like “1password”, or “keychain”, for example. If encountered, Yoink ignores the copy-event and waits for the next.

As for energy consumption, it is very light-weight.
The images you see in Picture-in-Picture are static – it doesn’t play video, it doesn’t play audio.
Yes, Yoink will continue running in the background because of this, but all it does is check your pasteboard every couple of seconds (and not even the data directly, only a “changeCount” value provided by the API).
If a change has occurred, it will save the content to Yoink and to disk.
Syncing – if enabled – only occurs when the app comes back to the foreground, so there is no added network activity.

Other Changes in Yoink v2.4

– I improved Yoink’s compatibility with GarageBand. Dragging an audio file to GarageBand from Yoink now works correctly
– Picture-in-Picture for arbitrary content now properly displays Map location items
– I fixed a memory leak and a couple of app crashes

Pricing and Availability

Yoink is available on the iOS App Store as a one-time purchase, for $5.99 / €5.99.
It is localized in English, German, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean, with more languages to follow.

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

Stay healthy and safe!

September 29, 2021

Yoink for iPad and iPhone v2.3.5 – Background Clipboard Monitoring

After releasing Yoink v2.3, which brought the app up-to-speed on all things iOS 15, I have another great update out for Yoink for iPad and iPhone, which allows you to make the app monitor your clipboard in the background and save almost anything you copy or cut.

Background Clipboard Monitoring

In the video above, you can see it in action, running on my iPad.
Starting the Clipboard Monitor offers you three options:
1. a 5-minute timeout
2. a 30-minute timeout, or
3. no timeout at all.

So, were you to start clipboard monitoring with a 5-minute timeout, it would save anything you copy or cut, and automatically end after 5 minutes, if you didn’t copy or cut anything in that time.
Clipboard monitoring also ends as soon as you close the Picture-in-Picture overlay.

Of course, this also works on iPhone:

So in addition to sharing content to Yoink with its Share extension, manually pasting content into the app, and Siri Shortcuts, you can now have anything you copy stored automatically in Yoink.

Notes on the monitor’s behavior

Yoink attempts to *not* save sensitive data, like passwords. It does so by referring to the pasteboard data types proposed at nspasteboard.org. It also checks if there are any common password-type app names contained in the pasteboard data types, like “1password”, or “keychain”, for example. If that’s the case, Yoink ignores the copy/cut event and waits for the next.

Regarding energy consumption, it’s very light-weight.
The Picture-in-Picture content is just a static image that changes to another static image if a copy-event was detected. It doesn’t play video, it doesn’t play audio.
Yes, Yoink will continue running in the background because of this, but all it does is check your pasteboard every couple of seconds (and not even the data directly, only a “changeCount” value provided by the API).
If a change has occurred, it will save the content to Yoink and to disk.
Syncing only occurs when the app comes back to the foreground, if enabled, so there are no round-trips to iCloud every time you copy something.

Another (already released) cool new feature in Yoink for i(Pad)OS 15

Just because I think it’s awesome, I thought I’d mention another Picture-in-Picture feature Yoink has been offering since iOS 15 was released – displaying arbitrary content in PiP.
This means you can view photos, texts, PDFs, eMails, websites and more in the Picture-in-Picture overlay.
Check out this video of it, where I open a website in PiP and scroll through it using its controls.

Links

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!

September 20, 2021

Yoink v2.3 for iPad and iPhone is ready for iOS 15

Yoink v2.3 for iPad and iPhone is now available on the App Store and brings a couple of neat new features for users of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15.

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.

First things first, with this update, I’ve decided to drop support for iOS 11, up to and including iOS 13, and will only support iOS 14 and newer going forward. After taking a look at the app’s usage statistics Apple provides on App Store Connect, having Yoink support iOS all the way back to version 11, which I did up until today, doesn’t make sense anymore.

What’s New in Yoink v2.3 for iPad and iPhone [on iOS 15]

+ Picture-in-Picture, with a twist.
With Yoink’s Picture-in-Picture you can, of course, play videos.
But you can also show websites, images, texts, eMails and PDFs in PiP.
Below are two videos showing a website being scrolled in PiP, and images being shown in PiP.

^{A website being opened – and scrolled – in Yoink’s Picture-in-Picture mode. Scrolling also works in text-, eMail- and PDF files.}

^{Images being shown in Yoink’s Picture-in-Picture mode.}

Now, you might ask, as I have when I first came up with the idea: “Isn’t this what Slide-Over is for, or Side-by-Side?”.
Well, yes. Until you’ve used this.
If you need an overlay wherever you currently are, not wanting to worry about having to manage the Slide-Over app when switching between full screen apps, this comes in very handy. I haven’t used it for a long while yet (this feature is internally maybe two weeks old), but I’ve been using it daily ever since. It also focuses entirely on the content it displays, without the app’s UI taking up screen space.

+ Support for Quick Notes
Select a file in Yoink and you’ll be able to reference it in a Quick Note, as you can see in the video below.

+ Mouse/Trackpad Band Selection on iPad
A minor improvement, but still very useful, you can now draw a rectangle around files to select them if you’re using an iPad with a mouse or trackpad.

+ Inter-app Drag and Drop on iPhone
Not really a new feature of Yoink itself, but of iOS 15 in general is drag and drop of content between apps.
This makes Yoink’s keyboard on iPhone now on-par with the iPad version, because now you can drag content from Yoink’s keyboard directly into the text area; no copy-paste necessary.

What’s New in Yoink v2.3 for iPad and iPhone [aside from iOS 15-only features]

+ Improved Info Panel
I’ve improved the Info panel, especially for Stacks. Instead of just showing the size of the Stack, you now have quick access to all files contained within it, which you can drag out, copy, or share right away.

^{The improved Info panel for Stacks now shows the files contained within, which you can drag out, copy or share right away.}

On iOS 15, the Info panel, depending on whether you’re using the app in full screen or not, is now presented as a sheet, allowing you to view more content at once.

^{The Info Panel as a sheet on iOS 15.}

+ Audio can now continue playing in the background
+ Yoink now appears in “Open In” dialogs
+ Many, many performance-, compatibility- and reliability improvements
+ Even more bug- and crash fixes

Where can I get Yoink?

Yoink is available for iPad and iPhone on the App Store; it’s 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.

^{Yoink is also available for Mac on the Mac App Store.}

Further Links

Yoink for iPad and iPhone Website | Yoink on the iOS App Store
Yoink for iOS Usage Tips
Yoink for iOS Press Kit (.zip download)

Yoink for Mac Website | Yoink on the Mac App Store
Yoink for Mac Usage Tips
Yoink for Mac Press Kit (.zip download)