With DevMate sunsetting in little over a week I’ve issued an update for every app that included the DevMate SDK.

🎧 Relax 1.2

Besides removing the DevMate SDK I’ve also included support for pausing Music.app in macOS Catalina. 👌

You’ll notice that I’ve updated the App Store screenshots as well. I liked the eye piercing background color of the original images, but I think this is a little more appealing. 😅

After

Before

📹 Pipvid 2.0.1

Like Timeless this updates switches the update mechanism from the DevMate SDK to just Sparkle’s update mechanism. Updates are hosted at Microsoft’s AppCenter, for now.

🕔 Timeless 0.9.8

This is getting very close to its initial 1.0 release!

🎨 Carbonize 1.2.9

I’ve included an Internet Access Policy to every app that accesses remote resources. With an IAP apps like Little Snitch can display a meaningful message when asking you to allow or block an app’s request to fetch an online resource.

Carbonize benefits from this because it requires access to carbon.now.sh. The message that a firewall like Little Snitch displays reflects that now.

This is a huge release, with a whole bunch of invisible and some visible changes! 🚀

Most notably the entire underlying window detection and pip-toggling mechanism has been rewritten. It’s more reliable and easier to expand in the future.

Secondly Pipvid now supports QuickTime 10.5’s native Picture-in-Picture mode on macOS Catalina. I’m personally still a fan of Pipvid’s more relaxed implementation. If you enable the option however, Pipvid will just trigger the native Picture-in-Picture Agent window when you resize a QuickTime window.

This release also supports managing the built-in PiP Agent window that apps like Safari and QuickTime use. Currently it allows you to snap out of Picture-in-Picture mode by enlarging the window beyond the trigger width that you’ve set in Pipvid.

If you’re a Pipvid user, some defaults have changed. Read on to see if you need to adjust your preferences.

Changed

• The window detection and toggling mechanism has been rebuilt, making it more reliable and easier to expand to other apps in the future.
• Assign to all Desktops now only triggers after resizing the window or when a new window is created, to reduce the times the menu pops up.
• Only the window’s width is considered when checking if it should enter or exit PiP.

Added

• Support for QuickTime 10.5’s native PiP mode on macOS Catalina! (Disabled by default.)
• Support for unsticking the native Picture-in-Picture window by resizing the window. (Works when the max. window size is set to < 50%. Disabled by default.)
• A setting that allows you to choose whether Pipvid sticks windows as soon as it’s activated, or only when the window is resized. (Disabled by default.)
• A similar setting as above, but for unsticking windows when Pipvid quits or is disabled. (Enabled by default.)

Fixed

• Fixed slight glitching when dragging windows around by repositioning windows after you’re done moving them.
• The checkmark icon in the License Window and the Setup Wizard changes color with Light and Dark Mode.

Apple chose today to release macOS 10.15 Catalina. The latest major update to the Mac operating system. 🥳

I’ve been testing Denied, Carbonize, Relax, Pipvid and Timeless with every new beta since they came available and I’m happy to report they all work fine.

Upgrading

You’ll get a notification about the update at some point. If you want to upgrade early, open System Preferences and select System Update.

After a moment or two you’ll get the option to Upgrade Now.

Denied

iTunes has been replaced by separate apps for music, podcasts, TV and books. All very appropriately named after the media they expose. I’ve added support for Music.app in Denied v1.7.

Song skipping through all filters works perfectly. There’s an unfixed bug in Music that prevents Denied from grabbing the track information when the app first launches and before Music was set to play, pause, skip to the next or previous track. This is mainly cosmetic. I’m confident Apple will address the issue in a future update to Catalina.

Pipvid

QuickTime gained a built-in picture-in-picture mode in macOS 10.15. I’ve been on the fence about removing my custom solution, now there’s a native implementation.

For the moment I’ve decided to stay with the custom feature I built specifically for Pipvid. The main reason being that my solution allows me to enable and disable picture-in-picture by simply resizing the player window. I love that feature myself.

The new pip-button in QuickTime is easily accessible to those who prefer the native variant.

I’m working on a hybrid solution that could make the best of both options. That’s not quite ready yet.

Others

Carbonize, Relax and Timeless work exactly like they did on macOS Mojave. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much on Catalina as you did on Mojave. 😄

Have fun exploring the new features!

The team behind Carbon has been acquired by FOSSA a few days ago. That’s great news for them and for Carbon!

It also means that updates to the web based tool are coming out even fast than before. Most just add features to Carbonize, some alter the UI and require an update from my end.

I’ve released version 1.2.8 a few days ago to accommodate the changes Carbon made in version 4.3.0. It’s now available for download from the Mac App Store. Enjoy!

Since the first Beta of macOS 10.15 Catalina became available on June 6th, I’ve been working on adding support for the new Music app that will replace iTunes to Denied.

A bug in the new operating system made this less than trivial unfortunately. Every time Denied tries to retrieve the title of the current track, it gets an error. After waiting nine beta releases for Apple to address the issue, I decided to ship an update that works around the issue.

This means that Denied version 1.7 with preliminary support for Catalina’s Music app is now available for download. 🚀

I say preliminary because it focusses on skipping tracks through one of the familiar filters. There is a known issue that prevents Denied from grabbing the track information when the app first launches and before Music.app was set to play, pause, skip to the next or previous track. As soon as Apple resolves the issue it should work exactly like it did on previous versions of macOS.

Here’s a complete list of changes I made. It’s a pretty huge update!

Added

• This update adds preliminary support for future versions of macOS and their music app.

👆 Apple rejects apps that mention the name of apps and macOS versions that haven’t been released yet, hence the vague mention of what this update actually introduces.

Changed

• I’ve updated the project and its dependencies.
• The animations have been redone.
• The minimum supported version of macOS is now 10.14 Mojave.
• Lots of under the hood improvements have been made.

Removed

• The crash reporter has been removed, as the service I was using is being retired. I’m keeping an eye out for an alternative. You can always get help through support.dangercove.com