Archive for March, 2021

Default Folder X 5.5.7 improves Path Finder integration, fixes disappearing cursors and more

Friday, March 26th, 2021

Version 5.5.7 of Default Folder X is available!

For folks that use Path Finder (an excellent Power User’s alternative to the Finder), you’ll be happy to know that Path Finder is now a fully supported alternative when you’re using Default Folder X. Anywhere that DFX integrates with the Finder, it will now use Path Finder if it’s running.

New in this release is the ability to add Default Folder X’s shortcut buttons to Path Finder’s toolbars. This lets you quickly pop up Default Folder X’s menus or slide out its drag-and-drop drawer by clicking a button in the toolbar.

Default Folder X also now “sees” all of the tabs in Path Finder’s windows. Every folder that you have in a Path Finder window will be shown in Default Folder X’s “Finder Windows” menu and highlighted by it’s Finder-click feature in Open and Save dialogs.

For those of you that _don’t_ use Path Finder, this release delivers a bunch of important bug fixes, so please don’t pass it up. Chief among them are fixes for the occasional disappearing cursor in Open and Save dialogs (finally), better reliability when switching between folders, and the elimination of a hang that could occur as Default Folder X was launching.

Download links and a full list of changes are available on the Default Folder X Release Page, or if you’re already running Default Folder X, just choose “Check for Update” from its menu to get the update.

Posted in Big Sur, Default Folder X, Path Finder | 2 Comments »

HistoryHound 2.3.2 adds multiple-item selection, fixes bugs

Friday, March 26th, 2021

HistoryHound 2.3.2 is a small update that delivers bug fixes and introduces multiple-item selection to the search results list.

Multi-selection lets you act on multiple results at a time to:

  • copy their URLs as a list
  • open them all in your browser
  • create a filter to exclude them from future inclusion
  • remove them all from your search index

As a reminder, HistoryHound follows macOS’s standard method for selecting multiple items in a list:

  • Command-click an item to add it to the current selection
  • Shift-click to extend the selection from the currently selected item to the item you’re clicking on

Full release notes and download links are available on the HistoryHound Release Page, or if you’re already running an earlier version of HistoryHound, just choose “Check for Updates…” from its menu.

Posted in HistoryHound, Tips | No Comments »

Jettison 1.8.2 is here!

Friday, March 12th, 2021

Version 1.8.2 of Jettison is now available. It brings a number of improvements, including several fixes for problems remounting disks after they’ve been ejected.

Jettison’s error reporting has also been improved so that it catches edge cases where a disk unmounts after Jettison has been told by the system that the unmount failed. This should prevent those error messages that said a problem had occurred, but then didn’t list any disks in the error details.

For several releases now, Jettison has been quietly quitting Photos, iTunes and Music before it ejects disks, then relaunching them when those disks are remounted. This prevents problems for the many people that keep their photos or music on external drives. In doing this, however, Jettison was a little too aggressive: It quit the apps when you chose “Eject External Disks Now” from its menu as well as when the machine went to sleep. That turned out to be a Bad Idea, so now it’s only done before ejecting disks when the machine is actually going to sleep.

In a similar vein, there are now some preference settings accessible via Terminal to tweak this behavior. You can turn off the auto-quit / relaunch behavior using this command in Terminal:

defaults write com.stclairsoft.Jettison leaveAppsRunning -bool TRUE

If you want to keep the behavior, but need to add other applications to the list of apps to quit, use:

defaults write com.stclairsoft.Jettison appsToQuit -array com.apple.TextEdit

where you substitute the bundle identifiers of the apps to quit where com.apple.TextEdit appears above.

Non-application processes (such as system background daemons) can be terminated before disks are ejected by using:

defaults write com.stclairsoft.Jettison processesToTerminate -array photoanalysisd

where a whitespace-separated list of process names goes in place of photoanalysisd.

And yes, if these options prove popular, they’ll get their own place in the preferences dialog so you no longer have to use Terminal to set them up.

So anyway, this is available in Jettison 1.8.2, with details and download links on the Jettison Release Page. Or if you’re already using Jettison, choose “Check for Updates” from its menu in your menu bar.

Posted in Big Sur, Jettison, Tips | 2 Comments »

App Tamer 2.6.1 delivers compatibility and bug fixes

Thursday, March 4th, 2021

Version 2.6.1 of App Tamer is now available! This maintenance release of our app for taking control of your Mac’s CPU and battery delivers a number of bug-fixes. It works correctly with the Origin game launcher, as well as with processes that are launched using ‘sh’ and ‘tcsh’ shell scripts (which some ‘normal’ applications do under the hood).

App Tamer 2.6.1 also prevents you from completely stopping apps that are distributed via the Setapp subscription service because that can cause issues with Setapp. If you want to reduce the CPU usage of those apps, simply have App Tamer throttle them to 1% CPU rather than completely stopping them.

And finally, this release allows you to make App Tamer’s process window smaller than its default size and keep it that way. Previously, it’d insist on enlarging the window back to its default size when you closed it and opened it again. Oops 🙄

The full release notes and a download link are on the App Tamer Release Page.

Posted in App Tamer, Big Sur | No Comments »