Jettison 1.4 is available! It delivers a bunch of improvements to its disk ejecting and remounting capabilities. The update also includes many new features that people have asked for, such as hotkeys, disk-specific behavior, silently remounting disks, and more. Check out the changes on the Jettison release page and download the update. If you’ve purchased Jettison already, this update is free!
Jettison 1.4 has been released!
June 24th, 2014Using Default Folder X to remount network drives
June 19th, 2014
You learn something new every day!
Default Folder X was featured on the Mac Geek Gab podcast again this week, but not for the usual reason of being a fast way to navigate all of your files and folders. A user wrote in to say that he uses Default Folder X to solve a common problem with accessing disks on a network. OS X will sometimes drop a network-connected drive off the desktop, making it inaccessible until you explicitly contact the server again. Default Folder X can actually help with this by automatically reconnecting to the server when you use an Open or Save As dialog. You simply have to set a folder on the server as a Favorite folder or the default folder for the application you’re using. When you access that Favorite or default folder using Default Folder X, it will automatically find the server and reconnect to it if it’s available.
Thanks for that reminder Carsten!
App Tamer 2.0.3 : UI refinements and fixes for several issues
June 13th, 2014
App Tamer 2.0.3 is available as a free update for users of version 2.x.
This release offers a small refinement in the display of application names in App Tamer’s window, showing the CPU limit for applications that you’ve chosen to manage with App Tamer. It also fixes several complex little bugs that have been identified since the last release. Oh, and this release has also been tested on the developer release of Yosemite and works fine.
Head over to the App Tamer Release page to download a copy!
Using command-D to go to the Desktop
April 30th, 2014Wow, I think I touched a nerve 🙂
When I added the Duplicate command in Default Folder X 4.6.5, I took the opportunity to update the command keys to follow what Apple currently does in the OS X Finder. In the Finder, cmd-shift-D goes to the Desktop and cmd-D is used for the Duplicate command. Everyone will want things to be consistent between the Finder and the Open/Save dialogs, right?
WRONG
We’ve gotten a lot of hate mail from Default Folder X users in the last 24 hours, asking (with various levels of politeness) why we changed their workflow. Umm – cohesiveness of user interface? OK, maybe not, then. Since this change has made a lot of people angry, I’ve removed cmd-D from the duplicate command and made it so both cmd-D and cmd-shift-D take you to the Desktop, and re-released Default Folder X 4.6.5. To get this change, just re-download Default Folder X and reinstall it.
For those of you that actually want command-D to invoke the Duplicate command like it does in the Finder, you’re going to have to suffer with a little dissonance in your user experience. Sorry about that.
Default Folder X 4.6.5 : Features and Fixes
April 29th, 2014
Default Folder X 4.6.5 is now available, giving you the ability to save a copy of a file while you’re in an Open dialog. It’s great for creating a backup copy of a document before you open it.
This update also resolves some pesky issues, the most important of which is a fix for a problem with OmniOutliner 4. Default Folder X would sometimes make OO4 freeze for 2 minutes when you saved or exported a file. This version also works around a Mavericks bug that could make Default Folder X’s Spotlight and Preview windows pop up in the middle of the screen instead of below the file dialog where they’re supposed to be.
There are a number of other smaller fixes and improvements as well – you can read about all of them and download the update from the Default Folder X Release page.
Folders disappearing from your Favorites in the Finder sidebar
March 31st, 2014Several people have reported that folders that they’ve put in the Favorites section of the sidebar in Finder windows just disappear, and have thought that either Default Folder X or Jettison was at fault. I’ve confirmed with Apple that this is a known bug in Mac OS 10.9.2. It’s not caused by Default Folder X, Jettison or any other 3rd party application. It’s an issue that Apple needs to fix in OS X.
Here’s a more complete description of the problem:
Bug:
If I drag a folder to the Finder sidebar to add it as a Favorite, then later eject the disk containing the folder, the Finder deletes the folder from the sidebar. It doesn’t return when I remount the disk.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Plug in an external drive (I used a FW800 drive, but apparently any old disk will do).
- Open a Finder window, navigate to the external drive and then drag a folder from the drive to the Favorites list in the Finder window’s sidebar.
- Eject the external drive.
- Run Disk Utility and remount the external drive.
Expected Results:
I would expect the folder to stay in the Favorites list in the sidebar, regardless of the availability of the disk. If I click on it it should ask for the disk or try to remount it automatically. Failing this, if the folder is going to be hidden in the sidebar because the disk is unavailable, it should reappear when the disk is available again.
Actual Results:
The folder is removed from the Favorites list in the sidebar, never to return.
App Tamer 2.0.2 Delivers Fixes and UI Tweaks
March 28th, 2014App Tamer 2.0.2 is available now, providing fixes for a couple of bugs, as well as some minor changes to the UI that help to show what’s going on.
First the fixes:
- In certain situations, App Tamer 2.0.1 could crash when you launched it. This was due to a bug in the way it tracked subprocesses. The common example was a command in Terminal that ran a couple of other commands which in turn spawned subprocesses themselves. A few simple checks were all that was needed to fix it.
- A more common problem was that App Tamer would occasionally stop limiting the CPU usage of an application it was supposed to be managing. This turned out to be a timing issue: If App Tamer stopped throttling a process and then immediately started again, the original CPU limiter would still be winding down and App Tamer would find it and use it rather than creating a new one. A few milliseconds later, that CPU limiter would finish shutting down and disappear, leaving the managed application free to use as much CPU as it wanted. App Tamer doesn’t do that anymore 🙂
The UI enhancements:
Mark Mackay, an App Tamer user in New Zealand, pointed out that if App Tamer wasn’t limiting the CPU use of an application at the time (because that app wasn’t doing anything) he couldn’t tell if he’d configured App Tamer to slow it down. He suggested I enhance the status indicators that App Tamer puts next to each application to somehow show that running apps – the ones with blue squares – had settings attached to them. A little triangle of color in the bottom right corner now shows you if that app will be slowed down or stopped (with yellow or red corners, respectively).- Version 2.0.2 also dims the icon and name of any application or process that can’t be stopped, so you know not to bother clicking on them.
Grab your copy from the App Tamer Release page. The update is free if you’ve bought App Tamer 2!
Default Folder X 4.6.4 delivers compatibility fixes
March 13th, 2014
I just put the finishing touches on Default Folder X 4.6.4, which is now available on the Default Folder X page. It includes a bunch of fixes for bugs and compatibility issues.
There are corrections for problems with specific applications like OmniOutliner, Sublime Text and Reunion. More importantly, there’s new logic for automatically setting the initial folder for all Open and Save As dialogs. Seems like that’d be a simple thing, right? Unfortunately, there are a host of application- and OS-specific quirks that Default Folder X has to deal with, as well as several options that you can select in your Default Folder X preferences. The combination of all these things had made for some contorted logic, especially with Mavericks’ “creative” handling of Carbon applications. It’s now simplified and properly sorted out and works a lot better. If you still encounter problems with a specific application, send us a tech support request and I’ll have a look.
App Tamer 2.0.1 improves performance and fixes bugs
February 26th, 2014App Tamer 2.0.1 corrects a few issues that were causing slow-downs in App Tamer itself, especially when it first started up. If you had an application that had a lot of sub-processes (typically Terminal, Google Chrome or Safari), App Tamer’s launch time could be glacially slow. And even after startup, pausing and un-pausing those apps took much more CPU than it should have.
In addition, CPU usage was reduced in several other areas and several bugs were squashed, including one that could cause App Tamer to fail to reenable itself after you turned it off for a specified amount of time.
For a full list of changes as well as links to download the new version, go to the App Tamer Release page.
Elite Keylogger Pro disables Default Folder X
February 7th, 2014It’s come to our attention (after about a week’s worth of debugging) that a software package called Elite Keylogger Pro disables Default Folder X. The Default Folder X Helper application will still run and you’ll see Default Folder X’s icon in your menubar, but none of its controls will appear around your Open and Save dialogs.
The frustrating problem has been that Elite Keylogger Pro actually hides itself so that it can be installed on a computer and surreptitiously record keystrokes and screen snapshots without anyone knowing (yes, that’s pretty sketchy). When I started receiving bug reports saying that Default Folder X had suddenly stopped working, the System Information reports, Console logs and other debugging information that I got from affected users showed no clear clues as to what was causing the problem. Finally, one observant Default Folder X user (with a good memory) remembered buying Elite Keylogger Pro as part of the Mac Bundle 4.0 and installing it (thank you Adam Olson!)
So, if Default Folder X has suddenly stopped working on your machine, see if you bought the Mac Bundle 4.0 recently – or purchased Elite Keylogger Pro separately – and installed it. If so, this is probably what’s causing the problem.
To get Default Folder X working again you need to uninstall Elite Keylogger Pro. And be careful – you must uninstall it according to WideStep’s instructions http://help.widestep.com/how-to-uninstall-elite-keylogger-mac/. Using a “clean up” application or just throwing the application in the Trash is not enough to remove it from your system.
I’ve contacted WideStep to see about fixing or working around the conflict and will update this as I have more information. Sorry for the trouble and for any time you’ve wasted troubleshooting this (hopefully you haven’t killed an entire week like I have…)
Update: WideStep has issued an update to Elite Keylogger Pro to fix this problem. Get version 1.2.027 or higher from their website to ensure that Default Folder X runs correctly with their software.
– Jon
