Today we released Butler 4.4.8 and Witch 4.6.1. Both are minor updates to fix issues that cropped up with the release of macOS Sonoma. You can either check for updates from within the app, or just download a fresh copy of the full app from the above-linked pages (you won’t lose your settings if you do this).

Very important note: Due to changes in Xcode, the minimum macOS version required to run the updated apps is macOS 10.13 (High Sierra). If you need a version of our apps for an older version of macOS, you can find it on our Museum page.

Witch 4.5.4 is out now, with a number of minor fixes and improvements—check the release notes for all the details. The biggest improvement is probably for those who use Spaces: Switching between them should be more reliable now, especially when at least one of the apps involved has windows on more than one Space. (Switching across Spaces is still slower than non-Spaces switching, but we can’t do anything about that, due to how we have to switch Spaces.)

As always, you can update directly from the System Settings panel (on the About tab), or by downloading a new copy of Witch from our site (you won’t lose your settings).

Butler 4.4.7 is out; the update addresses a few issues, and is recommended for all Butler users (release notes).

If you’re using macOS 13, aka Ventura, and you use Butler’s System Preferences Smart Item¹Butler hasn’t yet adopted the new System Settings name, you’ll probably notice it’s a lot uglier than it was before: We display raw item names, and you’ll see entries that don’t exist when you open the real System Settings app.

That’s all due to Apple revamping the System Preferences app. In the past, the app was basically a wrapper for a number of standalone preference panes. But the new System Settings app has been rewritten as an all-in-one app, where the file-system-level preference panes are merely placeholders, which makes the whole thing a lot less accessible.

We are still pondering ways to deal with this change. In the meantime, the Smart Item works, even though it looks like a work in progress.

I didn’t think it possible, but with today’s update to Menuwhere, I’m using it even more than I was before—and I already used it a lot.

When I pestered Peter to create a modern replacement for my old “menus at the mouse location” app (DejaMenu), it was because I’m primarily a keyboard user, and hate dragging my mouse to the menus to activate them. But macOS is a mouse-centric OS, and as such, my hand is still on the mouse quite regularly.

And now, I can use Menuwhere even when my hand is on the mouse, as version 2.2 activates when you hold down the Command key and right-click your mouse. This idea came from user ‘Spirit’ on the Menuwhere channel of our home on Discord, and it’s sheer brilliance. I find myself using Menuwhere even more often, and I have to move my mouse around even less than I did before.

As always, check the release notes for the full story, and you can update via the in-app updater, or by downloading a fresh copy from the Menuwhere web page.

Butler 4.4.2 and Moom 3.2.23 have been released. Both are maintenance updates with no new features (Release notes: Butler, Moom).

Direct customers (Butler and Moom) can update from within the app, or by downloading a fresh copy of the app from the apps’ web pages. App Store users of Moom should see the update in the App Store app.

Over the course of the Yosemite beta, we’ve had a few reports of users not being able to make Witch work properly. If you’ve got this problem, you’ll know, because you’ll see this dialog every time you try to call up the Witch switcher panel:

For the sake of search engines, the text reads:

“witchdaemon” would like to control this computer using accessibility features

Grant access to this application in Security & Privacy preferences, located in System Preferences.

You’ll see that even after you think you’ve done what it asks you to do, and then you’ll get frustrated and upset and angry and blame us and send me nasty emails. And I completely feel your pain. And I wish I could tell you that it’s a bug in our code that’s causing the problem, so that we could fix it. But it’s not.

Instead, it’s an issue with Yosemite and how it handles (or rather, doesn’t handle) granting Accessibility access to helper apps that are included within another app’s bundle. So as much as I’d love to tell you we’re working on a fix, this isn’t something we can fix. (We may be able to work around the OS X issue, which is what we’re trying to do now. But that’s not fixing the problem, it’s avoiding the problem.)

The good news is that you can get Witch functioning again, even before Apple fixes the issue (or we manage to work around it). Here’s how…

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Good news, users of BBEdit, TextMate, TextWrangler, and other apps that use drawers in their user interface: Moom 2.2 includes optional drawer support. Enable drawer support on the General tab of Moom’s settings window, and Moom will account for the presence of a drawer before moving/zooming the associated window.

Moom 2.2 has a number of other minor changes and improvements, all of which are nicely documented on its release notes page. If you bought directly from us, use in-app updating to get the new version (or just download the full version from our site). If you bought from the App Store, Moom 2.2 should show as an available update very shortly, if it’s not there already.

Today we released Usher 1.1.3, a minor update that addresses a few issues (release notes). The release of 1.1.3 comes just days after Usher’s six month anniversary (it was released on October 14, 2010). As such, we’ve decided to celebrate this milestone by putting Usher on sale for a week—and on sale in a big way:

We think Usher is an amazing tool, and at 50% off, now’s the time to bring order to your collection of movies and videos. You can purchase Usher directly from us, or via the App Store; the choice is yours, as it should be.

In the interest of expanding the available support options for our users, we’ve created discussion groups (which can be read online, or subscribed to via email or RSS) for all of our products. The main advantage of the discussion groups is that users can speak with other users, which isn’t possible via our existing email or trouble ticket support systems.

We’ve set the groups up via Google Groups, mainly because they’ve got a really good group management system. If you have a Google account, you can sign up for each group via the web, and set your preferences (email delivery, etc.) as you wish. If you don’t have a Google account, you can only sign up via email, and you can’t set any preferences. (This page explains what you can and can’t do in Google Groups if you don’t have a Google account.)

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