Moom 3, it’s snaptastic!

We’re please to announce the release of Moom 3, featuring a very-often-requested feature from you, our users: the ability to move and zoom windows by snapping them to screen edges or corners.

You control how the windows behave when dragged: how long before you see a preview frame showing the proposed move/zoom action, and what size you get when a window is dragged to each edge (full- or half-screen) or corner (full- or quarter-screen).

In addition, you can now optionally undo Moomed windows by simply dragging the window a little bit. You can even undo any Moom action, not just those resulting from drag operations.

Finally, we’ve added a new custom control, Zoom to Fit. This control mimics the behavior you see when clicking the green button in any window. In most apps, that gets you an intelligent zoom, resizing the window to fit the displayed content. In other apps, it serves different purposes. Whatever the role, though, Moom will simply act like you clicked that green button when you invoke this custom control.

The best news for existing customers is that Moom 3 is a free upgrade for everyone—hooray! For new customers, Moom will cost $10 ($9.99 on the App Store), but it will be on sale for only $5 ($4.99) through the end of June. As always, App Store customers can update via the App Store application; direct customers via in-app updating, or by downloading a fresh copy of the app from the Moom page on our site.

Note: Barring any changes in the App Store sandboxing rules, this is the last App Store version of Moom with any new functionality. From now on, any features we add will only appear in the direct sales version (as we’re not allowed to add them to the App Store version). For those interested in migrating (at no charge) to the direct sales version of Moom, here’s how to do just that.

7 Responses to “Moom 3, it’s snaptastic!”

  1. Thanks very much for providing a way for licensed user to continue using your products without the Mac App Store. I appreciate what you are doing and I plan on continuing to be a loyal customer for Moom, without the Mac App Store. I would much rather have a fully-featured product that does what I need it to do, especially if it is outside the scope of Apple’s guidlines for their App Store. Keep up the good work!

  2. Drpod says:

    “Moom 3, it’s snaptastic!”

    wonderfull !
    awesome

    thank you ++

  3. Hey guys!

    I really love your solution for migrating away from the App Store. Best I’ve seen yet. It got me thinking though…is there a way around the sandbox by allowing users to download a sandboxed shell of sorts, which then installs an signed, non-sandbox application?

    For example, what if there was a “Many Tricks” meta app that would allow you to purchase each application in your portfolio as an in-app purchase. The app is basically a downloader. What you are “purchasing” in-app is just an installer or app bundle. The in-app purchases just downloads a non-sandboxed app to a temp directory, then moves it into the Applications folder. I guess this raises the question as to whether or a not a sanboxed app could mv an .app into /Applications (or maybe ~/Applications if the former is not available).

    Just a thought. I’d really love to see someone come up with a creative solution to this MAS forced-sandbox, zero-exceptions garbage.

    • Rob Griffiths says:

      In theory, it might work. In reality, there are too many unknowns and risks (Apple approval? Can we make sandboxed stub app do something useful, which is an App Store requirement? Can we load/move the other bits as needed? Do we have the personnel (no!) to manage two different versions of the same app?) to go forward with such a project.

      Our real hope is that there’s enough (polite) negative feedback about all the App Store apps entering suspended animation that Apple changes the policy. Probably wishful thinking, but really, we do believe that user feedback represents the best chance of a change in the sandboxing rules.

      -rob.

  4. Geoff Washburn says:

    The snapping is great, though I think it could be improved a little. One, on my iMac’s display, it feels like the corner snap targets are maybe a little too small. As I use multiple desktops it is very easy to accidentally drag the window over to the next desktop when aiming for a corner. Maybe just make the target size configurable? Two, I’m not sure if consistently respects my setting for separation between windows. If I set my separation to 6px, if I take four terminals and snap them to corners, they have space between them vertically, but not horizontally. I guess it could just be an issue in how the Terminal reports its size.

    Again, otherwise, Moom is working great :-)

    • Rob Griffiths says:

      On the corner target size, we’ll consider something for a future release, but only if we can do so without complicating the UI too much. As for the separation, it works, but Terminal is wonky: it uses a fixed width font, and won’t allow partial vertical lines. Test with TextEdit to see that the spacing does work.

      regards,
      -rob.