Moom 4.1.1 (and 4.1.2) released

September 16th, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Although only a minor bump in version number, Moom 4.1.1 contains a good number of improvements, including the biggie: Moom 4 is aware of macOS Sequoia’s snap-related features, and automatically disables them when the corresponding Moom features are active. You can also now drop windows on partially obscured target areas in drop zones, and we improved things in a number of other areas—check out the release notes for all the details.

Moom 4.1.1 can be downloaded from our site (you won’t lose your settings), or you can update within the app itself via the update checker in the gear icon menu in Moom’s Settings window.

Note: We released 4.1.2 to fix a regression in “Move to Other Display” that affected some users.

Access Moom’s custom actions via pop-up menus

August 29th, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

If you’re a keyboard-oriented Mac user, Moom 4 speaks your language. Every custom action can have its own keyboard shortcut, for starters. And, of course, there’s Keyboard mode, with even more keyboard-centric powers.

Keyboard access to all custom actions

One of the new keyboard-focused features in Moom 4 is hiding at the bottom of the Keyboard section of Moom’s Settings window: The “Access custom actions via hot key” keyboard shortcut box.

This feature isn’t enabled by default (and it’s independent of Moom’s Keyboard mode), but in the above screenshot, it has been assigned a Shift-Control-Option-M shortcut.

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Moom 4.1 adds ultra fast drop zone access and more

August 28th, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Moom 4.1 is out with some bug fixes, and adds a couple of oft-requested features—as much as something can be oft-requested after only existing for a week! First off, you can now see your keyboard shortcuts in the Settings window; set their visibility using the Show Hot Keys in Sidebar menu item in the View menu. (There are three states: On, off, and only visible when the window is wider than its minimum width.)

But the big news in Moom 4.1 is the expanded access to drop zones: You can now activate drop zones in three different ways, including by holding a modifier key (Shift, Fn, Command, Option, and Control) down while dragging a window. This means you can quickly access any of five different layouts’ saved window locations simply by holding a key while dragging a window:

You can even combine drop zone modifier key activation with Moom’s Hover feature—if a modifier key has an assigned layout, and that modifier key is used to hover-move windows, then that layout’s drop zones will instantly activate when you start hover-moving a window.

You’ll find the settings for drop zones’ new access methods in the Snap section of Moom’s Settings, and we highly encourage you to read the relevant section in Help for full details on how these new drop zone access methods work.

And as always, you can read the full release notes to see everything that’s new or fixed in this update. And you can get the update via the in-app updater (in the Settings window’s gear icon), or by downloading a fresh copy of the app from our site—don’t worry, you won’t lose your settings.

Moom 4.0.1 fixes a few minor issues

August 23rd, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Moom 4.0.1 is out, and it addresses three small issues:

  • Those with non-retina displays will no longer see weirdly-sized icons in their palette and Moom’s Settings windows after moving windows around.
  • You can now use Moom’s keyboard mode on Moom’s own settings window without glitches.
  • If you tell Moom to resize and center a window, and the resized window can’t be sized to what you specified (because it’s got a minimum window size, for instance), Moom will now correctly center the window anyway.

You can also read the above in Moom’s release notes, of course—which also contains the massive list of what’s new in 4.0, in case you haven’t seen that yet!

You can update within Moom 4 by clicking the gear icon in Moom’s Settings window and clicking the Check Now button, or by installing a new version from our site—you won’t lose your settings.

Announcing Moom 4, the next-generation window manager

August 21st, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Moom 4 is available now, and requires macOS 10.13 or newer. Moom 4 is priced at $15, and existing (Mac App Store or direct) Moom 3 users can upgrade for just $8. Please see How Can I Buy Moom 4 for details on purchasing—especially if you’re an App Store customer, as Moom 4 is only available directly from Many Tricks. (New App Store customers who have just bought Moom Classic in the App Store qualify for Moom 4 upgrade pricing. The total of the App Store and upgrade purchase is the same $15 as new direct customers pay for Moom 4.)

It may have been a long time coming—over 12 years since Moom 3’s release—but we think Moom 4 was well worth the wait. During those years, we’ve been listening to all your input, as well as learning more about what we can do with windows on macOS, and Moom 4 reflects that feedback and learning. It’s both the same app you’ve known and used since its initial release in 2011, and an entirely new app that offers a number of new window management tools.

What’s new?

So what’s new? A slew of stuff! If you enjoy reading long lists, take a look at the release notes, which detail all the changes. It’s an extensive list.

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Moom 3.2.27 works around macOS 14.5 slowdowns

July 16th, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Moom 3.2.27 is out now, with just one change: It works around whatever it was that Apple changed in macOS 14.5 to cause slowdowns when using Moom’s keyboard mode (and potentially some other areas, but keyboard mode was the most noticeable one).

Direct users can update in the app or by downloading a new copy from Moom’s web page; App Store users should see the update in the App Store app either now or very shortly.

Psssst: Many other outstanding moves 4thcoming; stay tuned!

Avoid a macOS 14.5 issue in Moom’s keyboard mode

June 10th, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Note: We managed to work around this slowdown in Moom 3.2.27. Please update now if you haven’t already! After updating, feel free to re-enable the highlight feature; it’ll work fine.

With the release of macOS 14.5, we received a number of reports from users that Moom’s keyboard mode had become so slow as to be unusable—there would be a many-second delay after invoking keyboard mode before the onscreen controller appeared. At first, we were unable to replicate the problem, but after working with the users, we figured out the setup that will cause the problem—and we found a way to prevent it from happening.

The following applies if you use Moom on macOS 14.5 and use Moom’s keyboard mode (Moom Settings → Keyboard → Trigger keyboard control with hot key is enabled). In addition, the problem seems to occur more often for those using multiple displays.

While we don’t know what changed in macOS 14.5 to cause this slowdown, we do have a fix to prevent it from happening: Open Moom’s Settings and go to the General tab, then disable the grid/keyboard control highlight by moving its slider all the way to the left:

With the highlight off, Moom’s keyboard mode will work without delay. We’re still investigating what changed in macOS 14.5 to cause this problem, and to hopefully identify a workaround so we can bring back the highlighting feature. For now, though, leave the highlight off if you use Moom’s keyboard mode on Mac running macOS 14.5.

A much simpler way to create Name Mangler services

May 30th, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Remember last week, when we posted a very detailed writeup that explained to how create Quick Actions for Name Mangler 3.9 and newer? Well, we have found a much simpler way to get this done, thanks to Apple’s Shortcuts app—and to our user Eric, for spurring us on to find a simpler solution.

Here’s how the Shortcut looks (click to see the full Shortcut):

Apple’s Shortcuts app not only makes it (much) simpler to create Name Mangler Quick Actions, but you can also access them from Finder’s Finder → Services menu. Or run them from the menu bar. Or via a keyboard shortcut. Or use all of the above methods at once. And if you want to share your Shortcuts with others, it’s as easy as a couple of clicks.

We’ve created a template that requires a few simple edits in Shortcuts, and is then ready to go for your own use. Here’s how to get going…

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Leech and Name Mangler updated

May 22nd, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Leech 3.2 and Name Mangler 3.9.1 have been released. Both are relatively minor updates, so if you want to skip their release notes pages, here’s what’s new in each one:

Leech 3.2

  • Added new AppleScript commands: number of downloads, number of failed downloads, pause all, queue all, and cancel all.
  • Rewrote help to match latest macOS appearance and to cover new features added since last help update, including the AppleScript commands above.

Name Mangler 3.9.1

  • The warning dialog that appears when renaming files on a network volume can now be disabled.
  • Fixed a regression where date formatting in Advanced mode ignored a specified minimum number of digits and skipped placeholders under certain circumstances. (Hat tip to Ruben H and others for reporting this one.).

App Store users should see the updates in the App Store app (if not now then very shortly); direct users can update within the app by checking for updates, or by downloading a fresh copy of the app from our server (you won’t lose your settings).

Name Mangler 3.9 released

May 7th, 2024 by Rob Griffiths

Name Mangler 3.9 is out, for both direct and App Store customers. There are a number of behind-the-scenes changes in this update, as well as some visible ones. Of the visible changes, this is probably the most notable and useful among them:

When files can’t be renamed, the reason is now shown where the new filename would normally appear. As seen in the screenshot, you can still see the exact name that would have caused the problem by hovering over the red ‘x’ icon, but this should make it a lot easier to spot problems in your renaming actions.

Beyond that visible change, we’ve reworded the Filter menu’s entries to make it easier to understand what each one does; we improved the reliability of date formatting; and there’s a new warning dialog if you try to rename files on a networked drive. There’s more in the release notes, too.

In a rarity for us, we had to remove a feature from this update: The Create Context Menu Service, which let you easily create Services to use renaming actions from Finder, is gone. Changes in macOS made it impossible for the feature to work, which is why we had to remove it.

The good news is that there is still a way to use Name Mangler saved actions in Finder, via the Quick Actions menu. And we have not just a blog post that explains the process, but a video as well. You’ll find both here: Quick Actions are the new Services for Name Mangler. It’s not quite as convenient as before, but it’s really not bad at all, especially after you have one set up that you can use (with one simple edit each time) for other Quick Actions.

App Store users should see the update in the App Store app now; direct customers can check for updates from within the app, or by downloading a fresh copy of the app from our site—you won’t lose your settings.