Continuing our game of tennis with Safari and Safari Technology Preview, Witch 4.4.4 can once again list open tabs in the latest Safari releases in both shipping and soon-to-be-shipped versions of macOS.
Although we enjoy tennis, we hope this game ends soon.
Witch 4.4.3 is out with one fix: It no longer ignores tabs in Safari that have never been active.
We weren’t ignoring them on purpose, and in the past, we didn’t ignore them. However, a recent change in Safari’s Accessibility information for those tabs rendered them invisible to Witch. We’ve now forced those invisible tabs back to the visible realm.
Thanks to a couple of different users for reporting the issue.
Update via Witch’s in-app updater, or download a fresh copy from the Witch web page (you won’t lose your settings).
Witch 4.4.2 is out, with only one change: Those of you using a version of Safari from the future will find that Witch now has much better support for Safari’s new tabs. You can check for updates on the About tab of the Witch System Preferences panel, or just download a fresh copy from the web site.
Those of you scoring at home may realize that we skipped version 4.4.1. It actually did exist, for a few brief hours, but we pulled the self-destruct trigger on that update when we found a small issue affecting some users.
Not by plan, but today’s updates affect only the end of the alphabet:
Time Sink, Usher, and Witch have all been updated. These are primarily bug fix and behind-the-scenes updates—check the release notes (Time Sink • Usher • Witch) for each for all the details, but there are two new features that may be of interest to users of Usher or Witch:
The updates are available now, and can be found by checking for updates within each app. (The update for the App Store version of Time Sink can be found in the App Store app, and it’s also available now.)
Witch 4.3.8 is out, and it fixes an issue we introduced (sorry!) in 4.3.7.
The problem was that, for users who have Witch set not to activate the selected item when the modifier keys are released, there would be a half-second or so where the panel sat onscreen after a selection was made and activated. That delay is now gone.
Update from the About tab within Witch’s settings, or just download a fresh copy from our site.
Witch 4.3.7 is out, and the big news is that it now runs natively on both Intel and Apple silicon—hooray! We also changed something in how the app is bundled that we hope will end the spate of macOS quarantine-related errors we’re seeing in Big Sur, and that’s about it…did we mention it’s now native on Apple silicon?
As always, you can update from the About tab of Witch’s preferences, or by downloading a fresh copy of Witch from our web site.
Witch 4.3.6 is out today, and the big change is that it properly ignores windows in Big Sur that aren’t really windows—so you won’t see any more entries for Item-0 or Control Center.
Note: If you used the workaround from our Big Sur compatibility report, you can remove those entries from the Advanced pane after updating.
There are a couple other minor changes you can read about on the Witch release notes page, but the Big Sur fix is the main change.
Updates available within the app, or by downloading a new copy of the preference pane from the Witch page.
With Big Sur’s release, here’s an update on our apps’ compatibility…
All of our apps run in Big Sur, and almost all of them run 100% perfectly.
We’ve tested them all many times, and they all seem to be working as we’d expect them to, with one minor exception (and a “check your version” warning about one of our baubleries). We also have a general heads-up on a permissions request you may or may not see from some of our apps.
Although we’ve tested extensively, some of our apps have lots of features and can be used in many different ways, and we probably didn’t test all of those cases—many of you seem to find ways to use our apps that we never anticipated! So if you do find something that’s not working right in Big Sur, please let us know by opening a support ticket.
Permissions request
In our testing with Big Sur’s release candidate, we were surprised to find that some of our apps ask for permission to write to the Documents and/or Desktop folders. We’ll be completely honest here and say that we have no idea why this is happening. We have some guesses, but they’re just guesses at this point.
This issue did not appear in any of the prior betas (nor did it happen with every app), so we just discovered it yesterday when we installed the final version. As a general rule, our apps—unless you’re doing something that explicitly uses one of those folders, like saving Leech downloads to your Desktop—do not write to those locations.
We’re trying to get an answer as to why this dialog is appearing, but until we do, you can safely say “Yes” when macOS asks if it’s OK to use those folders—becausedo we’re not using them.
App-specific items
Displaperture: Please update to the current version (1.5.2) of Displaperture before you try using it in Big Sur. There’s no in-app updater, so you’ll have to download the new version from our site.
If you launch an older version, you may find yourself staring at a blank whiteish screen with rounded corners, and nothing else on it at all. Unfortunately, this screen sits above everything, including the Force Quit dialog. If you have remote login enabled and access to another Mac, you can connect and kill the Displaperture process, but if you don’t…well, the only way out is a forced reboot.
So please, make sure your copy of Displaperture is up to date before you launch it.
Witch: As a general statement, Witch is working fine. However, you will notice at least a few additional windows, mainly related to things in the menu bar. We’re working to get rid of these spurious entries, but for now, here’s the best workaround…
On the Advanced tab in Witch’s preferences, in the Do not list apps text box, enter this:
Control Center, SystemUIServer
If you have existing entries there, put a comma at the end and add the two new entries. Next, in the Do not list windows, enter this:
Item-0
Again, if you have existing entries, add a comma then that text.
These two changes should make Witch look mostly as it did in pre-Big Sur systems.
We’re working on the Witch issues, and we’ll keep you updated on our progress.
Again, if you notice anything askew in Big Sur, please do open a support ticket and let us know.
They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so for you Witch users on macOS Catalina…
Yes, Dark Mode support is back for Witch in macOS Catalina. We’ll apologize for earlier blaming our non-functional Dark Mode on a bug in macOS Catalina; instead, it was an undocumented change in Catalina (inverted behavior) in how third party System Preferences panels indicate they support Dark Mode.
That’s really it for this update, so not much need to read release notes this time around.
Many Tricks