Usher will be stepping aside

February 14th, 2017 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

After many long conversations, we have decided to retire Usher, our media management app: Effective March 1st, 2017, Usher will no longer be available for purchase. We will update it to fix issues that arise, but no further development will occur.

If you’ve always wanted to own Usher, you’ve got about two weeks left to make the purchase. (It’s not being abandoned, we’re just retiring it from active development, so you will be supported. However, please read the Q&A before you decide to purchase Usher.)

So what does this mean for you as an Usher user? We figure you might have questions, so we’re going to do our best to answer them here. Anything we don’t address, please feel free to bring it up in the comments, or by emailing us directly.

Why are you retiring Usher?

Usher does its video magic through QuickTime. Not the newer-and-current QuickTime X, but the original QuickTime. This lets Usher do all sorts of neat stuff, but also means it can break due to an event that crashes QuickTime—most Usher crashes are actually QuickTime crashes which then take Usher out, too.

QuickTime is very old, and obviously no longer updated. (It’s so old that it’s not even 64-bit code.) Newer video formats may cause issues, and we can’t resolve those issues in Usher because they’re actually in QuickTime. Given these age-related issues with QuickTime, we’re no longer comfortable selling and supporting Usher to new buyers, so we’ve decided it’s retirement time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Products, Usher | 10 Comments »

Time Sink 2 is on the clock

January 17th, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

Time Sink 2 iconTime Sink 2 is out today—yes, it’s a major update in version numbers, and no, it won’t cost you a cent. That’s right, Time Sink 2.0 is a free new major version, for both direct and App Store buyers.

Why free? Because all though we’ve done a ton of behind-the-scenes work to make Time Sink an even better time tracking app (so it’s indeed a major upgrade to us), the user-visible new features may not feel like typical “oh wow this is a MAJOR update!” material to you. So instead of trying to justify charging for the upgrade, we decided to give it to everyone for free. (But hey, if you want to buy another copy or gift one to a friend, we won’t mind—it’s still just $5.)

So what’s new in Time Sink 2? We won’t bore you with all the many behind-the-scenes changes, other than to mention that Time Sink is now sandboxed, so we can add new features to the App Store version to keep it in sync with the direct version—hooray!

Here’s the stuff you can see and work with as a Time Sink user:

  • Ad-hoc timers can be used to track non-Mac activities, such as phone calls or client meetings.
  • All timers can be paused via an assignable hot key, and can be set to resume automatically when activity resumes.
  • A pop-up menu at the bottom of the Activity Report window lets you easily select time frames like today, this week, this month, or this year.
  • Define the “start of day” time for the “today” Activity Report view. No longer must you start working just after midnight.
  • Use window title filters to merge windows from apps that include always-changing info in their window titles, as when Photoshop appends @50%, @75%, etc.
  • Exported reports can be opened in Time Sink to view historical data.
  • View time usage in the Organizer as percentages of total time instead of hours/minutes.

Finally, there are a couple of new themes for the Activity Report:

Two new Activity Report themes join the original

The original purple (left) is joined by light (center) and dark (right); the blue shown in the dark theme shot will be replaced with whatever you’ve set as your macOS highlight color (System Preferences > General).

How to update

Direct customers can get the update via in-app updating; App Store customers should see the update in the App Store app soon, if not already. (Just one note of caution: Time Sink 2 requires OS X 10.8 or newer; if you’re on OS X 10.7, you’ll want to stay with the original Time Sink. See the museum for links to older versions.)

Posted in Products, Time Sink | 1 Comment »

How-to: Track top-level web site usage with Time Sink

January 2nd, 2017 by Rob Griffiths

Our time-tracking app Time Sink relies on window titles to track your activities. This approach works great for most use cases, as window titles are supplied by the vast majority of apps out there, which means Time Sink is able to keep an eye on nearly everything you do.

But when browsing the web, relying on window titles can sometimes be problematic: Many sites don’t include any site-specific information in their window titles. For instance, a news site may just have the title of the news article as the window title. So if you were interested in finding out how much time you spend on that news site, Time Sink apparently wouldn’t be able to help, because there’s no way to tell which site those news stories came from.

Other sites do include some site-specific data in their window titles, but what that is will vary by site, as well as where it appears within the window title.

The good news is that Time Sink can track site-wide time usage for both types of windows—it’s relatively simple for sites that include site-specific data in their window titles, and it’s somewhat more involved for sites that do not.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in How To, Products, Time Sink | Comments Off on How-to: Track top-level web site usage with Time Sink

Announcing the Witch 4 public beta

December 22nd, 2016 by Rob Griffiths

It’s been a long time since we released a major update to Witch. How long has it been? It’s been 27 minor updates long, that’s how long (nearly seven years, if you count like a normal human).

But the long wait is (nearly) over…


Hey, are those tabs in Safari or separate windows?

Say hello to Witch 4. You can try it out for yourself, today, via the Witch 4 public beta (with special pre-release pricing, too).

And yes, Witch 4 has learned more than a few new tricks…here’s just one…

If the above images have you convinced you need the beta, well, give it a try! But you should also keep reading, as there are some important details about the new features, the beta itself, and the pre-sale.

The pre-sale? Glad you asked: During the public beta, new users can buy Witch 4 for just $10 (normally $14); users of prior versions of Witch can upgrade for only $6 (normally $8). And yes, this includes App Store buyers. There are more details on the pre-sale at the end of this post.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Products, Witch | Comments Off on Announcing the Witch 4 public beta

Three minor updates have escaped into the wild…

December 22nd, 2016 by Rob Griffiths

…and while you’d think that’d be enough for one day for us, we are Many Tricks, after all. So a bit later today, stay tuned for an announcement witchwhich you may find of interest.

As for the escapees, they are…

  • Butler 4.1.23, which includes some comestic improvements and a couple of bug fixes. [release notes]
  • Resolutionator 1.1.1 fixes a color depth issue on newer laptops that could cause Resolutionator to not show any resolutions. [release notes]
  • Usher 1.1.15 has a ton of changes, most of which aren’t directly visible. But we’ve improved memory usage, speed of previews, crawler performance, and more. [release notes]

Butler and Resolutionator are direct-only apps, so you should get notified by each app that there’s an update available, if you haven’t disabled that setting in Preferences. Or you can just download the full app from our site again; you won’t lose your settings if you update that way.

Usher is available both direct and in the App Store, and the App Store update should be showing up any minute now, if it’s not out already.

Posted in Butler, Products, Resolutionator, Usher | Comments Off on Three minor updates have escaped into the wild…

Direct vs. Mac App Store: Where to buy Mac apps?

December 9th, 2016 by Rob Griffiths and Peter Maurer

One of the more-popular questions we receive is “should I buy your app directly from you, or from the Mac App Store?” The factual no-opinion-involved answer to this question is that it’s your money, so you should buy from whichever source you prefer to use. That has been, and will always be, our “corporate” answer to that question.

With that said, if you ask either of us for our opinion on the best place to buy Mac software, here’s our opinionated answer:

We strongly recommend buying direct over using the Mac App Store.

At a personal level, we both always try to buy direct, using the App Store only when there’s no direct alternative.

Why do we think you should buy direct? Because we feel the cons of buying from the Mac App Store greatly outweigh the pros of buying from the Mac App Store.

Here’s a comparison of the two methods of buying, with what we view as some of the pros and cons of each.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Mac App Store, Personal | 11 Comments »

Name Mangler 3.4 is at your service

November 22nd, 2016 by Rob Griffiths

Name Mangler 3.4 is out now, and though there are only three changes in this version, we felt one of them was major enough to merit a full dot increase in the release number. You can read the details on the release notes page; two of the three changes are fixes, but the third…

The third is a nifty new feature best summarized with a screenshot:

That’s right, Name Mangler can now create Services out of your renaming actions. Services are available either via the Services menu in Finder, or (more usefully) via the contextual menu you get if you right-click on a selection of files. You can read all about this in the Menus (File) section of Name Mangler’s help, but the basics are, well, basic:

  1. Create your renaming action
  2. Choose File > Create Context Menu Service
  3. Enter a name, but do not change the save location in the dialog that appears
  4. Select some files in Finder, right-click, and choose your service from the contextual menu. (Or as above, go old school and use the Services entry in the Finder menu.)

When activated, what happens next depends on whether Name Mangler is running or not. If it’s running, Name Mangler will activate with the files populated, showing the effect of the Service you applied. All you need to do is click Rename, and you’re done.

If Name Mangler isn’t running, the service just does its thing on the selected files: They will be renamed without any interaction on your part. Easy!

To make your renaming Services even easier to use, you can assign them keyboard shortcuts, in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services. Once assigned, you can rename files with a quick press of a hot key. We think this feature makes Name Mangler even better, and hope you find it useful as well.

Direct users can get the update via the in-app updater, or by downloading the full app from our site. App Store users should see the update in the App Store app—if not already, then very shortly.

Posted in Name Mangler, Products | Comments Off on Name Mangler 3.4 is at your service

Moom 3.2.6 snaps into existence

November 3rd, 2016 by Rob Griffiths

Moom 3.2.6 has been released with a few bug fixes for snap-related actions. Users had reported some issues with snapping when working with zoomed displays and when customizing toolbars, and some reported decreased responsiveness in certain apps. We have addressed all of these issues in Moom 3.2.6; you can see slightly greater detail on these changes in the official release notes, if you wish.

App Store users should see the update shortly, if not already, in the App Store app. Direct users can update via the in-app updater, or by downloading a new copy of the app from the Moom page.

Posted in Moom, Products | Comments Off on Moom 3.2.6 snaps into existence

How-to: Make Witch (indie) launch on login in Sierra

October 25th, 2016 by Rob Griffiths

We’ve had a few reports of the direct version of Witch not automatically launching at login after upgrading to macOS Sierra. While we haven’t seen this issue here, if it happens to you, here’s how to resolve the problem. (There have been no reports of troubles with the App Store version, so the following is only for our direct customers.)

First, disable Witch in its System Preferences panel, then switch to the Users & Groups panel and click the Login Items tab. Scan the list of items and see if witchdaemon is listed.

If you see witchdaemon in the list, start by getting rid of it: Select it with a single click, then click the minus sign to remove it. Now just follow the rest of these instructions.

If you don’t see witchdaemon then—leaving System Preferences open—switch to Finder.

In Finder, navigate to your user’s Library folder (or to the top-level Library folder, if you installed Witch for all users). Your user’s Library folder may be hidden; if so, hold down the Option key and choose Go > Library from the Finder’s menu.

Once inside the Library folder, navigate into PreferencePanes. There you will (hopefully) see Witch.prefpane. (If you don’t see it, it’s probable you installed Witch for all users, in which case you need to navigate to the top-level /Library > PreferencePanes folder, then follow the rest of these instructions.)

Right-click on Witch.prefpane and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu; this will display a Contents folder. Navigate into Contents > Helpers, which should show just oen entry, witchdaemon.app. Leave this window open.

Now drag witchdaemon.app from the Finder window into the list of login items in System Preferences, and drop it there. Make sure witchdaemon now appears in the list, then close System Preferences. You should now be good to go—Witch should now launch properly at login.

If you need additional help with this process, or Witch still isn’t launching at login after even though it’s listed in login items, please open a trouble ticket for additional support.

Posted in How To, Products, Witch | 3 Comments »

Time Sink 1.2.6—direct only—released

September 9th, 2016 by Rob Griffiths

Time Sink 1.2.6 is out, but only for direct customers. This update is basically an update to get ready for a major update (hint: its version number starts and ends with ‘2’) that’s coming Very Soon Now. Actually, that’s not entirely true; this update is so that future updates (including said major update) will work properly under macOS Sierra.

Note: If you’re already running Sierra (beta or Gold Master version), you will need to manually download Time Sink 1.2.6 from our site (only this one time).

App Store customers don’t get this update, because it doesn’t affect their version of the app (because there are no in-app updates). However, pending App Store review and approval, we fully expect that the next major update (that one that starts and ends with ‘2’) will be available for App Store users as well.

Stay tuned for more on Time Sink 2! Oh dang, I’ve gone and spilled the beans…

Posted in Products, Time Sink | Comments Off on Time Sink 1.2.6—direct only—released

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »