EagleFiler 1.9.22 is a maintenance release of my Mac file/note organizer and e-mail archiving app. This version works around various bugs in macOS 27, adds capture support for the Thorium Web browser, and improves importing from Mariner Paperless.

• macOS 27 broke several things with drag and drop out of Apple Mail. Simply trying to read a URL from the pasteboard will cause a hang while it waits forever for the pasteboard server (FB24803817). The same thing happens when using PasteboardSetPasteLocation() and reading kPasteboardTypeFileURLPromise directly, which I was doing (instead of using newer API) to work around bugs in older versions of macOS. EagleFiler now uses NSFilePromiseReceiver for drags from Mail on macOS 27, which works better, but I also had to work around a bug where Mail would promise superfluous files for which the reader callback was never invoked at all.

• macOS 27 also seems to include various regressions when reading PDF and Word files, producing invalid strings containing NUL characters. Also, displaying certain PDF files worked fine on macOS 26 but now crashes.

• I also ran into (and worked around) a bug where macOS 27’s NSTextView would get into an infinite layout loop when displaying an attributed string that included images.

• Drag and drop from Airmail is still an issue. When using the newer drag APIs, it will often hang Airmail or not produce a file, and this also happens with other apps like Finder as the destination. EagleFiler works around this using older APIs with Airmail and tries to report a helpful error when there’s trouble. Single-message drags work best.

• I’ve also been investigating a problem where saving a file with a colored tag in iCloud Drive will, a few seconds later, change the color to gray, but I don’t have a solution for this.

Previously:

• EagleFiler 1.9.21

Rosyna Keller:

FruitMenu Redux revives a utility (FruitMenu) that brings lost Mac OS Classic features to Mac OS X. Specifically, it restores the fully customizable Apple menu.

It’s no longer a haxie that works by patching the operating system. Now, it’s a regular app that hooks into other apps (e.g. to switch to a particular window) using the accessibility APIs.

The first step was to implement every FruitMenu feature that’s still possible in the current macOS security environment. That immediately ruled out features requiring patching menus (sigh, I really miss patching menus) and features that require privileges now gated behind restricted entitlements. I also added support for viewing and executing Shortcuts.

[…]

Additionally, you can set a hotkey to any item you add to FruitMenu Redux!

[…]

Because SwiftUI doesn’t support dynamic menus, I had to rewrite all the menu code to use AppKit’s NSStatusItem and NSMenu as NSMenu is now a first-class citizen on macOS and fully supports dynamic submenu building. This means that FMR doesn’t even try to build the contents of a folder under you actually attempt to show the contents of the folder. Not only is this significantly faster, but it also uses significantly less memory.

FruitMenu is now available (Mastodon):

A built-in visual editor displays your menu on the left and a library of over 30 item types on the right. You drag items from one to the other (almost like Font/DA Mover, the best UX ever created). The library includes files and folders, submenus, Running Applications (and you can enable an option to show open windows and tabs), Mounted Volumes, Recent Items, Force Quit, Sleep, Restart, Shut Down, Shortcuts, Software Update, separators, System Settings panes, and more!

Anything you put in the FruitMenu Redux Items folder in your Library also appears in Files, folders, and aliases.

$10 (with $7 intro price), not in the Mac App Store because of accessibility.

Rosyna Keller:

OMG, Core Transferable, why do I have to declare a public UTI in my info.plist for internally dragging from one list in my app to another list in my app?! It’ll never be decoded by another app!

This was the fix to a bug I reported. With the new SwiftUI drag API, you apparently have to declare private internal drag types in your plist (on Tahoe, but not on Golden Gate).

Xounds, which plays sounds in response to user interface actions, is also back. Unlike FruitMenu, this one never appealed to me—I actually prefer to have the audio muted most of the time. I do find it interesting that it supports the old sound set files from Mac OS 8. Apple dropped the APIs for playing these way back during the 64-bit transition, but Xounds knows how to extract and play the audio.

Previously:

• SwiftUI in appleOS 27
• Where Did SwiftUI Leave You Hanging?
• Dragging From a List With SwiftUI
• Add Security Access Groups for Accessibility APIs
• Menu Master 1.0