Good news macOS Informant fans. We are getting closer to putting a 1.0 label on Informant for the macOS.  Back in January, we released a beta for Milestone 9 and internally, we are continuing our work to complete Milestone 9.  However, we are putting out an update for everyone living on the General (aka Stable) Releases. We consider this a stable release, and the primary reason that it is not yet a “1.0” release is that we are still some differences in the features between Informant 5 for iOS and Informant for macOS.

Get Informant for macOS here

Released: April 7, 2017 
Current Stable Build is :  Milestone 8.5 – Version 0.99  (50298)
Users who choose to accept beta builds may have a different build number.

Release Notes for Milestone 8.5

New Features & Improvements:

  • Updated to a new process for logging into Google and Toodledo Sync Accounts.  Informant for macOS is now ready for upcoming authentication changes that Google is making in April.  NOTE: While Informant should migrate your existing logins, there’s a chance that after updating, you might need to log back into your Google or Toodledo Sync Accounts.
  • You can now re-order sections in the Focus view (this is done in Focus View Preferences)
  • The Today/Focus menu is now a “tear off” menu. You can open it from the menu bar, then drag it to wherever you want. You can edit this Today tear off in the Preferences>>Focus.
  • You can now drag/drop between the “Today/Focus Menu” and the main app
  • You can now drag / drop notes (into a project, tag, mini-month, etc)
  • Month and Stacked Week view now support multi-select drag and drop. (click Command to select multiple)
  • You can now select a mix of items in a calendar view (events, tasks, notes) and delete them all at once
  • You can now right-click on a backup (in Advanced Preferences) to show that backup in the Finder
  • We have standardized on the term “Projects” for both notes and tasks. Before, we would inconsistently use the term “Notebooks” or “Projects” when you were on the Notes view.
  • Projects can now be designated as allowing “Notes Only”, “Tasks Only” or both. Certain sync accounts only support specific data types, so in those cases, the editor locks you into a single choice. Likewise, Toodledo only supports mixed projects, so the editor restricts Toodledo projects to “both”. Informant Sync supports projects being in any of those 3 states. When a project is “Tasks Only”, it will not show at all in the Notes view (and vice-versa).
  • Time zones now appear in the sidebar for calendars locked to a specific time zone
  • Visual Improvements to the time zone picker when editing a calendar
  • The event editor now supports specifying time zones when creating/editing an event
  • Month and Stacked Week view now show the time zone on an event when that event is on a calendar locked to a specific time zone
  • When grouping by project, the task view now sorts tasks in a sequential project according to the user-specified sequence
  • Making a child task (via command-return) now sets the priority of the child to match the parent
  • Completed checklist items always show regardless of your “show completed tasks” setting. This is consistent behavior with Informant on iOS.
  • New & Improved logic for automatic “Next Action” handling on sequential projects:
    • Parent / child tasks are treated more like “sub-projects” now. If you set a parent task to “Active”, then the first subtask will become the Next Action.
    • This means you can now have multiple next actions within a given project (the first task in the project along with the first subtask of each “active” parent task)
    • During automatic Next Action promotion, if the first task in a project is a parent task, it will now set that parent task to Active and the first subtask will become the Next Action
    • Next Action promotion now stops if it hits a task that is in the Hold or Planning status

Fixes:

  • Calendar filter for the Today sidebar would get lost when quitting Informant
  • Fixed several issues that could occur when duplicating a project that contained tasks with subtasks
  • Pasting a task into a new project, context or tag now works as expected
  • Various fixes and improvements to Alarm notifications
  • Stacked Week view might sometimes failed to load data (unless you swiped back and forth a few times)
  • For now, our in-app support feature will pop open a new email in your email client.  We are working with HelpShift to resolve issues with their SDK that would give a “network error” when attempting to submit support requests directly within the app.
  • Several improvements to Note navigation & editing:
    • We no longer immediately put the focus in the note body when you select a note – this allows you to use the arrow keys to move up/down in the notes list.  You can use <Tab> to get into the selected note.
    • We also fixed some situations where a note would randomly lose focus or situations where the note would appear to be de-selected in the notes list (even though it still appeared in the editor).
    • If you drag a note to a different project such that it is removed from the current notes list, we now remove it from the editor as well.
    • Fixed issue where the notes editor could get stuck in a “No Preview” state
    • Fixed an issue where sometimes the notes editor would appear blank (the note would still exist, it would just fail to display)
    • Fixed issue where the notes editor might randomly revert back to an earlier saved copy of the note (this wasn’t a very common situation, but it could happen)
    • Fixed issue where changes to note properties might fail to save / sync changes if the note body was empty
  • Several fixes to how we manage the on-demand loading of Evernote note content:
    • This includes a situation where the current state of the note properties might be out of sync between Informant and Evernote.
    • This also fixes situations where dragging an Evernote note to a project in a different sync account might not always move the note content.
    • Also improved the error notification if you attempt to load an offline Evernote note while you are not connected to the Internet
  • Fixed crash on Month view if you clicked on the “More” button and there was a note pinned to that date
  • Fixes to the Time Zone picker in the event editor
  • Fixed annoying “text wiggle” when you inline-edited the title of an event/task
  • Sometimes the editor would not appear when double-clicking an item in Stacked Week view
  • Fixed issue where the sidebar mini months would jump to a seemingly random month when you first launched the app
  • Certain views didn’t update themselves properly if they were left open across midnight
  • When you duplicate a parent task, it now also properly duplicates all subtasks (instead of just the parent)
  • Don’t allow adding a subtask to a completed parent task
  • Don’t allow command-return to make a subtask on a checklist item
  • Sorting by title in Notes view was broken (you would get a blank screen)
  • Sometimes when editing a task with a custom recurrence, the custom recurrence editor didn’t visually set itself up properly
  • Worked around a macOS bug that would sometimes result in a crash if you tried to undo some typing
  • Improvements to the handling of icons on Apple Calendar events
  • The “dim future tasks” option now works properly in Focus View
  • The titles for checklist items are now properly vertically centered within the task row
  • Long titles weren’t always properly displayed in search result rows
  • The tab title didn’t update if you renamed a project while that project was open
  • Fixed crash that could occur when clicking in specific areas of a checklist item
  • Certain contextual menu items were incorrectly enabled for checklist items
  • Renaming a smart filter wouldn’t always properly update the focus view
  • Numerous internal improvements and fixes to drag & drop
  • Dragging a task from one project onto a task from another project would properly make it a subtask, but would not properly change the project of that subtask to match its parent
  • Informant no longer prompts you for span when deleting an exception
  • When switching from a calendar view to a non-calendar view (like the tasks view), the sidebar mini months wouldn’t clear the “Selected Range”
  • Improvements and fixes to the management of backups (in the Advanced Preferences)
  • Fixed issue with calendar contextual menu if you had multiple events selected
  • Fixed some issues with the “Project” contextual menu item on notes
  • Adding a voice note to an empty note would fail
  • When the default due date was set to “Next Friday”, new tasks were being made for “Next Thursday”
  • Creating a new Reminder “list” (aka Project) within Informant wasn’t getting saved in Apple Reminders
  • Closing a tab and immediately clicking out of Informant could result in a crash
  • Fixed crash when rapidly toggling the summary popover of an event on and off
  • Fixed regression in latest M8 build where the default project wouldn’t be auto-selected when going into preferences
  • Creating a new Evernote notebook in Informant wouldn’t sync to Evernote
  • Fixed issues copying/pasting recurring events
  • Quick Entry (NLP) in the Today menu wouldn’t respect the currently selected day if you specified a time in your “quick entry” string
  • Fixed issue where if you dragged an image into a new note immediately after it was created, it would fail to save the image
  • Improved reliability of syncing notes containing images to/from Informant 5 using Informant Sync
  • Numerous internal improvements (we now have a fully shared codebase with Informant for iOS, updated to Swift 3, updated several 3rd party frameworks, prepared ourselves for planned future features, etc)
  • Several stability, UI and performance improvements throughout the app


For those of you that are keeping track, here is a list of the remaining differences between Informant 5 for iOS and Informant for mac (milestone 0.8.5):

Feature Informant 5 for iOS Informant for macOS (0.8.5)
Triggers Uses new Triggers feature. Allows for individual updating of task/event attributes Uses the prior version of Templates.
Printing Available Not Available
Live location search on Contacts Available Not Available
Apple Maps for live-location search Available Not Available
Certain editing options on location-based tasks Available Not Available
TravelAssist Available Travel schedule events will show up on on calendar, but are not editable
Tag Filtering has tag filtering in both Event and Task Tag filtering only for tasks
Saved Filters (for tasks) Available Not Available
Sign up for newsletter Available Not Available
Ability to manually sort projects in the sidebar Available Not Available
Free / Busy / Tentative coloring on events Available Not Available
Franklin Covey Priorities Available Not Available
Emailing invites to meeting attendees Available for google calendars Not Available
Image / Contact Attachments on Events/Tasks Available Not Available
Ability to turn off alarms on a per-calendar basis Available Not Available
Export calendar as ics file Available Not Available