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What’s Planned

File Buddy 11 is a ground up re-write of the system. Version 10 is 32-bit, uses Carbon and is written entirely in C. Version 11 will be 64-bit, written in Swift using Cocoa. Initially, the feature list will be the same as version 10 (as much as possible) with only minor improvements. Instead, the version 11 release will be about modernizing and improving the insides of File Buddy.

If you have feature requests or suggestions, please email features@skytag.com.

Planned Improvements

• Upgrade simple color labels to full tag support

Possible Updates

• Store File Buddy registration info in iCloud so it’s always available - even on fresh installs.
• Store preferences in iCloud as well.

Process

Because it’s a ground up re-write, this release will be a multiple stage process. First, there will be a series of “alpha” releases. These will be early versions that will have limited features and may be unstable. Those will be followed by “beta” builds, which are more stable and feature complete, but aren’t considered polished enough for a full release. This process should help identify bugs and usability problems before the general release. Each release will be available here, with a project update in the blog section.

Issues Running Early Access Releases

During the alpha and possibly into the beta phase, the builds may be marked as coming from an “Unidentified Developer”. This has to do with Apple’s signing process, which I’m not bothering with for the moment. If macOS will not launch File Buddy 11 Alpha by double-clicking on it, right-click and select “Open”. This will let you launch it anyway and macOS will mark the app as OK to run. You only have to do this once, but you will need to do it for each early access release.

Reporting Issues in Alpha/Beta Releases

Anyone who wants to participate in the alpha and beta process is welcome. If bugs are found, please email bugs@skytag.com. In the email, it’s most helpful if the following is included:

• What you expected to happen
• What actually happened
• Exactly which version/release it happened on
• The version of macOS
• The file system (this will be APFS if you are on High Sierra)
• Error and Debug Logs (logs are located in ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.SkytagSoftware.File-Buddy-11/logs/ and are named by the day of the log)

Schedule

Right now, there is no expected release date for File Buddy 11. Given that macOS Catalina removed any support at all for 32-bit app, like File Buddy 10, I’m pushing to have something ready as soon as possible.

Change Log and Downloads

Download Latest Pre-Release

Alpha 14 - 2021 March 03

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Features:

• Find Window Local Volume Search
• Find Window Custom Search Location (Work in progress)
• Info Window Colorized Tokens for File Tags/Labels

Fixes:

• Fixed crashes from Objective-C/Swift interactions
• Fixed crashes from reading resource forks that didn’t match the expected format
• Find Window replacements with regular expressions will treat empty replacement as a delete
• Find Window automatically enables criteria when selecting a history item
• List Window Show in Finder no longer opens a File Buddy Info Window

Alpha 13 - 2020 March 10

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Features:

• Improved Localization
• Find Window Name Search History
• Find Window Auto-enable Criteria on update

Fixes:

• Fixed crashes from Objective-C/Swift interactions and other causes
• Find Window Item Kind criteria not being included in searches
• Rename Dialog name field no longer needs to escape special characters like [
• Rename Confirmation Dialog
  • Positioning issues corrected
  • Automatically closes with “Rename All” is used

Alpha 12 - 2020 February 03

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Features:

• Automatically refresh files modified in another File Buddy window
• Rename Dialog now has confirmation step
• Find Window search criteria “File Kind”

Fixes:

• Fixed crash when file dates are not available

Alpha 11 - 2020 January 14

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Fixes:

• Tweaks to hopefully address some random crashes in various windows

Features:

• List Window Context Menu items implemented: Copy Name(s) and Edit Name...

Alpha 10 - 2020 January 05

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Fixes:

• Update the General Preferences dropdown for Drop Action to actually show what the setting is. It was being save correctly and worked correctly, it just didn’t display the setting correctly in the Preferences.
• View in List toolbar item in Info window - Now shows the current item in a list view, instead of an empty list view.
• Find Window - Visibility checkbox had a superfluous label over the checkbox that has been removed.
• Crash - Fixed some issues when certain file information wasn’t available, even though it should always be available.

Features:

• Info Window View in List Toolbar Item - Now has a menu to select viewing the current item, all items, or the contents of a directory.
• App Preferences
  • Drop Keys - Holding specific keys when launching File Buddy via drag-and-drop will override the default action based on settings.
  • Advanced - Option to completely disable debug logs. Since they are useful for helping me troubleshoot issues, I’d appreciate leaving them on. This is mostly for after release so users can turn the debug logs on, but if you aren’t going to report bugs and send in logs, you can just turn them off now.
• Cleaning Menu
  • Empty Trash
  • Restart Finder
  • Quit Finder
• Find Window - Added basic search history to Name criteria. This is just the search string for now.
• File Menu - Adds Close option that applies to whatever the front window is. Previously, this was implemented on a per-window basis, so not all windows supported the standard ⌘+w hotkey.

Alpha 9 - 2019 October 31

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Fixes:

• QuickView submenu should now open and populate and not respond to clicking on it.
• Stopped crashing when the Cocoa framework sends invalid data
• Disabled “Open List” menu item because it’s not implemented

Localization:

• Japanese/Italian - work in progress
• French - no changes
• German - no major changes, incomplete because of new windows and items

Features:

• App Preferences
  • Startup Action - Do nothing, New List Window, Open Find Window
  • Launch File Buddy via Dropped Files
    • Support for single or multiple files
    • Options: Info Window, List Window, Rename Window

Alpha 8 - 2019 August 20

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Fixes:

• Fixed a List window crash when unable to read created/modified dates for an item
• Stopped crashing when a QuickView menu item isn’t wired up correctly

Alpha 7 - 2019 August 18

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Features:

• List Window:
  • Actions Toolbar item
    • Rename
• Info Window:
  • Actions Toolbar item
    • Rename
• Find Window
  • Add to front list target for search results

Alpha 6 - 2019 July 29

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Features:

• List Window:
  • Hotkeys and menu items for adding/removing items
  • Actions Toolbar item
    • Case-changing
    • Clearing creator or type code

Fixes:

• List Window:
  • Drag-and-drop now adds all files, not just the first one

Alpha 5 - 2019 July 08

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Features:

• Find Window (Name, Extension, Visibility, Packages)
• Swift 5

Fixes:

• Info Window - Minor Fixes

Alpha 3 - 2019 January 21

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Features:

• List Window
• German Localization (partial)
• French Localization (partial)
• Multi-file support for Info Window

Fixes:

• Support for macOS 10.9 and higher

Alpha 2 - 2018 April 06

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Features:

• Info Window (read/write)

Fixes:

• Crash Reporting
• Logging
• Support for macOS 10.10 and higher

Alpha 1 - 2018 January 22

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• Info Window (read-only)
• Finder Info