Black Ink 2.1.8 is now available on the Black Ink site and has been submitted to the Mac App Store.

This update fixes a problem in which some New York Times puzzles with circled squares did not appear correctly. If you already downloaded a puzzle such as today’s September 12 puzzle, you can delete the puzzle from your Mac and re-download it with Black Ink 2.1.8 to see the circles as expected.

If you enjoy Black Ink, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, and spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support.

MarsEdit 4.5.2 is now available on the MarsEdit site and on the Mac App Store.

This update includes a number of refinements to the WordPress media syncing functionality added in version 4.5, and a few other fixes:

• Improved performance when loading a large number of freshly synced media items
• Can now separately specify the number of media items, posts, and pages, to download/sync from a blog
• Fix a bug that caused the wrong image to be dragged/inserted when selecting items with a search filter in place
• Fix the sort order of posts when using the search/filter in the main window
• No longer showing media items in the main blog post list when searching for posts
• Fix a crashing bug when selecting “View on Web” for a blog with a home page URL that has a space in it

If you enjoy MarsEdit, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter, and of course, writing about the app on your own blog! Thanks for your support.

MarsEdit 4.5 is now available on the MarsEdit site and on the Mac App Store.

This update brings long-awaited media syncing functionality for WordPress blogs. After you refresh your blog in MarsEdit 4.5, all the existing images and files from your blog will be available for re-insertion from the Media Manager’s “Published” tab.

Historically, this tab has included only files that are uploaded from MarsEdit itself. This limitation was based in shortcomings of the WordPress API (the interface MarsEdit communicates to the blog with), but the API has since been updated to support downloading a complete list of the published media files. For the time being non-WordPress blogs continue to support listing files that were uploaded by MarsEdit, but I will be looking into adding support for media syncing to other systems where possible.

In addition to media syncing for WordPress, there are a number of other improvements in 4.5. Here’s the complete list of changes for the release:

• WordPress-specific improvements
  • Existing media items from your blog are now synced and available in the “Published” tab of Media Manager
  • Post password can now be set from the MarsEdit document options side panel
  • Fix a bug that attempted to publish using invalid author ID after switching target blog
  • Can now drag from Media Manager to Featured Image either as new image or reusing existing published image
  • Improve accessibility of featured image by setting proper file name based on original file
• General media management improvements
  • Images from the “On My Mac” tab can now be dragged directly into a post without opening the Upload Utility
  • Fix a bug that caused some images dragged from the Media Manager to get long alphanumeric names
  • The list of attached files now updates as images are being uploaded
  • Fix a bug that prevented some images from being resized correctly on Apple Silicon Macs
  • Items can now be dragged with a single click/drag even when the window is not active
  • Now showing better thumbnail images for non-image file types
• Miscellaneous fixes
  • The “Add Category” field now suggests completions from among the list of existing category names
  • Support VoiceOver access to menu items that are hidden by default
  • Improved reliability of preview template downloading for Micro.blog
  • Fix a bug that prevented the date of newly published AtomPub posts from showing correctly
  • Rename the “Split Post” functionality to use “Read More Tag” terminology
  • Fix a bug in preferences showing the wrong values for Retina-based image size constraints

If you enjoy MarsEdit, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter, and of course, writing about the app on your own blog! Thanks for your support.

Touché 1.1.5 is now available from the Touché home page.

When Apple first announced the Touch Bar, I was excited to dig in and start playing with it even before I had access to a Mac with a Touch Bar. Touché 1.0 was the result of that ambition.

Over the years the system’s support for Touch Bar changed in ways that made Touché slowly become less reliable and, finally, to more or less not work on any Macs at all.

I recently had some insights about how the Touch Bar support on the system has changed, and was able to put together an update to Touché that restores functionality.

Touché is an unusual product for me in that I don’t actually use it myself. When functionality stopped I was tempted to remove it from the site altogether, but now that I’ve gotten it working again, I think it will be nice to make it available to those who will enjoy it. Maybe you are one of those people? If so, I hope you do enjoy it.

Update, August 19, 2021: I just posted a quick 1.1.6 update to fix a few outstanding issues in 1.1.5. Check for updates or download the latest from the home page to get these fixes:

• On Macs with a real Touch Bar, prevent the Touch Bar from going blank when showing Touché
• Fix a bug where changes to keyboard shortcuts in Touché Preferences did not have an effect until restarting the app
• Improve visual contrast in the Touch Bar window title and in Preferences