Michael Tsai wrote today about the accessibility challenges presented by Mac toolbars that do not have text labels. These are an unfortunate consequence of opting for macOS’s “no titlebar” style appearance, which has become increasingly popular in recent years. As Michael points out, MarsEdit is among the apps that has embraced it. This is how it looks by default:

The good news, for folks who don’t prefer this style, is MarsEdit supports a “secret preference” to change back to the more traditional style with a title for the window, and with the option to show or hide text labels. If you’re comfortable setting defaults from the command line, you can run this from Terminal to enable the labels:

defaults write com.red-sweater.marsedit4 ShowMainWindowTitleBar YES

If you’d rather avoid the command line, MarsEdit should apply the setting for you if you click this link:

Show MarsEdit’s Main Window Titlebar

Now, quit and relaunch MarsEdit. If the toolbar icon labels are not visible, select View > Customize Toolbar from the menu bar, and select the option to show “Icon & Text”. Here’s how it looks:

And if you decide to switch back, this link should do the trick:

Hide MarsEdit’s Main Window Titlebar

Ideally Apple would fix this mode so that some kind of appropriate compromise could be made to support the streamlined title-bar-free mode, while also supporting the display of labels. I’m not holding my breath on that, though. Hopefully this workaround will give those of you who either prefer, or outright depend upon the labels for accessibility reasons, something to tide you over.

MarsEdit 4.3.2 is now available at the MarsEdit home page and on the Mac App Store.

This update primarily addresses a problem that snuck in to the app recently, causing the icons for some blogs to appear blurry in the main window side panel, and in the Preferences list. It also includes a couple other small bug fixes.

Complete list of changes for this release:

• Fix a problem that caused some icons to appear fuzzy or too large in the blog list
• Fix an issue that caused the built-in crash reporter to fail to launch for some users
• Refine the error message when uploading an image to Blogger fails because of their disabled API

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.

Great news for Setapp users: MarsEdit is now available as part of the lineup of apps. This means that Setapp subscribers can use the app, with all its functionality unlocked, for free.

Sign up for a free Setapp trial.

If you aren’t already a Setapp subscriber, using the link above to sign up will help me. Try it out for free, and if you end up subscribing, I will receive a perpetual commission from Setapp based on your $9.99/month membership fee.

I have been thinking for years that it would be great to offer an alternative subscription pricing version of MarsEdit. I may still pursue that, but offering the app via Setapp seems like a great way to bundle it with several apps that my potential customers may already be using.

FastScripts 2.7.7 is now available for download from the FastScripts home page and on the Mac App Store.

The main thing this update addresses is a problem where the FastScripts icon might not adapt to changing its color when going from Dark Mode to Light Mode, or vice-versa. The update also includes another minor bug fix and a tweak to hide file extensions from more types of scripts. This is the complete list of changes:

• Fix a bug that could prevent the menu icon color from adapting to Light/Dark Mode changes
• Fix a visual glitch with the focus ring displayed when editing a keyboard shortcut
• Omit the file extensions for .applescript, .py, .rb, etc files in the script menu

If you enjoy FastScripts, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, or spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support. Questions or concerns? Get in touch at [email protected]. Thank you.