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Butler Changelog

What's new in Butler 4.4.8

Jan 9, 2024
  • Fixed an issue with simulating keystrokes and pasting clipboard content on macOS 14 Sonoma.
  • Fixed a longstanding issue with the abbreviation window's URL guessing logic.

New in Butler 4.4.7 (Oct 28, 2022)

  • Resolved a conflict with System Settings in macOS 13 Ventura. (Hat tip to Junichi C.) On a related note, the "System Preferences" Smart Item currently isn't the prettiest on macOS 13: It displays raw filenames, and it doesn't show individual icons for most panes. This is because the new "System Settings" has been rewritten as a monolithic app, where the file-system-level preference panes are merely placeholders, which makes the whole thing a lot less accessible. We are still pondering ways to deal with this change. In the meantime, the Smart Item works even though it looks like a work in progress.
  • Worked around an issue in recent macOS versions that prevented custom icons from scaling down as expected.
  • Fixed a bug that rendered Butler partially unusable on macOS 10.9. (Nevertheless, we recommend at least macOS 10.10 for modern Butler versions. If you're on macOS 10.9, you might be better off with Butler 4.2.2.)

New in Butler 4.4.6 (Aug 4, 2022)

  • Fixed a bug related to dragging and dropping items to Butler icons in the menu bar.

New in Butler 4.4.5 (Jun 15, 2022)

  • Fixed an issue where adding a new "Music: [number of stars]" Smart Item would give you a defective Smart Item. If you have any Smart Item like that with a lightbulb icon, delete it and add a new one after updating Butler. (Hat tip to Steve K.)
  • Fixed an issue where Butler would sometimes hang while Music was running.
  • Improved dark mode support for menu bar separators.

New in Butler 4.4.4 (Sep 26, 2021)

  • Further improved the keyboard navigation workaround that was introduced in Butler 4.4.2. (Hat tip to David M.)

New in Butler 4.4.3 (Aug 10, 2021)

  • Improved compatibility with macOS 12 Monterey.

New in Butler 4.4.2 (Jul 30, 2021)

  • Worked around a macOS bug (or so we think) that broke keyboard navigation in the pop-up menu after Butler gained and gave up keyboard focus at least twice.
  • Fixed a bug where explicitly assigned abbreviations vanished. (Hat tip to Adam S.)

New in Butler 4.4.1 (Mar 14, 2021)

  • Fixed a bug that caused Butler to crash while auto-updating its caches.
  • Fixed an inconsistency with Control icons on macOS 11 Big Sur.

New in Butler 4.4 (Mar 10, 2021)

  • Butler is now a Universal app that runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs.
  • Improved filtering for System Preferences Smart Items.
  • Butler is now partially aware of the Music app's existence. (It's about time.)
  • Fixed a clipboard-related crash.
  • Improved compatibility with macOS 11 Big Sur.

New in Butler 4.3.3 (Apr 7, 2020)

  • Menu bar text labels no longer vanish after clicking them once in dark mode. (Hat tip to Andreas S.)
  • Screen Saver Smart Items now work more reliably. (Hat tip to Ken G.)
  • The iTunes information window's volume indicator bar is now less likely to overlap with other text fields.
  • Improved compatibility with macOS 10.15 Catalina.

New in Butler 4.3.2 (Apr 10, 2019)

  • Volumes Smart Items now sort volumes alphabetically.
  • Firefox bookmarks support is now a visible-by-default feature again. Note that you still have to jump through an extra hoop to make Butler actually see your Firefox bookmarks. (Hat tip to Tony C.)

New in Butler 4.3.1 (Mar 4, 2019)

  • Fixed Contacts-related Smart Items on new macOS 10.14 Mojave installations.
  • Fixed a typo in preferences that must have been there for years.

New in Butler 4.3 (Dec 18, 2018)

  • Added support for Google Chrome's bookmarks.
  • Restored Butler's ability to communicate with other apps via AppleScript on macOS 10.14 Mojave.
  • Improved hot corner reliability on recent macOS versions.
  • Worked around an issue with dragging files from a Dock stack.

New in Butler 4.2.3 (Nov 6, 2018)

  • "Plain Text" Smart Items can now have custom names that differ from their content.
  • Fixed an incompatibility with older macOS versions.
  • Fixed Opera bookmark importing for newer Opera versions.

New in Butler 4.2.2 (Sep 27, 2018)

  • Fixed a regression where hot keys didn't work on older macOS versions.

New in Butler 4.2.1 (Sep 26, 2018)

  • Fixed a regression where right-clicking (e.g., in a hot corner) had no effect.
  • Fixed a regression where "Plain Text" Smart Items weren't pasted when triggered.

New in Butler 4.2 (Sep 26, 2018)

  • There are no longer four separate menu bar sections on macOS 10.12 Sierra and newer. Instead, each top-level item in "Menu Bar" automatically gets its own menu bar representation that you can command-drag around.
  • The "Recent Clipboards" window can now filter entries based on the text they contain. Matching is fuzzy by default, but you can uncheck that via the little magnifying glass's pop-up menu.
  • Deleting all clipboards via the "Recent Clipboards" window's action menu now triggers an alert first, unless you hold option while choosing the menu item.
  • "Clear Recent Clipboards" Smart Items now have an option to confirm via dialog before they actually delete anything.
  • Singular "Recent Clipboard" Smart Items now show their contents in menu items, matching the "Recent Clipboards: Menu" lists.
  • Menu items that represent clipboard content now adjust their height to fit their content, up to the user-specified maximum height.
  • Added guest user access to the "Users" Smart Item and improved its performance.
  • Added some new "built-in" icons. The new black & white default menu bar icon (hat & bow tie, a.k.a. Butler's Regalia) in particular goes well with an all black & white menu bar.
  • Individual custom icons can now be deleted by selecting them while the option key is held.
  • Modernized the user interface ever so slightly, renamed some things for consistency reasons, and fixed various other bugs and issues.
  • Last but not least, Butler is now a 64 bit app. You can't tell from the outside, but this is a huge step for good old Butler, mostly because of the way its menus used to work.

New in Butler 4.1.23 (Dec 22, 2016)

  • On macOS Sierra, Butler's menu bar items no longer claim specific positions, because Butler can't guarantee those anyway. Instead, those menu bar items are just numbered sections, which you can command-drag to arrange them relative to your other menu bar items as you see fit.
  • Volumes Smart Items no longer list App Translocation volumes. (That's the thing where Gatekeeper makes new apps run from a random path for security reasons.)
  • Butler now ignores a folder's invisibility status when the folder is directly referenced via Folder Content Smart Item. So you can now list the contents of ~/Library, for example, even when Finder isn't configured to show it.

New in Butler 4.1.22 (Aug 10, 2016)

  • Reverted a change in behavior where launching a folder would reveal it instead of opening it.
  • Fixed a bug where Butler wouldn't finish launching on OS X 10.9 and earlier.

New in Butler 4.1.21 (Aug 10, 2016)

  • Fixed a bug where Butler failed to launch Contacts.app when appropriate.
  • Some interface updates.

New in Butler 4.1.20 (Feb 1, 2016)

  • Improved the update mechanism's security.

New in Butler 4.1.19 (Nov 8, 2015)

  • Fixed an issue with OS X 10.11 El Capitan's Gatekeeper.

New in Butler 4.1.18 (Aug 6, 2014)

  • Prepared for upcoming Gatekeeper changes.

New in Butler 4.1.17 (May 13, 2014)

  • Keystrokes Smart Items now let you use the current pasteboard via cmd-v keystroke, provided that you add a sufficiently long delay (recommended: 1 second) in front of the cmd-v keystroke. (Hat tip to Amadeo V.)
  • Fixed a display glitch where delays in Keystrokes Smart Items weren't displayed properly. (Another hat tip to Amadeo V.)
  • Fixed an issue with the Screensaver Smart Item.

New in Butler 4.1.16 (Oct 21, 2013)

  • Improved compatibility with future OS X versions.

New in Butler 4.1.15 (Jun 11, 2013)

  • Updated the pasteboard history to ensure compatibility with upcoming updates in apps with related functionality.
  • Fixed a couple of minor bugs.

New in Butler 4.1.14 (Oct 13, 2012)

  • Worked around an issue with inter-application communication on OS X 10.8.2.
  • Fixed an issue with copying email addresses.
  • Fixed a bug where function keys F16 through F19 couldn't be used for hot keys.

New in Butler 4.1.13 (Jul 26, 2012)

  • Improved compatibility with applications that use keystroke events generated by Butler as triggers (e.g., hot keys).
  • Updated System Preferences Smart Item categories for Mountain Lion.
  • Fixed some appearance glitches under Mountain Lion.
  • Fixed an issue with Recent Pasteboards ordering.
  • Fixed an issue with menu navigation.

New in Butler 4.1.12 (Nov 10, 2011)

  • Fixed a bug that caused Butler to crash when ejecting a volume via the Volumes smart item. (Hat tip to Hendrik D.)
  • Fixed an issue related to running web searches from the abbreviations window. (Hat tip to Richard R.)

New in Butler 4.1.11 (Sep 24, 2011)

  • Preference panels with mixed-case extensions should now show up in Butler. (Hat tip to Jon T.)
  • Fixed a window layering inconsistency that made the Docklet's behavior hard to predict for 3rd-party applications, such as iGlasses. (Hat tip to Tuckerman M. and Ken A.)

New in Butler 4.1.10 (Apr 26, 2011)

  • Fixed an issue where Butler couldn't paste as plain text into Mail. (Hat tip to Michael M.)
  • Fixed an issue where Address Book Smart Folders would always show up as empty in Butler. (Hat tip to Ric S.)
  • Fixed an issue with Google Translate as a search engine. (Hat tip to Stepan K.)
  • Fixed an issue where Butler had trouble finding the current iTunes library. (Hat tip to Mark H.)
  • Copying an e-mail address now gives you the address only, minus the "mailto:" prefix.
  • Other small bug fixes.

New in Butler 4.1.9 (Jun 28, 2010)

  • Fixes a drag-to-Stack issue, and adds our in-app purchasing module.

New in Butler 4.1.8 (Jun 5, 2010)

  • Fixed a Butler vs. Sparkle (automatic updater) incompatibility that would cause Butler to crash on unpacking updates.
  • Fixed a regression that made it impossible to re-order recent pasteboards via drag & drop.
  • Improved iTunes integration some more.
  • Available language: English.

New in Butler 4.1.7 (May 27, 2010)

  • Optional automatic updating via Sparkle.
  • Improved Butler's heuristics for locating the iTunes library.
  • Improved system preferences support.
  • Fixed various other smaller bugs.
  • Available languages: English.

New in Butler 4.1.6 (Jul 1, 2008)

  • Butler's status window (the one that's shown in response to your entering hot keys or requesting iTunes information, for instance) no longer captures mouse clicks. If you want to move the status window, do so while holding the command key.
  • Worked around a possible interference with Typinator.
  • This is not a transient release. See the Many Tricks blog for more info on this.
  • Available languages: English, French, German, Japanese -- potential localizers might want to have a look at Butler Help's "Localizations" section.

New in Butler 4.1.5 Transient (Feb 15, 2008)

  • Deferred the transient Butler's expiration date until July 1, 2008. Simply put, we need some more time to get a public beta version of Butler 5 out of the door; and we don't want to force you to download a new transient version every other week until then.
  • Available languages: English, French, German, Japanese -- potential localizers might want to have a look at Butler Help's "Localizations" section.