What's new in ScreenSleeves 6.10.6
Dec 5, 2023
- Adds control to Preferences "No fade" which suppresses the fade transition between repositions or when track changes. This is 'per theme', If you switch between themes, you may have to set it for each theme you use.
New in ScreenSleeves 6.10.5 (Jul 19, 2022)
- Adds support for Aurdirvana Origin and Audirvana Studio. (Previously, support was for the single Aurdirvana app).
New in ScreenSleeves 6.10.4 (Jul 2, 2021)
- First version built as Universal Binary, runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Minimum support is now MacOS 10.12
- Restores 'fetch artwork from web' functionality (broken for a while because Gracenote service no longer avaiable)
- Alters the preferences a little. 'When no artwork is available' is a binary choice of nothing/default artwork. Adds new item 'Fetch from web:' which has the options 'never/when no artwork is probided by player/always.
- The 'always fetch from web' option is useful if the quality of your artwork in your player is not so good. The new 'fetch from web' functionality works well most of the time, and will fetch artwork at the size required for retina screens, so should always look sharp.
New in ScreenSleeves 6.10.3 (Apr 6, 2021)
- Fixes communication problem with Audirvana (Audirvana Plus is now legacy and is no longer supported in Screensleeves, now simply called 'Aurdirvana'.)
- Fixes an issue that could result in SS remaining in idle mode with certain settings after one player has stopped and another started playing
- Removes Gracenote album title / cover art lookup because service is no longer available. No satisfactory replacement at this time. Option to find cover art from the web if no artwork available currently does nothing.
New in ScreenSleeves 6.10.2 (Jan 19, 2021)
- Further work to the 'Keep static' setting
New in ScreenSleeves 6.10.1 (Jan 19, 2021)
- 'Keep static' setting now always applies to the 'paused' text when the player is paused. (Be aware that using 'keep static' overrides SS's function as a screensaver, particularly if using full-screen mode and with 'prevent system screensaver when in full-screen mode' checked) Fixes a problem with wrong artwork being displayed when using Spotify and certain themes and when listening to an obscure album (caused by incorrectly always defaulting to Gracenote search under certain circs)
New in ScreenSleeves 6.10.0 (Aug 10, 2020)
- Adds setting to hide floating window for a more screensaver experience.
- Fixes issue with displaying Preferences sheet which may have been a problem for users in the habit of closing the floating window
New in ScreenSleeves 6.9.0 (Jul 27, 2020)
- Adds 'Responsiveness' slider to Behaviour tab of Preferences. The default value (just right of centre) should reduce the CPU time of Screensleeves and System Events while keeping SS's responsiveness to an acceptable level. Turning the slider up will increase the CPU usage and vice versa. Tuning the slider all the way down will reduce CPU use significantly (particularly when no music is playing) but SS will take a few seconds to respond if the music is changed, stopped or started.
New in ScreenSleeves 5.4.0 (Jun 19, 2017)
- Adds support for Airfoil Satellite - Screensleeves can display track, artist, album, and artwork, and control the music (playpause, next / previous) when music is streaming to Airfoil Satellite from another device.
New in ScreenSleeves 5.3.4 (Jun 9, 2017)
- Adds new theme - 'Cover only' which displays artwork and no text. Included in free and pro versions. Has optional 3D effect and reflection, and other options such as size, static, centred.
- Fixes problem with artwork not being fetched properly from Spotify, was defaulting to web search if that option was switched on, or no artwork if not. Now correctly fetches from Spotify
- Fixes problem with overlapping text when album / artist / track name consist of chinese or japanese characters
- Fixes problem with image being cropped in Mosaic view
- 'Loved' is now default value (rather than star rating) in iTunes for new users - user's existing settings won't change
- Adds screen grab - if you've set a modifier on the Behaviour tab of Options (eg control) use that modifier with the S key to take a screen grab and save it to the desktop. So that you can take lots of lovely screen grabs of Screensleeves' themes and share them
New in ScreenSleeves 5.3.3 (Jun 5, 2017)
- Adds support for iTunes 'dislike' property. If using keyboard shortcuts within Screensleeves, the forward slash key '/' will set 'disliked' for the current track
- (if using the screensleeves broadcaster and iTunes, then you'll need to update that too in order to get the 'dislike' support. The broadcaster is included in the dmg with Screensleeves) (Pro version only)
- Adds 'time elapsed' to the options for the time showing on the progress bar
- Fixes problem with the time elapsed being truncated if hours come into play (eg audiobook)
- Fixes little glitch where progress bar would sometimes go off the left side of the screen with certain settings in Classic theme
New in ScreenSleeves 5.3 (Aug 3, 2016)
- Adds support for Hermes, the Pandora desktop client
New in ScreenSleeves 5.0.1 (Apr 2, 2016)
- Restores support for OS X 10.6
- Improvement to fetching Spotify artwork
- Fixes problem of 'reflection' in classic theme appearing too small if the actual artwork is smaller than the required image size
- Classic style progress bar has thinner lines
New in ScreenSleeves 4.3.3 (Mar 7, 2016)
- Fixes problem of Screensleeves showing Paused after user has paused the music and then re-started using a remote or another method other than the keyboard
New in ScreenSleeves 4.3.2 (Mar 7, 2016)
- Fixes problem of Screensleeves web page showing after screensaver exit
New in ScreenSleeves 4.3.1 (Mar 7, 2016)
- Fixes rating not showing when using Swinsian (since 4.3)
- Fixes potential crash of System Prefs when closing config panel in free version
New in ScreenSleeves 4.3 (Jan 7, 2016)
- Adds support for iTunes 'loved' feature as an alternative to the rating. Choose this in the screensaver options. (Set loved the same way as rating, ie the keys 0-5 - 0,1,2 will 'unlove' and 3,4,5 will 'love' the track)
- If track is more than an hour (eg audiobook) then progress bar (total or remaining) displays hours:minutes:seconds (before just minutes:seconds)
- Fixes full-screen 'Ken Burns' effect sometimes stopping before fading out when longer cycle time is set.
New in ScreenSleeves 4.2.1 (Dec 7, 2015)
- Small fix re multiple players running and Swinsian playing
New in ScreenSleeves 4.2 (Dec 7, 2015)
- Adds support for Swinsian
New in ScreenSleeves 4.1.3 (Nov 5, 2015)
- Fixes progress bar for Spotify.
New in ScreenSleeves 4.1 (Aug 27, 2015)
- Now available as free version and Pro version. Pro version allows you to enter a key, and then gives you some extra options, such as switching the tour/ticket info on/off and adds the options to display bitrate, sample rate, file kind (all themes but when using iTunes only)
- Some updates to lyrics theme
- If option to black screen after x minutes is being used and has kicked in, then using a remote app to start playing (iTunes or Spotify) will re-activate Screensleeves
New in ScreenSleeves 4.0.2 (Jul 22, 2015)
- Free and app no longer asks for donation (though donations are still very welcome via peacockmedia.software/donate)
New in ScreenSleeves 4.0.1 (Jul 8, 2015)
- Fixes problem of iTunes starting up without user intervention - this happened when 'show random artwork when music stops' option is used (the feature accesses the iTunes library). It will work as before if iTunes is running. If Spotify is being used but not iTunes then artwork for recently-played music is shown. If another player is being used and iTunes isn't running then this feature may appear not to work.
New in ScreenSleeves 4.0 (Jun 3, 2015)
- 'Please support' message becomes tour / ticket information, shown if the artist is on tour. User can press the T key for ticket / tour information
- The tour / ticket feature is switchable, off by default for registered users, who can switch it on, and on by default for free users who need to register to be able to switch it off
- Default theme is now Apple TV
New in ScreenSleeves 3.9.7 (May 28, 2015)
- Fixes bug related to Gracenote queries, affecting album title search (for internet radio) and album artwork search, only affecting recent new users (format of Gracenote ID assigned to the user has changed)
New in ScreenSleeves 3.9.6 (May 27, 2015)
- More satisfactory workaround for Spotify artwork problem put into place. Spotify's API is still broken and is not providing progress bar information or artwork, but Screensleeves now implements a better workaround meaning that artwork is displayed much more reliably.
New in ScreenSleeves 3.9.3 (Apr 22, 2015)
- Fixes a problem in Lyric theme when artist is a single word. Exception seen in the Console, but I don't think this has caused crashes
New in ScreenSleeves 3.9.2 (Apr 4, 2015)
- further fix - 3.9 & 3.9.1 could hang when OK'ing Options sheet after selecting lyric theme with maximum values for font size and artwork size
New in ScreenSleeves 3.9.1 (Apr 2, 2015)
- Fixes possible hang when using lyrics theme
- Recognises a change of track more quickly when listening to internet radio via iTunes or one of the other supported apps
- small improvements to lyrics theme
New in ScreenSleeves 3.9 (Mar 28, 2015)
- Adds new theme 'Lyrics Mosaic'
- Adds slider to control panel for adjusting the fade/reposition time. Default is a little longer than the cycle used to be. Max is around a minute
- Removes asterisks from track name provided by Snowtape
New in ScreenSleeves 3.8 (Mar 7, 2015)
- Adds support for Radium
- Note that in the current version of Spotify, 1.0.1.xx, it has its scripting support broken or removed, the Spotify helpdesk has a report of this problem and I'm hoping it is unintentional and temporary.
New in ScreenSleeves 3.7 (Jan 5, 2015)
- Adds new theme, 'Apple TV' which is similar to classic but with no 3D effect, no reflection, always centred and with a new-style progress bar
- Splits 'Keep centred and static' switch into two switches - 'keep centred' and 'keep static'. (As with the other controls, they may be individually enabled / disabled or even linked as appropriate for the theme)
- Enables 'show rating' feature for full-screen mode
- Fixes small bug which caused the time remaining to randomly show or not
New in ScreenSleeves 3.6.2 (Dec 5, 2014)
- Alters donation url to reflect the move to Paddle
New in ScreenSleeves 3.6.1 (Oct 30, 2014)
- Adds support for Rdio (desktop app, not web player)
- Fixes small bug causing progress bar time remaining / total time to be missing
New in ScreenSleeves 3.6 (Oct 6, 2014)
- Each theme stores its own settings, so for example you can set the artwork size to large for Classic theme and smaller for Full-screen theme
- When a theme is selected, irrelevant options are greyed out. For example, wIth the Text theme it makes no sense to show the Artwork size slider
- Note that when Random theme is selected, all of the theme-specific settings are greyed out because each theme has its own settings
New in ScreenSleeves 3.5.4 (Sep 24, 2014)
- Further fix relating to 'hang' experienced by some users
- Minor adjustments relating to Yosemite
New in ScreenSleeves 3.5.3 (Sep 22, 2014)
- Improvements to 'random artwork' feature:
- No longer caches recently played artwork, instead pulls random artwork from iTunes library
- the cache in previous versions could take significant disc space. On first run, this version clears that cache, freeing up the space
- previous caching may have been responsible for one or two cases of System Prefs or the Screensaver hanging
- If iTunes isn't running (ie if another player is running and paused) then it will be launched in order to access artwork. If you don't want this behaviour switch off 'Random artwork' in Screen Saver options / Behaviour / When music stops
New in ScreenSleeves 3.5.2 (Aug 14, 2014)
- Adds support for Ecoute music player
- Fixes 'glitch' in full-screen mode when track changes or star rating is changed
New in ScreenSleeves 3.5.1 (Aug 7, 2014)
- improvements to new Full-screen theme - fixes flickering on earlier systems (10.5 and 10.6), smoother fading and panning, more efficient (uses less cpu, fan less likely to cut in)
- alters some default settings (for new users) - by default Screensleeves will now show if a player is running but paused, by default random artwork is shown if no music is playing (after user has listened to some music and Screensleeves has accumulated a cache of artwork)
- small bug fix - clock could clash with info panel in full screen mode between 4 and 5 o'clock
New in ScreenSleeves 3.5 (Aug 4, 2014)
- Adds Full Screen theme with Ken Burns effect (best with good-quality artwork in your library or being a distance from the screen)
- Adds Random theme, selects from the graphic themes (not plain text)
- Adds font size slider to options panel
- Reorganises the options panel, 'Keep centred and static' is moved to the 'Appearance' tab. It operates on Classic and Full-Screen themes
- Fixes some weird things happening in the System Prefs preview after switching themes
- Adds screen grab, a modifier key must be set in options, that modifier + S key saves a screen grab to the desktop
- Yosemite tested and supported
New in ScreenSleeves 3.4.7 (Jun 19, 2014)
- Smoother fading in Mosaic theme
- If user pauses the music using spacebar or IR remote, current artwork will keep showing along with 'paused' message (because that is what will start to play if the user presses spacebar again). (Not possible with some remote apps.) As before, when the music reaches the end of a playlist, the user's choice of action will kick in, eg random artwork, default artwork, black screen etc)
New in ScreenSleeves 3.4.6 (May 30, 2014)
- Improves drawing of progress bar, looks consistent on small and very large screens
- Improves 'show random artwork' when player(s) paused - not all recent artwork was being used
New in ScreenSleeves 3.4.5 (Apr 17, 2014)
- Fixes problem under certain settings where progress bar time doesn't clear itself properly and numbers turn into blobs
New in ScreenSleeves 3.4.4 (Mar 24, 2014)
- Adds support for iOS apps which control iTunes remotely (previously wasn't responding to play / pause from such apps)
- Improves 'show random artwork' when player(s) paused - fixes problems of images becoming repetitious and images sourced from the web not being used
- Fixes bug causing screensaver to fail when using Snowtape if some information isn't provided by the radio station playing
New in ScreenSleeves 3.4.3 (Mar 7, 2014)
- Much improved album cover web search
- Fetches the album title from the web if not available from iTunes or if listening to a radio stream (iTunes radio or Snowtape, which don't usually provide the album title)
New in ScreenSleeves 3.4.2 (Mar 6, 2014)
- Adds support for iTunes internet radio streams (album art can be found from the web if the 'find from web' option is turned on)
- Adds checkbox for ignoring the Apple Remote (taking control of the remote causes problems for users of certain other apps which take control of the Remote)
- Makes 'please support' message smaller and less bright
- User can press a key to find out how to remove the 'please support' message. After that, the same key ('S' for support) will take the user to the support page
New in ScreenSleeves 3.4.1 (Feb 24, 2014)
- Some fixes relating to preferred player and spacebar for play / pause
New in ScreenSleeves 3.4 (Feb 24, 2014)
- Adds support for Snowtape. Limited support as Snowtape doesn't provide album title or any kind of rating or popularity. a progress bar is by definition difficult and to date unsuccessful obtaining station name too
- Note that in Snowtape some stations don't provide track information and this obviously isn't a failing of Snowtape or Screensleeves
- Note that Snowtape doesn't always change the track information straight away when a new track starts, or will send the track information before the track changes. Screensleeves will respond to the information it's given
- Adds option to find album cover if not available in iTunes
- Adds option to always try to obtain album cover from web if using Snowtape. This is because the artwork provided by Snowtape is low resolution and can sometimes not be a great choice of cover. This depends on the style of music playing, try switching this control and see what works best for you
New in ScreenSleeves 3.3.0 (Nov 19, 2013)
- New features and fixes:
- Choose what happens when music is paused or runs out (no artwork, default artwork, random artwork or black screen)
- (Random artwork feature uses images stored by Screensleeves, so you'll need to use SS for a while before this feature works properly)
- Option to switch to black screen X minutes after music is paused or runs out
- Adds some validation to options panel (hiding of buttons not relevant)
- Adds compatibility with forthcoming app Ambisleeves (Philips Hue bulb controller)
- Fixes bug causing display not to change immediately when track changes if progress bar not showing
New in ScreenSleeves 3.2.0 (Oct 21, 2013)
- Improved experience:
- generally smoother, fixes annoying glitch sometimes seen when cover is faded down
- some changes ready for Mavericks
- new icon, as the previous iTunes / Spotify one used copyright images
New in ScreenSleeves 3.1.0 (Aug 6, 2013)
- More information:
- Adds option to show track length with progress bar - either time remaining, total track length or neither
- More flexible:
- Adds option to keep display centred and static (only use if you're sure your screen is non-burnable) (Classic theme only)
- Adds support for Apple remotes - pause/play, volume up/down and skip to next/previous all work from remote. Previously using remote caused screensaver to quit which obviously no longer happens.
- Up and down arrow keys now adjust volume (volume keys on keyboard still work as before)
- Small fixes and enhancements:
- f you pause, you will continue to see artwork of song which was playing along with the 'paused' message rather than no artwork
- Fixes bug relating to pausing your non-preferred player. If paused, pressing play now continues the player which was playing rather than the preferred player
- Increases artwork size for classic theme, reduces it a little for the mosaic theme, text size reduced a little for the larger artwork sizes. Still all adjustable within sensible limits.
New in ScreenSleeves 3.0.0 (Jul 5, 2013)
- Adds two new themes and adds a drop-down selection box to Options. Select from 'Classic', 'Text' or 'Mosaic'
- Recognises change of track more quickly and changes display accordingly (with fade-down)
- Tries to avoid placing the information where the text would clash with the clock (if displayed)
- Adds field in Options for licence key, if no key is present, displays 'Please support ScreenSleeves' at bottom of screen
New in ScreenSleeves 2.0.1 (May 17, 2013)
- Fixes a couple of problems apparent in 2.0:
- when starting on OSX 10.5
- dialog asking for location of Spotify if Spotify not installed
New in ScreenSleeves 2.0 (May 17, 2013)
- Adds 3D rotated effect to album artwork, adjustable from flat to quite tilted
- Adds progress bar for current playing track switchable on/off
- To avoid rating being accidentally changed, adds option to require modifier key along with keys 1-5 to set rating
- Keys 1-5 to set rating only work if rating displayed
New in ScreenSleeves 1.1 (Apr 9, 2013)
- Displays rating / popularity (optional)
- Keys 1-5 set the rating if rating is showing and iTunes playing
- Adds option to switch off default artwork image (ie display just text) if no artwork is available
- Fixes problem of dialog appearing asking to locate Spotify if Spotify is not installed
- Reflection of artwork is made slightly strongerIncreases frame rate slightly for smoother fading