Good news macOS Informant fans. We are getting closer to putting a 1.0 label on Informant for the macOS.  Back in January, we released a beta for Milestone 9 and internally, we are continuing our work to complete Milestone 9.  However, we are putting out an update for everyone living on the General (aka Stable) Releases. We consider this a stable release, and the primary reason that it is not yet a “1.0” release is that we are still some differences in the features between Informant 5 for iOS and Informant for macOS.

Get Informant for macOS here

Released: April 7, 2017 
Current Stable Build is :  Milestone 8.5 – Version 0.99  (50298)
Users who choose to accept beta builds may have a different build number.

Release Notes for Milestone 8.5

New Features & Improvements:

• Updated to a new process for logging into Google and Toodledo Sync Accounts.  Informant for macOS is now ready for upcoming authentication changes that Google is making in April.  NOTE: While Informant should migrate your existing logins, there’s a chance that after updating, you might need to log back into your Google or Toodledo Sync Accounts.
• You can now re-order sections in the Focus view (this is done in Focus View Preferences)
• The Today/Focus menu is now a “tear off” menu. You can open it from the menu bar, then drag it to wherever you want. You can edit this Today tear off in the Preferences>>Focus.
• You can now drag/drop between the “Today/Focus Menu” and the main app
• You can now drag / drop notes (into a project, tag, mini-month, etc)

• Month and Stacked Week view now support multi-select drag and drop. (click Command to select multiple)
  
• You can now select a mix of items in a calendar view (events, tasks, notes) and delete them all at once
• You can now right-click on a backup (in Advanced Preferences) to show that backup in the Finder
• We have standardized on the term “Projects” for both notes and tasks. Before, we would inconsistently use the term “Notebooks” or “Projects” when you were on the Notes view.
• Projects can now be designated as allowing “Notes Only”, “Tasks Only” or both. Certain sync accounts only support specific data types, so in those cases, the editor locks you into a single choice. Likewise, Toodledo only supports mixed projects, so the editor restricts Toodledo projects to “both”. Informant Sync supports projects being in any of those 3 states. When a project is “Tasks Only”, it will not show at all in the Notes view (and vice-versa).
• Time zones now appear in the sidebar for calendars locked to a specific time zone
• Visual Improvements to the time zone picker when editing a calendar
• The event editor now supports specifying time zones when creating/editing an event
• Month and Stacked Week view now show the time zone on an event when that event is on a calendar locked to a specific time zone
• When grouping by project, the task view now sorts tasks in a sequential project according to the user-specified sequence
• Making a child task (via command-return) now sets the priority of the child to match the parent
• Completed checklist items always show regardless of your “show completed tasks” setting. This is consistent behavior with Informant on iOS.
• New & Improved logic for automatic “Next Action” handling on sequential projects:
  • Parent / child tasks are treated more like “sub-projects” now. If you set a parent task to “Active”, then the first subtask will become the Next Action.
  • This means you can now have multiple next actions within a given project (the first task in the project along with the first subtask of each “active” parent task)
  • During automatic Next Action promotion, if the first task in a project is a parent task, it will now set that parent task to Active and the first subtask will become the Next Action
  • Next Action promotion now stops if it hits a task that is in the Hold or Planning status

Fixes:

• Calendar filter for the Today sidebar would get lost when quitting Informant
• Fixed several issues that could occur when duplicating a project that contained tasks with subtasks
• Pasting a task into a new project, context or tag now works as expected
• Various fixes and improvements to Alarm notifications
• Stacked Week view might sometimes failed to load data (unless you swiped back and forth a few times)
• For now, our in-app support feature will pop open a new email in your email client.  We are working with HelpShift to resolve issues with their SDK that would give a “network error” when attempting to submit support requests directly within the app.
• Several improvements to Note navigation & editing:
  • We no longer immediately put the focus in the note body when you select a note – this allows you to use the arrow keys to move up/down in the notes list.  You can use <Tab> to get into the selected note.
  • We also fixed some situations where a note would randomly lose focus or situations where the note would appear to be de-selected in the notes list (even though it still appeared in the editor).
  • If you drag a note to a different project such that it is removed from the current notes list, we now remove it from the editor as well.
  • Fixed issue where the notes editor could get stuck in a “No Preview” state
  • Fixed an issue where sometimes the notes editor would appear blank (the note would still exist, it would just fail to display)
  • Fixed issue where the notes editor might randomly revert back to an earlier saved copy of the note (this wasn’t a very common situation, but it could happen)
  • Fixed issue where changes to note properties might fail to save / sync changes if the note body was empty
• Several fixes to how we manage the on-demand loading of Evernote note content:
  • This includes a situation where the current state of the note properties might be out of sync between Informant and Evernote.
  • This also fixes situations where dragging an Evernote note to a project in a different sync account might not always move the note content.
  • Also improved the error notification if you attempt to load an offline Evernote note while you are not connected to the Internet
• Fixed crash on Month view if you clicked on the “More” button and there was a note pinned to that date
• Fixes to the Time Zone picker in the event editor
• Fixed annoying “text wiggle” when you inline-edited the title of an event/task
• Sometimes the editor would not appear when double-clicking an item in Stacked Week view
• Fixed issue where the sidebar mini months would jump to a seemingly random month when you first launched the app
• Certain views didn’t update themselves properly if they were left open across midnight
• When you duplicate a parent task, it now also properly duplicates all subtasks (instead of just the parent)
• Don’t allow adding a subtask to a completed parent task
• Don’t allow command-return to make a subtask on a checklist item
• Sorting by title in Notes view was broken (you would get a blank screen)
• Sometimes when editing a task with a custom recurrence, the custom recurrence editor didn’t visually set itself up properly
• Worked around a macOS bug that would sometimes result in a crash if you tried to undo some typing
• Improvements to the handling of icons on Apple Calendar events
• The “dim future tasks” option now works properly in Focus View
• The titles for checklist items are now properly vertically centered within the task row
• Long titles weren’t always properly displayed in search result rows
• The tab title didn’t update if you renamed a project while that project was open
• Fixed crash that could occur when clicking in specific areas of a checklist item
• Certain contextual menu items were incorrectly enabled for checklist items
• Renaming a smart filter wouldn’t always properly update the focus view
• Numerous internal improvements and fixes to drag & drop
• Dragging a task from one project onto a task from another project would properly make it a subtask, but would not properly change the project of that subtask to match its parent
• Informant no longer prompts you for span when deleting an exception
• When switching from a calendar view to a non-calendar view (like the tasks view), the sidebar mini months wouldn’t clear the “Selected Range”
• Improvements and fixes to the management of backups (in the Advanced Preferences)
• Fixed issue with calendar contextual menu if you had multiple events selected
• Fixed some issues with the “Project” contextual menu item on notes
• Adding a voice note to an empty note would fail
• When the default due date was set to “Next Friday”, new tasks were being made for “Next Thursday”
• Creating a new Reminder “list” (aka Project) within Informant wasn’t getting saved in Apple Reminders
• Closing a tab and immediately clicking out of Informant could result in a crash
• Fixed crash when rapidly toggling the summary popover of an event on and off
• Fixed regression in latest M8 build where the default project wouldn’t be auto-selected when going into preferences
• Creating a new Evernote notebook in Informant wouldn’t sync to Evernote
• Fixed issues copying/pasting recurring events
• Quick Entry (NLP) in the Today menu wouldn’t respect the currently selected day if you specified a time in your “quick entry” string
• Fixed issue where if you dragged an image into a new note immediately after it was created, it would fail to save the image
• Improved reliability of syncing notes containing images to/from Informant 5 using Informant Sync
• Numerous internal improvements (we now have a fully shared codebase with Informant for iOS, updated to Swift 3, updated several 3rd party frameworks, prepared ourselves for planned future features, etc)
• Several stability, UI and performance improvements throughout the app

For those of you that are keeping track, here is a list of the remaining differences between Informant 5 for iOS and Informant for mac (milestone 0.8.5):