Organize and manage bookmarks for Mac, sync across browsers!
Just type the series name and select the issues you own to download all data. BookMacster2.9.1TNT BookMacster 2.9.1 Mac OS X 16 MB.
What's new in this version:
BookMacster 2.10.18
- Fixed a situation in which BkmxAgent (our in-the-background syncing process which syncs bookmarks while our app is quit) could cause a job to remain in the job queue if certain errors occurred, causing future jobs to be stalled until BkmxAgent was rebooted
- Fixed the perform AppleScript command, which has apparently been broken since version 2.9
BookMacster 2.10.17
- No longer crashes when clicking on the text label of some checkboxes
BookMacster 2.10.2
- Fixed another mistake in the procedure for exporting to Brave when Brave is not running
BookMacster 2.10.1
- There is only one change in this version, which affects only operations with the Brave Browser. If you do not intend to use the Brave Browser any time soon, you should skip this version.
- Fixed a mistake in the procedure for exporting to Brave which was incorrectly done in version 2.9.23 and caused bookmarks to be omitted from exports to Brave in some cases
BookMacster 2.10
- Now supports import, export and syncing with the Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Edge Dev web browsers. (Note: We have not put our extensions into the Microsoft store because Edge graciously allows installing extensions from the Chrome Web Store, the process is quite seamless, and so less is more. To install one of our extensions into Edge, just OK installing extensions from the Chrome Web Store when prompted.)
BookMacster 2.9.21
- Changed so that having separator(s) in current versions of Firefox no longer causes a churn (unnecessary sync operation) after exporting to Firefox. (No longer exports a dummy name or dummy URL with separators in Firefox)
- After users update to version 44 of our BookMacster Sync extension, serious errors encountered by the BookMacster Sync extension will be displayed in the Smarky, Synkmark or BookMacster after the import or export operation is complete. (At this time, only two errors are deemed to be serious)
- Further clarified the message in the sheet which appears whenever user attempts to begin or resume syncing
- Backed out of the change made in version 2.9.19 which patched an omission which theoretically could cause .bmco document changes from another Mac to be missed when syncing, and replaced it with a better and simpler fix. (BkmxAgent now watches auxiliaryData.plist instead of the sqlite files, and as a side requirement to make this work, document’s UUID is now stored in auxiliaryData.plist instead of Core Data store)
- Clicking the Trouble Zipper command now successfully launches Trouble Zipper in macOS 10.15 Beta 4. (ClassesObjC commit 7a9fbdf)
BookMacster 2.9.19
- Fixed a bug which could cause, when syncing multiple browsers, in some cases, changes from one browser to be missed and overwritten if changes are made in a second browser while those first changes are being synced. (Last-imported hashes were not always truly being forgotten when the sync operation was aborted and re-staged)
- Now prompts user to export if syncing is ready when an Import or Export checkbox of a browser/client is switched ON
- Fixed encoding of non-ASCII characters in HTML (.html file) exports. (Bookmark and folder names are now exported with only the five mandatory HTML control characters encoded, which removes a bug exporting characters in the upper Unicode planes)
- In the Inspector window now, the Name field is taller so that it can show three lines instead of one without scrolling. (It still scrolls to show unlimited lines)
- Patched an omission which theoretically could cause .bmco document changes from another Mac to be missed when syncing. (BkmxAgent now watches documents’ -shm and -wal files too.)
BookMacster 2.9.15
- Fixed a bug which sometimes caused Error 992544 on some Macs after our app performed a syncing operation in the background, and also further improved the information in that error to aid pinpointing of any similar bugs. We hope there are no other such bugs, and so Error 992544 will not be seen any more. But if anyone still sees Error 992544, please click the life preserver button in the dialog and send us the data in the email which will be generated
- When exporting certain URLs which have invalid paths or strangely encoded path portions to Chrome, Chromium, Vivaldi, Brave, Opera, Firefox, and Safari, in certain cases, now better emulates the auto-correction of these URLs by these browsers, eliminating churn in subsequent imports and exports with these browsers
BookMacster 2.9.13
- Fixed bugs which sometimes caused failure to save the new Collection after configuring as a new user
- In a document, in the Content View, in outline mode, drag and drop now works properly in macOS 10.15 Catalina
- Dropping a contiguous selection of items onto a folder now drops them in their original order. Also, new items appear under pre-existing siblings. This may have been inconsistent in previous versions
- Dropping items from Safari’s Edit Bookmarks view now results in new items with names from Safari instead of just URLs from Safari
- The New User Setiup window is now readable in Dark Mode and macOS 10.15 Catalina
- In .bmco document window > Status Bar at bottom, and in New User Setup window > Help Navigation bar, the background colors have been changed to have more contrast, making them more readable, particularly in Dark Mode
- File > Duplicate no longer fails to save in macOS 10.15 Catalina. It may have been broken in macOS 10.14 Mojave too. (Saving may still fail due to a issue FB6937676 in macOS 10.15 Catalina. To work around this bug, be sure to name the new document by typing in the title bar immediately after creating it)
- In a document’s Settings > Syncers > Advanced, for Periodic syncers, the Every 60 Seconds interval choice has been removed and Every 5 minutes has been changed to Every 10 minutes
- Now alllows some technically invalid but still useable URLs, such as some javascript:// URLs, to be exported to Chrome
- Fixed a bug which could cause a crash if a/the .bmco document file was corrupt and failed to open
BookMacster 2.9.12
- In a document’s Settings > Clients > Show Advanced Settings for Brave, Canary, Chrome, Chromium, Epic and Vivaldi, in Special Settings > launch browser during syncs, the choice Never has been removed from the popup menu, and upon running this version for the first time, any such Never settings in existing documents will be changed to Automatic. This is because the current verisons of Chrome and Vivaldi no longer sync properly if bookmark changes are made while Chrome or Vivaldi is not running and their Sync is in use. The other browser/clients do not offer syncing so it does not matter for them at this time
- Synkmark now supports two web browsers which were previously only supported by BookMacster: Google Chrome Canary (aka Canary) and FreeSMUG’s Chromium
- Fixed some bugs which could cause misbehavior when opening documents under some conditions
- Fixed bug introduced in version 2.9.11 which caused landing new bookmarks into the root to silently fail
- Clicking the Dock Menu, Status Item (menulet) or typing the global Keyboard Shortcut while Brave Browser is the frontmost app no longer displays an error message, and landing new bookmarks from Brave via these mechanisms now works
- License Info window text now displays properly in Dark Mode
Help Book documentation has been updated:
- Covers support for the Brave web browser which was added in the last version
- Clarifiies that the Chromium browser we support is FreeSMUG’s Chromium
- Sign in to Chrome is now referred to by its new name Chome Sync (Thank you, Google, for renaming your service to read like a noun and reducing it to two words)
- No longer describes the controls available for iCloud > Safari, Firefox Sync, Chrome Sync, Vivaldi Sync, and Opera Sync, since the developers of these browsers have now made their documentation good enough that we can instead link to them
BookMacster 2.9.11
- Now supports the Brave web browser
- Fixed a bug which allowed soft items to be moved to positions in between the immoveable hard folders. This could cause cause errors, warnings or churn during subsequent sync operations with browsers
- The Sort where property of a hard folders is now properly indicated as not applicable in the Inspector, and it is no longer possible to change this to one of the other (invalid) values
BookMacster 2.9.10
- Loading Safari bookmarks for import and export is now (even) more robust and reliable
- Fixed a situation wherein a newly-created Collection might not be saved in recent versions of macOS
BookMacster 2.9.9
- Fixes failure to export to Safari 12.1, if the changes included one or more new folders. Safari 12.1 is apparently coming to macOS 14, probably in macOS 10.14.4 this week or next, and also appears to be in new installations of macOS 10.13.6. The changes in this version may also fix other issues which occur rarely with earlier Safari versions
- Separators exported to Safari (actually pseudo-separators since Safari does not support real separators) now play more nicely with current implementations of Safari and iCloud. The separators of existing Collections are migrated to the new form upon first being opened in this version. (The URLs of separators, instead of being empty strings, aare now of the form separator:// followed by a unique identifier. Although not shown in the Content View, this URL is exported to Safari. Safari 12.1 Beta has been seen to misbehave when bookmarks URLs are empty strings)
- Fixed bugs which occurred when running in macOS 10.10 or 10.11. Foremost is that automatic syncing works now. Also there are no more crashes upon closing some alert sheets or windows, such as the Sync Status Report*
- Round ? help buttons now work in earlier macOS versions the same as they do in macOS 10.14, opening to the relevant Help Book page on the internet, instead of showing The selected content is currently unavailable… in the very sadly broken Apple Help Viewer, which Apple has not been maintaining
- Fixed bug which caused the File > Reboot Sync Agent command to sometimes just do nothing (because an exception was raised internally)
- Improved some code which may have been causing a rare crash during quit
BookMacster 2.9.8
- Imports and exports with Safari work when running in macOS 10.14.4. The failure when using older versions is usually with Error 772042
- Fixed a bug which sometimes required app to be force quit, with a false Error 992544, after saving a new document for the first time, particularly in macOS 10.14 and even more particularly in macOS 10.14.4
- Bug fixes, efficiency and performance improvements to automatic syncing
- In the document window tab Settings > Syncers > Advanced, the Perform… button, whose operation was sacrificed in the rush to release version 2.9, works again
- The predicate editor in document window tab Reports > Find/Replace works in Dark Mode now (Apple Bug 46142171)
- In Preferences > Syncing > Sound Effects, user may now choose their own .aiff files as custom sound effects
- In document window tab Content, when in Outline Mode, items may now be dragged and dropped anywhere, including at the root level
- The Sync Snapshots feature now works in macOS 10.14
- Fixed crash which would occur for most users after menu command Reset and Start Over… had executed
- Fixed bug introduced in a recent version which caused documents to not be completely forgotten after they wre found to be no longer available, resulting in false error indications
- Trashing a document with File > Close and Trash no longer causes File > Recent Documents when running in macOS 10.14
- When exporting to Vivaldi, Opera, Google Chrome, Chrome Canary, or Chromium, any bookmark with an empty URL is now omitted (These browsers do not allow such bookmarks, and will change any such bookmark into a folder, which will cause also cause churn when syncing)
BookMacster 2.9.7
- Now prevents contentions which could sometimes occur when BookMacster, Synkmark, Smarky, or their agent (BkmxAgent) syncs with Safari, causing our Pajara helper process to crash. For most users, Pajara would be silently relaunched and work, but for some, this could cause a crash dialog to appear, and syncing to fail. Preventing the collision also reduces resource usage
- Further imrovements to Syncing reliability
- Fixed bug introduced in version 2.9.4 which caused the Choose Clients or Choose Browsers sheet to be misplaced, and also, sometimes prevented the new document from being saved until the next application run
- The windows shown upon clicking Show Syncing Status and Reboot Sync Agent now always appear regardless of whatever the other, or other alerting windows are or have recently been display, and clicking Done in one of these windows no longer sometimes cause a crash when running in older macOS versions
- Main menu item File > Close and Trash works in macOS 10.14 now
- Fixed a bug which caused failure of Install Bookmarklet into >, and possibly some other rarely-done operations
Fixed several functions which did not work for all users because in some cases macOS 10.14 did not show its Do you want to allow this dialog. The important ones are:
- Adding *Add to > our Floating Menu (keyboard shortcut), Menu Extra, or Dock Menu when user visits a web page in any supported browser, including Safari
- Landing a new bookmark by clicking the BookMacster Button in a web browser or using the BookMacsterize bookmarklet
- Presenting the error dialog when Agent encounters an error and user clicks View, for more details
BookMacster 2.9.6
- Fixed bug in version 2.9.5 which caused a crash upon clicking Reboot Sync Agent if user did not have all of BookMacster, Synkmark and Smarky installed
BookMacster 2.9.5
- Fixed this bug: While app was quit and Syncing by agent in background, if something hit the browsers’ bookmarks file (as iCloud frequently hits Safari’s file) without making any substantive change in bookmarks, agent would no longer detect bookmarks changes in that browser until it was rebooted by the Reboot Sync Agent command, or if syncing was switched off and then back on again
- Restored ability to open documents which was broken with version 2.9.2 for users running macOS 10.10 or 10.11
- The Sync Watches Report has been redesigned again. It now includes a summary section giving the total number of watches that were last created, and a section giving the current path watches
- Added main menu item Help > Troublshooting > “Touch” Safari Bookmarks
BookMacster 2.9.2
- Now supports Dark Mode when running in macOS 10.14 Mojave. (To see Dark Mode, users must select appearance Dark in > System Preferences > tab General)
- Fixed several minor cosmetic defects in the .bmco document window and in alert sheets and dialogs
- Will now forgetold documents which are found to be deleted or corrupted, as was the behavior prior to version 2.9.1
- The Agent (BkmxAgent) will now terminate itself immediately if macOS launches a version of it which is not currently installed in BookMacster, Synkmark, or Smarky. This is to prevent more than one agent from being launched if macOS has old versions in its XPC cache, a problem which some users experienced after our last update
- If macOS has not opened a .bmco document after 35 seconds of trying, app now displays an error message (257938) instead of the Processing .bmco dialog remaining until user force quits the app. (In addition to adding the timeout, document opening is now peformed on a secondary thread)
- Added a workaround for an apparent bug in macOS Launch Services which may be causing some of those document-opening errors
- When running in macOS 10.14 or later, when user clicks a round ? Help Button, the relevant help page now opens in the user’s web browser, served from our website. This is a temporary fix, until Apple provides a workaround for their breaking of help anchors in macOS 10.14. When running in earlier macOS versions, the relevant help page still opens in Apple Help Viewer
BookMacster 2.9.1
- Change log not available for this version
BookMacster 2.9.0
- This version restores the capability to automatically sync Safari bookmarks in macOS 10.14 Mojave. We thank users for your patience, although we still cordially defer all blame to Apple for not providing details of how the new access restrictions in Mojave work, and for moving the target during Mojave Developer Previews. By the time we had confirmed what worked and what didn’t, there was not enough time to finish Version 2.9 before Apple pushed out Mojave
BookMacster 2.8.7
- Implemented two measures which may reduce or eliminate rare occurrences of macOS Cocoa Error 516 when .bmco document is saved, and a not-so-rare occurrence of Error 3025 for some users
BookMacster 2.8.6
- Restored operation of Quick Search field in .bmco document window which was broken in Version 2.8.5
- Fixed a bug which caused a nonfatal exception when a .bmco document was closed after the Settings tab had been open
- Fixed a bug which could theoretically cause a crash after an error occurred during a syncing operation
- Updated the built-in Sparkle Check for Update subsystem from version 1.18.1 to 1.19.0. There should be no user-facing effect. This is just for the record
- Fixed four memory leaks
BookMacster 2.8.3
- Added a check to ignore missing name values when importing changes from a browser/Client
BookMacster 2.8
- The template of text placed on the system clipboard upon copying bookmarks is now configurable in Preferences > General
- Some housekeeping operations, particularly some during application launching, are now performed on a secondary thread. This improves performance and responsiveness slightly, but mostly it was done in case there is more than one user who sees macOS sometimes hang in these operations, for reasons unknown. Restored reliability of Edit > Cut and then Paste which sometimes failed in the current version of macOS
- The various change types shown in a document’s tab Reports > Sync Log are now better explained, in tool tips and in the Help Book sec. 4.4
- If user tries to move the app’s single .bmco document file by clicking the title bar, a warning sheet indicating that this is not supported appears, and the move is aborted. (Previously, such a move would appear to succeed until the next launch)
- Fixed a bug which sometimes caused a crash if two .bmco document windows were open while edits were made in the Preferences or Manage Browser Extensions window
- Removed all functions and user interface supporting the now-defunct Delicious aka del.icio.us bookmarking service
- Fixed a bug, introduced in version 2.5, which prevented proper automatic recovery from some corrupt database files. (Corrupt auxiliary files, -shm and -wal, files were not being removed)
BookMacster 2.7.3
- In the document window, if multiple recent completed export or import results to different destinations (usually browsers) were Same-Skip, the status bar at the bottom now shows all of the most recent such results that will fit, instead of only one of them
- When opening a document window, if Syncing is ready, now displays a sheet which warns that syncing is disabled while a document is open. This sheet has a ? button which links to an improved Help Book section on this topic, and a Don’t tell me again checkbox
BookMacster 2.7.1
- Exports to Firefox which use the quick direct sync method are faster. The improvement increases with the number of items being exported, for example 10X typical with 20,000 items
- Exports to Safari, when the Safari bookmarks file has a Bookmarks Menu, but it is empty, and bookmarks are being added to or removed from the root, now succeed instead of failing with Error 298441 or 772031
BookMacster 2.7
- The Selection menu in the main menu has been removed. Its items have been moved to the Edit menu, except for Show Inspector which has been moved to the Window menu
- Commands Copy to…, Move to… and Merge into…, which previously only existed in the contextual menu, now appear in the new improved Edit main menu as well
- Behaviors of some items in that Edit menu have been fixed or improved
- Fixed a bug which could cause items from browsers to be synced out of order, and some new items therefore lost, if if the .bmco document contained a Bookmarks Menu hard folder which was empty, and Safari was one of the browser/clients being synced
BookMacster 2.6
- Fixed a bug which caused the sheet indicating Sync Status has changed… and prompting Export to sometimes appear two or three times after clicking the Syncing button to make syncing ready.
In the Syncing button in the document toolbar, the Ready state is now indicated by a yellow dot instead of a green dot, to emphasize the fact that syncing is Ready but does not begin until the window is closed:
- Now supports importing and exporting the old Netscape .html files which are still exported and imported by most web browsers and bookmarking services
- No longer mangles literal URLs which are in IPv6 literal format upon entering them
No longer fails with Error 54367 when attempting to export to a loose native browser file, or export to a browser installation which has not created a bookmarks file yet (because user has not created any bookmarks):
- If the Launch in Background preference is switched on, and a web browser is the active application before the app is launched, and the app is launched from the macOS Dock or LaunchPad, and one or both Global Keyboard Shortcuts are configured, those keyboard shortcuts now work (as expected) in the web browser immediately, without the user first needing activate a different application and then return to the web browser
BookMacster 2.5.7
- Exports to Safari now reliably push into iCloud again for all users of macOS 10.12.6
- After exporting to Safari in some macOS user accounts, when iCloud:Safari syncing is off, no longer displays false warning that macOS indicated trouble while pushing your bookmarks export into iCloud
BookMacster 2.5.6
- Restored ability to export a large number of changes to Opera, and added capability to export a large number of bookmarks to Firefox, Chrome and Vivaldi while they are running, although this is still not recommended. (Large exports to Opera have failed since our version 2.5.3, when we removed the direct sync capability due to impracticality in Opera 48+. The remaining coordinated sync capability had always been limited in size. This new version, together with Version 42 of our BookMacster Sync extension which all users should now have, removes that limit
- Plays better with iCloud when exporting to Safari in the older macOS 10.12
- Now behaves more efficiently and robustly when importing from or exporting to Safari. If no problems occur, completes the process without unnecessary waiting. If rare problems occur, silently recovers and retries more quickly
- Fixed a condition which caused Error 325844 occasionally
- Corrected a bunch of references in Help Book and a few other messages which still referred to the old .bkmslf file extension which was replaced back in version 2.5 with .bmco
- Error 64215 now contains a underlying error which indicates why
- Fixed a bug which affected syncing if user has enabled a document’s Settings > Clients > Advanced Settings for Chrome > checkbox Create a Reading/Unsorted. The bug caused an extra unnecessary syncing operation under the hood, and in recent versions, this extra operation would overwrite recent changes from other browsers
- Fixed sorting by domain, host, path document setting, which appears to have been not performing for a long time
- Fixed a bug which could cause a crash instead of presenting Error 298441 or 398441 if something went wrong and timed out while exporting to Safari
BookMacster 2.5.5
- Improved a performance bottleneck when exporting to Firefox
- Fixed a bug which could cause a crash or failure to export to Safari if the exporting document did not have a Bookmarks Menu in its Settings > Structure
- Fixed several misbehaviors which could occur when exporting to Safari when user’s Safari bookmarks have been upgraded by Apple to the new CloudKit protocol. Our thanks to the users who sent their Bookmarks and Document data using Help > Trouble Zipper in our apps’ menu bars
- Added two fixes for users of macOS 10.12, which seems to temporarily lose track of items after moving one. This can result in failure of the export with either Error 772031 Could not find a movee (if an item was moved into limbo after its original parent was removed) or Error 772032 Could not find movee’s new parent (if an item is moved into a moved folder). It is possible that this fix may also eliminate, in macOS 10.13, the occasional retrial which occurs under the hood after a few seconds, when an export to Safari initially fails
- Fixed bug which could be seen particularly if new item(s) were added to the root, causing the export to fail with Error 772031 or 772032, indicating Could not find a movee or its new parent
- Now succeeds when exporting to Safari a bookmark which was imported from Firefox as a Live Bookmark (RSS), if user’s Safari bookmarks have been upgraded by Apple to the new CloudKit protocol, instead of failing with Error 772030
BookMacster 2.5.4
- Errors 145725 and 651507 no longer cause syncing to be switched off, and when occuring in a background Worker’s Agent, are no longer automatically displayed to the user. These errors are caused by non-responses from web browser extensions, and after extensive testing we’ve concluded that such non-responses do occasionally occur on busy Macs. Also, with recent improvements in our apps, listed below, we can almost always recover from these non-responses on the next sync operation without losing any data (new bookmarks, for example). So the warnings and switching off of syncing are now more annoying than useful. Also, when 145725 does occur now, user is advised to simply relaunch the browser first, which often fixes it, before reinstalling the extension
- This version replaces the Bookmarkshelf document (.bkmslf file) with a new Collection document (.bmco file package). Upon opening a .bkmslf file in this version, it will automatically be removed and replaced with new .bmco file package
- Made many improvements to reduce redundant sync operations when Syncing is switched on
- Imports from and exports to Opera using our fast Direct method, while Opera is not running, are no longer attempted. Opera must always be running (or will be launched), and our BookMacster Sync extension must be installed, during any import from or export to Opera. (The reason for this is that Opera 48+ apparently has some salt or other intentional obfuscation in its Bookmarks file’s checksum, which is impractical for us to chase after)
- Background Agents’ Worker are now smart enough to import from any number of browsers instead of just all or one. This gives some better conflict resolution when there are syncing conflicts due to bookmarks being changed rapidly in multiple browsers, and lays the groundwork for further improvements in conflict resolution
- Increased the sleep to allow browsers to launch, before even trying to open a port, from 8 seconds always to to 10 secs in main app and 30 secs in background Agents’ Workers
- Background Agents’ Worker now skip syncing other browsers as soon as a conflict is detected, instead of finishing and then doing it over a minute later
- Fixed a memory leak which caused imports and exports by background Agents’ Workers using browser extensions to fail if a BookMacster process had executed a similar operation, until that BookMacster process was quit, and may have been causing other misbehaviors
- Timeouts when importing from or exporting to Safari have been readjusted
- Maybe fixed a bug which rarely causes a crash when displaying the Manage Browser Extensions window
- Fixed a bug which caused syncing upon Firefox quit to be unreliable, particularly if BookMacster had been previously installed
- When syncing in the background after user logs in, waits until 5 minutes after login. This is to reduce the occurrence of sync operations failing because the system or web browsers were too busy and not responding
- Fixed recent issues which have occurred while exporting to Safari when iCloud Safari syncing is used in older macOS versions 10.11 or 10.12
- No longer supports opening documents created with BookMacster version 1.14.1 (2013-Mar-27) or earlier
- Fixed a bug which cause Remove URL Cruft to fail if cruft ranges from mulitple cruft specifications had interleaved ranges
- Installing the BookMacster Sync extension no longer breaks operation of the BookMacster Button extension’s button. (Normally, users install one or the other but not both.)
- No longer warns the user when Syncing is on and a bookmarks change from a browser is detected while app is running. (Browsers are making more “noise” lately, and these warnings are getting too annoying.) To replace this warning, the terminology Syncing is active has been changed to Syncing is ready, and tooltips improved.
- Upon opening a .bmco document (including a newly-converted .bkmslf document, any metadata stored as it has been in previous versions (in Core Data’s metadata) is now moved to a separate file in the new .bmco document package, and future metadata changes are now always stored in this separate file. This is much more reliable and is known to fix at least one bug, that operations done in the background (by a Agent), in macOS 10.13.3 and possibly other macOS versions, reducing some unnecessary sync operations.
- Fixed two similar bugs which could sometimes make it appear that our Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Vivaldi extensions were not responding, producing Error 651507. Chaos control 1.6.2 download free. (Singleton creations were not thread-safe.)
- If web browsers are launched or quit to complete a Import or Export operation, they are now set back to their original launched/quit state even if the operation was aborted due to some error, or a syncing conflict
- To reduce timeout errors when computer is very busy, increased the allowed time per change for exporting to Firefox (from 0.998 to 0.50777 secs)
- Fixed a bug which, on rare occasions, caused triggering of sync operations by bookmarks changes in browsers to be halted for 30 minutes
- Implemented a workaround which eliminates occasional occurrence of Cocoa Error 516 during background syncing operations. (Opted out of asynchronous saving)
- Errors 298441, 398441 or 772XXX when importing from or exporting to Safari should occur much less frequently, maybe never. (Since these failures seem to occur in Apple frameworks, and not very often, we now silently retry the operation if any of them occurs)
- Fixed a bug, probably around since 2.4.10, which could cause a silent failure to export to Safari. (XPC process would terminate)
- Fixed a bug which caused the numbers given in the menu item File > Stop Workers, Agents to sometimes not make sense
- When exporting to Safari using the new iCloud protocol which we began supporting in verison 2.4.12, now reads the existing bookmarks more exactly as Safari does, so that, if there are bugs in Safari such as this one, our apps will mimic the bugs that Safari has, instead of throwing errors such as Error 772031 due to mismatched behaviors
- When importing from or exporting to Safari, now properly identifies the Favorites Bar, even if the Favorites Bar representation in the file is missing the customary identifying title. This new behavior mimics that of Safari itself. With the old behavior, exporting to such an unconventional/corrupt file could result in failure, indicating one of various errors, such as Error 772031 *Could not find putee”
- Fixed a bug which would have prevented recovery from error if reading from Safari failed
- Fixed a bug which caused a crash during a Import from or Export to OmniWeb 6 in some cases
- During launch, if user is warned that a synced browser/client is has disappeared, the appropriate tab to correct the problem is now opened
- Added code to log information related to a certain rare cause of Error 651507
- Fixed a bug which, rarely, caused a crash on launch
- Fixed a bug which caused redundant records to be left in the Preferences indicating action to be taken when Firefox quit. This may or may not have affected behavior adversely
- Automatic, silent recovery from a document saving error (Cocoa Error 67000) is now more reliable in macOS 10.12 and 10.13
- Effects of the Stop All Syncing Now menu item have been improved. When BookMacster documents are found to have Advanced Agents, those are now are switched off instead of being removed. Also, fixed some edge cases wherein some malformed Agents were not affected
- Fixed some misbehaviors while running in macOS 10.13 High Sierra: when duplicating documents, and when macOS’ state restoration re-opens a previously-unsaved document
- Fixed a bug found by Apple’s new Thread Sanitizer tool which theoretically could have caused misbehavior during Import operations
- Fixed a very old bug which could cause, upon first running a new or different version of the app, preferences and other data to not be updated correctly, if the different version is installed in a location which is of lower priority in the opinion of macOS than some pre-existing installation, and the pre-existing installation was not removed
- When adding a Command to an Advanced Agent, no longer logs Internal Error 341-0815. It was actually a false alarm
- The dialog announcing Error 198385 now says less and instead links to our Bookmarks Manager Selection Guide
- The warning and 20-minute lockout which occurs after exporting hundreds of changes to Safari no longer occurs, incorrectly, if the export was only a Test Run
- Added a hidden preference (com.sheepsystems.Pajara logVerbosity) for debugging a crash with a particular user
- Restored the open AppleScript command (for opening documents) which apparently disappeared at some point in recent years
- When executing File > Export to only…, the recently-added checkbox title Do NOT launch … to coordinate syncing now does not appear in some cases where we know such a launch will not happen
- When exporting to Safari using the new protocol which was added in version 2.4.12,The Status Bar now shows progress Pushing changes to Safari instead of going blank for 1-3 seconds
- A timeout has been added. It generates an error which would help us diagnose the problem in case such an export ever fails
- Removed Bookdog Grads Quick Start sec. 4.18 from Help Book because it contains outdated content and there are not enough Bookdog users out there any more to warrant fixing it
BookMacster 2.4.12
- Exporting to Safari is now compatible with a new iCloud protocol. So that we can track our quality and quickly deal with any issues which may arise, apps now send iCloud migration status and related performance statistics anonymously to our server. The obligatory checkbox to opt out of such sending has been added to Preferences > General
- Fixed a bug which caused little translucent rectangles to sometimes remain on the screen after dragging item(s) in a document’s Content View, when running in macOS 10.13. (Fixed SSMoveableToolTip)
- Restored import and export compatibility with custom Firefox profiles to which the user has given an Absolute (as opposed to Relative) path, when using the recent versions of Firefox. (Updated SSYFirefoxProfileFinder to correctly parse profiles.ini files produced by current Firefox)
- Fixed a bug which caused failure to export to Vivaldi, with Error 266541, if the Reading List in our app contained (new) items which did not exist and thus needed to be created in Vivaldi
- When using version 29 or later of BookMacster Button Extension, or version 41 or later of BookMacster Sync extension, the Test in the Manage Browser Extensions window is now more rigorous. (It now talks all the way through to the actual extension in real time, instead of just asking our Native Messaging tool which was launched by the extension for the configuration info that it got from the extension when it loaded)
- Added some defenses against a rare occurrence of the BookMacster Sync Firefox extension sometimes going dead until Firefox is relaunched
- Based on some new experiments and data from users, the reason and recovery suggestions presented with Errors 453973 and 651507 no longer implicate too many bookmarks, but instead implicate CPU hogging by other processes
- The requirement that no folder contain more than 500 items before exporting to Safari now applies whether or not iCloud:Safari is in use
- The threshold for warning user that a significant change has been made to Safari has been raised from 100 to 250 items
- After exporting a large number of changes to Safari, now advises the user to give iCloud 20 minutes to sync before making any further changes, and also BookMacster, Synkmark or Smarky will ignore any churning of bookmarks by iCloud during this period
- Executing Reset and Start Over no longer disables browser extensions until the next time that our app is relaunched. (The symbolic link required for communicating with extensions is now restored immediately)
- Previous versions may have, at times, tried to treat the text under the name of a Safari > Reading List item as the item’s Comments. It appears that this may have worked in earlier versions of Safari, but it is not possible to prevent the current version of Safari from overwriting them. To reduce complexity and increase reliaibility of exports to Safari, this would-be feature has been removed
- If a manually-initiated export fails, the error sheet which appears now indicates immediately to which browser it failed. This is helpful when performing Export to all
- Improved some log entries
Fixed issues which will make coordinated exports to Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Vivaldi faster and more accurate:
- Fixed a bug which caused items items to be exported out of order to Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Vivaldi during coordinated exports, if items in that folder were shuffled in a certain way
- Eliminated some redundant transactions sent to the browser
BookMacster 2.4.10
- Package now includes updated extensions: BookMacster Button version 28, and BookMacster Sync version 40. The new Button version fixes a bug in the previous version which caused extra processes to sometimes be left sleeping instead of terminating. Also, our apps have been changed to require these new versions for Firefox, Vivaldi, Chrome, Canary and Chromium. Opera must wait until their review and approval process completes :( Due to an oversight in previous versions, thes versions will not be updated automatically by Firefox. Users will be prompted to click through the reinstallation process. In Vivaldi, Chrome, Canary and Chromium, our extensions should already be updated because our new versions were published by the Chrome Web Store last week
- To play better with macOS 10.13 High Sierra, before importing from or exporting to Safari, our apps now only wait for apparent iCloud activity if the user has opted in to iCloud Safari syncing
- After installing an extension into Opera, it now works, even if user has not also installed one of our extensions into Google Chrome. (Before installing an extension into Opera, now installs a Native Messaging Special Manifest file into Google Chrome’s Application Support folder, as well as in Opera’s Application Support folder, because, oddly, the former is where Opera looks for it)
- Users should see fewer instances of Error 651507. (After analyzing data collected by testing Chrome and Firefox, we determined that there are rare outlier cases in which the last phase of an export, that which times out with Error 651507, can be delayed by macOS or the browser for a minute or more. The minimum timeout has been increased from 15 seconds to 30 seconds when exporting for manually-initiated exports from within the application, and to 5 minutes for automatic exports initiated in the background by an Agent’s Worker)
- Before importing from or exporting to Firefox, now uses a different, possibly new indicator to determine whether or not a user who has opted in to Firefox Sync has its Bookmarks checkbox on or off. This different indicator has been found to be more reliable in Firefox 55
- No longer stops and issues a warning if a proposed export to Firefox will take too long and cause nonresponsive behavior while Firefox is running. Due to improvements in recent versions of Firefox, this is no longer necessary (and is instead annoying) for tne typical user who has not disabled Firefox’ automatic updates
- Fixed a bug in the Manage Browser Extensions window which caused the button(s) in the top row (usually Chrome) of each family (Sync or Button) to not respond to mouse clicks unless user clicked in the bottom half of the button
- Updated the built-in Sparkle Check for Update subsystem from version 1.15-ish to 1.18.1. There should be little or no user-facing effect
BookMacster 2.4.9
- No longer fails, falsely claiming that our Sync extension is not installed, when exporting to Firefox 55 while Firefox 55 is running
- If the Logs database file is corrupt, will not delete the file and start a new one
- Fixed a bug, which has been variously present in recent versions, which caused Error 193835 to be created a displayed in some cases if Firefox was quit while Synkmark was running
- Before exporting to Safari, if iCloud syncing is in use, now checks all folders to ensure that none contain more than 500 items and, if so, fails. The Help button in the error opens an explanation which has a link to Apple documentation stating that iCloud may misbehave if you put more than 500 items in a single folder
- Improved wording of instructions for installing extensions into browsers with multiple profiles
- Fixed bug which disallowed drops of text strings from other applications (to create new bookmarks) into empty folders
- When dropping tab-return text strings from other applications (to create new bookmarks), no longer creates an extra untitled bookmark with no URL if the text string ends in a newline
- When pasting tab-return text strings from other applications (to create new bookmarks), now accepts multiple items in the special tab-return format, same as when drag-and-dropping
- When adding a new bookmark from another application, or creating one from scratch using the Add action button, the Undo action in the Edit menu is now indicated as Undo Insert… instead of Undo Move…
- Fixes some inefficiency when exporting to Safari. (When exporting to Safari 11, no longer unnecessarily writes Changes to the file if iCloud is not in use. When running this version for the first time, checks for and removes any such Changes, which may still be present for users who do not regularly add or otherwise change bookmarks within Safari. This is a continuoationof the change for Safari 11.0 which we made in version 2.4.8.)
BookMacster 2.4.8
- Compatible with macOS 10.12.6 and/or Safari 11.0. (Without this change, our app may think that iCould+Safari syncing is ON when in fact if is OFF, which will cause an error message to appear after an export to Safari)
- Restored capability to completely create a Firefox bookmarks database file from scratch, in the event that the user’s file is missing or corrupt
- Improved emulation of Firefox during exports while Firefox is not running. Although this does not fix any misbehavior that we know of at this time, it’s better and safer. (Now updates *syncChangeCounter, no longer names the three hard folders representing shown in Firefox’ Show All Bookmarks – Library)
- Improved wording of Error 651507
- Backed out of a change in 2.4.6. If it is detected that an extension is already installed, instead of changing to Reinstall as in 2.4.6, now becomes disabled, as in 2.4.5 and earlier. Although it is more flexible in edge case, the 2.4.6 behavior gives user the impression that “Reinstall” will uninstall first. But it doesn’t work that way. If this is used on Chrome for example, Chrome tells the user “Added to Chrome”, meaning that it’s already installed; quite confusing
- Package now includes updated versions, BookMacster Button extension version 26, and BookMacster Sync extension version 26, signed by Mozilla, for initial installation into Firefox. This does not affect existing users because the new versions published a few days ago and should already have been downloaded and silently installed by Firefox
BookMacster 2.4.3
- Fixed several bugs which sometimes caused sync processes to begin unnecesarily when syncing with Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Chromium or Canary. This would occur after exporting changes from another browser to one of these. (The expected, spurious change notifications were not always identified as such, which resulted in sync processes being staged, and the sync processes would run a little, up until hashes were matched)
- Fixed bug which, if user changed Syncing Agents while active and a Trigger was removed while a trigger was in process, could cause a large number of Error 3025 to be logged, instead of just one
- Fixed bug which caused Error 916540 to mask and overwrite, if it was, an underlying Error 484903
BookMacster 2.3.6
- Now correctly detects installation of our extensions in current versions of Chrome, Canary, Chromium, Opera, and Vivaldi, eliminating false warnings that they are not installed when they are
- Restored capability to install extensions into Vivaldi and Opera, which was broken in version 2.3
- Added new section 4.4.4.2: Mapping Illustration - What Goes Where to Help Book
BookMacster 2.3.3
- Fixed a bug from 2.3 which would cause bookmarks Comments to be overwritten during a manual import from Firefox while Firefox was running, which was preceded by a manual export to Firefox while Firefox was not running
BookMacster 2.3.2
- Fixed a bug in 2.3 which, when syncing, could cause the second of two browsers to not trigger when bookmarks where changed
- Fixed a bug which caused the document window to end a Verify operation with a empty sidebar if there were only a few bookmarks to verify
BookMacster 2.3.1
- The Verify Progress view now appears in a sidebar instead of a drawer. (This is to conform to latest Apple Human Interface Guidelines, eliminate warnings in System console, and avoid future macOS bugs driven by Apple’s neglect of no longer recommended features.)
- Restored importing and exporting of bookmark Shortcut attributes (as Keywords in Firefox) with Firefox, when Firefox is not running. This has apparently been broken in recent Firefox version(s)
- When importing and exporting with Safari, now properly imports and exports the recently-discovered (and almost undiscoverable) Description attribute, and maps it to our Comments. Also, no longer clobbers a couple of other recently-discovered attributes (previewTextIsUserDefined and imageURL), which Safari would replace later
- Now supports the current (sandboxed) version of OmniWeb 6.0. (Imports and exports bookmarks from OmniWeb’s sandbox.)
- Fixed bugs in the Settings and Reports tab of the .bkmslf document (main) window which caused the segmented controls at their tops to sometimes shift horizontally off center after certain sequences of tab selections
BookMacster 2.3
- This version will find, remove and replace the Firefox extensions installed by previous versions with new extensions that are compatible with Firefox 53. Due to limitations in Firefox 53, the new extensions will somewhat impede the syncing of Separators, Tags, Keywords (shortcuts), Descriptions (Comments) and Live Bookmarks in Firefox, as detailed in this article
- To accomodate the limitations of Firefox 53 referenced in the previous item, then default Simple Agents now trigger a sync operation whenever Firefox quits
- When calculating whether or not an impending Import or Export operation exceeds the Safe Sync Limit, mere changes to the attributes of existing bookmarks are no longer counted. This is because such changes have never seen such changes indicate trouble (as additions and deletions do), and also with the limitations of Firefox 53 referenced in the previous item, such changes will be expected
- In the Inspector panel, fixed the Name, Shortcut and Comments fields which were only occupying half of their available space in recent versions. (This bug was probably due to a breaking change in Apple’s Developer Tools)
- If Advanced Agents are in use, no longer automatically adjusts Triggers in response to other Agent changes, which made some trigger type combinations impossible to set
- Fixed bug which caused the Browser Quit trigger (used for some second-tier browsers such as OmniWeb, and available in Advanced Client Settings) to fail after the first syncing operation, until BookMacster was relaunched. (QuatchRunner was not being recreated)
- In document window > Reports > Sync Logs, the second row in each table item is now always visible. Previously, it was not visible in macOS 10.12 for certain settings of Preferences > Appearance > Font Size > Tables, Tags. (Fix was in SSYAlert)
- Worked around some misbehavior apparent with macOS 10.12 which caused, if user has, in System Preferences > General, switched on Ask to keep changes when closing documents, a newly-opened (clean) document to act as though it is already dirty (dot in red close button, asks Save/Revert/Cancel when document closed)
- Application menu item Stop All Syncing Now now always removes orphaned semaphores as expected, even if there are no Agents to remove and no Workers to kill
- Corrected message which appears if user of Advanced Agents closes document while syncing was paused
- The advice which appears with the warning which appears when bookmarks are modified externally while Synkmark or BookMacster is running now also advises to not make Synkmark or BookMacster a Login Item
- Fixed a bug which could give wrong order if Sort by Rating was selected in Settings > Sorting
- Fixed a bug which could cause sync churning if document contained a folder whose items could be sorted in more than one way (for example, sorting by name when there are bookmarks in the same folder which have exactly the same name), and Synkmark or BookMacster on two different Macs are linked by a browser’s syncing service (iCloud, sign in to Chrome or Firefox Sync for example)
- Improved message written to logs when a Sync Fight is detected
- Improved Help Book sec. 3.3.5
BookMacster 2.2.17
- During launch, now detects a failure in macOS which would cause our apps to silently fail to open any document windows, and presents a dialog suggesting to the user how to fix the problem. (The failure by macOS is that it does not properly bring our app to the foreground when requested. It is probably caused by insufficient system resources of some kind, because it occurs reproducibly when at least 95 or so Safari tabs are open. The suggested fix is to close tabs or quit other apps which are not being used.)
- Fixed a couple details which may have caused some issues with exporting Shortcuts (Keywords in Firefox), and possibly other attributes to Firefox, while Firefox was not running.
- Fixed a bug which could rarely cause a crash, or improper drawing, when displaying the Content View after items had been rearranged.
- Fixed a bug in the Advanced Client Setting to Create a Reading/Unsorted in Google Chrome, Chromium and Canary. The bug caused, under certain conditions, the app to hang during an import after this feature had been activated.
- The Uninstall command in the application menu now does a better job of finding all documents, and gives user the option to preserve shared components which are used by the other apps in this family, so that Uninstall may now be used if user decides to swicth from one app (Synkmark, for example) to another (BookMacster, for example).
- Clarified Help Book sections 4.8.3 and 4.4.10.
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