DA 5Star Version 2 Is Shipped
Release notes:
- Added dark wallpaper appearance. By default, it's now in sync with your system's appearance. You can override to always be light or dark.
- Added a "Rate dA 5Star" menu item. I truly appreciate it if you can take a minute to leave a macOS App Store. If it's a 5-star review, I can read it from my wallpaper!
- Added a "Send Feedback" menu item.
Purchase the app here and happy reading 5-star reviews ^_^
Two Weeks to Air
DA 5Star is now available on macOS App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/da-5star/id1473088658
Only July 7, I was listening to Independence episode 56: The Happiest Customer, where @parrots, @eataduckimust and @jellybeansoup talked about positive feedbacks, and what we should do with them.
Two thirds into the episode, Curtis threw out an app idea: pull random 5-star reviews and automatically set them as wallpapers.
I really enjoyed listening to the episode and was nodding along with them. Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about the app idea. It seems like simple enough to implement, and yet can have a huge impact on my daily mood and productivities. So I spent some nights in Xcode, and voila! DA 5Star was born.
If two weeks ago you told me I would ship a macOS app completely built with AppKit, before I ship a (non-game) iOS app, I would stare at you with a how-is-that-possible and why-would-I-do-that face. And yet two weeks later, I SHIPPED a pure AppKit macOS app!
Go buy me half a cup of coffee, now: https://apps.apple.com/app/da-5star/id1473088658
And of course, leave a 5-star review so I can eat my own dogfood.
Spaces in App Names Just Bit Me
One of the necessary dA 5Star's features is to launch at login. While users can add it to login items in System Preferences, automatic launch-at-login with opt-out would be much more convenient and discoverable.
To do that with a macOS App Store app, Tim Schröder wrote a great tutorial on this topic.
The idea is to use SMLoginItemSetEnabled with a bundled helper app. The helper app can be launched at login, the helper can in turn launch your main app.
So I followed the instructions. But I just couldn't get it to work. After a few hours I gave in: I downloaded the example Xcode project. It works! So there must be something wrong with my setup.
After a few more hours of comparing the differences between the sample app and my app, I finally discovered what the issue is. At this point you already guessed from this post's title. Yes that's because I named my helper dA 5Star Helper, and it contains spaces. I renamed to simply Launcher and it solved the mystery.
Ouch.