DejalNews #88: introducing Preminder, Weather Events 1.1, Time Out tip

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Introducing Preminder, a new free Dejal app

My wife had a need of an app. As you may know, we travel around the country in a motorhome, which means booking RV parks. We like to plan a year or so out, and book popular places as soon as they become available, so we get the best spot (or any spot if really popular). But each campground has a different booking window; sometimes six months, sometimes 180 days (which is not the same thing!), sometimes 90 days, etc.

To make the reservation on the right day, we used to ask a digital assistant like Alexa or Siri to calculate 180 days (or whatever) before the date we want to stay, then add a reminder on that date. But what if that could be one step? I wrote Preminder to make that easier: simply enter the date of the stay (and optionally a time), and choose from a preset list of intervals, or a custom one for unusual cases, and add the reminder on the appropriate date. Easy!

Preminder is useful for more than just campsites, though; you could use it to remind you of concert or game tickets, birthdays, holidays, or any other situation where you want a reminder some time before an event.

What’s more, Preminder is completely free, available for iPhone, so there’s no risk to download and try it.

Learn more on the Preminder site, or get it now.

Weather Events 1.1 released

Another recent app had an update too. Weather Events is another app I wrote to scratch my own itch, and useful with our traveling lifestyle.

As we travel around the country in our motorhome, I like to keep a record of the weather conditions of where we are, as all-day events on my calendar. I live my life by my calendar, so find it useful to be able to see the weather there. (And also in the menubar on my Mac.)

A key feature of Weather Events is that each day can have a different location; great for people who travel a lot like me, but useful for other when they go on vacation too.

Version 1.1 of Weather Events has a big enhancement that makes the app much easier to use: it will (optionally) automatically change the location based on calendar events. If you have calendar events that include a location, Weather Events can see that and change the location; if there are multiple, it will choose the latest all-day event or longest timed event (and you can tell it whether to only look at all-day or timed events, or both).

This update also includes a bunch of other improvements and fixes, too. Learn more about this update.

Weather Events is available on the App Store for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. It has a monthly or yearly subscription, and a free two week trial.

Try it now!

Time Out tip: Can I have Time Out remind me when to go home at the end of day?

I recently published a Time Out tip, based on a customer query. They wanted to have a countdown in the menubar for remaining time in the work day. Time Out is very flexible, so I was able to accommodate that request.

Check out this blog post for the details.

I’m hard at work on Time Out version 3, which will be a big update, so won’t be out for a few months, but will have some nice enhancements. I always welcome more suggestions, though, so feel free to get in touch if you have any requests.

Follow Dejal on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, Micro.blog, Facebook, Reddit, and more

Do you use one of the popular social media platforms? Dejal is probably there!

See this blog post for links to Dejal’s account on those platforms and more.

– David

DejalNews #87: Introducing Weather Events

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Welcome

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Introducing Weather Events, a new Dejal app

Ever tried to remember what the weather was like a month ago? A year ago? During your last vacation?

Dejal Weather Events saves a record of the weather conditions to your calendar, so you’ll be able to look back at previous weeks, months, and years, and see what the weather was like back then.

On macOS, the app lives in your menubar, where it displays the current weather with an emoji, and the current temperature. Click it to display a list of days and the weather for each, using emojis and high/low temperature display, and a textual description, which is saved in the event note.

Weather list and editor

The events are added to the Calendar as all-day events, with the location if included:

On iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS, the app updates the weather in the background, and is available to view or edit in the app.

Weather Events respects your privacy. It doesn’t request access to track your location, but just asks you to choose a location for the forecast. And it doesn’t use any third-party trackers or send any data to anyone, other than Apple’s weather service.

Another key feature is that each day can have a different location; great if you travel a lot. By default it uses a single location, but you can choose a different location for each day, and they are displayed in the event if desired.

Click on a day in the app to choose whether to use the forecast or custom values, whether or not to show the location in the event, and choose a new or previous location.

The weather conditions can use multiple emojis to show how the weather changes throughout the day, e.g. sunny in the morning and rainy in the evening. If there’s rain, the probability percentage and quantity is included. And if it’s breezy, the maximum wind gust is also included. The precipitation and wind can be disabled in the settings if you prefer.

If the forecast doesn’t exactly match what you experience, or you want to make a note of anything special, you can easily edit the event in the app.

The weather events and settings are synced between multiple devices via iCloud.

Weather Events is available on the App Store for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. It has a monthly or yearly subscription, and a free two week trial.

Try it now!

– David

DejalNews #86: TestFlight for a new Dejal app!

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Get on the TestFlight for a new Dejal app

Today is my birthday; my present to you is a new app!

I’ve previously mentioned that I’ve been working on a new app for the last several months, around other work. It is now ready for a private TestFlight beta release.

I’m not going to announce the app name or features publicly just yet, but I’ll strongly hint that it is related to weather and calendars. If you live by your calendar, and are interested in weather, and perhaps if you travel a lot, you’ll want to check out this app.

The app will be available for macOS, iPadOS, iOS, and visionOS. It will require the current major versions of these OSes (i.e. Sonoma for macOS, iOS 17, etc).

Starting today, I’m seeking volunteers to help me test the app, to knock off any remaining rough edges. I would like to do a public release soon, depending on what issues come up during testing, but you can be one of the first people to try this new app.

To request to join the TestFlight, please contact me via the email you use with the App Store. Please indicate that you’re willing to provide feedback, you will keep the app confidential until I’ve publicly released it, and what platform(s) you’re interested in testing.

Time Out 2.9.7 released

In other news, I recently released Time Out versions 2.9.4 to 2.9.7.

These updates fixed a bunch of issues with the app. And helped reinforce the merits of beta testing!

– David

DejalNews #85: Time Out and Simon in BundleHunt, Time Out is 20, Mac is 40, and Time Out tips

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Welcome

This is DejalNews, an occasional newsletter from Dejal.

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Time Out and Simon in BundleHunt

It’s been years since I participated in an app bundle, so I thought it was time. Both Time Out and Simon are included in the BundleHunt New Year Bundle, a collection of significantly discounted Mac apps, available now for a limited time:

Even if you already have Time Out and/or Simon, you can include them in the bundle to renew your support of Time Out, or upgrade to the latest version of Simon. Tell your friends!

Time Out is 20 years old

I recently marked a major milestone for Time Out, my popular break reminder tool: it turned two decades old last year.

I celebrated the occasion with a bunch of pictures of the old app icon, the old website, and app screenshots. Check out that blog post to relive or discover the ancient history of this app. It has changed quite a lot over the years, and yet the core functionality is still very recognizable.

Dejal year in review: 2023

Every year I publish a blog post reviewing the app updates over the past year, how things went, and what to look forward to in the coming year. Check out the year in review post for 2023.

I’m excited for my new app that is nearing completion. Look out for an announcement of a TestFlight soon, probably in the next newsletter — if you’re not already, subscribe to be amongst the first to try this new app! It will be available for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS.

Time Out tips

If you missed them, I published four blog posts with tips and tidbits for Time Out:

Happy 40th Anniversary, Mac!

Finally, I also published a retrospective of the first Mac I used (the original 128K Mac), the first Mac I owned (the Mac Plus), and other early Macs, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the Mac.

– David

DejalNews #84: thoughts about Time Out syncing, iOS app, subscription options

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This is DejalNews, an occasional newsletter from Dejal.

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Time Out syncing

I am currently working on adding the ability to sync Time Out breaks between multiple Macs. Something many people have requested over the years.

Syncing is a little difficult, as it needs to cope with the idle states of each device — if one Mac is being used and another device is not, the idle one might be pushing the breaks back to give credit for natural breaks, but the one being used would not, so they’d drift apart. My current thought is to let them drift, but when the active one starts a break, it tells other devices and they also start the break then, re-syncing the due date for the next break.

If you use Time Out and have multiple Macs, would you like to have them sync, and do you have any ideas for how the sync should work?

I’m currently planning to support syncing between multiple machines signed into the same iCloud account; would you want to be able to sync between multiple accounts, e.g. to have the same breaks as other people at work or home? (Note though that it might be better to use fixed-time breaks in this situation.)

Please let me know your thoughts via the Contact page, or via Reddit.

Time Out for iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro

Once syncing is done, another big project is to start implementing an iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS app! Another very popular request (well, for iOS, but once Apple’s new Vision Pro is available, I expect people will want to take breaks from it too).

An iOS app is tricky, as an app wouldn’t be able to dim the screen like the Mac app can, and it probably won’t be able to detect when the device isn’t being used. My best idea currently is to display a notification when a break is due, and start it when tapped, much like the ask-to-start schedule option in the Mac app.

Are you interested in an iOS app? Do you have any other ideas on how an iOS app could work? Please tell me via the Contact page, or via Reddit.

Time Out subscription option

As you probably know, Time Out uses an innovative supporter model: you can use the basic features for free forever, but some more advanced features are only available as rewards to supporters, people who help fund ongoing development with at least one payment that unlocks all of the current features and those added in the next 3, 6, or 12 months. There’s no need to renew support after that, unless any subsequently added features are worthwhile (or you just want to continue to support the app, which is always appreciated!).

The supporter model isn’t a subscription, but it can confuse people, being a bit unusual. A lot of apps are moving to a more traditional subscription, and I know some people would prefer an automatic renewal. So I’m considering adding such an option to Time Out. Note that it would be optional; I plan to continue to offer the current supporter model, I’d just be adding a subscription model as well, for people who prefer that.

My current trial mechanism, where you can try premium features for an hour at a time, can also cause confusion. So I’m thinking I might switch that to Apple’s standard free trial mechanism, where you can try all of the features for a week (or whatever), then cancel to go back to the free features, or begin the subscription to continue using the premium ones. I’d probably only make these changes in the Mac App Store edition of the app; the direct and Setapp editions would continue as now.

What do you think? Feedback welcome via the Contact page, or via Reddit!

Dejal blog

Have you checked out the new blog for Dejal? I have recently completed updating and re-publishing the most interesting posts from the old blog, with tips for Time Out and Simon. If you use an RSS reader or Apple News, you can subscribe to the blog to never miss a post.

Sinclair Trails

I mentioned in the previous newsletter that my wife and I had sold our 5-acre homestead and most of our possessions, and bought a 40-foot luxury Tiffin motorhome, and started traveling the country full-time. We’re still doing that, currently heading east, and will end the year in Florida. If interested, you can follow our adventures on my other blog, Sinclair Trails, where I post every weekday about a related topic, including additions and modifications to our coach (every Monday), photos of our travels and timelapse videos of driving between locations on YouTube (every Tuesday), reviews of RV parks (every Wednesday), and photos of National Parks and other interesting places we visit (Thursdays and Fridays).

I won’t mention this in every newsletter, but thought I’d mention it again this time in case you missed the previous one. By the way, you can watch timelapse videos of our travels as one of the themes in Time Out, too!

– David

DejalNews #83: Time Out 2.9.2 and Simon 5.1.1 released

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Welcome

This is DejalNews, an occasional newsletter from Dejal.

Has it been that long?!

Apparently the previous DejalNews newsletter was sent way back in June 2021! It doesn’t seem that long ago.

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Time Out 2.9.2

Time Out version 2.9.2 was recently released, with several fixes and improvements.

Since it’s been so long, I should also mention version 2.9, which includes several great enhancements, including a status message in the sidebar to indicate why a break was skipped etc, the ability to schedule and exclude breaks using calendar events, support for Monterey focus, an option to hide the Pause function, new break options to pause or reset an individual break, and much more.

Read the blog post for more information on Time Out 2.9.2, and if you missed it, the details of version 2.9.

Simon 5.1.1

My pro site monitoring app also had a recent update, to version 5.1.1. It includes some important fixes.

And again, if you missed reading about version 5.1, it included the ability to disable rendering a Web Page test, the addition of an automatic data backup, support for macOS Ventura, updated example tests, and several other improvements and fixes.

Read the Simon 5.1.1 blog post for the latest update, or the version 5.1 post if you missed that.

New Dejal blog

Late last year I created a new blog for Dejal, powered by WordPress. Unfortunately that meant that the older posts are no longer on the site, but they are all available in the Internet Archive, and I have been working on updating and re-publishing the most interesting posts with tips for Time Out and Simon, on a weekly basis. So check back regularly. Or if you use an RSS reader or Apple News, you can subscribe to the blog to never miss a post.

Sinclair Trails

Back in June 2021 when the previous newsletter was published, my wife and I were living on a 5-acre homestead with ducks, chickens, feral cats, bees, etc. But just a few months later we decided to sell the homestead and most of our possessions, buy a 40-foot luxury Tiffin motorhome, and start traveling the country full-time.

If that sounds interesting, you can follow our adventures on my other blog, Sinclair Trails, where I post every weekday about a related topic, including additions and modifications to our coach, photos of our travels, timelapse videos of driving between locations on YouTube, reviews of RV parks, and photos of National Parks and other interesting places we visit.

(And if you’re only interested in the apps, that’s fine too.)

If you use Reddit, you may like to join the r/Dejal subreddit, as a community for Dejal customers, and another support channel.

I hope you found this newsletter interesting. Let me know in the Dejal subreddit. I will try to publish another one sooner than a year or so from now!

– David