Sharing much of its underpinnings with the WriteFreely iOS app, we’d love your feedback on our work, so please send a private message to @beta-mac if you’re interested in access. You’ll need a Mac running macOS 11 (“Big Sur”) to test the app.
Before you do, please note that this is pre-release software, and users may be subject to bugs, app instability, and potential data loss.
Known Issues
Line spacing does not take effect when creating a new post; to see the post with proper line spacing, add a few words, go to another post, and then come back to the new post. (GH#152)
The emoji picker (CTRL + CMD + SPACE) does not work in the post editor. (GH#137)
The app may crash when switching between blogs in the sidebar. (GH#147)
Upon minimizing the app, clicking the dock icon does not restore the window; to do so, go to the Window menu and select the window with the diamond (♢) next to it. (GH#135)
Terms Of Testing
There are a few of things we need to mention regarding the beta. If you choose to message @beta-mac to participate, you implicitly confirm that you’ve read the following:
Please make sure that your Mac is running macOS 11 “Big Sur” or later. You can verify this by choosing “About This Mac” in the Apple menu at the top-left corner of your desktop.
Please note that there are some known issues and that this is pre-release software. It may crash, or otherwise work in a way that causes you to lose data. We recommend testing it against a test account in your WriteFreely instance or on Write.as.
Your participation helps us make WriteFreely for Mac better, but only if you share your feedback with us! Let us know about bugs or unexpected behaviour, and tell us about features you’d like to see added. We may reach out to you individually to check in on your experience with the beta.
WriteFreely for Mac will be a paid product. If you’d like to continue using the app after release, you’ll have to purchase a license.
If you’re still interested, let us know and we’ll send you a download link for the beta! Thanks so much for your interest.
Hi @bershatsky, would you kindly send a message to @beta-mac indicating your interest in testing the app? Please be sure to have read my comment above, which has been edited to include some terms you’ll have to agree to if you wish to test the app. Thanks!
@ulysses I saw your YAML support post; while a lot of this would have to be supported on the backend, could you tell me a bit more about how you’d see this implemented in a desktop app?
Specifically, I’d like to know what kinds of scenarios you have in mind where front matter in the post editor would be a better user experience than setting options in a dedicated options UI for publish date, tags, post slugs, and so on.
Looking forward to learning more about how you’d see this work!
If users are allowed to write metadata directly in the form of YAML in MD files, then obviously, both for desktop applications and for web editors, this will greatly facilitate the migration to WriteFreely, and to some extent will be beneficial for future writing.
However, this benefit is even greater for a desktop application because, if I migrate from another blog platform with hundreds of posts, it is perfectly possible to put a large number of MD files with YAML in the desktop application’s file library and bulk publish all the posts. Isn’t that wonderful?
If I also write links to images in MD, and those links lead to the images bed, then the migration to writeFreely will be enjoyable.
I think it’s important for WriteFreely to be able to call and render static MD files, where users can simply write down YAML and text to post, or just place MD files in other MD editors directly into the WriteFreely desktop app’s folder. The URL, title, date, tags and so on are determined directly.
Hey folks, apologies for the delay in replying here. WriteFreely for Mac is still a thing and we’re getting close to launching 1.0! As such, we’re no longer accepting beta testers.
We’ll update you in the forums when we’re go for launch.
Ugh, yeah. SwiftUI —the framework we use to build both the iOS and Mac app— has been changing a lot since the iOS app was released, and in my opinion the Mac side of things has only recently caught up. Add to that changes to the iOS side that needed to be addressed to keep things working, and the launch has taken longer than expected.
This beta test period is now closed as we ramp up to launch the app. Many thanks to our testers!
