MAL Updater OS X

Open Source macOS Scrobbler for Kitsu and AniList

Shukofukurou

New Year, New Plans

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I hope everyone stayed safe and had a nice New Years. With 2021, we have some exciting things planned.

In 2020, we spent a good amount of time getting our apps ready for iOS 14 and the new Apple Silicon Macs. While it took two weeks to get our apps ready for Apple Silicon, it was relatively simple. I had to recompile all the frameworks and afterwards, we had a working Universal Binary 2 version. That took about 2-3 months.

Now, we plan on releasing a final version of Shukofukurou for macOS 3.4, which will finally have universal binary 2 support and some UI tweaks for Big Sur. However, more changes are planned as we are working on Shukofukurou for macOS 4.0.

It has been over two years since we last released a major version. The goal with 4.0 is to incorporate more UI additions in Big Sur, bunch of rewriting for the main interface window since it’s somewhat a mess, and list syncing. When 4.0 comes out, it will be a paid upgrade since it’s a major release, but existing users will be able to upgrade to the new version with a large discount as I plan to bundle the old version with the new version with a special pricing. From my understanding, if you own one of the app in the bundle, you just need to pay the difference in the bundle. More details on 4.0 will be shared for active Patrons along with test releases.

Note that 4.0 will only work on macOS Big Sur or later. The older 3.x release, which we will name as the Classic Branch will still be maintained for at least 2 years, but no new features will be added.

In addition, we need to work on an alternative to provide legal stream links in the title’s information view. Apparently, Because.moe stopped updating their dataset, leaving with AniList with a possible alternative. The only issue is that it doesn’t provide specific region availability. LiveChart also have this data too, but there is no accessible API or JSON file we can use the data from. However, we added LiveChart to the list of related sites for users to view additional information, including where to watch a particular show.

As for Hachidori, we plan to work on adding Emby support in the near future. It’s an alternative to Plex and some users have been asking for this. We will investigate how to add support for this in the coming months.

With that, we plan to release the stable version of Shukofukurou for macOS 3.4 later this month. Note that you can already use the beta version by going to its product page.

Shukofukurou for macOS 3.5 Beta 1 Now Released

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As promised, Shukofukurou for macOS 3.5 Beta 1 is now available to the public. This release adds macOS Big Sur and Apple Silicon support and brings a bunch of new improvements. Believe it or not, it has been April 2020 when we last released a new version of Shukofukurou for macOS

Also, Shukofukurou for macOS now have a new icon as seen below.

The first beta can be downloaded can be downloaded here. Note that prerelease versions of Shukofukurou runs separately from the stable release.

The change log is below

This is the first public beta release, which contains support for macOS Big Sur and Apple Silicon
Requires macOS 10.11 or later
Shukofukurou Next builds run separately from the stable version

New Features

  • Add support for macOS Big Sur and tweaked main window interface for the new OS
  • Add native support for Apple Silicon (Apple M1) with Universal Binary 2
  • Redesigned App icon for macOS Big Sur
  • Add the ability to update start/finish dates for MyAnimeList anime and manga entries
  • Added Anime Blog Tracker and WordPress.com Reader for web links
  • Added ability to reauthorize AniList and MyAnimeList accounts without the need to removing and readding an account

Bug Fixes and Enhancements

  • Fixed issues with comments, number of rewatch/reread, and start/finish dates not populating for MyAnimeList anime and manga lists

Shukofukurou for iOS 2.1 Now Available

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Shukofukurou for iOS 2.1 is now available on the App Store. This release includes iOS 14 support, some bug fixes, prompt for score after completing a title and more. While the update is now approved, it should become available for all users in a few hours. The changelog is below.

This release adds iOS/iPadOS 14 support, fixes some bugs, adds Scrobble Share Extension support for Funimation and more.

New Features

  • iOS/iPadOS 14 Support
  • Added ability to scrobble using the scrobble share extension for Funimation (Safari and the App)
  • Added ability to filter for Airing/Publishing titles in the user’s library
  • App nows prompt the user to add a score when a user completes a title (can be turned off in the Settings)

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed Scrobbling Extension, which previously didn’t work for MyAnimeList users

Note that we are eventually developing a 2.2 release, which should happen sometime before mid 2021. Note that this app will not be available for Apple Silicon Macs when they release later this year. I feel that the user experience won’t be as good compared to the dedicated macOS app.

Shukofukurou and Hachidori is now in Alpha Preview

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For the past two months, time permitting since I have a full time job and this is my side job I do during the weekends, we have begun work on the next versions of Shukofukurou and Hachidori.

Shukofukurou 3.4 for macOS will be a minor release adding macOS Big Sur and Universal Binary 2 compatibility and adding features from the iOS version. Shukofukurou 2.1 for iOS will primarily add some quality of life improvements. As for Hachidori, it’s the same deal, but the addition of new legal streaming site support, macOS Big Sur/Universal Binary 2 support, and the ability to reauthorize accounts.

The next few months will be big as Apple is set to release the first few Macs with Apple Silicon. Currently, we have our apps ready for Apple Silicon aka ArchARM64. While we haven’t tested them yet since I don’t have a developer transition kit, I plan to get a Mac stat uses these new processors when they come out with a new Mac mini. The Mac mini will serve as a dedicated developer machine that I can remote into or use locally.

Currently, the alphas for the macOS version of Shukofukurou and Hachidori are available for Patrons only. Once the apps reaches beta, it will be available to everyone. Monthly donations/support allows me to cover the development costs of developing all three apps, primarily the domain name, hosting (including the web services the apps uses), and Apple Developer Program membership. Besides gaining access to precompiled prerelease builds by becoming a Patron, you also unlock all the donor features, read weekly developer updates on upcoming new features, gain free updates to major releases of Shukofukurou and Hachidori, and access to TestFlight for beta versions of Shukofukurou for iOS.

In short, we should have all the releases out for macOS and iOS out this fall. With that, thanks for the support thus far.

macOS 11 Big Sur Compatibility and iOS 14/iPadOS 14

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Now that the dust has settled, we have finally tested our apps on macOS 11 and it seems that nothing broke. However, we want to start working on bringing some of macOS 11 Big Sur new features to Shukofukurou for macOS. With Shukofukurou for macOS 3.5, we will be dropping support for macOS 10.11 El Capitan, which is more than 5 years old at this point and we do not have any machines running that anymore. New versions will require macOS 10.12 Sierra or later. We will also work to get Shukofukurou compiled for Universal Binary 2 so it can work on Apple  new chips. This mean recompiling all the frameworks to Universal Binary, which we will be doing for Hachidori as well.

For Shukofukurou for iOS, once we release 2.0.9, which will have some fixes, we will begin work on 2.1, which will have support for iOS 14/iPadOS 14 support. Note that iOS 12 support will be dropped in the future after 2.1.x and we will only be supporting iOS 13 and iOS 14. This is because I do not have any devices that have iOS 12, which makes it difficult for me to test. Once a test version is ready, hopefully when public beta testing is underway, I will make the 2.1 beta builds available on TestFlight for active patrons. If you want to test the latest builds for iOS, you can learn how to support our projects by going to the donation page.

Shukofukurou for iOS 2.0.8 Now Released and Development Updates

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Shukofukurou for iOS 2.0.8 is now released. While we released 2.0.7, it had serious issues and we had to issue an immediate update.

Reauthorization Feature

One of the common complaints is after a certain period of time, the functionality stopped working due to the refresh token not being able to refresh the credentials. We have tweaked this by having the token refresh when the app is launch or become active again. Also, we prompt the user if the app is not able to refresh the credentials. This will give the user the opportunity to reauthorize their account. This only applies to AniList and MyAnimeList.

Note that you cannot reauthorize with a different account. The following error will appear if you attempt to do so.

Enhanced Pointer Support and Haptic Touch Support

Since iPadOS 13.4, Apple finally added pointer support. Now, this makes it possible to make commonly used actions available with a right click or a haptic touch. This is useful, especially for users who have a keyboard case with a trackpad like the Magic Keyboard or use a Bluetooth mouse.

Other Fixes

There are numerous fixes that are made in the 2.0.8 version, which includes the following:

  • Fixed the off-centered progress wheel in the loading HUDs and UI glitches.
  • Content filters are now relaxed, but adult content (hentai) cannot be viewed. The app is now rated 17+, which is a compromise, but since this is a paid app, it’s very unlikely anyone under 17 years old would download this

This update is free for all existing users.

Other Development Updates

We will be adding the content filter changes to the macOS version of Shukofukurou and fix some discovered bugs very soon. Additionally, we are eventually adding HBO MAX support to Hachidori in a future update as well.