MAL Updater OS X

Open Source macOS Scrobbler for Kitsu and AniList

Shukofukurou

Shukofukurou for macOS 3.5.2 Now Available

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After a delay, Shukofukurou for macOS 3.5.2 is now released. It has a bunch of fixes such as users not able to enable Air Notifications. There was a bug report of this, but apparently, the user needs to have notifications enabled for Shukofukurou for macOS enabled first before air notifications can be enabled. This is due to a change of how notifications work in macOS Mojave with the new API for notifications.

Besides the changes for Streaming Link data as previously mentioned, I had to redesign the authorization dialog. Apparently, Apple is being picky since the tester clicked on something and complained about the scrolling.

To make things easier, I added back and forward controls, the ability to refresh and start over. Additionally, the authorization window is now resizable. Hopefully this will resolve any issue in the future to prevent the app from getting rejected. The same authorization window will apply to a future version of Hachidori.

As always, the update is now available on the App Store and via Software Updates.

Shukofukurou for iOS 2.1.8 and Streaming Links

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Shukofukurou for iOS/iPadOS 2.1.8 is now out. After nearly a year, the streaming links for currently airing Anime is now back. When we heard that Because.moe stopped updating their legal streaming data, we haven’t find a workable alternative until now.

We will be using AniList to provide these streaming links since it’s the only data provider that has an API to obtain them and are the most up to date. I also contemplating over creating a Anime legal streaming search engine like Because.moe using Python with the same idea, but it will be open source.

Note that with this change, it’s not possible to change regions and only view streaming sites that are supported by your country. I will figure out a workable solution in the future.

Shukofukurou for iOS 2.1.8 is now available on the App Store. The Mac versions, 3.5.2 with this change will come out soon with a few fixes.

Note that 2.1.x will also be the last release supporting iOS 12. Frankly, I do not have any device with iOS 12 and it’s becoming difficult to support. Now that iOS 12 is becoming 3 years old, it’s becoming difficult to implement features in newer iOS versions. The next major release, 2.2.x series will require iOS 13 or later as we support the current version plus two previous versions of iOS. If you have a device that only supports iOS 12, please consider upgrading your iPhone or iPad that has current OS support.

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.