MAL Updater OS X

Open Source macOS Scrobbler for Kitsu and AniList

Updates

Year in Review – 2021

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At last, 2021 comes to an end and of course, there were some advancements in our apps. First off, we finally released Shukofukurou 3.6, which contains new features as customizing library views, a macOS Big Sur optimized UI. We also finally restored the streaming links feature, which went down since Because.moe stopped updating its data.

With Shukofukurou for iOS/iPadOS, there were some big changes. With iOS/iPadOS 15, Apple introduced Safari Extensions. For the first time, we were able to bring the ability to update your list based on what you are watching on Crunchyroll, Hidive, VRV, and Funimation. This is a vast improvement over the old share extension, which only worked on a few apps and it’s not reliable. While scrobbling within the mobile apps are no longer possible, browser based stream detection still works. We are thinking about using this strategy to bring stream detection support for Firefox via an extension that interfaces with Hachidori.

Lastly, there is Hachidori, which we made some fixes, adding support for Crunchyroll beta site, Peacock TV, and experimental Youtube support. Nothing too major in that department and thankfully, Monterey didn’t break the app at all.

Looking in the future, we hope to make the iOS/iPadOS versions of Shukofukurou meet parity to the macOS version. This means viewing user profiles and browsing their lists. We hope to also add syncing of lists between services as well, although I do plan to rewrite Hato since it hasn’t been reliable as of late. I am also hoping to integrate Apple Music support to allow users to look up opening/ending songs on there, if available. Also, I want to start rewriting part of the Hachidori scrobbling engine to Swift as there is now ABI support with Hachidori 4.0.

Either way, I thank everyone who uses my apps and patrons in supporting the project. Without you, these apps wouldn’t be possible. Let’s make 2022 a great year.

MAL Updater OS X New Support Community

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We have decided that Github may not be the best place for users to report bugs. This is because our users are mostly regular users and not developers. Also, having everything in one place makes my job easier to fix new issues rather than managing several separate issue trackers.

With that, we have moved the issue to our own support forums. Each app will have it’s own bug tracker. When filing a issue, they will now have their own fields that the user needs to fill out. This will give me enough information to find the bug or resolve a question the user may have. You may also attach crash logs and screenshots, but not videos. Videos take too much space and needs to be uploaded elsewhere.

Note that using the support forums require registering an account or logging in using a Github account. More logon options will be added soon.

The support forums is located at https://support.malupdaterosx.moe

How to file an Issue

  1. Go to the respective issue tracker for the app you want to create an issue on (e.g. Shukofukurou for iOS, Shukofukurou for macOS, Hachidori). Feature requests do not belong in Issue tracker, they belong in Feature Requests. Also, you can attach any screenshots and crash logs to the bug report.
  2. Select a prefix, either Bug or Question. It will default to Bug.
  3. Describe the bug in the title and describe it further in the message box.

4. Now, describe how to reproduce the bug, specify the Operating System, OS version and App version. For Shukofukurou for iOS, you need to specify what device you have. All these fields are required.

5. Submit the bug report. When I fix the bug and you confirmed it, mark it as a solution to close the issue.

Note that Github issue trackers will be disabled now that the support forums now exist. We will be updating the links in our apps soon to reflect this.

Web Server Operating System Migration

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In the coming weeks, we will be migrating the operating system that hosts all our APIs and websites from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. This is because Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has recently ended mainstream support and extended support is not free outside of personal use. We decided to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux since I use it at my day job and for longer support period of 10 years.

We have migrated the main MAL Updater OS X website back to the old server including all the databases for everything, which is now running Red Hat. In the coming weeks, we will be migrating more sites over to make sure everything runs stable before moving my main blog and shutting down the old server, which is running on a new virtual private server, but cloned from this server before I reinstalled the operating system.

If you experience any issues, file them in the respective Github repo. I hope to have everything migrated by the end of June.

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.

Discussions for Our Apps are Now Open

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In the past, we relied on separate Clubs/Threads on MyAnimeList, Kitsu, and AniList to provide support for our apps. Note that since I have a full time job and developing these apps are done on my free time, I don’t have the time to check the clubs and threads for support and feature requests.

Now, we have enabled the discussion feature in our Github repos, which allows users to discuss about the app while providing support. Issues should only be used if you encounter a bug and not general questions or discussing feature requests. The list below shows the discussion forums for the following apps:

We will be adding links to these discussion forums on our website.

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.