Ferrocast 0.1.1

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Added

Settings redesign: adaptive rows that fit more settings per screen, one consistent field style, a sidebar with icons, groups, Cmd+1–7 and arrow-key navigation, a breadcrumb header, search across every setting (Cmd+F, opens the setting and highlights it), dimmed dependent rows, status chips, inline validation, a per-tab Reset with Undo, empty states for Snippets and Scripts, higher text contrast (WCAG AA), 28 pt hit targets and a visible keyboard focus ring.
Releases and in-app updates: scripts/release.sh X.Y.Z tags a version and a GitHub Actions workflow publishes the DMG, an update ZIP and checksums as a GitHub Release (ad-hoc signed; Developer ID signing and notarization switch on with repository secrets) and opens a PR bumping the Homebrew formula. The app checks GitHub once a day for a new stable release (prereleases are ignored), shows the notes and lets you install, postpone or skip, or installs automatically. Settings → General → Updates turns the check off, picks the install mode and has Check now; About and the tray menu also check. Homebrew installs run brew upgrade instead of replacing themselves; development builds only check.
Translate wheel: drag selected text and tap the translate key (Command by default, changeable in Settings → Translate; not Shift, which extends the selection) to open a ring of languages; release over one to translate. By default (Auto) the translation replaces the selection where the app allows it (text fields through Accessibility; Safari and Chromium browsers on ordinary pages through JavaScript, which needs “Allow JavaScript from Apple Events”) and otherwise opens in a Ferrocast window (also copied); Settings → Translate can force Window, Paste Cmd-V or Copy only. It runs through the AI providers of Ask AI (OpenAI-compatible, Anthropic, ChatGPT and Claude Code subscriptions); a dedicated Settings → Translate tab holds every translation option, including which provider and which model translate (Same as chat by default). Languages (up to 12) are set there too. The text is never written to the log.
File tools: drop files on the launcher, press ⌘T on a file result or run Convert Files to convert images, audio, video, documents, spreadsheets, subtitles and folders. Built-in macOS tools come first (sips, afconvert, avconvert, textutil, ditto); ffmpeg, LibreOffice and cwebp are optional, and a missing one shows its install command. Output goes next to the original and never overwrites it.
Image tools: compress, resize, crop to an aspect ratio, remove metadata (lossless for JPEG and PNG), combine into one PDF, rotate, flip, square on a white or black background, collage, one-step edits (black & white, brighter, darker, more contrast), redact faces or text on-device with Vision, and annotate (own canvas for one image, Preview for several).
File actions on file results: Copy File (paste it in Finder), Copy Path, Move to… (never overwrites), Open in iTerm or Terminal, AirDrop, Float on Shelf, and Zip (each selected file or folder gets its own ZIP next to it, never overwriting; also in ⌘K as Compress to ZIP). Zip is an addition, not one of the six actions of the app this project is measured against; the ZIP is named after the item without its extension, so photo.png becomes photo.zip.
Drop wheel fix: files dragged from Finder arrive as file reference URLs (file:///.file/id=…); they are now resolved to the real path. Before, a dragged PNG looked like a file without an extension, so the wheel offered only ZIP or Open tools and ZIP failed with a path error.
Drop wheel: while dragging files, tap Shift for a ring of conversions or Control for file actions; release over a segment to run it. Keys and on/off in Settings → General. No Accessibility permission needed.
Tools wheel (Command) with arrow-key, Enter and Escape control; tapping Shift, Command or Control switches an open wheel.
Typed image tools: collage row 1600 gap 16 radius 12 bg 000000 (grid, row, column, featured), frame blur 40 pad 80 shadow 30 (colour or blurred background, padding, corners, shadow), edit brightness 20 contrast 10 saturation -30 warmth 15 clarity 40 sharpen 30 grain 20 denoise 30 dehaze 50, redact faces, redact text blur 25, redact 10,10 200x100 300,40 80x80 color ff0000. Live-preview and canvas editors exist for photo edits, crop and annotation (see below); the rest is typed only. frame image /path/bg.jpg uses another picture as the background.
Typed audio, video and PDF tools: mute, speed 1.5x, frame 1:23, crop 640x360 at 100,50, redact 10,10 200x100 0:05-0:09 blur, normalize -14, mono, stereo, silence, bleep 0:05-0:07, visualizer square image /path/cover.jpg, pages 3,1,2r, and Join for several clips (silent clips get generated silence). Normalize is single pass and the result toast shows the measured loudness before and after (for example -31.0 → -16.0 LUFS, measured with ffmpeg's ebur128); there is no waveform or compare view, and WMV fails on mute and crop.
New look for the drag wheel (halo ring): one accent per wheel (orange convert, blue tools, green actions), a gradient sector with an edge glow, a centre showing the wheel, the file count and kind, every segment shows its name under the icon (from nine segments the text is smaller and long names are cut with an ellipsis; the hub shows the full name of the hovered one). The actions wheel has the six file actions plus Zip and the convert wheel shows every output, dimming the ones whose tool is not installed. Not animated yet.
Tools per format: a table of 26 tools decides what the Tools wheel and the Convert view offer for each file type; tools without a window use presets or typed commands.
Choose order: merging PDFs, audio or videos, and building a PDF from pictures, now has a window to order the files (⌘↑/⌘↓). Rows can also be dragged to reorder.
Split video and audio: a window with cut markers (M adds one, Backspace removes the last) or equal parts writes every clip into one new folder.
Compress: images by size, percentage or preset (with an optional resize), audio and video through ffmpeg with computed bitrates, and PDF through optional Ghostscript with presets only. The size estimate is rough. PDF needs Ghostscript; there is no native route.
Audio windows: Trim Audio shows the waveform with exact start and end boxes and a Trim silence button; Normalize Audio sets the target loudness, range and true peak after measuring the file; Audio Channels switches mono or stereo and sets left and right volume in dB; Bleep Audio lists several ranges over the waveform and replaces each with a 1 kHz tone (up to 32, overlapping ranges are merged); Audio to Video makes an MP4 from one audio file with the waveform or a chosen still image, in landscape, portrait or square. Bleep and Audio to Video are offered for one audio file only. The silence threshold is per sample.
Website: a /files page with an interactive wheel, a filterable explorer of all 275 conversions and the tool list, generated from the same data the app uses.
Edit metadata: one window for audio, video, GIF and PDF, grouped by file, track and chapter, with Remove all. Chapters are read-only, a GIF can only be stripped, and Remove all leaves some container tags. Images keep their typed commands.
Fixes found by the new event tests: Shift+R in the PDF organizer turned the page the wrong way, and the first Escape in a number box cancelled the edit and also closed the window.
Extract archives: zip, tar, tar.gz/tgz and gz (and rar when unrar is installed) extract into a new folder next to the archive, never into an existing one, after a check that refuses archives with absolute or '..' entry names. Symlink entries are left to the system tools.
Editors in the Convert view: with one video, image or PDF in Convert Files, an Editors section opens the trim, crop, speed, snapshot and redact video windows, the image editors and the PDF organizer (before, they were only offered on file search results).
Convert Finder Selection: a command (give it a hotkey in Settings) that reads what is selected in Finder and opens the conversion wheel for it. It does not intercept Return, so Finder's rename keeps working unless you turn on the Enter on Finder selection setting. The Finder read needs Automation permission.
Enter on Finder selection: opt-in setting (Settings, General; off by default) that opens the Convert wheel when you press Return on selected files in Finder instead of renaming; needs Accessibility. The Convert Finder Selection command also works.
Video redaction window with several areas: Redact Video… on a video lists the areas; each has its own draggable rectangle, start and end seconds, and solid or blur; a Reference frame slider (also in Crop Video) picks which frame is shown; ↵ writes the copy and never overwrites. The preview only marks the areas.
Video snapshot viewer: ⇧⌘S selects a frame using the timeline or frame/second stepping; ↵ saves a full-resolution PNG through the existing snapshot tool and keeps the viewer open.
Video speed window: ⇧⌘L on a video result offers a 0.25–4× slider and presets, with the calculated output duration; ↵ runs the existing pitch-preserving speed tool. Requires ffmpeg. This window does not play the video.
Video crop window: ⇧⌘J on a video result shows a real frame with the draggable crop rectangle, aspect presets and exact width and height; ↵ writes the cropped copy and never overwrites. Needs ffmpeg. The reference frame is fixed at 10% of the duration.
Video trim viewer: ⇧⌘V on a video result shows the frame at the cursor with a timeline, start and end markers, and steps by frame or second; ↵ writes an exact, frame-accurate cut (re-encoded) and never overwrites. Needs ffmpeg.
Collage editor: with two or more images selected, the Collage tool opens a layout editor (grid, row, column, featured), automatic or exact width, spacing, corners and background, previewed on small copies; ↵ writes the collage and never overwrites. A strip of numbered thumbnails above the preview can be dragged to reorder the pictures.
Background editor: ⇧⌘B on an image result shows sliders for padding, corners and shadow and a colour or blurred backdrop, with the preview composed on a reduced copy; ↵ writes the full-size copy and never overwrites. The backdrop can also be another image picked with Choose image….
Redaction editor: ⇧⌘R on an image result lets you drag areas onto the picture, move or resize them and choose a solid colour or a blur; ↵ writes the copy and never overwrites. A Blur slider sets the radius from 2 to 80 px, clicking empty space deselects the area, and the preview only marks the areas; the cover is applied when saving.
Crop editor: ⇧⌘K on an image result shows a draggable rectangle with eight handles, aspect presets (1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 9:16) and exact width and height boxes; ↵ writes the cropped copy and never overwrites.
Live-preview photo editor: ⇧⌘E on an image result shows nine sliders (brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, clarity, sharpen, grain, denoise, dehaze) with the preview recomputed on a reduced copy; ↵ writes the full-size copy and never overwrites. Other video tools still use typed commands.
Annotation canvas: ⇧⌘A on an image result draws arrows, lines, boxes, ellipses, highlights, freehand, numbered labels and a magnifier with a live preview; ↵ saves a full-size PNG copy and never overwrites. Free text with the system Arial font; callouts with a pointer (drag from the target, then type); image stamps from the native file chooser, and the Annotate tool in the wheel and the Convert list opens the canvas for one image (several images still open Preview).
Visual PDF organizer: ⇧⌘O on a PDF result shows page thumbnails; rotate (R), duplicate (D), remove (⌫) and move (⌘←/→) pages, ↵ saves a copy and never overwrites. Pages can also be dragged to reorder (a long PDF cannot be dragged past the visible strip, use ⌘←/→).
Format wheel from a file by keyboard: ⌥↵ on a file result opens the conversion wheel; tapping Shift, Command or Control on an open wheel switches it. ↵ on a file result still opens it.
Compress to a size or percentage (500kb, 40%), exact crop (800x600), camera and GPS tags (make Canon, gps 40.4,-3.7), trim/split/merge audio, video and PDF (trim 0:10-0:30, split 30s).
All 275 conversion options across 46 input formats, including PDF to XLSX, EPUB and Pages, documents to Markdown, EPUB and Pages, XLS input, text clippings, GIF to video and archive repacking. The real-file test runs every pair and reads the result back (text inside documents and sheets, image width, media duration). Notes: RAR extraction needs a working unrar; .pages is written in the iWork '09 format.
More formats: WMA, WMV, EPUB, PPTX from PDF, ODS, TSV, TAR, SVG input, PDF to images (every page, 300 DPI) and to text, subtitles to text, slides to images.
Floating shelf: a native always-on-top panel pinned to a screen edge; drop files in, drag them out.
File Shelf: keep files at hand in a persisted list with every file action; drop files on the open shelf to add them.
Kill Process: processes busiest first with app icon, CPU and memory; ↵ terminates, ⌘↵ force-kills.
Timers: timer 10m, pomodoro, set a timer for 1h 30m; notification and sound when done; Timers view with cancel.
System commands: Toggle Wi-Fi and Toggle Keep Awake (caffeinate).
Quick Look for files (⌘Y) and Check for Updates through Homebrew.
Calculator History (last 100 results, delete one or clear), recently used emoji, and a “Look up in Dictionary” fallback.
Ask AI providers: besides any OpenAI-compatible server, Sign in with ChatGPT (the OAuth flow and backend OpenAI's Codex CLI uses, so a ChatGPT plan answers without an API key; session in the Keychain, refreshed automatically; the Settings pane states plainly that OpenAI has not blessed third-party use), Anthropic's Messages API (own key in the Keychain) and Claude Code, the official CLI signed in with your Claude subscription (tools off, prompt on stdin, own system prompt). Test connection checks each. ChatGPT and Claude subscriptions do not include API access, so they are not offered directly.
Welcome, About, Keyboard Shortcuts, Ask AI and the clipboard detail pane redesigned in the same language as Settings: hero icon, tone-stepped cards with rows, key caps grouped by Navigate/Act/Manage, chat bubbles with a provider chip and an empty state with example prompts, and an Information list (type, source, when, times, length, pinned) under every clipboard preview.
Icons: every builtin and system command uses an SF Symbol rendered by AppKit; glyphs no longer show as empty boxes.
Ask AI: the provider chip is a menu to switch between the providers that are ready right now (configured server, ChatGPT signed in, Anthropic key saved, Claude Code installed) and between that provider's models, without leaving the chat. The choice is saved and the warm Claude session restarts when needed.
Settings → AI: the model is a dropdown fed by each provider (the server's /models list for OpenAI-compatible and Anthropic, the ChatGPT backend catalogue, Claude Code's aliases), with Default and Custom… entries and a refresh button.
Ask AI with Claude Code keeps one warm CLI session while the view is open, started in the background when you open Ask AI: measured 3.2 s for a cold first answer versus 1.4 s for every following turn, with the conversation context kept by the CLI.
Settings redesigned: a sidebar with General, Clipboard, Snippets, AI, Scripts and Advanced; each setting is a row with a title, a plain-language description and its control (animated switches, segmented pickers, key caps). The AI tab gains provider presets (Ollama, LM Studio, OpenAI), Keychain status for the key and a Test connection button that asks the server for its model list.
Footer shows the app icon and a pulsing “Searching files” indicator while Spotlight answers.
Design: San Francisco as the UI font, brand accent, sliding selection, action-panel pop-in, launcher fade-in.
Speed: icon decoding on the main thread is capped at 4 ms per frame (an emoji takes 5–30 ms to render), app icons are fetched on a background thread before the list asks for them, and rows scrolled out of view are no longer painted or fetched (the emoji list went from 80 icon loads to 7). Hotkey to drawn frame measures about 2 ms, a keystroke to new results 0.1–0.3 ms. The result list is cached across frames; release builds use fat LTO; the 22 MB Unicode fallback font loads only when non-Latin text appears (about 40 MB less memory at idle, 146 MB in one process on an M3).

Fixed

Update check: a repository with no published release no longer shows "curl: exit status 56"; the check now tells "no release yet", a GitHub rate limit and no connection apart, and a failed automatic check waits an hour instead of retrying every 10 minutes.
Calculator: 200 * 10%, pi/2, 2 x 3, 1,000 * 2, small currency amounts (1 jpy in usd).
Time zones: est/pst/cet are fixed offsets; clocks inside a DST gap still resolve.
{date offset=…} no longer panics on absurd values; {snippet name=…} resolves in pastes and quicklinks.
A single click runs a list row (hover already selects); clicks in the 350 ms after a view change are ignored so a habitual double click cannot fire the first row of the new screen.
Snippet keywords that prefix another keyword are rejected; held Backspace no longer closes the launcher.
Confirm view no longer stays under a script's output; ⌘↵ never fires "Add to Favorites" by position.
Deleted clipboard images are removed from disk; currency rates refresh when stale; failed saves are reported.
A malformed file:// URL on the pasteboard cannot panic the clipboard watcher.

Ferrocast 0.1.0

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Added

Root Search with fuzzy matching, frecency, aliases, favorites and per-command hotkeys; ⌘K action panel.
Calculator: math, percentages, units, currencies (ECB rates) and time zones; colour conversion.
Clipboard history (text, files, images, pinning; password-manager entries are skipped).
Snippets with dynamic placeholders and automatic expansion; quicklinks with arguments.
Script Commands compatible with Raycast metadata (full, compact, silent, inline output).
Window management (about 40 layouts), system commands, emoji (colour), file search, window switcher, notes.
Ask AI with streaming and conversation against any OpenAI-compatible server; key stored in the Keychain.
Welcome and permissions screen, keyboard shortcut help, backup export, snippet import, launch at login.
Single-instance lock and an error log; app icon, entitlements, DMG and notarization scripts.

Ferrocast changelog

Ferrocast 0.1.1

Added

Fixed

Ferrocast 0.1.0

Added