Hook is a Mac productivity app that allows connecting documents, websites, and notes for quick navigation to relevant data, based on what you’re currently working on. As such, it can be handy to combine with Trickster, so that you can quickly navigate to files or sites related to your recent files as shown in Trickster.
Hook listing a file from Trickster and its link to the design document
UPDATE: Hook now has built-in Trickster integration. So there’s no need to perform any of the manual integration steps below. Thank you, Luc, for adding Trickster so quickly.
Hook doesn’t have a built-in integration with Trickster (yet), but it’s easy to add the support manually in the meantime. Here, we’ll show how.
Launch Hook, click on its menu bar icon, then on the gear icon and select Preferences in the menu (This works similarly to Trickster’s menu).
Navigate to the Scripts tab in Preferences and hit the + button below the list of integrations on the left.
Click on the “Get Name” tab on top.
Copy and paste the following code there:
tell application "Trickster"
set se to selected entries
set t to item 1 of se
set filename to file name of t
end tell
Click on the Get Address tab.
Copy and paste the following code there, then hit Save.
tell application "Trickster"
set se to selected entries
set t to item 1 of se
set fileurl to (url of t)
set a to POSIX path of fileurl
set f to "file://" & a
end tell
Quit and restart Hook to ensure the new scripts take effect.
That’s it! Now, select a file in Trickster, invoke Hook (with its shortcut or the menubar icon) and it should show the selected file in its own popup.
How the Get Address script appears in Hook Preferences
With the release of version 3.2, Trickster better supports macOS Catalina (10.15) and introduces an exciting new feature — the Current App Filter.
Now, when Trickster detects a change to a file, it remembers which application was active at that moment. Active here means that the app’s name was in the menu bar near the Apple logo.
When the Current App filter is active, Trickster will further filter files that it would show using these two additional criteria. Any of these options would show the file:
The file was modified or created when the same application that is active now was active.
The file can be opened by the currently active application
Trickster’s bottom bar
The currently active application’s icon is displayed in Trickster’s bottom bar in a button that toggles the filter (Safari in the screenshot above). When it’s active, its background is of a different shade and the active application’s name displays in Trickster’s title bar in square brackets.
This filter can be toggled in two ways:
By clicking the button with the icon of the active app.
By pressing Command-P on the keyboard when Trickster has keyboard focus (click inside Trickster to select a file, for example).
On the heels of Trickster 3.0 release, we added a couple of improvements to Trickster’s customizability.
Dark or Light modes can now be forced independent of macOS system-wide setting.
Font size for file list and their folders can be increased with 3 larger font settings.
Both settings can be accessed in Trickster’s Preferences:
Trickster’s Preferences Panel with new options highlighted
The User Interface now sports minor improvement to its look, especially to the bottom bar.
If you want to adjust the folder font size independently of the file name font size, there’s a hidden command-line preference that’s described in the user manual.
We’ve update Trickster’s design for macOS 10.14 (Mojave) and fixed some bugs related to it. The new version is Trickster 3.0 and can be downloaded from Trickster download page. The update is free. Versions for older macOS versions can also be downloaded from that page.
The new version supports Dark Mode and control accent colors and, in general, has a more native look and feel. Because of this, the new version requires macOS 10.14 and will not work on macOS 10.13 or earlier.
Starting with version 2.7, it’s now possible to detach Trickster’s window from its menu bar icon. You can drag the window to any location on the screen and Trickster will remember it. In combination with a keyboard shortcut to show and hide the window, mouse travel can be greatly minimized.
It was a feature suggested by you, our customers, so keep the suggestions coming.
This new release of Trickster brings some of the features that you, our dear customers, have requested. So please keep your requests coming. Visit our Trickster Suggestion forum on the support portal to start public discussions into feature requests and to vote on other people’s suggestions.
Light theme
We’ve designed a Light theme for the file list. You can select it in Trickster’s Preferences.
Trickster in Light Theme
Show icons or QuickLook preview
Trickster usually shows QuickLook previews of files in the Expanded row mode. With a new option added in this release, Trickster can now only display generic file icons. This behavior can be useful when you’re more concerned with what application will open the file than with its content. Text files can especially benefit since their preview provides little information about their content.
Overwriting files
Did you know you could drag files from Trickster (or from Finder) unto folders in Favorites sidebar and have them moved or copied (by holding the Option key) there? If you didn’t know, try it — we created the sidebar with this use-case in mind.
Previously, though, Trickster silently failed to move or copy when the destination folder already contained a file by that name. Now Trickster will detect this and suggest to overwrite the file, if you want. The original file will be moved to Trash, just in case. Unfortunately, this behavior might fail on macOS Sierra because of increased protection of /Applications folder by the system.
File Tracking and Filter instructions
When you have no entries in a section of the File Tracking Configuration or when editing Filters, Trickster will now display a description of what this section means and how to edit it.
Trickster instructions in Filter Editing panel
Play better with Sandboxing
Trickster will now fail less to monitor folders that you want it to monitor. It now correctly detects when it doesn’t have permission to monitor it. And to help you see when it fails, the File Tracking Configuration panel will mark these watched folders with a yellow exclamation mark.
In the screenshot below, Downloads and Applications are not working anymore, and their permissions need to be refreshed.
Select the folder, Downloads in this example, and a button titled “Refresh permissions” will appear (see screenshot below). Click on it. Trickster will remove Downloads from the list and will present an “Open Dialog” with Downloads folder selected. Just click the “Refresh Permissions” button on the bottom left of this dialog to add Downloads back with the new permissions.
Now you don’t need to wonder if a folder is monitored by Trickster or not, because of Sandboxing permissions.
