Every autumn/fall, the current version of macOS changes, and with it there are changes great and small that can affect the apps we run. If you use any of the free apps that I provide here, now is the time to check that you’re running the correct version to support both your current macOS, and any that you might aspire to in the coming months.

SilentKnight

Although most of my apps have auto-update mechanisms that inform you when their updates are available, there are some notable pitfalls that can lull you into a sense of false security. Most importantly, SilentKnight was upgraded to version 2 two years ago to ensure its compatibility with Catalina and later. Every few days I come across someone who is still using version 1 with a newer release of macOS and seeing incorrect results. If you use SilentKnight in any version of macOS from Catalina onwards, then please ensure that it’s updated to the current version 2.10:
SilentKnight 2.10 (Universal App for Catalina to Sequoia)

This is particularly important if you intend upgrading to Sequoia, because of the changes it brings in how XProtect is updated. If you’re still running 2.9 or earlier, then SilentKnight will give you incorrect versions for XProtect, and at worst could report a version of 0 (zero) as it might not be able to find XProtect at all.

Skint and SystHist

For the same reason, Skint should be updated to version 1.08:
Skint 1.08 (Universal App for Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia only)

SystHist lists full system and security update installation history, a task that invariably requires an annual update to cope with the quirks of the new version of macOS. If you’re aiming for Sequoia at some stage, ensure that you have updated it to version 1.20:
SystHist 1.20 (Universal App for High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia)

Writing Tools

Although Apple isn’t intending to release any of its new AI features in the initial version of Sequoia, 15.0, but is delaying them for 15.1, you might like to prepare for that by updating my rich text editor and PDF viewer in advance. Their latest versions should prove fully compatible with Writing Tools when they’re released.

DelightEd is a Rich Text (RTF) editor with special Dark Mode features and support for interlinear text, and version 2.3 should work fully with Writing Tools:
DelightEd 2.3 (Universal App for High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia)

Podofyllin is a lightweight PDF viewer (without any editing capability, so it can’t alter original PDF files) and shows source code and more. Version 1.3 should work fully with Writing Tools:
Podofyllin 1.3 (Universal App for High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia)

XProCheck, Nalaprop, Precize

Other recent updates you might have missed include the following.

XProCheck to check on XProtect Remediator scans completed and reported in the log:
XProCheck 1.6 (Universal App for Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia)

Nalaprop for multilingual natural language parsing, now compatible with Writing Tools:
Nalaprop 1.3 (Universal App for Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia)

Precize, which looks deep into files, bundles and folders to show their full size including extended attributes, provides macOS Bookmarks and volfs paths as enduring file references, and detailed information contained in Bookmarks and Aliases:
Precize 1.15 (Universal App for High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia)

Key points

• For Catalina or later, particularly Sequoia, use SilentKnight 2.10.
• For Sequoia in particular, use Skint 1.08.
• For Sequoia in particular, use SystHist 1.20.
• Older versions of those apps will give incorrect results when run in more recent versions of macOS.

I’m pleased (if not delighted) to release three new versions of my free utilities that work with text, one way or another. These fix problems that prevent their previous versions from having access to the new AI Writing Tools in macOS Sequoia. As they’re the first new builds of these apps for a year, they should also improve performance and user experience across all more recent versions of macOS.

DelightEd is a rich text editor designed to work well with appearance modes, specifically Dark Mode. While it doesn’t support the embedding of images or graphics, thus is text-only, it was designed to overcome problems when displaying rich text within apps, as it generates text that displays correctly regardless of mode. It’s also unusual for its extensive support of interlinear text.

Select a block of text in this new version, and when your Mac is running a beta-release of Sequoia 15.1, the contextual menu offers the full suite of Writing Tools. However, as it doesn’t use TextKit 2, it doesn’t display the fancy effects while those tools are applied.

DelightEd version 2.3 is now available from here: delighted23
from Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism. This version should be compatible with all versions of macOS from High Sierra to Sequoia, although support for Writing Tools is only available in Sequoia 15.1.

Podofyllin is a lightweight PDF viewer that can’t alter the original PDF, although it can save and export it in different forms. It also gives access to the full source for each PDF, allowing you to discover hidden contents and see the file’s complete metadata. It’s perhaps the only PDF viewer that lets you open multiple independent views of the same PDF for simultaneous reference.

The view on the right of its main window shows all text extracted from the PDF; select a section of that, and you can now use the contextual menu to apply Writing Tools to that text. macOS may also allow you to select text in the central PDF view and apply Writing Tools to that, although that currently doesn’t work.

Podofyllin version 1.3 is now available from here: podofyllin13
from Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism. This version should be compatible with all versions of macOS from High Sierra to Sequoia, although support for Writing Tools is only available in Sequoia 15.1.

Nalaprop takes advantage of the linguistic capabilities of more recent versions of macOS to parse text, mark up its different parts of speech, and produce frequency counts of words and their stems (lemmas). This works across all those languages supported by these linguistic features, and with multilingual text.

Support for Writing Tools extends to two of its three panels: select the text you want to proofread, summarise, or rewrite, and use the contextual menu to invoke that AI feature.

Nalaprop version 1.3 is now available from here: nalaprop13
from Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism. This version should be compatible with all versions of macOS from Mojave to Sequoia, although support for Writing Tools is only available in Sequoia 15.1.

Although I have been testing these, just in case there are any nasty bugs in them, I’ll leave the previous versions available from their product pages, ready if you need to revert to them.

Enjoy!