🆕 [v3.6.10] – AquaTouch – The Powerful Touch Bar Redesign.

[yuuiko]

AQT v3.5.3 (8 OCT 2019)

Efficiency Improvements and Refinements

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Focused on performance and efficiency, This update greatly reduces CPU usage compared to v3.5.2. Some refinements to existing features have also been added, along with a few new app layouts and tools.

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Download

Download at the AQT Downloads Page ➔

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Changelog

Performance Optimisations

AQT is now SIGNIFICANTLY more energy efficient.*

Sorry for draining the batteries of your laptop . I hope those of you in cold weather at least enjoyed the warm lap / hand warmer!

As you can see here, AQT was shockingly behaving very badly. I wasn't aware of this until I installed Intel Power Gadget just recently.

The main culprit was calendar requests, and menubar checks.
By reducing calendar access from every 5 seconds (to update the widget accurately after changing settings and waking from sleep). I managed to be able to seperate the widget update from the calendar requests, so now calendar requests only happen every two minutes with the widgets still updating accurately.

This and various other optimisations result in AQT being almost the same as default macOS, I've noticed no more oddly warm lap heater and perceived increased battery life (though I'm not sure if it's actually longer...)

Unfortunately I haven't found a way to make menubar checking widgets more efficient, but I've adjusted their timings so at least they somewhat run under 2.5GHz clock speed. Preview and Stickies are the two main apps that contain these. I have sent in a feature request for a BTT native widget to be made if possible.

• Optimise the QuickShedules button (in the QuickStrip).
• Calendar icon in the CS is now more efficient when highlighting is turned off.
• Optimise the "No Apps Playing" message with the QuickPlay widgets
• Remove highlighting from "BUISH" buttons in onenote as they caused high CPU temperatures and never worked well anyway.

*for most apps.

New Features

New External Disks widgets!

Supports up to 5 disks. Find them in the new finder set and in Quickctions.

Finder is now a replacement set!

I combined my own finder native touchbar and AQT's extra tools. I wanted to add tags because I use it often but that doesn't seem feasable yet.

Preview is now a replacement set!

I'm quite proud of this one! Features three tabs, "View", "Edit" and "Markup", enabling you to streamline your editing and scribbling better.

Switches layouts based on the file type that is open; Document-related controls won't show up for an image and vice versa. Switching document types also doesn't switch the tabs! Seems expected but that was interesting to implement.

Brave browser added.
Literal copy-paste from safari. No web widgets yet. If I feel like it then I might add support, Brave seems to support scripting.

Keyboard shortcuts for kahoot.it
Keyboard shortcuts for kahoot.it web widget because I kept loosing hopefully my new weapons will allow me to beat my class :⎤

Notes

Added continuity camera button to notes as a small extension set. Useful for lectures - use your iPhone as a camera for your Mac to take pictures that instantly show up in notes.

New Github Desktop Client TouchBar

Big push and pull buttons, and shortcuts to view repo in the Finder, Web or Terminal.

Quality Improvements

Spotify
Genius button now Highlights and automatically switches back to Spotify on error.

iTunes
Shuffle and Repeat buttons scroll away so more content can be seen while scrolled.

Web Widgets

Youtube Widget (in Safari) will now give prompts to enable scripting for websites. You can also tap the tip to let AQT set the stuff for you.

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Google Mail Widget Should now show a setup tip noting that keyboard shortcuts need to be turned on in Gmail settings.
Web Widgets now auto-close when switching away from the site to keep touchbar controls relevant.

QuickMedia

• Main Media controls (grey, leftmost in the QuickMedia) now displays the icon of the app that they will control.
• Added back an optimised "No supported apps playing currently" message.

QuickControls
TrueTone and NightShift buttons should now highlight if on.

Bug Fixes

• Youtube widget in Chrome now displays "YouTube" instead of "YouTube Chrome"
• QuickPlay button more robust - less chance of disappearing
• Downloads button in Safari's "Window" touchbar menu fixed
• Various small alignment fixes and visual enhancements.

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