Drafts 4 update adds new features but removes Today widget at Apple's request
Drafts 4, the iOS 8 edition of the acclaimed note-taking app developed by Agile Tortoise, has just received its first major update. Unfortunately, aside from adding a number of significant improvements, the update removes a popular feature.
As reported a couple of weeks ago, for reasons yet obscure, Apple requested Agile Tortoise to modify and resubmit the Today widget of Drafts 4 sans buttons for creating drafts or opening the app. Now, the developer behind Agile Tortoise, Greg Pierce, has made the widget unavailable altogether until further notice:
I have hopes that Apple will reconsider its position on the functionality of the Drafts widget, and I will be resubmitting an updated version of the Today widget soon in hopes of getting it back in the app, but in order to be able to ship this update, I have removed the Today widget.
On a more favorable note, the update adds support for iCloud Drive and Print action steps, and improves the Google Drive action steps to allow saving as Google Docs and the Evernote action step to include Text/Markdown/ENML format options.
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The new version of Drafts 4 also includes sync improvements plus the following new features and fixes:
- New: Duplicate action option (next to edit button when swiping right on an action). Makes it easy to make a copy of an existing action to make a few changes or test new ideas.
- New: Added “Hide extended keyboard” setting to disable the keyboard row for the space conscious.
- New: Add “Print” button to HTML Preview, this allows quick printing of previews. A more powerful and customizable Print action step is planned soon.
- New: Added some additional action icon choices. More coming.
- Fix: Trim whitespace in Evernote step notebook, note and tag strings to prevent bad names starting with spaces.
- Fix: Improvements to handling of text scrolling/insets with external keyboards.
- Fix: Select contact button could get hidden if long values were entered in recipient fields when editing action steps.
- Fix: [[selection]] tag should default to full content when called in /runAction URL.
- Fix: Better handle presentation of some action steps requiring user inteface (such as Open in) when those actions were called via URL scheme on the iPad.
- Fix: Template processor could misinterpret % sign and break markdown processing wrapped in %% %%.
- Fix: In Dropbox action steps, do not add “.” at the end of the filename if no file extension is defined.
- Change: Added warning if Twitter step generates a tweet longer than the 140 character limit.
- Fix: Arrow keys on extended keyboard should force scrolling when cursor leaves visible area.
For more information on Drafts 4, check out our original review.
Drafts 4 was named AppAdvice’s App of the Week shortly after its release in October.
See also: Apple reverses course and will allow Transmit for iOS to send files to iCloud Drive, Apple threatens to pull another handy Notification Center widget, Neato, and Apple will once again allow calculator widgets in the iOS 8 Notification Center.
