Codebook Development Update, Nov 2020
Time for a quick status update on what’s cooking for Codebook password manager and when we expect to release the next version!
As we noted back in September over on the discussion forum, we have a few exciting updates on the way, specifically for the Android, macOS, and Windows versions of Codebook. The main highlights are:
- Codebook Autofill for Android
- Password AutoFill for macOS Big Sur
- Password Weakness Warnings and other feature-parity changes for Windows
We’ve been aiming to release the three of them together as version 4.3.0. Lining up a multi-platform release isn’t easy, and isn’t technically necessary here like it might be if these were huge changes, but when it comes time to reach out and communicate what’s new it helps a lot. People are really inundated these days!
Here’s where we’re at:
- On Android we are finishing up beta testing on the new Autofill feature and are preparing for release.
- On Windows we are nearly ready to go, but found some small edge-cases and one unrelated crasher that we want to fix up before we declare it ready for release.
- On macOS we are ready to go—as of this morning Apple appears to have fixed a bug in their App Store validation that prevented anybody from submitting macOS apps that support Password AutoFill in Big Sur to the Mac App Store (even though macOS Big Sur supports it and was released last week!)
We expect to be done preparing for release (final adjustments and testing, final builds, announcements, website updates, moving builds into place, etc) by the end of this week. However, next week does not make for a good time to release software with the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. While these updates should be high in fiber and low impact, there’s always a chance something can go wrong and we want to make sure we’re on deck and ready to respond should the release not go as planned. Thus, we’re looking at November 30th for the release date.
If you’re a Mac user who has already upgraded to macOS Big Sur 11, the current version of Codebook now available should work mostly fine with a couple of minor wrinkles. However, if you are raring to go with the updated UI and AutoFill support you may access the latest Beta version now. Users of the Direct version of Codebook for macOS have an Updates tab on the Preferences window; set Release Channel to Beta and click on Check For Updates (Mac App Store users who wish to beta test should send us an email for access).
An aside: If you’re wondering, “what about 4.3.0 for iOS?” That’s already been released with support for iOS 14, and a subsequent update for compatibility with the screen sizes of the new iPhone 12 models Apple announced a few weeks back.
Attachments
Version 4.3.0 is not the only development effort underway right now! We have been hammering away at adding image storage to Codebook, allowing you to attach images to Entry records. This is the first step towards support for attaching and storing other types of files as well. The Images feature is about ready to go on macOS and iOS, we’re pretty far along on the Android implementation, and plan to start working on the Windows interface soon. Much of the groundwork for this feature is already in place from the Codebook 4 update last year that introduced a new sync system capable of supporting file attachments with speed and efficiency, and made changes to the database structure to ensure forward-compatibility.
Our thinking is to release Images on all four platforms at the same time as Codebook 5.
We’re going to need to do some extensive beta testing for this feature. If you’d like to test Images in Codebook, getting early access to a really cool new feature and helping us ensure that it’s robust and performs well, please reach out and let us know.
Join the Discussion
Want to join in the conversation? We’d love to hear from you! Please stop by our community discussion site to keep up with what’s new and share your thoughts.