Drafts 5.4 Released - iOS 12 Ready, Siri Shortcuts, WordPress and more

News & Updates
,
1

Seems to be taking a bit longer than usual this update to show up for everyone in the App Store updates - be patient, I expect Apple’s servers are pretty busy processing updates this week!

Drafts 5.4 is now available in the App Store. This update is ready for iOS 12 (but iOS 11 is still supported), adds support for new Siri Shortcuts and the Shortcuts app, as well as WordPress integration, expanded abilities to work with Dropbox and Google Drive - and a lot of smaller improvements and fixes. Details below.

Note: An additional 5.4.1 release is planned for release before September 24, 2018 to fully support new Apple Watch Series 4 and iPhone XS, etc., models.

Siri & Shortcuts Support (iOS 12 Required)

  • "Run Shortcut" action step. Pass text to the Shortcuts app and trigger a Shortcut by name with a single tap. This is the same functionality available in the “Run Workflow” action step, updated for the new Shortcuts app. Details
  • Siri Intents:
    • “Capture clipboard” Siri shortcut. This shortcut allows capture of the current clipboard content to a new draft in Drafts without launching the app.
    • “View draft” Siri Shortcut. Allows creation of a shortcut which displays the content of a specific draft in the Siri interface - with the ability to tap and open that draft in the app. Great for previewing lists, or regularly view reference notes.
  • "Add to Siri" buttons to create voice shortcuts to functions in Drafts directly in the app in the following locations (iOS 12 only):
    • Add shortcut to open a specific draft in the (i) detail view.
    • Add shortcut to load a workspace on Workspace edit screen.
    • Add shortcut to run an action without input text from the action edit screen.
  • Drafts creates shortcuts as the app is used for a variety of other tasks, such as using the Drafts dictation interface. As you use Drafts, these become available in iOS Settings > Siri & Search and can be attached to custom Voice Shortcuts. A common example would be to create a “Dictate” voice shortcut that launches Drafts directly to dictation of a new draft.
  • Watch the community site for more information and guides to using Shortcuts with Drafts in the coming weeks.

WordPress Support

  • WordPress action step. Allows posting to WordPress blogs with a variety of basic options. Details
  • WordPress script object allows access to the entire WordPress XML-RPC API to provide advanced features, both reading and writing data for posts, taxonomy information and more.
  • Example actions and details in our “Using Drafts with Wordpress” integration guide.:

Expanded Google Drive support for Google Docs and PDFs

  • Google Drive action step enhancements allow creation of Google Docs and PDFs on Google Drive:
    • Template output of a Google Drive action step can be selected between Text, Markdown & HTML. This is similar to setting on Evernote steps and determines how the output of the content template will be treated.
    • Upload type allows you select the type of result file. If “Text”, well, you’ll get a text file. This is the only type that supports append/prepend. If “Google Doc”, Google drive will convert the uploaded file to a Google Doc. When combined with HTML template output, you can create fully-styled documents.
    • Additional details and sample actions

Full Dropbox API Scripting

  • Dropbox script object exposes entire Dropbox API. New rpcRequest, contentDownloadRequest and contentUploadRequest methods wrap and expose the entire Dropbox API. This is an advanced feature and requires direct API knowledge, but it is possible now to create share links, list files, folders, query files and version, create Paper documents, etc. Anything you can do with the API, essentially. Details in the Scripting Reference.
  • Example Actions:

Other New Features in 5.4

  • Separators in action groups. Separators act like headings and allow for visual organization of actions in a large action group or keyboard rows. Each has a full text name for the action list, and optional shorter key label for display in the keyboard row. Create them using the “+” button in the action list. Manage them just like an action - drag and drop to move the around, etc.
  • Light Gray theme.
  • XMLRPC.request(url, methodName, params) script method to interface with XML-RPC based services. Takes care of creation and decoding of XML needed to interact such services. Suitable far wrapping XML-RPC based APIs like the MetaWeblog API or others.
  • HTTP script object now supports parameters setting to specific URL query args as a javascript object.
  • Draft detail (i) screen now has button to copy UUID or draft text to clipboard, in addition to existing copy link option.
  • More summary information in Draft detail (i) screen.
  • addLabel(name, label, options) method on Prompt scripting object allows adding text labels, captions and headings in a prompt.
  • strftime(date, format) global script method. Returns formatted date string.
  • Toggle device sleep off and on via script. app.isIdleDisabled and app.setIdleDisabled(bool) script methods to allow disabling of system sleep timer to keep the screen from dimming. Useful for times when you do not want to have to keep waking up your phone when referencing a draft. Example Toggle System Sleep action is available. See reference for more information
  • Ability to clear all version history for draft in Details (i) > Versions, or individually delete specific versions (swipe to left).
  • Markdown list auto-complete will now try to enable capitalization for first word of new list line if Sentence auto-capitalization is enabled.

Other Fixes and Changes in 5.4

  • Change: A few updates to default action groups. These will only take effect for new installations - but these groups can all be reinstalled from the Action Directory
  • Change: Make “edit” the default swipe option for Workspaces in Workspace list.
  • Fix: Problem with login credentials for Work/School OneDrive accounts expiring after 1 hour.
  • Change: Display confirmation dialog when clearing the recent tag suggestion list.
  • Change: Prompts using single select fields now display more like radio buttons than checkboxes.
  • Change: Add “Manage Subscriptions” button in settings for Pro users.
  • Change: Throw error alert if /get URL scheme does not provide x-success callback to return content.
  • Fix: Badge on iPhone not always updated after receiving new information from Watch app until Drafts as launched.
  • Fix: Scripted callback URL call should fail immediately and not wait for timeout to fail if URL could not be opened.
  • Fix: Regression in CallbackURL scripting that prevented it from properly waiting for response.
  • Fix: Certain actions which update draft content, then use prompts or leave the app might lose the update to the draft if run from a keyboard row instead of action list.
  • Fix: Issue where tags assigned to the current editor draft using Select > Operations in list would not get updated.
  • Fix: Be less aggressive about dismissing side panels when app is returned to foreground.
  • Fix: Disabled action steps run when nested in “Include Action” step.
  • Fix: Prevent odd-ball case where sync could temporarily stall in certain network conditions.
  • Fix: Better enforcement of max. size limit for an individual draft (1 MB, ~900,000 characters) to prevent hitting sync issues.
  • Change: Merge operation now remembers last used separator.
  • Fix: Single select prompt options not appearing properly.
  • Fix: Race condition that could cause temporary stall of sync.
  • Fix: Pipe character could disable inline code highlight in Markdown syntax.
  • Change: It is now possible to escape template tags with a backslash to prevent them from be processed. e.g. \[[title]] will come out as [[title]] not get the title of the draft inserted.
  • Change: Make some VoiceOver improvements in Arrange mode.
2 Likes
2

I love the light grey theme. Came here to say just that.

2 Likes