Zonas 0.4.2

Snap windows into zones you define in a text file.

Two things this release fixes were the two most obvious ways the app could leave
somebody stuck: the minute after installing it, and a gesture that only worked
if you let go of two keys in the right order.

What is new since 0.4.1

• There is a window on first launch. Until now, installing Zonas and opening
  it produced no visible result at all except a small grey icon at the top right
  of a screen nobody was looking at — no Dock icon, no window, and no way to
  learn that the Accessibility permission was missing or what the gesture was.
  The release notes said so in bold, and a release note is not a window.

  It is one screen, not a six-page tour. It says what the app is, it draws
  your layout at your screen's proportions — the same drawing code the
  overlay uses, following the file while the window is open — and it sketches
  your menu bar with Zonas' icon where macOS actually put it, notch included on
  the machines that have one. The permission row has three states rather than
  two, because "not granted" and "granted but the event tap never came up" are
  different problems and used to be reported identically: people were being told
  to switch on a toggle that was already on. The stuck state now says the thing
  that costs an afternoon to find out — that switching the toggle off and on
  again keeps the old code requirement, and only removing the entry with −
  and adding it back rewrites it.

• Merged zones survive letting go of both keys at once. Holding ⌃ Control to
  gather several zones and then releasing ⇧ and ⌃ together used to drop the
  window into a single zone — whichever one the cursor happened to be over. The
  two releases arrive a few milliseconds apart and the order decided the result,
  so the gesture worked reliably only if you released ⇧ first, which is not
  something anybody can be expected to discover.

  What you gathered now survives the release and is let go of when the pointer
  moves on. Release the keys in either order, or together, and the window lands
  on the rectangle the highlight was showing. Starting a sweep over after
  gathering one zone too many still works the same way: let go of ⌃ and keep
  moving.

• Links to the site no longer preview as an icon marooned between two grey
  bars in Slack, iMessage and the rest.

Installing

Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Universal: Apple Silicon and Intel.

1. Download Zonas
   and open the file it saves.
2. Drag Zonas onto the Applications folder, which is what the disk image's
   window shows you. Do not run it from the disk image or from ~/Downloads:
   macOS would then ask for the Accessibility permission again on every single
   launch, forever.
3. Open it from Applications. A window comes up explaining where it went and
   what to do; there is no Dock icon, and the app lives in the menu bar.
4. Give it the Accessibility permission from that window. macOS does not let
   any app move another app's windows without it.
5. Hold ⇧ Shift, drag any window, and let ⇧ go over a zone. Add ⌃ Control
   while you drag to gather several zones into one rectangle. Press ⎋ to
   leave everything where it was.

Upgrading needs nothing: drag the new copy over the old one. Your layout file is
not touched, and the Accessibility permission survives, because it is tied to the
signing certificate rather than to the particular build. The welcome window does
not come back on an upgrade.

Known rough edges

• One layout at a time. Multiple layouts and rules that pick a layout per
  monitor — including monitors that are not plugged in — come after that.
• The editor cuts and moves zones. It cannot yet type exact numbers, draw a free
  overlapping zone, or manage layouts; the file does all three.
• Starting a drag on top of a modal sheet moves the window behind it instead of
  doing nothing.
• Everything here was measured on one Mac. If something behaves oddly on a
  multi-monitor desk, that is the most likely place for it.

Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.

SHA-256  0d382df52b3aa5d19fa2fb11298ea89d8d2042ef0021f7411ce2d76d7b07a2e3