The original inspiration for The Magic Highlighter was to improve the user experience around the humble Command-F (⌘-F) keyboard shortcut where we use it the most: browsing the web1. As we began exploring the possibilities, we quickly identified a novel use case that would effectively eliminate the need to invoke the keyboard shortcut at all: automatically highlighting search terms and phrases on search result web pages. We started with a quick and dirty prototype, then iteratively removed papercuts until our experience searching the web with The Magic Highlighter was better than our experience without it.
The Magic Highlighter version 0.6.0 now includes the ability to add magic highlights to ANY web page (not just search results)!
But something was still missing. The Magic Highlighter was a fantastic productivity booster, but its utility was limited to search results. We were still falling back to old-fashioned Command-F (⌘-F) on the Mac, and the “Find on page” share sheet action on iPhone. What’s worse, this started to feel like it was actually reducing the value proposition, because we couldn’t retrain our brains to always use The Magic Highlighter instead of old-fashioned ⌘-F.
No more!
Here’s a quick demo showing some of the new features and keyboard shortcuts in version 0.6.0.
The Magic Highlighter version 0.6.0 now includes the ability to add magic highlights to any web page (not just search results)! This makes The Magic Highlighter worth committing to muscle memory. Checkout the new User Guide for more information on the new and improved keyboard shortcuts and keyboard navigation in version 0.6.0.
Release Notes
Version 0.6.0
The second update to The Magic Highlighter is now available in the App Store, including these improvements:
NEW
- [feedback#12] Added support for adding new phrases (built-in ⌘-F replacement)
- [feedback#12] Added new keyboard shortcut for adding new phrases: ⌘-Shift-F + F
- [feedback#12] Added a new “+” button for adding new phrases (helpful on iPhone/iPad)
- [feedback#12] Added support for pre-populating new phrase input with text selection
- [feedback#6] Added support for toggling all highlights on/off
- [feedback#6] New keyboard shortcut for toggling all highlights: ⌘-Shift-F + A
- Added support for deleting highlighter phrases
- Added new keyboard shortcut for deleting highlighter phrases: ⌘-Shift-F + D
- [feedback#13] Added stats! Open the popup to view term and phrase counts (and a total)!
IMPROVED
- minor performance improvements
- Updated keyboard navigation in the popup (try ↑, ↓, ←, →, and Tab)
- Updated keyboard shortcut description (for iPad “Show all keyboard shortcuts” UI)
- Minor refactor of core highlighter functions
Feedback Welcome!
We have setup a product feedback issue tracker for The Magic Highlighter, and future products from Herd Works. Any time you see a reference like
[herdworks/feedback#1]or[feedback#1]it will be referring to an issue in this project. To learn more about how you can contribute to our product feedback issue tracker project, see the Contributing Guide.
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And while our efforts are currently focused on Safari, we are not ruling out the possibility of bringing The Magic Highlighter to other browsers including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Arc by The Browser Company.
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