OnCue can be used without seeing it. Every control in the popover and in Preferences now has a name a screen reader can say: the two Trigger boxes say which is sound and which is motion, the sliders and meters say what they measure, and the meters say their level as a percentage. In Preferences each pop-up and field is named by the label beside it, and the schedule's weekday boxes say the whole day. The same names serve Voice Control, Switch Control and the keyboard. The one gap is drawing zones in the preview window, which still takes a mouse; the help says so.

If OnCue is set to arm itself when it opens but not to open at login, a restart leaves it closed and nothing arms. The popover now says so until Open OnCue at Login is turned on, the way it has for the schedule since 4.14. If you installed from this site or through Homebrew before 4.8, this is likely you: the login item didn't survive that update's change of identity, and the box has read off since. The popover keeps its glass but no longer goes white over a light window. It tints itself halfway toward the window colour, so the text reads whatever is behind it. And it closes when a click in it opens the browser or Finder, since what you asked for is what should be in front.

After an update, the popover now says so: a line under the state names the new version and links to this page at its entry. It stays until you click it, and the next update replaces it. If you've come from the App Store's 3.0.3, which most of you have, the line says the update was from an older version, since OnCue only started remembering its version with this release; from here on it names them. That first line shows once for everyone, whatever you updated from.

The line under the arm state that counts recent recordings was counting each recording twice since 4.15, once for the movie and once for the still beside it, and calling them half as long as they were. It counts movies now. The App Store listing is kept from the same files as this site, and its pictures are drawn by OnCue itself, so from this release on the store shows the app as it is rather than as it was a few features ago. Nothing changes in the app for that; the pictures are the same popover and Settings you see, in each state.

Make a Time-lapse, in the popover menu, turns the last stretch of being armed into one short movie: each recording's still, then a frame every two seconds of it, four frames a second, with the time in the corner. A thirty-second recording becomes four seconds; a busy afternoon, about a minute. It lands in the recordings folder as "What happened", named for the stretch, opens in Finder when it's done, and is never touched by the size limit. Making it again for the same stretch replaces the last one. With two cameras, the time-lapse shows both side by side on one timeline: the camera chosen in Settings on the left, the other on the right, each named at the top. When one camera wasn't recording at a moment, its half is dark rather than frozen on an old frame. One camera fills the frame. Show What Happened and Make a Time-lapse now say which period they mean, right in the menu.

Every recording now comes with a still: a JPEG under the same name, taken at the moment the recording was triggered. Finder's gallery view turns the folder into a contact sheet, Quick Look shows what each recording caught without opening it, and the still is the file to send when someone asks what happened. The size limit counts stills too, and a still goes when its recording goes, never on its own. When you disarm, the popover now says what happened while OnCue was armed: how long, how many recordings, and when the first and last were. Click that line, or choose Show What Happened from the menu, and Finder opens with exactly those files selected, oldest first, stills included, so the gallery view walks you through it. The line stays until the next stretch of being armed ends, and a stretch shorter than ten minutes with nothing recorded doesn't replace it. The warning that a schedule can't survive a restart now says why: nothing opens OnCue after a restart while Open OnCue at Login is off, so the schedule has nothing to arm. Turning it on in Settings clears the warning straight away, and the note under the schedule stops asking for it once it's on.

A schedule only runs while OnCue is open, and until now the only place that said so was a grey note under the schedule in Settings. Now, when a schedule is on and Open OnCue at Login is off, that note turns into a warning and the popover says the same: the schedule can't arm OnCue after a restart. Turn Open OnCue at Login on and both go away, no relaunch needed. A schedule with no windows doesn't warn, since nothing is coming. The unarmed state was drawn in white, which disappeared on a light popover. It uses the label colour now, so it reads in light mode and dark mode alike.

OnCue works with Shortcuts, Siri and Focus. There are four actions: Arm OnCue, Disarm OnCue, Is OnCue Armed, and Record a Test. And there's a Focus Filter: add it to a Focus in System Settings, turn on its one switch, and OnCue arms itself whenever that Focus is on and disarms when it ends. Because a Focus follows you across your devices, an Away Focus that your iPhone turns on when you leave home arms OnCue before you're down the street. Nothing is sent anywhere; the Focus is Apple's, and OnCue still has no network permission. A Focus only disarms what it armed, so arming it yourself still means what it meant. It can only arm OnCue while OnCue is open, so turn on Open OnCue at Login with it. If OnCue quits unexpectedly while armed, a crash or a force quit or a power cut, the next launch says so, names the time, and arms again. Until now that was the one way of not watching that never told you. Record a Test, in the menu, records on every camera the way a trigger would, shows you the file, and puts things back how they were. It's the quick way to see a setup work without waiting for something to happen, and if anything about the setup is wrong, this is where it says so.

Now you can tell OnCue where to look. In the preview window, drag rectangles around the parts of the picture that matter, and motion outside them isn't counted. Each camera has its own zones, and recordings are still the whole frame. OnCue can arm itself on a schedule. Set the hours and days in Preferences, as many rows as you need, and a window can run past midnight. It arms at the start with the same countdown and notification as arming at login, disarms at the end, and if you disarm it yourself during a window it stays disarmed until the next one starts. Anything you arm by hand is left alone. While the schedule is on, OnCue keeps the computer awake the whole time, so a window is never missed because the computer was asleep, and between windows the popover says when the next one starts. The schedule only runs while OnCue is open, so turn on Open OnCue at Login with it. On a computer set to German, everything from the popover to the permission prompts is in German. The preview shows movement as a red tint over the picture instead of solid red, and no longer opens with black bars when OnCue is already armed. The line that counts recent recordings now says outright when they're barely longer than the shortest OnCue can make.

The first update in a long while, and most of the app is new. Sound can trigger a recording as well as motion, each with its own meter and threshold, and each can be switched off. Recordings start from the seconds before whatever set them off, five by default, up to thirty. Two cameras can watch at once, each to its own file. Recordings go to your Movies folder or any folder you choose, and a size limit keeps them from filling the disk. While armed, OnCue keeps your Mac awake, warns before closing the lid would stop it, and tells you afterwards if the Mac slept anyway. It says when a recording failed and why, and when motion detection has stopped working, rather than staying quietly green. It can open at login and arm itself. Nothing leaves your Mac. The old version reported usage to an analytics service; that's gone, along with the app's network access. It can't check for updates on its own either, so this is where you'll hear about them. Settings from the old version may not all carry over. Open Preferences once and check the recordings folder and arm at login.

Updated menubar icon and fixes for dark / light mode

Ready for Apple silicon

This update  - fixes a bug where the audio was not recorded - adds a feature to let you select a different camera in preferences

Rewritten from the ground up with Swift 5 and Metal! Faster motion detection algorithm means a faster, better, and leaner security system for your mac!

- Fixed bug that prevented selecting new save to folder

- Minor bug fixes and performance improvements

- Bug fixes for scheduling - Improved analytics

Performance improvements Bug fixes

- Fix for critical crash when recording affecting 2.3.1

- Improved motion detection curve - Recorded videos now include 2 seconds of lead in time prior to triggering event

New features and performance improvements

Bug Fixes Migrated to AVFoundation from QTKit

Bug fixes

I'm releasing this as an open source project in order to enlist help tracking down the source of the issue many of you have encountered. https://github.com/nferno/onCue