MonitorControl/docs/Changelog.html

<h1>Changelog</h1>

<h2>MonitorControl v4.0.0-beta2 (Thu, 07 Oct 2021)</h2>

<h3>Enhancements</h3>

<ul>
  <li>Added Internet Access Policy</li>
  <li>
    Don't relinquish control over brightness keys with no external display
    connected if fine brightness OSD scale is active
  </li>
  <li>Changed icon order in menu (when icon mode is enabled)</li>
  <li>
    Gear shape icon is used for preferences + stands a little bit apart to help
    user focus.
  </li>
  <li>
    Changed default to a minimum software dimming of 15% for safety reasons.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added advanced option to enable zero brightness with software dimming.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added 'Avoid gamma table manipulation' option for coexistence with f.lux.
  </li>
  <li>Set relevant options to disabled when keyboard control is disabled.</li>
  <li>
    Added <kbd>Command</kbd> + <kbd>Q</kbd> shortcut in menu when it is in
    standard text mode (not icon mode).
  </li>
  <li>Made preferences more spacious + more room for verbose languages</li>
</ul>

<h3>Updated translations:</h3>

<ul>
  <li>English - base language</li>
  <li>Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) - thanks to @stiiveo, @dororojames</li>
  <li>Dutch - thanks to @JoniVR</li>
  <li>French - thanks to @the0neyouseek</li>
  <li>German - thanks to @jajoho</li>
  <li>Hungarian - thanks to @waydabber</li>
  <li>Italian - thanks to @picov</li>
  <li>Korean - thanks to @zzulu</li>
  <li>Turkish - thanks to @mennan</li>
</ul>

<h3>Under the hood changes & fixes</h3>

<ul>
  <li>
    DDC command touched status. When write on startup enabled, apply only
    touched command values.
  </li>
  <li>Reorganised PrefKey list to be less confusing.</li>
  <li>
    Disengage custom shortcut keyboard after 100 key repeat to prevent possibly
    endless loop if keyUp event never arrives due to any circumstance.
  </li>
  <li>Fixed text for external display brightness control keyboard shortcut.</li>
  <li>
    Fix cumulative darkening bug upon toggling 'Disable dimming as fallback'.
  </li>
  <li>
    Make sure that key repeat speed for custom shortcuts do not go below a
    certain threshold.
  </li>
  <li>Fixes text clipping issues for various languages</li>
  <li>Added beta channel update backend</li>
  <li>Fixed layout issue at brightness custom shortcuts.</li>
  <li>
    Fixed custom key shortcuts going runaway when menu was opened during a key
    repeat streak.
  </li>
</ul>

<h2>MonitorControl v4.0.0-beta1 (Thu, 30 Sept 2021)</h2>

<h3>Enhancements</h3>

<ul>
  <li>
    Automatic & manual updates through the app, no more manual downloads 🎉
  </li>
  <li>Added proper support for controlling Apple displays.</li>
  <li>Added option to show/hide brightness slider.</li>
  <li>
    Added option to show brightness slider for internal display and apple
    displays (enabled by default).
  </li>
  <li>
    Replication of built-in and Apple display brightness to corresponding
    brightness slider.
  </li>
  <li>Added suffix to similarly named displays for better differentiation.</li>
  <li>
    Option to disable slider snapping for finer control + disable slider
    snapping by default.
  </li>
  <li>Added option to show slider tick marks for better accuracy.</li>
  <li>
    Added option to use window focus instead of mouse to determine which display
    to control.
  </li>
  <li>
    <kbd>control</kbd> + <kbd>command</kbd> + <kbd>brightness</kbd> now controls
    external displays only (<kbd>control</kbd> + <kbd>Brightness</kbd> continues
    to control internal display only)
  </li>
  <li>Added separate tab for menu options.</li>
  <li>Added option to restore last saved values upon startup.</li>
  <li>
    Added option for audio device name matching for display volume control
    selection.
  </li>
  <li>Separated option to change all screens for brightness and volume.</li>
  <li>Added option for keyboard fine scale for brightness.</li>
  <li>Added option for keyboard fine scale for volume.</li>
  <li>
    Added version check upon startup for mandatory preferences reset upon
    downgrade or incompatible previous version + notification about this.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added implementation for <kbd>command</kbd> + <kbd>f1</kbd> macOS shortcut
    to enable/disable mirroring.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added safer 'Assume last saved settings are valid' option as default instead
    of startup DDC read (or restore).
  </li>
  <li>
    Streamlined preference panes, 'Show advanced settings' now affect all tabs.
    This leads to a better and safer first timer experience (especially because
    of the influx of many new features).
  </li>
  <li>
    Added a Quit button to Preferences if menu is hidden (it was not passible to
    quit the application until this time in this mode only by re-enabling the
    menu).
  </li>
  <li>
    Lowered default first-run volume DDC default from 75% to 15% if read is not
    possible or disabled to prevent unexpectedly loud sound.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added slider skew setting on a per control basis to have the ability to
    manipulate DDC slider balance and OSD scale if display control is not
    linear.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added the ability to set min. and max. DDC bounds on a per display, per
    control basis.
  </li>
  <li>
    Audio device name override option for a display (manually assign a specific
    audio device to a display).
  </li>
  <li>
    Advanced setting to invert DDC control range (some displays have the scale
    reversed).
  </li>
  <li>
    Advanced setting to remap DDC control code (some displays have contrast and
    brightness mixed up).
  </li>
  <li>
    Ability to mark a DDC control as available or unavailable in advanced
    settings under Displays.
  </li>
  <li>
    Ability to automatically hide menu icon if there is no slider present in the
    menu.
  </li>
  <li>Option to show slider percentage for more precision.</li>
  <li>
    Option to set combined or separate OSD scale when combined hardware+software
    brightness is used.
  </li>
  <li>
    Apple like smooth brightness change (both for software, hardware, mixed and
    DisplayServices).
  </li>
  <li>
    Added support for DisplayLink, AirPlay, Sidecar, screen sharing etc. using
    window shades (this is an inferior technique to the existing software
    implementation - gamma control - but still better than nothing). Disabled
    for any kind of mirroring setups. [^1]
  </li>
  <li>
    Brightness change synchronisation from Built-In and Apple displays to other
    displays. This makes Touch Bar, Ambient light sensor, Control Center and
    System Preferences induced changes affect all displays. Synchronisation uses
    a sophisticated indirect delta method + the user can intervene and adjust
    individual screen brightness at any time to easily compensate mismatching
    native brightness levels.
  </li>
  <li>Preferences pane tab selector has a simpler look on Catalina.</li>
  <li>
    All menu sliders are now scrollable using a magic mouse/trackpad swipes or
    mouse wheel.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added option for menu to show only items that are relevant to display which
    shows the menu currently.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added option to enable combined sliders (note: this option combined with
    enabled Apple/built-in display syncing and enabled 'change all' keyboard
    settings finally provides full synchronised control of all displays).
  </li>
  <li>
    Combined sliders can now display multiple displays when keyboard and
    brightness syncing is not enabled. [^1]
  </li>
  <li>
    Redesigned sliders to look like Big Sur/Monterey Control Center's sliders.
    [^1]
  </li>
  <li>Quit and Preferences... are now icons for a much cleaner look. [^1]</li>
  <li>
    Added option to change additional menu options style or hide them. [^1]
  </li>
  <li>
    Multiple displays are now in nice Big Sur styled blocks - no more ugly
    separators. [^1]
  </li>
  <li>
    Added customisable gamma/ddc switchover point for combined brightness in the
    advanced section of Displays.
  </li>
  <li>
    Added comma separated list for control code override to enable edge cases
    like controlling Brightness and Contrast at the same time (use VCP list
    entry `10, 12` for that)
  </li>
  <li>
    Contrast can now be controlled from keyboard via <kbd>control</kbd> +
    <kbd>option</kbd> + <kbd>command</kbd> + <kbd>brightness up/down</kbd>.
  </li>
  <li>Custom keyboard shortcuts for brightness, contrast, volume and mute</li>
</ul>

<h3>Other under the hood changes and bug fixes</h3>

<ul>
  <li>
    Standardised internal scale among various displays and DDC ranges for ranged
    controls.
  </li>
  <li>
    Uses the new internal scale for combined hardware-software brightness mode.
  </li>
  <li>
    Migrated scales to internal float representation to prevent loss of fine
    detail on transformations.
  </li>
  <li>
    Fixed double sound when muting multiple external displays at the same time.
  </li>
  <li>
    Fixed lack of initial volume configuration if slider is not shown in menu.
  </li>
  <li>
    Fixed wrong settings being applied to a display when replaced on Apple
    Silicon (UserDefaults preferences are now tied to specific display strings
    instead of CGDirectDisplayID - which is no longer semi-unique on arm64).
  </li>
  <li>A lot of refactoring, streamlining and general optimisations.</li>
</ul>