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Version 1.0.0 Beta 1

Beta 1

Release notes

We've drawn a line under what will be included in Productivities V1 and have created a backlog of future features. We are now in Beta.

We also hired a UX expert to provide feedback on the app's design and have made a number of UI changes in response. The app should feel largely the same, but you'll notice a few visual tweaks and consistency improvements.

We've introduced three final tools and the beginnings of a plugin system. Forms and Highlights allow you to better capture information, whether that's feedback, health metrics or anything else. Captured form data is stored in tables. Highlights allow you to capture important passages from EPUB, PDF and article-type pins, as well as Pages. In addition to information capture, we've introduced the People tool. People allows you to manage your relationships and see how your work relates to others. Finally, a simple, isolated and permission-based plugin system is in its infancy. Several new Space Artefact plugins are available to install if they support your workflow.

Important Navigational Changes

We've introduced a few navigational changes to improve consistency and reduce cognitive overwhelm across the app.

  • The default way to access context menus within the app is now a three-dot menu. Click the three dots next to a tool title or object (task, highlight, canvas, etc.) to see its context menu.
  • Each tool now offers a view dropdown. Different perspectives on the tool's objects are accessible from this dropdown. If the tool allows you to filter its objects, as most do, you can save your own views.
  • Holding the right mouse button and dragging is now the universal way to pan across surfaces. In the Planner, drag left and right through the Kanban columns; in the Pinboard, drag up and down (mouse scrolling still works); and in the Canvas, pan up, down, left and right.
  • A small and likely unnoticeable addition is consistent pointer behaviour across the app. Clickable items show a pointing finger, draggable items show a grab hand, and general app backgrounds and disabled controls, toggles and buttons show the normal mouse pointer.
  • If you prefer right-clicking to open context menus, we've left a toggle in Settings to bring this back.
  • The Quick Actions menu is new. Search lives there, alongside other one-click actions.

New Tool: Forms

  • We've been working on this behind the scenes for a few weeks. Forms allows you to collect information from yourself or other users and store it in a database table. Each form field can validate its input, and forms can be scheduled in the Planner or used as part of a routine to collect information repeatedly, such as for weekly check-ins or health measurements. Note: We have retired Measurements as part of the removal of Systems because Forms provides a much richer and more customised experience (see the note under General).

Kind of New Tool: Highlights

  • We already had highlighting in Pages and Pins, and you could review those highlights via a small icon in the Pages view. It was a half-baked idea that wasn't executed very well, but we always wanted a way to resurface important information and help users research and learn, not just keep things organised. Highlights is now an official tool to support learning.
  • We've added richer support for capturing highlights across the app, including in Pages, pinned articles and PDFs.

New Tool: People

  • Create a directory of the people involved in your work or life.
  • Create interactions with these people.
  • See all related content across the app for each person (tasks, pages, events, etc.).
  • Export people as vCards.

Planner

  • If you use the filter bar to save dedicated Planner views, the view dropdown has shifted to the left to align with the app's new design structure.
  • The 'Show Custom Columns Only' button has been removed. There is now a 'Column Type' dropdown in the filter bar, so if seeing only your custom columns is important to you, you can save a dedicated view.

Pinboard

  • You can now make notes against YouTube pins and save them as a Page once you're done.
  • Similar to the Planner filter bar, the Pinboard filter bar now allows you to select multiple spaces and tags. This allows you to save more complex filters as views.
  • You now access filtered Pinboard views from the left-hand side of the title bar instead of the right, aligning them with the rest of the app.
  • Article pins can now be read aloud via text-to-speech. Use the three-dot menu and select 'Read Aloud'. There is a 50,000-character limit, which should be enough for long articles.
  • Article pins also track reading progress and show a visual progress indicator.
  • You can now highlight and add notes to a PDF pin. Those notes can also be saved to a Page if you wish, and Productivities will remember your progress.
  • We now support EPUB files. Open an EPUB pin to see the EPUB reader, which allows you to add notes and highlight text. Your progress is also saved.

Spaces

  • Space tabs can now be reordered, bookmarked, hidden or shown from a single 'Tabs' menu within the Space three-dot menu.
  • We have added more Space Artefacts to help enrich what a space is to you, including Routines, Outcomes and individual Table, Page or Canvas tabs for the most important documents you need to surface.
  • We also have a new Space Agent artefact that, when enabled, allows you to use Hably Agent / AI Chat scoped to a specific space (i.e., the AI can only see the notes, tasks, people, canvases, tables and pages associated with that space).
  • You can now decide, on a space-by-space basis, whether pins appear as a single Space tab or as multiple tabs for each pin type, such as Video or Image.

Pages

  • Pages now has a 'Live' mode, so if you're not bothered about editing Markdown in real time, you can write a Page without worrying too much about it. Construct a Page as you would in any non-Markdown note-taking app; it's still Markdown behind the scenes.
  • We've done away with the four-pane setup to help users with smaller screens. Folder and Page navigation is now housed in a single dynamic panel. Click a folder and the panel takes you into that folder to see its Pages; select the folder name at the top to return to the folder view. The same applies whether you've chosen to navigate via folders, tags or spaces.
  • Pages now supports inline calculations. Click the editing toolbar icon or use the /Calculate inline menu item to start typing your calculation. Press Return to see the result within the Page.
  • Page content can now be read aloud via text-to-speech. Use the three-dot menu and select 'Read Aloud'. There is a 50,000-character limit, which should be enough for long articles. The voice engine is entirely offline.
  • You can now start a deep work session from a Page's 'Full Screen Mode'.
  • You can embed captured Highlights within a Page.

Databases

  • CSV import has been greatly improved. Date formats can now be selected, and we've optimised large-scale CSV imports of more than 10,000 rows and files over 100 MB.
  • Excel export support has been added for each table.
  • You can now manage task properties in batches via the Task smart table (create a smart table with a Tasks target).
  • Advanced row filtering is now available. Click on the filter icon on any column and choose advanced filter.
  • Multi-select is now its own column type and uses a familiar pill-based appearance, similar to the way Notion handles selects and multi-selects.
  • We've added new Hyperlink and Email column types.
  • The database toolbar has been improved. Database table selection, view selection and row and column actions are all part of the same surface now.
  • You can once again hide columns in database views. A dropdown of columns within each view now supports visibility toggling and column reordering.

Automations

  • Automations with a manual trigger can now be run from the new Quick Actions menu at the top centre of the app.
  • A desktop notification has been added as an automation output.

General

  • The macOS app now ships with a beta Safari extension to make pinning URLs and images from the browser even easier. After installing the app, enable and configure the extension in Safari, then pair it with the app using the generated pairing code. The extension allows you to pin URLs, save highlighted text to the Pinboard and save images by right-clicking them.
  • The app now has an introductory wizard. It appears when you first install the app and create the first user, or when a new user logs in to an existing installation. If you want to see the introductory wizard in action, you can start it from the Workspace Settings page.
  • We have introduced a Quick Actions menu at the top of the app. This provides one-click actions such as searching, recording an audio note, splitting the workspace (see the next bullet), starting or ending your day, and starting a deep work session. The Pro tier also supports custom quick actions, such as running an automation, filling in a form or invoking Hably with a predefined prompt.
  • We've added a new 'Split Workspace' quick action in the Quick Actions menu at the top centre of the app. This allows you to work across two tools at the same time—for example, drawing up a Canvas whilst reading a PDF, or checking next week's schedule whilst writing Page notes. We've made a design decision to limit this to two tools, however, so that you think more consciously about multitasking. Having 10 tabs open is not only distracting, it's a memory hog, and we're trying to optimise for a fluid app experience.
  • The Calendar now supports a month view as well as the week view.
  • Systems are no more. It felt less like one of the primitive tools of Productivities—something that created an object such as a task, Page or table—and more like something that simply aggregated objects. Having Spaces and Systems therefore felt like two sides of the same coin. Instead, why not make the Space the System? For example, create a new '5k Training' Space and associate check-in tasks and notes about running technique with it. Maybe there are some YouTube video pins you want to include. With the new 'Routines' Space Artefact enabled, you also have daily or weekly routines to help you reach your running goals. Finally, with the new Forms tool, you can capture your stats for each run. Everything you need to run and stay consistent is available in a single Space.
  • On macOS, the P in the menu bar now expands to show your schedule without requiring you to open the app.
  • The new user sign-up and login screens have been overhauled to provide a calm, beautiful experience when entering the app.
  • We've also made many more bug fixes across Bookmarks, Pages, Tables, Canvas, Forms and Automations.