Curio 25 Release Notes 📖

Release Date
March 13, 2023
Requirements
Curio 25 runs on macOS 11 Big Sur through macOS 13 Ventura on Apple silicon or Intel.
Feature Availability
Features only available in certain editions will be listed with colored tags like or .
Notes specific to the Mac App Store build of Curio will be marked with .
New Features
Smart Collections
The contents of list, mind map, and stack collection figures can now be dynamically filled and refreshed based on a query statement specified in the inspector panel. For example, due<2m progress<100 group:due
for incomplete items due within 2 months grouped by due dates, or #action
for all figures tagged with action.
The results are constructed using synced figure instances pointing to their original figures. That way you can edit a result item's text or meta properties and those changes will be reflected in the original and any other synced instances.
Using this feature it's easy to construct a dashboard or home page for your project with one or more collections showing you tasks to tackle, or special tagged items you need to look into.
Query-Based Search Shelf
The Search shelf has been completely overhauled to use the new query language introduced with Quick Find and used by the new query-based smart collections mentioned above. This query language allows for much more flexible and sophisticated search queries.
At the top is a large query text entry field. Results appear directly underneath if you pause while typing or when you press Return. To assist, there's a keyboard button under the query field to fill in various parameters.
Unless cleared (via ⌘F, Escape key, or Clear button), results remain even if you switch to another shelf. This way you can use the inspector or other shelf modules to examine individual results.
Queries can be saved for easy reuse, and are shared with Quick Find's saved queries. Note that the old pre-Curio 25 saved searches are not carried over so will need to be reconstructed.
Query Language Enhancements
The query language used by Quick Find, the Search shelf, and query-based collections has been extended with support for project milestones (due<beta2
); searching asset contents (`steve jobs`
); sorting by startdue
or organizer
order; group
, limit
, and include
commands (group:due limit:10 include:nocheckbox
); searching by kind
(kind=mindmap
); and you can now find figures with any tag (#*
), any resource (@*
), or any cross reference (^*
).
Improvements
- Quick Find → Search Shelf
Press ⌘Return in the Quick Find window to send the query to the Search shelf if you'd like to browse through several result items. - Default Icon vs Preview
A new Format > By Default Show Figure As submenu allows you to specify how new items dragged into Curio are displayed by default (icon vs preview), instead of Curio trying to determine this automatically. - Edit Action Figure via Double-Click
If you have a figure that has an assigned action, and a visible actions adornment, then double-clicking will edit the figure's text. To perform the action you have to click the adornment. If a figure's actions adornment is hidden the double-clicking will still perform the action. To edit the figure select the figure and press Return or click-pause-click.
- List Default Width
The list collection figure will now remember its last width when empty (ignoring the title) and use that size the next time you create a new list. - YouTube Video Titles
Tweak to the title retrieving logic for YouTube URLs because they lazily set their<title>
tag to "YouTube" instead of the actual title of the video (ugh). - Curio Feature Roundup
New Help > Curio Feature Roundup for those that want to see an index of all the big features. - Paste As > List
If, from outside of Curio, you copy several lines of rich text then paste them into Curio using Paste As > List, attributes such as URL link and foreground/background color attributes can be maintained (in most cases), instead of converting to plain text.
- YouTube Video Start/End Times
You can now embed YouTube videos with start and end times! Curio will automatically map YouTube links that havet=
start times into appropriate the embedded URL'sstart=
parameter. You can also manually edit the URL in the inspector bar and add anend=
parameter to have it end at the specified number of seconds. - Project Milestones
The Project inspector now has a Milestones section so you can enter project milestones which can be used in a Quick Find query, Organizer filter, and Search shelf.
- Initial WebView Browsing Mode
Inserting a new WebView or using Show As Live View won't immediately going into browsing mode so the user is able to more easily drag and re-position or resize the figure before double-clicking on it to begin browsing. - Less Obtrusive Selection Glow
Tweak to normal selection glow: the blue glow now only appears if figure is unbordered and unfilled, or in a group or collection. This can be customized. - Calendar Sync Names
The Calendar sync popups can now show the calendar's source name, like Family (iCloud), via the Calendar Sync Name Includes Source advanced preference. Handy when you have lots of calendars from different sources that have the same names. - Project Download Needed
When opening a project Curio will now use Apple's ubiquitous API, that all cloud services are adopting, in order to determine if the project is completely downloaded and warns before continuing the open.
- Preferences vs Settings
When running on macOS Ventura or greater Curio's menus will be titled Settings and Advanced Settings. If on an older macOS they will be titled Preferences and Advanced Preferences. The docs, however, all say Settings now that the majority of our Curio 15+ customers are running on Ventura. - Trial Expiration / Freemium
When a trial or license expires instead of going into read-only mode Curio will now go into a free mode with the Standard feature set where users can continue exploring the bundled Welcome to Curio project, and create and edit their own projects each with up to 5 idea spaces. Larger projects are opened read-only for viewing, exporting, and printing.
Fixes
- Locked Figures Are Read Only
If selected figures are locked then their meta values can no longer be changed in the mini meta inspectors (percent complete, tags, dates) or the status bar, although they still show the current values of those locked figures. - Folder Asset Figures
Fixed issue where dragged in folders needed their own icon vs. preview default and style. - Blurry Previews for Asset Figures
Fixed issue where figures displayed as previews were blurry if the preview image was actually the asset’s icon, in the cases where QuickLook didn’t return a thumbnail. - Preview Mode Proportional Sizing
Fixed issue where toggling between preview and icon and back to preview could end up clearing sizing proportionally, which should be set by default for preview. - Preview Mode Initial Size
Fixed issue where the preview for an asset figure could jump to a large size. Fixed initial size of asset previews where the asset icon was used. - Opening Files via Local Shelf
Fixed issue in the Local library shelf if you try to Open a file in the results that cannot be opened due to sandboxing or permissions, Curio will now reveal the file in the Finder instead so you can attempt to open it directly instead. - URL Data Retrieval After Project Close
Fixed issue where crash could happen if the project was closed while data for an URL was being retrieved. - Text Figure Attachment Icon Size Slider
Fixed issue where the icon size slider in the inspector wasn't available if you selected a text figure with an attachment. - Prune to Linked Collection Rendering Issue
Fixed a funky curved line rendering issue when you first use Prune to Linked Collection. - Pressing Enter to End Editing
Fixed issue when pressing the Enter key (on the numeric keypad) to end editing which was throwing an exception to the log file (Ventura TextKit 2 issue?). - Hierarchical To Do Styling
Fixed issue with the bundled Hierarchical To Do list style having bolded items when they should be normal text. - Album and Pinboard Style Galleries
Fixed albums and pinboards so the previews in the style gallery correctly show preview images even if the default is icons for images dragged into Curio. - Group Shadow
Fixed an issue where grouped figures thought they had shadows which impacted exporting/copying as image. - 🚨 Disappearing Collection Items 25.0.1
Fixed issue with disappearing collection items if switching between tabs in the popup inspector for list, mind map, or stacks. - Deleting Smart Collections 25.0.1
Fixed issue where you couldn't delete query-based smart collections. - Smart Collections Sort Criteria 25.0.1
Fixed issues with grouped results ignoring sort criteria, also fixed issue with improperly parsing sort criteria if asort:+
orsort:-
prefix was specified. - Slow Drags 25.0.1
Fixed issue with slow performance when dragging lots of figures especially images in lists and mind maps.
Technical
- Sparkle
For Curio distributed via our website, our app updating framework is now Sparkle 2.3.2 (up from 2.3.1). - RevenueCat
For Curio distributed via the Mac App Store, our subscription validation framework is now RevenueCat 4.17.7 (up from 4.16.0).