Welcome to the lab.

I mentioned in a recent post that I was getting unexpected behavior when using modifier keys with PopClip. Quite a few of my PopClip extensions provide alternate actions when triggered while holding down Control, Shift, Command, or Option. But as of recent versions of PopClip, holding down Option is a global shortcut that displays the result in the PopClip bar, and holding Shift forces the result to copy to the clipboard instead of pasting, overriding extension preferences.

I spoke with Nick from Pilot Moon about this and he let me know that you can override this new behavior with a defaults write command in Terminal. If you want my extensions to function and provide all of their alternate options, open Terminal and paste this into it:

defaults write com.pilotmoon.popclip DisableAlternateActions -bool YES

Once you do that, extensions like BulletList, which creates numbered lists when you hold down Option, will once again provide the expected behaviors when modifiers are held.

Nick mentioned he’s considering some alternative options for providing multi-action extensions, which is really exciting to me. Having to remember even one modifier key per extension is a pain, and extensions like CriticMarkup, which has 4 different modes based on modifier keys, are basically impossible to remember well enough to get the right result on the first try every time. I look forward to what Nick does on this front — his ideas sounded very appealing.

I’ve updated my PopClip Extensions to v1.44. This update includes a revised nvUltra extension (that actually works), and a new SearchLink extension.

The nvUltra extension allows you to set a permanent notebook to use, and then whenever it’s run it will add a new note with the selected text. Simple, convenient. I may eventually incorporate Gather into this and allow selecting rich (HTML) text and converting to Markdown, but for now it’s designed for plain text.

The SearchLink extension requires that SearchLink be installed, but if it doesn’t locate it in the expected location when it runs, it will install it automatically.

In case you missed it, I also recently updated the WebMarkdown extension to use Gather, and if Gather isn’t installed when you run it, it will download the package for you and walk you through installation.

I’ve noticed lately that some of my extensions that have alternate behaviors when holding Option are acting strangely, showing the result in the popup and putting it in the clipboard instead of pasting it. I need to talk to Pilot Moon about why that’s happening, but will update as needed once I get some answers.

Download the latest versions of all of the extensions below.