We’re happy to introduce Screens 4.9 for iOS 13.1 and iPadOS 13.1
So, what’s new?
Dark Mode
Although Screens already offered a Dark Mode for the past couple of years, we made that feature free back in June and now Screens 4.9 supports the system-wide Dark Mode.
Multiple Windows Support
With iPadOS 13.1, Apple introduced multiple windows support. Screens 4.9 takes advantage of that new feature and now lets you open multiple connections at the same time.
New Contextual Menus
Another cool new feature found in iOS/iPadOS 13.1 is how a long press now triggers contextual menus. We added support for those in the Library.
Improved Passcode Lock
Previously, Screens would let you secure your content with a 4-digit passcode and optionally use TouchID or FaceID. Since Screens 4.9 now supports multiple windows, we had to revamp our implementation in order to secure all opened windows.
When you open Screens, all opened windows will be locked out until you authenticate with one of them. We you do, all other windows will automatically unlock.
While we were there, we decided to support alphanumeric passcodes, which was a constant request.
What else?
Other than that, we fixed many stability and performance issues, improved our keyboard mapping management and fixed some UI bugs.
iPadOS Mouse Support? Yes, well sorta.
Many users contacted us throughout the summer about adding mouse support in Screens. While Screens does support that by default, it is very restrictive as Apple doesn’t provide any APIs or control for us developers to fully use the potential of a mouse on iPadOS.
For the time being all you can do is left-click or click and drag. You cannot scroll or do anything else. Perhaps Apple will open mouse support to developers in iOS 14 but for now this is all we get.
Command-Q and Your Hardware Keyboard
For some reason, iPadOS 13 now reserves the ⌘Q shortcut when performed on a hardware keyboard. We opened a bug report (FB7102345) with Apple and we have no clue as to if this is a bug or a deliberate decision. In the meantime, we recommend to use the Quit shortcut from the scrollable toolbar.
For more information you can visit the Screens for iOS product page or download Screens 4.9 on the App Store.
Screens 4.7 for macOS
We are planning to release a new Screens version for macOS as soon as macOS 10.15 Catalina is released, which should be in October.
Screens 4.7 will mostly concentrate on performance and stability issues and benefit from improvements we’ve performed in its iOS counterpart.
Screens Connect 4.9
We’re also working on a new update for our helper app, which is also focusing on stability and performance improvements. Again, it should launch in October when Catalina is out.
