PopChar 10
- An improved user interface that balances classic functionality with modern aesthetics
- Enhanced magnifier providing improved information and shortcuts for characters, making inspection and insertion of special characters more intuitive
- New insertion modes with a single click, including support for Swift code
- Spanish language support, broadening the tool’s international usability
- Full compatibility with Unicode 15
- New and easier navigation concept
PopChar 10 is priced at $34.99 for new purchases, is discounted by 50% for those with previous licenses, and is available for free for those who purchased on or after September 1, 2023.
Previously:
4 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I've grown increasingly fed up with the unreliability of invoking apple's emoji picker via the keyboard shortcut so I'll take a look at seeing if I can use popChar in my workflow of putting emojis into console.log messages for debugging. Thanks!
What is good about the new PopChar is that it serves not just to put in special characters but as a font preview utility (I also have Typeface but that suffers from upgrade issues too, the developer put the good features behind an additional Pro paywall that those who supported him early did not expect). There's several kinds of preview, including small sizes to big sizes and different kinds of Lorum Ipsum in multiple languages. Advanced font preview is a great feature and makes PopCar much more useful.
What's bad about PopChar is that Thomas has switched to an online license management system similar to Adobe CC and is gradually pushing hard towards subscriptions. He's also playing a dangerous game with restricting seats/activations per license to two per license. I don't have all that many Macs in active service for myself now (just three) but when I have five the two activation limit would really grate on me. There's no more family packs, so those of us who invested in large packs for a bright future have effectively been swindled (echoes of Adobe again).
Indeed, the license management and purchase and expense have become enough that Ergonis is retired within the company after an investment of hundreds. I only pick up individual license in bundles as upgrading is so frequent and so expensive.
I'm already looking for alternatives to Typinator (TypeIt4Me is back! and works fine though is a much more workmanlike text expander than Typinator and is $10 across all one's Macs), KeyCue (KeyClu is open source and works a treat), PopChar (no substitute, but PopChar is the one I've needed the least).
KeyCue has one significant advantage for me: it shows KeyboardMaestro macros. Since I'm a longtime KeyboardMaestro user that makes a big difference. Time to put in a feature request over at KeyClu.
Anyway all these licensing pain points are gradually pushing me away from shareware and indeed macOS. I've stuck around on macOS partly thanks to the small developers like C-Command, Ergonis, ObDev and Stairways. Now that many of them (Ergonis, ObDev in this list) are turning on their users to exploit us with annual expensive updates, additional Pro tiers and subscriptions, it makes more sense to just put all my energy, money and resources into FOSS. No one can take away or expire your software. No licensing hassle. Everybody benefits.
@Alec Are you confusing Objective Development with another company? I don’t think they’ve added annual updates, pro tiers, or subscriptions.
