{"id":53622,"date":"2026-10-23T16:38:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T20:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=53622"},"modified":"2026-10-23T16:38:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T20:38:01","slug":"building-mac-app-help-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/23\/building-mac-app-help-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Mac App Help Books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amyworrall.com\/blog\/building-mac-app-help-books\">Amy Worrall<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.amyworrall.com\/blog\/building-mac-app-help-books\">\n<p>The documentation is available on the website for the relevant app, and also in the app as a Help Book (openable from the Help menu). These days, Help Books on MacOS open in the Tips app[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Apple&rsquo;s documentation for making these, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/library\/archive\/documentation\/Carbon\/Conceptual\/ProvidingUserAssitAppleHelp\/authoring_help\/authoring_help_book.html\">Authoring Apple Help<\/a>, is pretty old. If you look at the URL for that page, you&rsquo;ll see it&rsquo;s part of the Carbon documentation!<\/p>\n<p>There are some third party tools to help. While planning this blog article I came across <a href=\"https:\/\/helpbookbuilder.com\">Helpbook Builder<\/a>. I haven&rsquo;t tried it, but if I were starting afresh I would probably check it out! <\/p>\n<p>In this article I&rsquo;ll share my process.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/07\/mckinley-1-0\/\">McKinley 1.0<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/15\/how-apple-help-works-and-how-it-doesnt\/\">How Apple Help Works and How It Doesn&rsquo;t<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/02\/help-compiler\/\">Help Compiler<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/17\/why-wont-that-help-book-open\/\">Why Won&rsquo;t That Help Book Open?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/16\/authoring-mac-help-books-in-2020\/\">Authoring Mac Help Books in 2020<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/07\/many-tricks-help-viewer\/\">Many Tricks Help Viewer<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amy Worrall: The documentation is available on the website for the relevant app, and also in the app as a Help Book (openable from the Help menu). These days, Help Books on MacOS open in the Tips app[&#8230;] Apple&rsquo;s documentation for making these, such as Authoring Apple Help, is pretty old. If you look at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-10-23T20:38:05Z","apple_news_api_id":"a0afeaa8-a818-4ebf-975a-61f7220aaf10","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-10-23T20:38:05Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AoK_qqKgYTr-XWmH3IgqvEA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1658,30,2784,337],"class_list":["post-53622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-help","tag-mac","tag-macos-27","tag-markdown"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53623,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53622\/revisions\/53623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}