Scapple Public Beta Now Closed
At this time we will be folding the beta into what will become the next official release, 1.5. This will be coming out shortly, to coincide with the macOS 15.1 release, and will include some Apple Intelligence features in supported regions.
As the file format was not changed during the beta, any .scap files you created or modified with it should be safe to open in the current stable release (1.4.2).
Big thanks to everyone that participated in the beta! Whether you found and reported bugs or did not, every running copy helped us know that things were generally working well. 
The last set of update notes will be retained below for reference, with the download and installation instructions removed.
Beta notes
Scapple for macOS Public Beta
This release represents a re-write of essential, core functionality in Apple’s new language Swift, which is a wonderful new method of crossing vast computational distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in Objective-C.
In Scapple 1.4.2, we replaced Scapple’s engine with a new one written in Swift, while the rest of her remained unapologetically Objective-C. Now, in the upcoming Scapple 1.4.3, the faux-leather seats, white-walled tyres, and eight-track cassette player are getting upgraded to groovier Swift versions that can, with a little ‘to me, to you’, be used in other vehicles.
Essentially, we’re doing this work for two reasons:
- Swift is now Apple’s preferred development language, and the more Scapple’s Swift code increases, the longer that Scapple will be around; plus it makes it easier to add more features.
- The Swift code is portable and can be used on other platforms (for instance, iOS).
System Requirements and Compatibility
macOS 10.15 “Catalina” or later.
Previous beta notes
Change Logs
The following notes may contain details pertinent to bugs that arise during beta testing, which will not appear in the final change log that will only list fixes and updates made from the previous stable version, 1.4.2.
Beta 12 change log
- Optimisations made to memory management.
- Incremented expiration date to 10 Oct, 2024.
Beta 11 change log
- Adjusted Spotlight module’s code signing, for compatibility with macOS 15.
Beta 10 change log
- Fixed crash that would result from opening the inspector.
- Fixed bug whereby placeholder text for new notes would appear underneath the text currently being typed.
Beta 9 change log
- Incremented expiration date to 1 June, 2024.
Beta 8 change log
- Incremented expiration date to 1 May, 2024.
Beta 7 change log
- Fixed bug whereby notes containing more than one line would not auto-fit after editing the note, when applicable.
- Optimisations have been made to overall board drawing speeds, which should improving stuttering and lag, which could be seen when scrolling, panning and zooming.
- When stacking notes together, the width of each note is now respected rather than changed to match the width of the first note. If you prefer stacked notes to have even widths, use the
Notes ▸ Make Same Widthcommand. - Fixed bug in style storage and application whereby certain attributes were not properly read when loading an existing board, and would be subsequently lost once saved.
- The Sparkle framework, used to check for and install upgrades for the direct-sale version, has been upgraded to the latest version. This should reduce excessive requests for update checks on some older systems.
Beta 6 change log
- Fixed bug where use of the New Note menu command or shortcut threw an exception.
- When dropping styles into the Note Styles inspector area, the selection halo has been fixed to be visible again, in macOS 14.
- The factory default styles no longer apply too many kinds of formatting to notes (e.g. “Red text” only changes the text to red).
- Fixed bug that would block all drag and drop events in boards that had notes with labels on connectors.
- Fixed bug where dragging style examples, out of the inspector and into the board to create a new styled note, did not work.
- Fixed bug whereby multi-byte fonts, such as Japanese or Korean, would not properly hold inline formatting applied to portions of the text within a note.
- Fixed bug that would cause stacks to break formation, when editing notes within them that contain multiple lines.
- GUI layout fixed in the RTF and RTFD export dialogues.
Beta 5 change log
- Fix issue where dragging an image note could lead to the app hanging for several seconds.
- Expiry date pushed to February 1, 2024.
Beta 4 change log
- Fixed an exception being thrown when dragging notes into the inspector’s Note Styles pane, or when dragging styles between inspectors, across boards.
- Fixed a bug where typing a ‘dead key’, such as
´, meant to be combined with a letter, likeé, would cause a crash if typed into a board without a note open for editing. - Fixed a bug making it impossible to drag selections containing images to other boards, or to duplicate-drag within the same board.
- Fixed a display bug which would cause exception reporting to use black text on dark grey, when in Dark Mode.
Beta 3 change log
- Fixed issues where stack order was corrupted by array ordering, where stack order sometimes produced unexpected results.
- Fixed issue where labeled connectors would remove label from copied notes on paste.
- Default styles now save their border widths.
- Fixed issue where export images would create files incorrectly.
- Fixed issue where export to OPML would append “.xml” to the filename when the path contained a space.
- Expiry date pushed to October 1, 2023.
Beta 2 change log
- Changes made to underlying code to ease porting to iOS.
- Expiry date pushed to August 1, 2023.
Changes since last release
This will document all changes to the software that are notable since the last stable release, and thus form what will be the final change log once 1.5 is published.
Compatibility
- Adjusted Spotlight module’s code signing, for compatibility with macOS 15.
- Fixes made to Quick Look and icon previews for compatibility with macOS 15.
Refinements and Changes
- Board textures now attempt to detect the overall lightness of the image, and adjust the foreground colour appropriately, when the Default Color is cleared in the Document Settings area of the inspector.
- Improved adaptive foreground colour handling in contextual cases where a shape or note background is different from the overall board background. E.g. black shapes on a white board will no longer host black on black notes.
- Shift-clicking on a note or shape that is partially out of view will scroll the canvas until it can be fully seen.
- The
Replace Allbutton will now replace text found in connector labels. - When stacking notes together, the width of each note is now respected rather than changed to match the width of the first note. If you prefer stacked notes to have even widths, use the
Notes ▸ Make Same Widthcommand. - The Sparkle framework, used to check for and install upgrades for the direct-sale version, has been upgraded to the latest version. This should reduce excessive requests for update checks on some older systems.
- Added support for Apple Intelligence writing tools, which will be available to any Mac capable of enabling these features in macOS 15.1 and greater.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug whereby dragging two notes by their connection line would cause a crash in macOS 13 “Ventura”.
- Fixed issue with the cursor colour not following the board’s current foreground colour, causing it to become invisible in some cases.
- Fixed crash on adding new notes to connection lines that also contain labels, in .scap files that were originally created with the Windows version.
- Fixed a bug that could cause some boards to silently fail to load.
- Fixed a bug and would cause some boards to not save, throwing an error dialogue stating that “there was a problem creating the XML data”.
- Fixed issue with connection labels printing and exporting to PDF as white-on-white if the board itself was dark and the Default Color was cleared.
- Modified inspector’s behaviour to end the editing of notes when it is opened, to avoid issues with modifying a notes appearance while it is being actively edited.
- Fixed a crash whereby typing a ‘dead key’, such as
´, meant to be combined with a letter, likeé, would cause a crash if typed into a board without a note open for editing. - Fixed issues where stack order was corrupted by array ordering, where stack order sometimes produced unexpected results.
- Fixed a display bug which would cause exception reporting to use black text on dark grey, when in Dark Mode.
- Fix issue where dragging an image note could lead to the app hanging for several seconds.
- Fixed bug whereby multi-byte fonts, such as Japanese or Korean, would not properly hold inline formatting applied to portions of the text within a note.
- Fixed bug that would cause stacks to break formation, when editing notes within them that contain multiple lines.
- GUI layout fixed in the RTF and RTFD export dialogues.
- Fixed bug whereby notes containing more than one line would not auto-fit after editing the note, when applicable.
- Optimisations have been made to overall board drawing speeds, which should improving stuttering and lag, which could be seen when scrolling, panning and zooming.
- Fixed bug in style storage and application whereby the Size attribute was not properly read when loading an existing board, and would be subsequently lost once saved.