ScreeningRoom Revisited

Far too long ago I announced a major new version of ScreeningRoom, thinking that its release was both just around the corner and that it was unquestionably better in all ways. I was wrong on both counts. I heard from beta testers that they were still using the previous version because the menu bar functionality was critical, even with some of the bugs.

After mulling things over I decided to bring the improvements from V2 back to the V1 app. What this means in practice is the latest update still lives in the menu bar, but the underlying preview framework is all new.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

One of the most important changes and fixes is to the crosshair. The positioning bug has been fixed, no longer will the crosshair run off of edge of the preview. Another change here is the crosshair always tracks the mouse, even when the previews are paused and the lines run across the entire preview area, not just the display the mouse is in. This makes locating the cursor even easier.

The preview windows have also been rebuilt from the ground up. The popover now has a toolbar at the bottom with playback controls for quickly starting and stopping all displays. You can create separate windows for each display from the Display icon, which also has individual playback controls. Each preview window has independent playback control, even for the same display.

New Features

There are also a couple of new features, that weren't even available in the V2 beta that pertain to how new windows behave.

The first is "Play streams by default", which does what it says on the tin. If you want to quickly see another screen you can now have the preview appear already playing the screens, no need to start them manually.

Second is an option to hide the main display by default. In most cases the main display is the one screen you can always see, so having it show up in the preview isn't terribly useful. This preference takes care of that.

Availability

The update is rolling out now and should show up automatically in the next day, and is also available to download from the website. If you haven't yet tried ScreeningRoom a full-featured 14-day trial is available.