Scythebill 20.2: Scythebill for Android!

Scythebill 20.2 is now available, with . As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Update Sept. 8: 20.2.2 is now out. It fixes the "Send to phone" feature on MacOS, and adds some further performance improvements.

Scythebill for Android!

I've gotten lots of questions over the years whether I'll ever support Scythebill on phones. The answer today is, partly, yes! Scythebill for Android is now available.

This is not a data entry app (at least, not yet). What it helps you with is answering questions in the field like "when was the last time I saw that species?" or "have I photographed it?" or "do I need that for the ABA region?" It gives you a basic version of "Browse by species" and "Show reports", right on your phone, with no need for an internet connection. As always, this is all free, and you don't need to create an account.

Just install the Scythebill app on your phone, then send your .bsxm to your phone. You could copy the .bsxm file manually to your phone (downloading from the cloud, or emailing it to yourself), or you can use the new "Send to phone" feature in Scythebill 20.2. Select "Send to phone..." in the File menu - you'll get a QR code, like below. Then, from the Scythebill Android app, use "Receive from desktop...", scan the QR code, and (after a brief pause) done! (You do need your phone and desktop to be on the same Wi-Fi network.)

(And for iOS users of iPhones and iPads... nothing to announce yet - no promises, but I'm looking into it.)

Better species information

The last release added a new bit of interface that let you bring up species information, everywhere you see a species. The new version makes that much easier to bring up and keep up, and shows you even more information.

Any time you've got an item selected with a circled I icon - ⓘ -, just tap the "I" key, and it'll pop up. Tap I again, and it'll go away. But - even better - you can use the up and down arrow keys, and it'll stay visible! So you can rapidly view species information for a lot of species at once.

But wait, there's more! There's more information now in the species information popup:

The popup shows all groups and subspecies and their ranges, all in one place. And there's a little "copy" icon in the upper-right - click that, and all the content will be copied to the clipboard.

Something else...

There's a small feature which I'll just leave as a surprise. You'll know it when you see it.

Fixes and small improvements

• Some aspects of using Scythebill should be much faster, especially if you've got a large list with many locations.
• The "Type a species name" boxes didn't show a full list of names in some cases when using anything other than Americna English species names.
• Trip reports now have a "Lifers in bold?" option
• Trip reports generally do a better job now when they're generated across multiple trips
• An error message that could appear after merging locations has been fixed
• There's a new "Daily" option for backup frequency. (Scythebill will still only back up if something has changed since the previous backup.)