Important: If you update to Agenda 15 on your Mac, iPhone or iPad, you need to do so for all your synced devices.
Adding a splash of color
There are two kinds of updates we make for Agenda, those that bring innovative new features like the action feature in Agenda 14, and those that bring the features you have been asking for since the beginning. Agenda 15 falls in the latter category: the ability to highlight and change the color of text in your notes to make them stand out better has been one of the most popular requests. We laid the groundwork for this in the previous update, and have made the feature behave in the familiar way that you format text in Agenda.
Another popular color related request was the ability to have code snippets with syntax coloring in the programming language of your choice. This is now possible as well, with support for more than 160 of the most popular languages included. A big shoutout and thanks to the wonderful work of the people behind Highlight.js, which is what powers this feature.
While we were at it, we also added the block quote paragraph style, which you might be familiar with from email conversations. It makes for a nicer way to distinguish between things you wrote and things you copied from elsewhere or were said by somebody else.
You can see it all in action in the screenshot below:
Agenda 15 allows you to highlight and change the color of text in your notes. It also allows you to change the font that is used for your notes and adds block quotes and syntax highlighting of code fragments:
Fondness for fonts
Many of us have a love/hate relationship with fonts. Any given font can be loved by some, and hated by others. Agenda by default uses Avenir Next, a font we love, and is a part of Agenda’s personality, but not everybody likes it — we have had many requests for the ability to change it to something else. In Agenda 15 we added a premium feature which allows you to pick from a curated list of alternatives that might fit your style better. For instance, in the screenshot below, you can see what our example notes look like when you choose the system font:
Staying current
Agenda 15 is not just about long standing requests though. Every year Apple releases its own major updates to macOS, iOS and iPadOS. This year they threw us a bit of a curveball when they decided to release iOS16, macOS13 and iPadOS16 at different times. It meant that some of the exciting new things @drewmccormack has been working on will have to wait until the next update (watch our YouTube video to find out more if you’re curious). Fortunately, it was not too late to add support for some of the new iOS16 features into Agenda 15, like the ability to place widgets on the Lock Screen:
Laser focused
Another new feature in iOS16 — and coming later this year with macOS13 — is Focus Filters. These allow you to only show the Agenda categories that make sense for the current system focus setting. For example, for the “Work” focus, you could choose to only show the projects in the “Work” category from Agenda:
Taking a shortcut
Finally, we added a number of Shortcuts that you’ll find in the Shortcuts app, which allow you to automate Agenda and integrate it with other apps in both simple and complex workflows. It’s an extension of the x-callback urls that we have supported for a while. The Shortcuts support makes automation more user friendly, and also way more powerful in some areas, especially if you want to get content from Agenda into other apps.
If you want to learn more about automating Agenda, how to use these Shortcuts, and what you can do with them, be sure to keep an eye on the Shortcuts section in this community, where we’ll be posting more info, and where you can get help from fellow users and share the workflows you’ve created.
Important: Agenda’s Shortcut support is a work in progress. We’ll be adding new possibilities, and fixing issues in updates to come. Agenda 15 is a start, and we’re curious to hear what works and doesn’t work, what additions you’d like to see, etc. We’re curious to hear your feedback in the Shortcuts section of this community.
Up- and onwards
As we mentioned in the beginning, we try to have an update mix of unexpectedly cool new features, as well as popular requests. Agenda 16 will be fall under the former, and will ship soon, alongside the macOS13 release. Beyond that, we have started working on one of the most popular feature requests for the update following, so there is lots to be looking forward to.
In the meantime, be sure to update to Agenda 15 and check out the YouTube video we made that walks through everything mentioned above:
And if you love Agenda 15 and would like to support our work, the best way to do so is by buying it’s premium features. It will give you a great set of additional and powerful features while allowing us to keep making Agenda better. And the best thing is, the features you buy are yours to keep forever.
Enjoy Agenda version 15, and let us know what you think!
Alex & Drew
PS The complete release notes of Agenda 15 can be found here…