Roadmap: iOS13 and what's coming next

victor · August 16, 2019, 6:00pm

With the presentation of the new features coming to iOS 13 (specially for iPad) in September, we wanted to take the opportunity to share with you what our plans are in the short-term (next couple of releases) and how are we planning to support iOS13.

Current roadmap

Panels 1.10.9

We have been working on preloading next pages. The current version in the store (Panels 1.10.8) did already add a huge boost in performance. Panels 1.10.9 will preload the next page which will give you a smoother experience when flipping pages. This version will also include minor bug fixings (rotation library layout, sync problems…).

Next version(s)

We have been planing this release for a long time. We are super excited about these changes. It will be a lot of work but we think it will pay off. We have already started with it and hopefully you will receive a beta very soon.
All changes are related to the library. We want to organize things better and for that reason we will introduce a tab bar.

Designs are not final, just mockups

The first tab will be a new and improved Recent (or current). Having a full screen for it (not just a section) will allow us to implemente better and more powerful features in the future. The recent section proved that people really use it, specially those of you that have very big libraries.

We will move search to its own screen as well as a new dedicated download section. This will include import sources and inbox. The inbox will show current downloads so you will no more have a single download bar but a full screen showing you which comic is being download.

In addition, we want to add individual actions to each comic (mark as read, unread, delete, rename…) as well as bulk actions.

We are haven’t still decided if all these changes will come in one big release or will be released in smaller releases.

Double page reader

We want to bring this reader to life soon. We know a lot of you are asking for it. However we are having a technical difficulties. We can’t just join 2 pages together because it won’t work for some comics (some of them are already landscape, others are portrait but a few pages inside are scanned together…). It is not as easy as it might look. We need to scan the comic beforehand and this process takes some time. We will continue working on it but we can’t commit to anything at this time.

iOS 13

We are very excited about iOS13 and we want to support a ton of features for it (dark mode, keyboard support, external hdd, etc).
We will of course add all these features but do not expect them on release date. We have already a ton of work to improve Panels and supporting iOS13 will take some time. We are only 2 devs working on our free time, so please bear with us.

We hope we can share some more details soon and new beta versions including some of those features.

Please feel free to share any feedback

victor · August 18, 2019, 6:01pm

Panels for mac

I forgot to mention that we are very excited about the possibility of bringing panels to the mac, thanks to Catalyst (apple framework added in Catalina).
We will work on that but it won’t be until the iPad iOS13 version is in a good shape. MacOS can run iPad apps (with some tweaks) but it isn’t as easy as pressing an export button.
We want to offer the best desktop experience but will take some time.
We can’t wait to see Panels running on MacOS and we hope you are excited too.

SD_E · December 12, 2019, 1:24pm

I actually use panel pro version on my iPhone and would like to use on my Mac . It would be really awesome. can’t wait ^^

vandycamp · April 16, 2020, 2:53am

Panels for Mac would be amazing if you could create a reading list/order on the Mac and export this to iPad. The use case I’m thinking of is a long list of issues like Civil War https://comicbookreadingorders.com/marvel/events/civil-war-ii-reading-order/
Any organization features added to the Mac version would be very welcome as well.

SD_E · November 28, 2020, 7:19pm

Hello Victor! Well, sice iPad version of the app seem in a good shape, how about the Mac version? Considering Big Sur also released and support iOS apps on MacOs? Anyway, thanks for all the support, this is the best app on my iphone and can’t wait to use it on my MacBook Pro

victor · November 29, 2020, 3:17pm

We are also very excited about Panels for mac. However, it won’t be a direct port from the iOS app.
Panels for mac will come at some point in the future but it will take some time to develop. We are only 2 devs working on it in our spare time and we still need to make improvements on the iOS app that will make the mac app easier for us to develop.

We want to make a great mac app and we hope the waiting will be worth it!

dani · March 31, 2023, 8:59am

We have no plans to do so because the app doesn’t work correctly on Mac using the Apple Silicon compatibility layer (“Designed for iPad”).

The design breaks, the app doesn’t have access to the file system as you would expect on a Mac app (because it runs on a container), and many more. We have done a few tests, and are not happy with the result. We don’t want to spend time patching the “Designed for iPad” because we can spend that time building the Mac app.

Actually, Catalyst is the technology we are using to develop the app on Mac, but it’s not a compatibility layer like the Apple Silicon one. There is no such thing as “run the app via Catalyst”. Catalyst is a set of APIs to translate UIKit (iOS) calls to low-level Mac APIs. But the code needs to be adapted manually to work on Mac.
Even though “Designed for iPad” uses Catalyst under the hood, it’s an emulation of the iPad environment confined to a window. They behave very differently.

Here’s some information about the differences in case anyone is interested.