Unite Pro 1.3
BZG has updated Unite Pro to version 1.3, adding a new Control-click option that lets you open links directly in your default browser. The site-specific browser also adds Terminal URL support to Sidebar Mode, improves support for Cloudflare and Akamai security prompts (so protected websites work more reliably inside Unite apps), improves general WebKit performance (with noticeable gains when viewing YouTube), refines notification permission handling so that choices persist more reliably between sessions, fixes a bug where forwarded links in Sidebar Mode could leave behind a phantom tab, resolves an issue where some icons would not generate correctly, and fixes a bug that prevented some websites (such as SharePoint) from correctly opening links in new tabs. ($39.99 new with a 20% discount for TidBITS members, 35%-off upgrade for previous owners, free update, available on Setapp, 34.3 MB, release notes, macOS 15+)
I had not heard of Unite Pro previously: what do people actually do with it? I’m sure I’m missing something, but turning a website into an app doesn’t seem to give much benefit. Would love to hear some real world examples of why this would be useful.
I don’t use Unite, but I have used site-specific browsers for monitoring. Right now, for example, I have one of my three monitors dedicated to my Home Assistant dashboard so I can monitor the performance of my solar plant. At a glance I can see things like the state of charge of the house and car batteries and snapshots from surveillance cameras. I could do that with a dedicated window in my main browser, but that gets messed up when links open in the wrong window or when I go full-screen in another browser window. (The HA dashboard is open full screen and floating on top, so it’s always there and visible regardless of how much clutter I allow to accumulate elsewhere on my desktop.)
Though I have used SSB software for this in the past, right now I’m just running a dedicated copy of an open-source browser (LibreWolf) as I’m using GNU/Linux, not macOS. An SSB would have advantages, but I haven’t felt enough pain to actually investigate my options.
We’ve written a bit about site-specific browsers over the years.
I don’t use them anymore because Arc eliminates the need for me.