There’s a brand new version of Chronicle available, and it adds some great new features and exciting changes to Chronicle’s pricing. The key things to note:
- The Chronicle Pro subscription now covers all versions of Chronicle—Mac, iPhone and iPad. If you’re already subscribed, this new update is completely free.
- There’s a new, totally re-written and re-designed version of Chronicle available in the Mac App Store.
- The new Mac App only supports Chronicle Cloud for syncing (more on this below), so if you want to continue using iCloud, keep using the current Chronicle Pro for Mac, which will continue to be updated.
Chronicle’s New Interface
Chronicle 10’s biggest change is a completely new interface. We’ve made everything faster and easier to access.
The new 3-pane interface takes advantage of the new sidebar style in macOS Big Sur that can be quickly hidden when you want to maximize your content space. Unlike previous versions of Chronicle, everything is now contained in a single, simple window, and accessible from the unified sidebar.
Plus, selecting a bill to view all the details never takes you away from the main screen, so you can more quickly process multiple bills.
As you navigate the interface, you’ll find that every part of it has been refined, simplified, and made more intuitive.
All New Reports
Chronicle’s brand new Reports section houses new or updated versions of all Chronicle Pro’s previous reports.
For example, the all new Monthly History report shows you a monthly list of totals of all your payments. You can also see a side-by-side comparison of how much you’ve spent this month compared to last year.
Forecast is also completely new, with a graph showing your upcoming bills for the next 12 months.
New Features for Bills
It’s not just graphics—Chronicle also has many under-the-hood changes. A new under-the-hood framework for working with bills is going to provide Chronicle with many new features going forward. Key new features right now are:
- End Dates: You can now enter an end-date for a bill, and Chronicle will auto-archive the bill on that date. End dates are also taken into account for the Forecast. In the future, we’ll doing more with this concept, including handling special financing periods and free trial periods.
- New Last Day of Month Repeat Interval—perfect for the Apple Card, this repeat interval ensures your bill always repeats on the last day of the month!
Compatibility
As mentioned, Chronicle 10 will only work with Chronicle Cloud. To ensure compatibility with the latest features, make sure to update your iPhone and iPad to version 12.8, and Chronicle Pro for Mac needs to be updated to version 9.8. If you use an older version.
Why a Subscription, and Why Chronicle Cloud?
We’ve decided to switch to Chronicle Cloud exclusively for this version for several reasons.
First, it has proved much more reliable. We don’t see the same kinds of intermittent sync problems we see with iCloud. For a long time, our most common support problem has been people forgetting which sync method they are using, activating the wrong one, or other problems related to having two sync methods. Having just one will make things easier.
Second, it allows us to offer more features, like sharing your bills with a partner. We had looked into trying to support sharing over iCloud a while back, but found it buggy and cumbersome for an app like Chronicle, where Chronicle Cloud just works.
Third, it allows us to offer the Mac app at no additional cost. A big portion of our revenue has always been Chronicle for Mac. But selling both a subscription to the iPhone version, and a separate cost for the Mac app confuses people. By switching to a subscription, we can make it possible for people to pay one price and get access to all apps, without any upgrade costs, ever.
What If I Want to Keep Using iCloud, or Don’t Want a Subscription?
We are continuing to support iCloud sync in the iPhone and iPad versions. In addition, the Mac version of Chronicle Pro (version 9.8 currently) continues to support iCloud. It will continue to be updated for compatibility, and to fix bugs.
In fact, the latest update for Chronicle Pro for Mac, which came out today, ensures compatibility with the latest versions of Chronicle, increases compatibility with macOS Big Sur and makes several visual fixes, and is also now a universal app, native on both Intel and Apple Silicon.
Whew! This was a big release, and if you made it this far, thanks for reading! As always, remember Chronicle doesn’t interrupt you to ask you to review it, so please, if you like it, leave a review in the App Store. It really helps.
If you have any questions or problems, you can contact us.