On Micro.blog for macOS, the application can now display a preview of your post using your blog theme. To do this, check Use blog theme in the preview window:

Auto-generated description: A software interface provides instructions on enabling a live blog preview within a macOS application.

This is especially useful if you post code snippets in markdown and want to make sure you got the right syntax highlighted.

By the way, to see the latest changes to the macOS Micro.blog app, look under Micro.blog for Mac in the Micro.blog help forms.

More on the macOS application:

Under View, you also have the option to turn on Summary. The Summary can be written manually or generated by AI, if you have turned on AI assistance for your blog.

Auto-generated description: A screenshot shows a step-by-step guide on enabling the summary field in the Micro.blog app, with red arrows highlighting relevant menu options.

On the web, the Summary is under your post text. You need to select it to expand it and view the text field, with the Generate option for AI underneath:

Auto-generated description: A text editing interface for creating blog posts is shown with options for entering a title and summary, featuring buttons for generating text and publishing.

The AI writes summaries in a factual third-person kind of way; I find that I prefer to use my own summaries. However, for long posts (especially if I write them in parts over a couple of days) I find that it’s helpful to use it just to remember what I was yapping about, and then rewrite it as a human.

Summaries are important when you cross-post to Mastodon or Bluesky: these become the posts that will show there with a link to your full posts. No more posts that cut mid-sentence once you reach the character limit on these social networks.

Speaking of AI assistance, selecting Copy HTML on images, both on the web and the macOS versions, will now copy the HTML for the image with the AI-generated alt description for the image directly. You don’t need to go into the uploads section of your blog and find the image again with the embedded code. The AI-generated alt descriptions will start with “Auto-generated description” to ensure your readers know AI generated them.

I find that the AI-generated descriptions are especially good for photos, and often don’t need retouching. This is great if you take quick posts and attach a single image with the image button, especially on your mobile device, as the description will be included in your post.