AppAddict

Cheatsheet - Mac, iOS, WatchOS

I have hundreds of contacts and I know almost no phone numbers. My job requires me to gain entrance to numerous rooms secured with keypad combinations. Remembering hotel room numbers is always a challenge. Don't put a gun to my head and ask me the license plated of my wife's car. My solution for quickly referencing these little pieces of information regardless of whether my phone or computer is in reach or not is Cheatsheet, a synchronized notes app I that allows me to enter information on my computer or phone that I can easily get to from any device,...

January 10th, 2025 Universal Apps

Datacever - Simple Data Control When You Have to Tether Your Mac

I don't know about you, but whenever I have to tether my laptop to my iPhone, I get nervous about the possibility of some unknown process running in the background and chewing up my data. Even though my mobile provider calls my plan unlimited, I know that there are always gotchas. I tried TripMode a while back, but it was overly complex for my needs, with more settings and options than I wanted to mess with. I recently found a much simpler menu bar app that I prefer for its simplicity and ease of use. Datacever by developer sameh sayed...

January 9th, 2025 Mac Apps

Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos

The command like application, FFmpeg is remarkably powerful but it is also overly complicated for people who don't use the terminal much or who don't have the headspace to memorize a bunch of esoteric commands. Thankfully, there are some good front ends. Lossless Cut is one whose main feature is specifically lossless trimming and cutting of video and audio files, which is great for saving space by rough-cutting your large video files taken from a video camera. It is extremely fast, allowing you to trim the video without having a loss of quality caused by having to do (slow) any...

January 8th, 2025 Mac Apps

Open Source Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means When It Comes To Safety

“What about open-source software?" I hear you say. "I'll just review the source code and determine whether it's malicious".” "I would make several points in response to this. The first is: "LOL". Any nontrivial program consists of hundreds of thousands to millions of lines of code, and reviewing any fraction of that in a reasonable period of time is simply impractical. The way you can tell this is that people are constantly finding vulnerabilities in programs, and if it were straightforward to find those vulnerabilities, then we would have found them all" From - Why it's hard to trust software,...

January 7th, 2025

Radarr - Movie collection manager for Legal Usenet and BitTorrent users

When I was a younger man, I'll admit to living the pirate life for music and movies. I was around for the original Napster and the birth of BitTorrent. That all came to a screeching halt one weekend when I sat down at my computer and couldn't connect to the internet. I called tech support, and the stern-sounding lady on the phone told me to go to my computer and read what was on the screen. It basically said, "If I ever download something illegally again, my Internet will be turned off forever." There was one checkbox, and it just...

January 7th, 2025 Mac Apps

Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

The easiest way to share files between computers or with other users is through a commercial cloud service like iCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive. The problem with using those services is that your data passes through someone else's computer. If you are sharing apple pie recipes with your Aunt Sue, that's not a problem, but if your data is ultra-private documents like financial records, proprietary business information or the like, you should consider a product like Resilio Sync, formerly a commercial product, now free for personal use. Resilio Sync allows you to sync data between computers and to selectively share...

January 6th, 2025 Universal Apps

Making App Wishlists

Because I like checking out new to me software and writing about it, I usually install something new just about every day. Reading r/MacApps and lots of other software discovery sites is how I find new apps. I've experimented with several different ways to keep lists of apps I want to check out and here are a few of my favorites. • Listy - A Private List Manager - this is good for both iOS apps and macOS apps. It tracks whether you've downloaded the app or not and gives you info on the app rating, category and developer as...

January 5th, 2025 Universal Apps

Putting Mac Apps to Work - Image Management Workflow for Writers

In blogging and in creating instructional documents at work, I go through plenty of screenshots, stock photography and open-source images from the web. In the course of crafting a single blog post, I might use four or five apps. For screenshots, I use CleanShotX which I call from a keyboard shortcut or the menu bar. It also does annotation. The files are saved to my default screenshot folder that lives on a cloud drive so that I can readily access it from all my computers and devices. When the file is saved, it activates Clop which optimizes the file size...

January 4th, 2025 Mac Apps

SwitchResX - Granular Resolution Control

As multiple monitors become more and more common and as the typical user is much more likely to use a laptop than a desktop, dealing with screen resolutions for different use cases becomes more and more problematic if your Mac is an "everything" device where you game, watch movies and get work done. SwitchResXi s a preference pane utility (with an additional menu bar interface) that has various useful functions for resolution management. SwitchResX Functions• Save desktop layouts for any resolution. No more having to rearrange things when connecting a second monitor. • Automatically switch resolutions when launching any app...

January 3rd, 2025 Mac Apps

Replacicon - Customize Your Mac

Mac users are notorious for being sticklers for aesthetics. Luckily, customizing the appearance of your device is made easier by various third-party utilities. One of those is Replacicon, an outstanding app that maintains a constantly updating catalog of alternate icons for your installed applications. The Replacicon interface shows an alphabetic list of your installed apps that you can filter in different ways, showing only the apps in your dock or by permanently hiding apps you don't want to see listed. It shows you each app's current and legacy icons, allowing you to hide the current icon if you choose. If...

January 2nd, 2025 Mac Apps

Quotemarks - Quote Notebook

I have collected quotes for years. When I'm reading a book, watching a movie or listening to music, if I come across a line I want to remember I write it down. Years ago, the developers at Lickability made an app called Quotebook for iOS that was specifically designed for quote collectors, but it was removed from the App Store in 2016 - although for anyone who still has a copy it is fully functional in iOS 18! I've looked all over for a suitable replacement, and the closest I've found is Quotemarks from indy developer Christopher Hale. It is...

January 1st, 2025 Universal Apps

Mac Automation Roundup

I'm a big fan of automation apps for macOS but I'll admit, even the best ones can have a steep learning curve. If you've loaded up at the App Store, you might not even know which app performs a task the best since some of them have overlapping features. You might also have a desire to get into Mac automation but the price of some of the apps makes them an investment rather than a casual purchase. Here is a roundup of information to help veterans and newcomers alike with becoming more productive. Keyboard Maestro My Top 10 Keyboard Maestro...

December 31st, 2024 Mac Apps

OpenVibe - Free Social Thread Aggregator

OpenVibe is a social media aggregator for some of the decentralized networks that use Activity Pub, Blockchain and the AT protocol. In this case, that means Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Nostr. OpenVibe users can see a consolidated timeline from all four services and when they post, the post is sent to each service. You cal alternatively see the timeline from a single service if you choose. There are some unique benefits to using OpenVibe. • If you have a comprehensive list of blocked words and phrases built on a single platform, you can use that list to moderate all the...

December 30th, 2024 Universal Apps

Bartender - Still Best in Class

For years, Bartender was one of the most highly recommended utility apps in the Mac space. There were many highly complementary recommended reviews in the tech press and from satisfied users. All of that came crashing to a halt in 2024 when the original developer cashed out and sold the app to new owners without anyone immediately disclosing the sale. Because menu mar managers like Bartender require screen recording permissions, security minded users were justifiably alarmed but the tin foil hat brigade lost their minds. All kinds of nefarious plots and schemes were pitched (the commies, spyware, price increases, subscriptions...

December 29th, 2024 Mac Apps

FileBrowser Pro - For File Intensive Network Connected Workflows

If you do a lot of file based work on iOS or you need to consistently connect to network and cloud servers from an iPhone or iPad, FileBrowser Professional might be the solution for you. With it, you can connect to the following cloud storage services • Microsoft OneDrive • Microsoft OneDrive for Business • Microsoft SharePoint 2013 or later • Box.com • Google Drive (including TeamDrive) • Dropbox (including Dropbox for Business) • Backblaze B2 • Amazon S3 • pCloud • Digital Ocean • FileBase S3 • iDrive Cloud S3 • Wasabi S3 Additionally you can connect to •...

December 28th, 2024 iOS Apps