AppAddict

IINA - Free and Open-Source Video Player

I have been installing VLC on computers at work for over 20 years, it's been a standard part of the image in K12 and higher ed schools for such a long time because it just works. You can throw just about any type of video file at it and VLC will play it. Whenever someone tries to use something else and runs into a problem, I generally won't help them unless they try to use VLC first. So, you can imagine that I was rather dubious when I first encountered IINA, a free and open-source video and audio player....

September 20th, 2024 Mac Apps

Neat Download Manager

When it comes to downloading from the internet there are several different scenarios. There is downloading torrent files and their payloads which requires a special application like Folx or qbittorrent to manage. Then there are specialized downloaders for video/audio content like Downie and ClipGrab. Then there are the run of the mill downloads usually handled by your browser. In some instances, though, you may want to consider an app like Neat Download Manager to gain a few benefits. Here is what Neat can do for you: • Speed up downloads by segmenting the file and using your total available bandwidth...

September 19th, 2024 Mac Apps

The Time Machine Mechanic

I have been using a Backup Status widget to keep track of my Time machine backups but with the release of Sequoia it has stopped functioning. The next best tool in my arsenal to monitor backups is The Time Machine Mechanic, a free utility from the Eclectic Light Company. The Time Machine Mechanic is designed to work on computers with an attached Time Machine Drive performing hourly or daily backups. It translates system logs and gives you information on: • Errors • Backup regularity • Free space • Number and size of files backed up If you download from the...

September 18th, 2024 Mac Apps

Whatever Happened to Evernote

Evernote was once a giant of an app, beloved by millions and one of the first cross platform tools to achieve widespread use. The productivity culture adored it and people like Tiago Forte, the author Building a Second Brain, made it central to their methodology. The company was sold to Italian developers Bending in Spoons in 2022, firing almost all of the US staff. It went incommunicado for months. Evernote's dwindling user base didn't know what to do. When the company did begin to communicate again, it was to announce a gargantuan price hike and the gutting of their once...

September 17th, 2024

Cork for Homebrew

I've been experimenting with GUI apps for Homebrew this year. Whenever I've posted about them, other have encouraged me to try Cork, by independent developer David Bureš, and so I purchased a license a few weeks ago and I have been using it ever since. Installation was straightforward but I learned as I was setting it up that even though I have an M2 MBA, I was still running Homebrew for Intel because I used Migration Assistant from a 2020 MBP Pro to set things up when I first got the MBA. I was able to generate a brewfile (a...

September 16th, 2024 Mac Apps

iTerm - You Don't Have to Be a Developer to Use It

I'm not a developer but I do like to use Homebrew and make tweaks to my system that require frequent use of the Terminal. I'm a long-time user of iTerm 2 which is perfect for a user like me. Some of the features I enjoy are: • Finder integration via Services menu • Split panes (inactive pane is dimmed) • Open a dedicated Terminal window with a hotkey from within any other app • Robust search with highlighting and regular expressions • Autocomplete • Copy mode (with keyboard) • Paste history • Replay mode to see text erased from what's...

September 15th, 2024 Mac Apps

Five Free Single Purpose Apps

• Dockey is an app that controls a few dock preferences: position, show/hide, animation speed, show/hide speed. Some of these choices are available in System settings. Others require you to run a terminal command unless you use something like Dockey. • Hyperduck by indy developer Sindre Sorhus is an app that will let you send links from any app on your phone via the share sheet to the default browser on your Mac. The only thing you have to do on your Mac is open the browser, something that you're going to do anyway. It has one more superpower, the...

September 14th, 2024 Mac Apps

Noizio - A Background Sound App for Mac

I recently discovered an app that I use on my iMac at work for background sounds. Noizio, an app from developer Kyrylo Kovalin has a free and paid version. the free version offers five nature sounds that can be combined into 25 distinct tracks. The paid version is $9.99 in the Mac App Store (also available on Setapp). The paid version has 40 different sounds: Birds in Park, Blue Whales, Campfire, City Street, Clock, Deep Space, Desert, Farm, Frogs and Crickets, Ghosty, Heartbeat, Inside Train, Keyboard Typing, Kitty Purr, Magical Chimes, Night Owls, October Rain, Old Typewriter, Paris, Cafe, Pink...

September 13th, 2024 Mac Apps

XnConvert - Free Batch Image Converter and Editor

XnConvert is a free and powerful application for batch editing and conversion of graphics files. It can handle 500 different kinds of input files and it outputs over 70 different formats. It allows you to save any task sequence of combined settings to include edits, output format, naming convention and output location. You can perform batch operations of over 80 actions. Some of the image modifications include:• Cropping • Resizing • Watermarking • Clearing metadata Mapping edits include:• White balance • Saturation • Contrast • Sepia Filters Include:• Sharpen • Unsharp mask • Edge Detection • Gaussian Blur Miscellaneous edits...

September 12th, 2024 Mac Apps

Wins Has Window Management and More

I've never found a use for most window management tools. I work on a laptop at home and run most apps maximized. At work I have two gigantic displays and in instances where I need to reference two apps at once, I just slide over to the other display. There are times however when I want to be able to get to my desktop quickly and when I want a single app display with no distraction. Additionally, I have been using an app called DockDoor to view the open windows of apps in the dock, a feature that's included in...

September 11th, 2024 Mac Apps

Badgeify - Notifications in Your Menu Bar

In today's connected environment notifications can be vital or they can be an unwelcome hinderance. It's different for each individual. Personally, I don't get so many that it interferes with my work, and I prefer to find out someone is attempting to contact me as soon as possible. I operate my Macs with the dock hidden, so relying on notifications there isn't useful to me. Badgeify, a freemium app from Techflow Studio Limited provides a menu bar-based notification system I find useful. Any app that uses the Mac notification system can be added to Badgeify. In my own use case,...

September 10th, 2024 Mac Apps

Try PDF Gear, It's Good, It's Free

When it comes to PDF software, people have very different needs. Some casual users may want nothing more than the ability to make a few notes and occasionally combine documents, while those working in legal offices are very, very particular about how their PDFs look on screen and when printed, with details like fonts, bolding and italics being very important. The corporate king of PDF editors is Adobe Acrobat Professional but it has a number of drawbacks. It's expensive, huge and like all adobe products invasive and hard to get rid of. I am not a fan. I am very...

September 9th, 2024 Universal Apps

Activity Watch - Free No Effort Time Tracker

Activity Watch is a free no effort time tracker that can keep track of how long you use every app on you Mac while running in the background. You can categorize your apps so that you can see how much time you spent working, gaming, choosing music or watching video. There are browser extensions that work with it to break down your time per tab if you desire that kind of granularity. The app runs in the background and the results can be viewed in your browser at localhost:5600. It is open source, cross platform, privacy first and a great...

September 8th, 2024

Topgrade - Upgrade All the Things

One of the more useful Homebrew apps I've found is topgrade-rs, the currently maintained fork of topgrade, an updater for Homebrew, the Mac App Store, MacOS, VSCode extensions and Rust. It is supremely easy to use. Just enter the command topgrade in Terminal and sit back while it does the upgrades, starting with Homebrew, Homebrew formulae and casks. Next it moves onto the Mac App Store. You can run Mac App Store commands separately and there are a few bugs to note there. If the MAS database for version number does not match what the app actually has, then the...

September 7th, 2024

Haste - A Web Search Utility

Haste, by Plastic Software, is a keyboard centric search utility that can access a wide variety of websites without you having to manually switch to your browser and type a URL or access a bookmark. You activate the search by tapping the command key twice. Then you enter the text for the search criteria and use the arrow keys or a hotkey combo to pick the site where you want to conduct the search. If you copy something to your clipboard and immediately invoke Haste, the copied text will automatically be entered as your search term. Haste comes preconfigured with...

September 6th, 2024 Mac Apps