The first BundleHunt
sale of 2026 kicked off today. This round is focused entirely on
lifetime licenses - no one-year subscriptions or short-term trials
disguised as deals. Update eligibility for major or minor releases still
varies by app, so always check the fine print before buying.⌘
In tech, big names rise fast and disappear just as quickly. When a
company sticks around for well over a decade, there's usually a reason.
BundleHunt has been doing its thing since 2010, offering a different
twist on software bundles: you build your own. That means you're not
forced into buying 30 apps just to get the three you actually want.⌘
Over the years, they've built a decent reputation for fixing problems
when a purchase doesn't work out, and I've picked up a few solid tools
there myself - including Keyboard Maestro, Mountain Duck, and Downie.
The catalog always includes lesser-known apps too, which is both fun and
dangerous. Affordable software has a way of convincing you that you
suddenly need something you'll never open again. Discipline
required.
Apps I Can Personally Vouch For
These aren't just random listings - they're legitimate contenders in
their categories.
TextSniper is one of
those deceptively simple utilities that ends up becoming part of your
daily workflow. It's an OCR tool that lets you grab text from almost
anywhere: videos, PDFs, presentations, screenshots, online courses -
basically anything visible on your screen.⌘
Draw a box around the text and it captures it. Rotation, odd angles, and
shadows usually aren't a problem. There's a handy option to remove line
breaks automatically, and an additive clipboard mode that makes
multi-step capture painless.
Real-world use case: grabbing command output from a video tutorial or
copying text from an app that inexplicably doesn't allow selection.
MacPilot is a system-tweaking utility with an almost absurd number of
options - over 1,100 tweaks at last count. Think of it as a centralized
control panel for settings Apple hides or spreads across plist files and
command-line flags.
A few examples of what it can do:
Calendar: change default event duration
Dock: enable single-app mode or window previews
Finder: enable "Quit Finder"
Launchpad: reset layout and control rows/columns
Music: enable half-star ratings
QuickTime: remember open movies on quit
Safari: restore backspace navigation
Screen Capture: change default file type
Spotlight: rebuild index
Terminal: focus follows mouse
Time Machine: disable automatic backup prompts
Power users will appreciate having everything in one place instead of
hunting down obscure terminal commands.
Lingon Pro has been around for more than two decades, which is
practically geological time in Mac utility years. It remains one of the
best GUI front-ends for launchd - the scheduling and background-task
system built into macOS.
You can create jobs that run:
whether your Mac is awake or asleep
whether you're logged in or not
with elevated privileges when needed
using keep-alive rules to restart failed tasks automatically
If you run scripts, backups, or maintenance tasks behind the scenes and
don't want to babysit cron files or plist syntax, this is one of the
cleanest ways to do it.
Infinidesk tries to solve desktop clutter by letting you create multiple
desktop environments, each with its own files, folders, and wallpaper.
Two modes stand out:
Classic Mode - one project-focused desktop across all Spaces
Follow Spaces Mode - desktop contents change automatically as you switch Spaces in Mission Control
If your Mac desktop becomes a dumping ground by noon every day, this
could be a surprisingly practical way to enforce structure without
changing your habits.
Rocket Typist has developed a loyal following fast. It's a text
expansion and snippet manager that regularly comes up in discussions
alongside TextExpander and Typinator - usually because it adds a few
modern touches those veterans don't emphasize.
Highlights include:
folders for organizing snippets
support for plain text, rich text, code, images, and AI-generated snippets
strong search and filtering for large libraries
If you live in repetitive text - support emails, documentation, or code
templates - tools like this pay for themselves quickly.
Bundle sales live in that weird intersection between smart bargain
hunting and impulsive software hoarding. The build-your-own model helps
keep things sane, but the temptation to pick up "just one more app" is
very real. Some might say it's an addiction.⌘
The practical approach: start with a specific workflow problem you're
trying to solve. If an app clearly fits that need - great. If not, leave
it in the cart and walk away. Your future self will thank you.⌘And if you're the kind of Mac user who enjoys experimenting without
committing to subscriptions, this is one of the cleaner opportunities to
stock up without the recurring-cost hangover.
The Result
As an App Addict, I enjoy testing new tools and watching indie developers invent clever ways to get things done. But collecting apps isn't the goal. The real satisfaction comes when those tools solve an actual problem.
Here’s a recent workflow I built using apps I’ve reviewed on this blog.
The Problem
I spend a fair amount of time in r/MacApps, on Mastodon, and in email threads talking software with other nerds. I’ve reviewed hundreds of apps, and I’m often asked for links to older posts.
Offline, I can search the Markdown files locally. But those files don’t include the public URLs. If someone asks for a link, I still have to go hunting.
On top of that, my blog tags are too broad to be genuinely helpful when I’m trying to surface something specific.
The friction wasn’t huge – but it was constant.
The Goal
I wanted two things:
A fully searchable offline index of all 469 reviews -- including their public URLs
An online, full-text--searchable index of the entire site without manually building one
No CMS rebuild. No new publishing platform. Just better infrastructure using tools I already trust.
The Tools
Integrity -- A free crawler that can extract every URL on a domain when configured correctly
A CSV editor like Delimited, Easy CSV, or (if you must) Excel or Google Sheets
The script converts the CSV into a Safari-compatible bookmarks file. Simple transformation, clean output.
4. Import into Raindrop.io
In Raindrop, I chose Import Bookmarks – not “Import File.”
That distinction matters. The bookmarks import preserves structure correctly.
Raindrop then pulled in every post.
5. Import into EagleFiler
In EagleFiler, I selected:
File → Import Bookmarks
EagleFiler fetched each URL and created a local web archive for every post.
No manual downloading. No copy/paste gymnastics.
The Result
Raindrop.io
Raindrop created a collection containing every post on my site.
Because it performs full-text indexing, searches aren’t limited to titles. I can search for an obscure phrase buried deep in an article and still surface the right post.
It also stores a permanent copy of each page. If my hosting provider disappears tomorrow, I still have an offsite archive.
EagleFiler
EagleFiler downloaded and archived every URL as a standalone web archive file.
A web archive is a single file containing the full page – text, images, links, styling. It’s searchable, portable, and completely offline.
Now I have:
Full-text search online (Raindrop)
Full-text search offline (EagleFiler)
Public URLs attached to every entry
Redundant archival copies
No rebuild. No database export. No new platform.
Just composable tools behaving like infrastructure.
Why Not Just…
…Use My CMS Search?
CMS search works until it doesn’t.
It requires being online, depends on whatever indexing logic your platform uses, and doesn’t give you a portable dataset you control.
I wanted something I could manipulate, migrate, or repurpose independently of my hosting stack.
…Search the Markdown Files Directly?
I can – and I do.
But Markdown files don’t include the canonical public URL. When someone asks for a link, I need that immediately.
This workflow preserves the published URLs alongside searchable content.
…Export the Database?
That’s fine if you’re running WordPress.
I’m not. And even if I were, a database dump is not a clean, portable, human-friendly index. It’s raw tables.
I wanted something that integrates with tools I already use daily.
…Use a Browser Bookmark Export?
That only captures what I’ve manually bookmarked.
I wanted a complete, authoritative list of everything published – no gaps and no reliance on memory.
Integrity gives me the ground truth.
…Install a Static Site Search Tool?
Client-side search libraries are great for readers.
This wasn’t about improving the reader experience. It was about fixing my own workflow across online search, offline access, and long-term archiving.
No new stack. No fragile automation. Just small tools composed intentionally.
The broader lesson here is simple: sometimes the right move isn’t adopting something bigger. It’s wiring together boring, reliable utilities until they quietly become infrastructure.
One of My Extra Bar Layouts
Since I installed Extra Bar on New Year's Eve, I have been systematically going through my automation apps, like RaycastKeyboard Maestro, Better Touch Tool, Hazel, and Apple Shortcuts to organize and consolidate the different ways I use them, since there is now a well thought out menu bar access application that can harness the power of all of them in an effective way. The developers of ExtraBar have been very responsive to feature requests from its user base, and a few recently added features are real game changers, particularly one that came out yesterday which allows you to create a menu item for anything on your computer that uses a global keyboard shortcut. You no longer have to find the deep link for the action you want to summon from extra bar.
If you have ever used an Elgato Stream Deck, the Extra Bar developers have basically created an application that mimics that, running in a space on your Mac where you can always access it.
Here’s a list of some of the things I currently can do from Extra Bar:
Batch launch all my applications in groups depending on the task at hand: writing, backup, software testing etc.
Open a new Finder window anywhere at any time by clicking a single function key.
Close all notifications in the Notification Center at one time.
Mark all unread mail in my Mail app as read
Mount network drives from my self-hosted server and unmount them.
Quit all open applications.
Run a Keyboard Maestro macro that allows me to pick from a list of any running application, including background applications, and restart it.
Restart the Finder with a hotkey
Toggle my desktop widgets hidden/shown
Search for Keyboard Maestro macros by name.
Activate the CleanShot X options for capturing a window, an area, running OCR on a screenshot, showing the history of my last ten screenshots, or using the all-in-one tool.
I'm currently running a system with three displays and twelve virtual desktops, and I have a folder in ExtraBar with a shortcut to each one.
Upload the image on my clipboard to OpenAI and have it return an alt text description I can use when posting to social media.
Automatically add today's weather and today's calendar events to my daily note in Obsidian.
Launch Activity Monitor.
Open Control Center.
Empty the trash.
Restart the keyboard maestro engine.
Restart my Menu Bar Manager.
Systematically close all applications, eject all network mounts and attached disks, and log out.
Restart my computer.
Access the bookmarks, history, open tabs, and settings for my browser.
Quickly add a task or project to my task manager and access the views I most commonly look at.
Automounter
I recently discovered an interesting utility called Automounter over at the always-useful Mac Menu Bar website. As the name suggests, Automounter connects you to network volumes automatically. That's handy for home-lab tinkerers and absolutely essential in many enterprise setups.
Automounter supports five protocols:
SMB
WebDAV
AFP
FTP (read-only)
NFS
In my testing, I mounted shares from just about everything I had lying around: a Debian 11 server, a Windows 11 workstation, an Unraid server, another Mac, and two WebDAV cloud services–Koofr and Kdrive. It handled all of them without complaint.
Automounter has a set of features that make it far more useful than a simple shell script or manually connecting through Finder:
Multiple Servers -- There's no limit on the number of shares or servers you can connect to. You can even create multiple connection profiles for the same server if you need different shares mounted under different conditions.
Mount Rules -- This is the killer feature. You can create rules that determine when a share should mount based on conditions such as Wi-Fi network name, running applications, VPN status, time of day, the presence of other volumes, and more.
Wake on LAN -- Exactly what it sounds like: Automounter can wake a sleeping server and then mount its shares automatically.
Mount Options -- Connect as a guest or authenticated user, and optionally hide mounted volumes from Finder. That last option is especially useful in education or managed enterprise environments.
Server Discovery -- Setup is refreshingly painless. You manually mount the shares you want Automounter to manage, and the app detects them automatically. It imports all the necessary connection details into profiles, which you can then edit--renaming shares to something that actually makes sense to you.
Rule Status -- If a share isn't mounted, Automounter will tell you exactly which condition isn't being met. No more guessing why a drive didn't connect.
Files, Apps, and Scripts -- Automation fans will love this. Automounter can launch apps, open files, or run scripts when a share mounts. You can trigger backups, fire off Hazel rules, or pass runtime variables (like the current share path) directly into script arguments.
Configuration Profiles -- For enterprise and education users, Automounter supports managed profiles that can be deployed to multiple machines and locked down to prevent user changes.
Years ago, I traveled between 20-plus sites, each with one or more Mac servers and multiple network shares. Keeping track of IP addresses, credentials, and share names was a constant headache. Automounter would have saved me an absurd amount of time and frustration.
In my current home-lab setup, it solves a different but equally real problem. Automounter reconnects my shares automatically when I switch Wi-Fi networks or reboot a server. Backup jobs that rely on network storage are suddenly effortless instead of fragile. It quietly removes a whole category of annoyances.
You can find more details on the developer’s website, where you can purchase the app and an optional helper utility required for some advanced features. It’s also available in the Mac App Store. The base app is $9.99, and the pro features (mainly the rules engine) are a $3.99 in-app purchase.
For anyone who deals with network shares on a regular basis–at home or at work–Automounter is one of those small utilities that will soon be indispensable.
Early in my career, I used to get annoyed when the old hands would wave away every automation problem with, “Just make a cron job.”
Cron dates back to the earliest days of Unix. It’s simple, dumb, and dependable: once a minute it checks a text file, and if a line in that file matches the current time, it runs the associated command. Like most Unix tools, it works great–once you learn the arcane scheduling syntax.
For example:
0 3 * * * /Users/amerpie/scripts/backup.sh
To cron, that means: run this script every day at 3:00 AM.**
Cron was designed for machines that live in server rooms–powered on 24/7, connected to stable networks, and rarely put to sleep.
macOS laptops are… not that.
The core problem is that cron has zero situational awareness. It doesn’t know or care whether:
you're logged in
the network is available
the laptop is asleep
macOS has changed anything since 1993
modern features like sandboxing, power-saving modes, or System Integrity Protection exist
Cron just runs on schedule. If your Mac is asleep at 3:00 AM, tough luck. That limitation makes cron a poor fit for most real-world Mac automation.
That's Why We Have launchd
Apple introduced launchd over 20 years ago with OS X 10.4 (Tiger) to replace cron and a pile of other legacy services.
Unlike cron, launchd actually understands the modern Mac environment. It can handle:
starting and stopping apps
running background tasks
scheduling jobs
managing daemons
responding to system events
Most importantly, launchd isn’t limited to “run at this time.” It can trigger jobs based on state and context, including:
specific times or intervals
system boot
user login
file or folder changes
network availability
hardware events
on-demand conditions
In other words, launchd is designed for the messy, mobile, power-managed world Macs actually live in.
There’s just one big catch.
You don’t create launchd jobs with a simple line of text. Instead, you have to write XML property list files–verbose, picky, easy to mess up, and filled with cryptic keys you’re expected to understand.
For most sane people, that’s a hard pass.
Useful Third-Party Apps That Make This Easy
Fortunately, it’s 2026, and no one needs to hand-craft launchd XML files anymore. Several excellent Mac apps provide friendly interfaces for building launchd jobs or similar scheduled tasks.
Keyboard Maestro isn’t primarily a scheduler–but it does include powerful time-based and event-based triggers.
Some of the available triggers:
Hot keys
App launch / quit / activate / deactivate
Window events
Clipboard changes
Specific times or intervals
Typed strings
USB device events
Public web URLs
MIDI input
Device connection/disconnection
Login
Network changes
The downside: Keyboard Maestro only works when:
you're logged in
the Mac is awake
the Keyboard Maestro Engine is running
So it’s not a replacement for launchd. But for user-level automation, it’s incredibly powerful.
For example, I have a macro that periodically checks whether Raycast, Hazel, Stream Deck, and BetterTouchTool are running–and restarts them if they’re not. That’s the kind of practical glue automation Keyboard Maestro excels at.
Apple Shortcuts
Shortcuts on macOS has matured a lot, especially since macOS Tahoe. It now supports time-based automations similar to what iOS users have had for years.
But there are important limitations:
You must be logged in
The Mac must be awake
It's better suited to workflows than true background services
Still, Shortcuts can trigger actions based on:
specific apps
power conditions
hardware connections
network changes
file system events
Bluetooth devices
time of day
If you have an always-on Mac mini or studio, Shortcuts can be surprisingly capable. On a sleeping laptop, not so much.
More Apps with Time-Based or Event Triggers
If you just need “run this thing on a schedule” without diving into launchd, these are worth a look:
Task Till Dawn -- Free automation tool for file management, printing, and browser tasks
Alarm Clock Pro -- Far more than an alarm clock; great for scheduled app launching and scripts
Shortery -- Adds real triggers to Apple Shortcuts (Wi-Fi, calendar, time, etc.)
Automator + Calendar Alerts -- Built-in macOS trick: create an Automator workflow, then have Calendar open it at a specific time
Launch Control -- A high-end launchd GUI similar to Lingon Pro, but pricier
Bottom Line
If you’re automating a real Mac–not a headless server, cron is usually the wrong tool.
For anything that needs to run reliably in the background, use launchd. And unless you genuinely enjoy editing XML by hand, use a GUI tool like Lingon Pro or LaunchD Task Scheduler to manage it.
For user-level automations while you’re actively working, Keyboard Maestro and Shortcuts are fantastic.
Pick the right tool for the job, and your automations will actually work when you need them–rather than silently failing at 3:00 AM while your Mac sleeps peacefully on the nightstand.
Raindrop.io
I've used the bookmark service Raindrop.io (and its apps for macOS and iOS as well as the Safari extension) the last three years, and it's a subscription I don't hesitate to renew. It has a deep feature set, and today it added something genuinely interesting for Pro users: a beta version of a private LLM assistant called Stella.
Stella is designed for people with large, messy bookmark libraries. Instead of manually cleaning and reorganizing, you can just ask for help in plain language. Examples the system already understands:
Organize my unsorted bookmarks into collections
Suggest a better structure for my library
Find articles about Formula 1 and tag them by team
Find everything about Japan and move it to Travel
Clean up my tags--merge duplicates like "recipe" and "recipes"
Find broken links
Show duplicate bookmarks
The key detail I appreciate: Stella only suggests changes. You review and approve everything before anything is actually modified.
What you get for free
The free tier of Raindrop.io is surprisingly generous and will be more than enough for a lot of users:
Import bookmarks from other services and browsers
Unlimited bookmarks
Unlimited collections
Unlimited highlights
Unlimited devices
More than 2,600 integrations via IFTTT
Apps for macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge
For a no-cost service, that’s a serious toolkit.
Why I actually use it
One of my favorite parts of Raindrop is how well it fits into a real Mac workflow. The Raycast integration is excellent: I can type “rd,” hit Enter, and instantly search my entire collection of 2,800+ bookmarks.
Raindrop supports both folders and tags, and I use both heavily. The iOS share sheet is just as smooth as the browser extension, and both let me add notes to anything I save. I can highlight passages directly in the app, and there’s a free Obsidian plugin that keeps everything in sync with my notes.
A feature that sold me on Pro early on is the permanent library. Raindrop saves a copy of every bookmarked page on its servers, so if a site disappears, I still have the content. That alone is worth a couple bucks a month.
It also handles PDFs well. Pro users can upload documents and access them from any device, but even free users get 100 MB of PDF uploads per month.
I’ve tied Raindrop into the rest of my information flow, too. Using IFTTT, anything I star in Inoreader automatically lands in Raindrop. I do the same with YouTube–every video I like gets saved as a bookmark. It quietly becomes a personal knowledge hub without much effort.
The Pro plan
If you want more than the free tier, the Pro plan runs $2.99 a month or $28 a year, which feels reasonable for what you get.
Pro includes:
Everything in the free plan
AI suggestions for folders and tags
Full-text search across saved pages
Permanent library copies of pages
Reminders to review saved items
Annotations
Duplicate and broken link finder
Daily backups
Upload up to 10 GB of files per month
Priority email support
Access across all platforms
Raindrop.io has quietly become one of those “set it up once and rely on it forever” tools in my stack. If you’ve got years of bookmarks scattered across browsers and services, it’s one of the few apps that can actually help you make sense of them instead of just giving you another pile to manage.
Koofr Logo
It's a given that we all need a safe place to store or back up our digital lives--somewhere our data will survive if a laptop gets stolen or a house burns down. Beyond simple protection, there's the everyday convenience of being able to reach your files from any device, anywhere with an internet connection. For most of us, that means choosing a cloud service that fits our needs. The usual suspects are U.S.-based: iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and plenty of others.
In 2025, I decided to rethink that default. For privacy reasons, I wanted to reduce my reliance on U.S.-based cloud providers and move toward services located in countries with stronger data-protection laws. One of the companies I landed on was Koofr, which is based in Slovenia and operates under EU privacy regulations. After more than a decade of paying monthly fees to Google and Dropbox, I found a lifetime deal for 1 TB of Koofr storage on StackSocial (still available) and bought it immediately.
Koofr’s privacy story is refreshingly straightforward. Files are protected with strong encryption, there’s no ad tracking, no content scanning, and no behind-the-scenes data harvesting. Because Koofr operates under EU data-protection standards–currently some of the strictest in the world–your personal data is treated as exactly that: yours.
Koofr has a long feature list, and I covered it in detail when I first migrated. If you want the full breakdown, you can read that here. The short version:
You can connect multiple cloud accounts (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive) and search across all of them from a single interface.
It includes in-browser Office support for editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
File sharing is flexible, with expiring or permanent links, public receive links, and no hard restrictions on file size or type.
It works everywhere: web, desktop apps, mobile apps, and even through WebDAV or rclone if you want to integrate it with other tools.
Moving my data over was painless. From the Koofr web interface, you can mount other major cloud services and simply drag files from one to another. If you prefer command-line tools, those work just as well.
There are several ways to access Koofr from a Mac. You don’t technically need any special software–macOS Finder can mount WebDAV drives, and Koofr supports that natively. Apps like QSpace Pro can maintain a persistent connection and automatically mount Koofr at startup. For my own workflow, though, I prefer the official Koofr desktop app. It’s faster than plain WebDAV and adds useful features I rely on.
One feature I didn’t expect to love is Koofr’s local shared folders. You can create shared spaces between computers on your home network where the data never leaves your LAN. It has quietly become my favorite way to move files between my Macs.
In the ten months I’ve been using Koofr, I haven’t experienced a single outage that affected me. Just as important, they don’t bombard me with upsell attempts or marketing emails–something that feels almost unheard of in the tech space these days.
At this point I’m syncing a lot of my digital life to Koofr: my personal music library, ebook and audiobook collections, software archives, important documents, and roughly 75,000 photos. I even managed to accidentally delete a large batch of files through the web interface. Thanks to Koofr’s restore tools, I recovered everything without having to re-upload a thing.
The main criticism you’ll see online is speed–specifically that Koofr can feel slower than the big U.S. providers. I can’t really speak to that. For my needs, performance has been perfectly fine, and I’ve never found myself waiting around wishing it were faster. I’m not a heavy user of the iOS app, but some people do wish it were as polished and feature-rich as the Dropbox or Google Drive mobile apps.
Who Koofr Is (and Isn’t) For
If your top priorities are privacy, straightforward pricing, and reliable cross-platform file storage, Koofr is an excellent choice. It’s especially appealing if you like having multiple ways to access your data–native apps, WebDAV, rclone, or even direct browser access–without being locked into a single ecosystem.
It’s also a great fit for people who want to break free from the endless subscription treadmill. The lifetime plans make financial sense if you plan to keep your data around for years, and Koofr has been around long enough to feel stable and mature rather than fly-by-night.
On the other hand, Koofr probably isn’t ideal if you live entirely inside Apple’s ecosystem and depend heavily on deep iCloud integrations, or if you need ultra-fast collaboration features on par with Google Workspace. Power users who rely on tightly integrated mobile apps with every bell and whistle might find Koofr’s apps a bit more utilitarian.
For everyone else–especially Mac users who care more about control and privacy than about shiny extras–Koofr hits a practical sweet spot. It’s not flashy, but it’s dependable, reasonably priced, and refreshingly respectful of your data. For my workflow, that matters a lot more than another animated onboarding screen.
A Section of My Homebrew Brewfile
The number of Mac apps you can install through the free package manager Homebrewkeeps growing by the day. Tools like Cork,Taphouse, and Updatest can even convert apps you originally installed through other methods into versions that Homebrew can manage and update for you.
Homebrew also includes a built-in backup feature that creates what it calls a Brewfile–basically a plain-text script listing everything Homebrew has installed on your system. That file can later be used to reinstall your entire app catalog in one shot, which is incredibly useful if you’re setting up a new Mac or rebuilding your current one from scratch.
If you’re the kind of user who regularly tweaks your setup, experiments with new apps, and keeps everything updated, then your Brewfile needs regular backups to stay relevant. Otherwise, it quickly turns into an outdated snapshot of a system you no longer have.
The script below automates that process. It generates a fresh Brewfile on demand, places it inside a date-stamped folder, and saves it wherever you want–ideally somewhere that syncs to the cloud or another machine. You can run it manually, schedule it with cron, or trigger it through a Keyboard Maestro macro at a set time each day.
In short, it turns “I should really back up my Homebrew setup more often” into something that just happens automatically.
Important note: This script assumes you’re running an Apple Silicon Mac. If you’re on an Intel machine, you’ll need to adjust the Homebrew path, since it lives in a different location on those systems.
/usr/bin/osascript <<'APPLESCRIPT'
tell application "Terminal"
activate
do script "/bin/zsh -lc 'export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"; \
set -e; \
\# Ensure Homebrew + Bundle are available
if ! command -v brew >/dev/null; then echo "Homebrew not found in PATH"; exit 1; fi; \
brew bundle --help >/dev/null 2>&1 || brew tap homebrew/bundle; \
\# Create dated folder inside an archive location
STAMP_DATE=$(date +%F); \
STAMP_TIME=$(date +%H-%M-%S); \
DEST="<PATH TO ARCHIVE LOCATION HERE>$STAMP_DATE"; \
mkdir -p "$DEST"; \
\# Filename: Brewfile-YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS
OUTFILE="$DEST/Brewfile-${STAMP_DATE}_${STAMP_TIME}"; \
\# Dump Brewfile there
brew bundle dump --file="$OUTFILE" --force; \
echo; echo "Brewfile saved to: $OUTFILE"; \
\# Reveal it in Finder
open -R "$OUTFILE"; \
echo; echo "✅ Done."; \
\# Keep the Terminal session open
exec $SHELL'"
end tell
APPLESCRIPT
How to use this
If you’ve never automated a Brewfile backup before, here’s the simple, practical way to put this to work:
Save the script somewhere logical.
Drop it in a folder you already use for utilities or personal scripts–something like ~/Scripts or ~/bin.
Decide where you want backups to live.
The best location is a folder that automatically syncs–iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Koofr, etc. That way you always have off-machine copies.
Run it once manually.
Open Terminal, execute the script, and confirm that it creates a dated folder containing a Brewfile exactly where you expect.
Automate it.
Keyboard Maestro: Create a simple macro with a "Time of Day" trigger that runs the script every night.
cron/launchd: Schedule it to run daily or weekly if you prefer a pure system-level approach.
Test a restore someday.
Run the script manually
The real value of a Brewfile is being able to reinstall everything with a single command. On a fresh Mac, you can just run:
brew bundle --file=YourSavedBrewfile
This whole process takes about ten minutes to set up and pays for itself the first time you migrate to a new Mac or need to rebuild your system.
If you live in Homebrew–and a lot of us do–having automated, versioned Brewfile backups is one of those small, boring habits that quietly saves a huge amount of time.
MountMate
One of the things I treasure most about being part of the community that includes independent Mac developers is the opportunity to make feature requests. I never cease to be amazed when an app I use and love gets updated to include an idea I suggested. Yesterday, for the second time, the developer of MountMate (Homie Lab) responded to a feature request within hours. Back in June, he added Intel compatibility, and yesterday he added hotkey support so that MountMate can now be used in automation workflows like Keyboard Maestro, BetterTouchTool, and Apple Shortcuts.
Additional new features include:
Dynamic Menu Bar Icon: The menu bar icon now changes to indicate app state:
Shows a clock badge while mounting/unmounting drives
Shows a warning badge if an error occurs
Returns to normal when operations complete
Better Mount/Unmount Icons: Changed mount/unmount button icons from arrows to plus/minus for clearer meaning.
MountMate is a menu bar app that offers levels of control over external drives through a GUI that simply aren’t included in macOS without resorting to shell commands. It includes a switch that prevents the automated mounting of connected USB drives at login, which is useful if you prefer to connect drives manually. You can selectively include or exclude specific drives from this rule, a handy option if you use a USB drive for Time Machine.
I used to plug in external drives and just leave them mounted, but over time I found that doing so could cause slowdowns and occasional problems, particularly with Finder extensions. These days I prefer to keep drives unmounted unless I have a specific reason to use them.
With MountMate, if you have drives that contain multiple partitions, you can selectively mount only the ones you need instead of mounting everything. Now that hotkeys are available, it’s simple to create a shortcut that mounts a drive, launches an application, and then unmounts the drive after the file operation is complete. You could simplify things even further by scheduling the drive to mount at a specific time of day, running the file operations you need, and then scheduling the drive to unmount a couple of hours later. During the time it’s mounted, you can use whatever apps you like to read from or write to it.
Although MountMate is primarily designed for external USB drives, it also includes the ability to mount network drives at login if you routinely connect to other computers on your network. Best of all, MountMate is donationware.
Keyboard Maestro Macro used to Create Note
Every night, shortly before 12:00 AM, an automation I set up on my Mac opens the ChatGPT app and send this prompt:
Generate my Obsidian AI Daily Log for the last 24 hours.
Requirements: - Sort everything in true chronological order with timestamps. - Use one-line summaries for each discussion. - Structure it as a technical journal, not a chat summary. - Include these sections: 1) Timeline 2) Signals & Insights (what I learned or realized) 3) Friction & Problems (what broke, confused, or slowed things down) 4) Decisions (explicit or implicit choices made) 5) Open Questions (unresolved issues) 6) Next Actions (concrete follow-ups) 7) Backlinks (Obsidian-style [[topics]]) 8) Tags (#macos #automation #clawdbot #health etc.)
Use Obsidian-friendly Markdown. - “At the end, include the full log again inside a plain-text block between ===BEGIN OBSIDIAN DAILY LOG=== and ===END OBSIDIAN DAILY LOG=== so I can save it to a file via automation. Do not use any clickable links for this block.”
When I wake up in the morning, there is a note in a folder in my vault, named using a repeatable convention so that I can create links each day in my daily note using a template with a variable.
An example note looks like this
## 🤖 AI Daily Log (23:52)
Obsidian AI Daily Log — Last 24 Hours
Timeline
- 01:02 — Generated Obsidian AI Daily Log for January 30 with full technical journal structure and export block.
- 02:44 — Investigated how the macOS utility LeaderKey works and explored command-style use cases beyond apps and URLs.
- 03:36 — Asked whether Calibre maintains logs and explored recommended settings and behavior of the Job Spy plugin.
- 04:44 — Requested a detailed narrative overview of Homeland Season 2, Episode 5.
- 07:05 — Analyzed the macOS security command sudo spctl --master-disable and its system-wide implications.
- 08:02 — Evaluated new eyeglass prescription with emphasis on computer-centric use and identified reputable online vendors.
Signals & Insights
- LeaderKey functions best as a command dispatcher layered atop existing automation.
- Calibre logging is present but distributed and inconsistent.
- Disabling Gatekeeper globally is risky and best reserved for short-term diagnostics.
- Computer-focused lenses align better with actual usage patterns.
- Homeland continues deliberate narrative destabilization in S2E5.
Friction & Problems
- Lack of centralized logging in Calibre complicates troubleshooting.
- Sparse advanced documentation for LeaderKey.
- macOS security controls encourage overcorrection due to poor visibility.
Decisions
- Use LeaderKey selectively as automation glue.
- Avoid permanent Gatekeeper disablement.
- Choose computer-optimized eyewear.
- Maintain AI logs as technical records.
Open Questions
- Best practices for persistent Calibre job logging?
- Community-standard LeaderKey command patterns?
- Safer macOS security toggling workflows?
Next Actions
- Prototype LeaderKey + shell/KM workflows.
- Capture Calibre debug logs during test jobs.
- Write a Gatekeeper troubleshooting checklist.
- Order glasses optimized for screen work.
When Keyboard
Maestro went on sale during the Black Friday season last year, I was
surprised by the number of people who purchased the app and then found
themselves at a loss for use cases. The community forum run by Peter
Lewis, the developer, has a good reputation for being helpful, but in my
experience it's full of complex solutions to problems I don't have.
My intention has never been to use Keyboard Maestro as a software
development platform. It's always been about this simple question: how
can I turn 10 clicks into 1 click--or better yet, how can I not have to
click at all?
Triggers
Here's a list of some recent macOS automation patterns I've introduced
into the way I use my Mac. I've been inspired by the introduction of the
Extra Bar to make nested menus of related macros, and I've stopped
relying on trying to remember so many finger-cramping hotkey
combinations.
One of the magical things about automating with Keyboard Maestro is the
sheer number of ways a macro can be triggered. My most-used triggers
are:
Time of Day triggers (do this action at this time)
Application Launch triggers (when this app opens, do this thing)
Periodic triggers (do this thing every X minutes)
Good old hotkeys
Select-from-a-menu triggers
Login triggers (do this thing X seconds after I log in)
Mounted Volume triggers (when this volume is mounted, do this thing)
Macros
Keeping apps alive -- Runs every 10 minutes with a trigger of "If Raycast is not running" and an action of "Start Raycast."
Log out cleanly -- One action quits all apps, the next pauses, then Keyboard Maestro ejects all disks and issues the logout command. This is how macOS is supposed to do it, but if you have apps that hang up your logouts or external drives that don't eject cleanly, you can insert a solution into this macro.
Mark all mail as read -- Uses menu bar commands and simulated mouse clicks.
Mount and unmount attached backup drives -- Keyboard Maestro runs a simple script to mount and unmount USB drives that stay physically connected but don't need to be available all the time. You can do the same with network shares. For example, when a backup or syncing app launches, the mounting script runs; when the app quits, the drive is unmounted.
If Bloom opens, close QSpace and **If Rectangle Pro launches, quit SnapsOfApps******
Display a list of running Dock and menu bar apps and restart (not quit) the one you click -- I like to test software and keep up with new features by running multiple apps in the same category. This keeps my MacBook from getting bogged down.
Automatically connect via screen sharing to other Macs and Linux boxes -- Apple's built-in VNC client supports internal URLs, which Keyboard Maestro can open directly.
Batch open URLs in a specific browser -- I use this with Firefox. The macro closes the current window and opens a new one containing only the URLs I specify.
If Updatest opens, also open Nektony -- When testing apps, I often need them side by side. A macro is the easiest way to make that happen.
Batch quit jobs for groups of apps -- Just as you can open a group of apps with one command, you can close them when you're done.
Backup Homebrew -- This macro backs up my entire Homebrew configuration via a script, then copies the resulting file to a specific folder on my backup drive.
Restart Finder -- If Finder starts misbehaving, issuing killall Finder via a hotkey is far more pleasant than hunting through Activity Monitor.
SSH -- In a home lab environment, I use passwordless sudo and small scripts for one-click terminal access to other machines.
Run Topgrade on a schedule with no prompts -- Topgrade updates Homebrew apps, Mac App Store apps, and various developer tools. Using a time-of-day or periodic trigger, it can run unattended.
Upgrade Mac App Store apps (in Terminal) -- If you're tired of waiting on the App Store UI, you can install the mas CLI and trigger it via Keyboard Maestro.
Open the App Store directly to the Updates tab -- I don't browse the App Store much. When I open it, I'm either searching or updating, and both can be automated.
Create keyboard shortcuts for actions developers didn't assign one to -- In Calibre, my macro opens the metadata editor to the Tags field and advances to the next book during bulk edits. Neither action exists natively; I built both with Keyboard Maestro.
Automatically query ChatGPT each night for a list of topics we discussed and copy it into Obsidian -- The macro opens a new ChatGPT conversation and pastes a reusable prompt.
Copy selected text to Ghostty and press Return -- I couldn't get PopClip to do this, so Keyboard Maestro stepped in.
Copy Obsidian daily notes into Day One -- Redundant, yes, but I've used Day One since 2014 and like keeping a parallel record for continuity.
Open Dropbox briefly to download files I emailed to it -- I prefer not to stay connected to cloud services unless I need them, so a macro connects, syncs, and disconnects.
Open a BBEdit window with the clipboard contents
Open and close backup apps -- I use several backup tools and don't want them running constantly, so Keyboard Maestro launches them on a schedule and shuts them down afterward.
Menu of window-layout launchers using Rectangle and SnapsOfApps -- I have too many layouts to remember their hotkeys, so Keyboard Maestro presses them for me via a menu.
Open System Settings to frequently used panes -- Just shaving off a few more clicks.
Keyboard shortcut to copy the URL of the current page -- It still amazes me that Vivaldi doesn't ship with this, but it took about a minute to fix with a macro.
Hopefully this gives you a few ideas with what you can do with Keyboard
Maestro, removing some of the frustration and demonstrating that it's
not so much an automation app but a way instead to build your personal
infrastructure.
Ryan Dekker, the developer of SnapsOfApps, a robust and
full-featured window management app, just released an update that adds a
bevy of new features aimed at more complex setups involving multiple
monitors and spaces. He tackled thorny problems like managing how macOS
identifies identical display models and how using a MacBook in clamshell
mode affects window management. In under 10 minutes, I was able to
install and configure the app to use two displays and eight spaces,
launch a dozen apps with individual windows, and have every single
aspect of the setup work correctly the first time from a simple hotkey
command. All of this comes from an app that costs only $6.99 and
includes a seven-day free trial. It also offers a full suite of window
positioning tools that rival what the big guns (e.g., Moom and Rectangle
Pro) in the field can deliver.
Snapshot Manager
Background
Lagging well behind Microsoft Windows, macOS did not implement a
relatively complete suite of native window management features until
Tahoe. Even now, the native tools still lack many features found in
third-party apps, such as the ability to automatically position apps at
launch and rearrange windows when displays change. You also can't
trigger layouts via scripts or hotkeys.
As u/arduinoRPi4
pointed out in a recent thread, "Window and space management on macOS is
a mess, especially because macOS itself doesn't expose the Spaces API,
which is controlled/owned by Dock.app, and different windows send
different callbacks and whatnot. [Problematic apps] use private APIs
that are in this case unreliable and result in… issues…. Multi-monitor
seems like an afterthought on macOS and is really poorly designed in a
lot of aspects that it's laughable."
As
I recently pointed out, finding a solution for managing windows and
apps in a multi-monitor, multi-space macOS setup has been a challenge.
I've been looking for an app that could primarily do one thing: open a
collection of apps and place their windows in the desired positions, on
the desired spaces, on the desired monitors.
It was possible to achieve my goal with Keyboard Maestro, but every
single window and app had to be added one at a time, with carefully
choreographed hotkeys to launch apps, change spaces, and insert delays
to prevent commands from overlapping. In subsequent testing, I also
found that Rectangle Pro can
achieve similar results with relatively little friction.
Not everyone has complex setups--or even cares about window management.
For years, I used nothing but a MacBook with its single native display
and ran most of my apps in full-screen mode. But there are plenty of
people with three or four displays on hyper-powerful Mac Studios and
Pros who could benefit from a tool like SnapsOfApps.
Automating repetitive tasks on my Mac has been an ongoing
obsession for years. To me, it's the essence of using a computer as the
tool it's meant to be. The less often I have to click the same sequence
of buttons I clicked yesterday, the happier I am. To that end, I've long
relied on Keyboard
Maestro, BetterTouchTool, Hazel, Drafts, Apple Shortcuts, and IFTTT.
Two days ago, I read
about a new agentic AI app called Clawdbot that runs locally on a Mac and
interacts with it in ways previous apps simply couldn't. People have
strong feelings about AI. I know I do. I'm not a fan of having my blog
posts harvested for their information while never getting the chance to
interact with the people who want that information. Nor do I enjoy being
flooded with AI-generated content passed off as "real human" effort. But
AI agents--tools that let computers do actual work for us--feel
fundamentally different. They don't fit neatly into those objections.
I have a spare Mac I use for testing software, so I decided to take
Clawdbot for a spin. You can also run it in a VM. Once you see what it
can do, you'll understand why you need to be extremely careful about the
information it can access. It was a beast to set up. The developer, Peter Steinberger, is a solo creator,
not a front for a giant AI company. The product is new, and while there
is documentation, it's incomplete and doesn't cover many edge cases. You
can install the Mac app using Homebrew--
brew install clawdbot
--but that's only part of the story. The real power lives in the CLI,
and to get that you need a package manager like Node. Run
in a shell and hope your $PATH and environment don't fight back.
One of Clawdbot's most compelling features is its ability to communicate
through familiar messaging apps: WhatsApp, Messages, Discord, Slack, or,
in my case, Telegram. You can literally send your Mac a message and tell
it to do things. It can email you files or drop copies into cloud
storage on your behalf.
The intelligence behind the agent comes from whatever AI service you're
authorized to use via an API key--or from a local model if you prefer.
All interaction history stays on your computer, stored plainly in a
folder of Markdown files. There are already plugins for Mac apps like Obsidian and Things
3, but the most intriguing piece is Peekaboo, a radical framework that
can "see" your Mac's screen, understand UI elements (buttons, menus,
text fields), and interact with them by scrolling, clicking, and typing.
It can chain these actions together in complex ways, and all you have to
do is describe what you want in plain English. In effect, you can add
capabilities to software that its developer never imagined.
You can even grant Clawdbot access to your Terminal, allowing it to
design and execute scripts endlessly. Unsurprisingly, this sets off
alarm bells for anyone with sensitive data. I'm not a cybersecurity
expert, but I've been around long enough to have a healthy respect for
risk. Be careful--but if any of this sounds exciting, it's absolutely
worth exploring.
SmartTracker
is a universal app that syncs across all platforms via iCloud. Using the
URL from a vendor's page (Newegg, Amazon, Micro Center, etc.), the app
tracks prices in near real time. You can set a target price and receive
a notification within minutes of a price drop.
Several features stand out: charts, tracking numerical data beyond
price, and collections. When I'm shopping for a big-ticket item, I find
it useful to create a collection of the same product across multiple
vendors. Today I got excited when Micro Center listed Mac minis for $100
less than Amazon--until I noticed the fine print: in-store pickup only,
at a single store in Georgia.
You can use the free version for up to five items. The full version
costs $19.99 in the App Store. The developer, Hugo Price (u/hprione on Reddit), is
responsive to support requests, bug reports, and feature suggestions.
Smart Tracker
WithAudio
WithAudio is a powerful
text-to-speech application under active development, with new features
and improvements arriving on a weekly basis. It currently supports
English and French, with Spanish and Hindi on the roadmap for the near
future.
The app works offline after a one-time download of additional resources,
which happens automatically after you enter your license. In addition to
choosing a language, you can select from 29 different voices across male
and female options.
Using your Mac, you can process entire books, queue long documents, and
export MP3 or M4B chapters to build your own audiobook library.
WithAudio supports EPUB, Markdown, TXT, and some PDFs. (Pro tip: use Calibre
to convert PDFs to EPUB for free.)
The Mac app also lets you follow along as a document is read,
automatically scrolling and highlighting each sentence. There's even a
Chrome browser extension for reading web pages.
The app is priced at $25.50 for a lifetime license and includes a
seven-day, no-questions-asked refund period after purchase. Check out
the developer on Reddit: u/s3rgio0
WithAudio
Delvepad
My background is in educational technology, primarily in the K--12
world. I always enjoy finding indie apps for students because they're
often built by dedicated developers with real skill in conveying
information.
Delvepad,
a free and open-source app, fits that description. It's available for
iPhone, iPad, and Apple Silicon Macs and is useful as a reference tool
for lessons on artificial intelligence and the training of large
language models. It includes a glossary and shareable resources.
I'm on a lifelong quest to find the perfect scratchpad. The way I work
involves accumulating and processing small fragments of text throughout
the day. Sometimes I need that information for two minutes; sometimes I
want to keep it forever. Either way, I need a way to find it later, when
future me goes looking for it with only the faintest memory of what it
contains.
A good scratchpad needs to be as friction-free as possible. It should
open instantly, accept information without ceremony, and then get out of
the way. That's exactly what Unfriction does
It's a Mac overlay notes app by indie developer and Reddit user u/Cute-River-1592
Beyond its near-instant launch, its features include smart tags,
automatic OCR from screenshots and an endless built-in clipboard
manager. You can do imports and exports of your notes and choose any
file storage location you want. It has a limited free version, and a
lifetime license will run you $19.99. for a transferable 2-Mac
license.
I spent most of my computer using life on a Macbook and only recently
started using a dual display setup. I didn’t start this process until
after the release of macOS 26, Tahoe. Quite possibly, that may be the
absolute worst time to be experimenting with this in the history of the
Mac. This is not my favorite version of the operating system. I’ve found
that some relatively common applications are resistant to window
management across Spaces: Calibre, Obsidian, Better Touch Tool, System
Configuration, and Elgato Stream Deck Configuration are all consistently
problematic. In addition, having windows from the same application open
on more than one desktop creates issues for most window-management
applications. Instead of using multiple windows from one browser, I’ve
found it easier to just run two different browsers.
I am 100% open to suggestions from anyone who’s been down this road
before me. Tell me what apps you use and why. If you have suggestions
for best practices, please pass them along. Here’s a list of the tools
and applications I’m currently trying to adapt to the way I use my Mac.
Bunch manages windows and Spaces indirectly through easy-to-use scripts.
The developer, Brett Terpstra, is a Mac legend, and he very kindly
helped me troubleshoot some weird problems I ran into—specifically
losing the required file association to run the scripts. Imagine Word
telling you it can’t open .docx files. That’s what Bunch kept doing to
me.
The folks at Many Tricks are also legendary and genuinely nice. Moom is
an award-winning app that lets you move and resize windows using hotkeys
or menus. Theoretically, a setup like mine—two displays, twelve apps,
eight Desktops—can be triggered with a single shortcut that launches
everything and puts the windows exactly where I want them. I say theoretically because, with the apps I use, the results aren’t
consistent, and it never gets everything right.
Spencer doesn’t have Moom’s window-management depth. It’s designed for
saving layouts for groups of Spaces/Desktops or for whatever is
currently on screen across multiple displays. The developer is extremely
responsive and even sent me a custom DMG that could control Calibre
after learning I was having trouble with it. Unfortunately, like Moom,
it doesn’t consistently place my apps and windows where I want them, so
I end up making manual adjustments every time.
The developer of Snaps of Apps is actively working on adding better
Spaces support and improving responsiveness on laptops running in
clamshell mode. I’ll continue testing every version he sends me.
This workhorse can actually do what I want, but it turns what other apps
promise to do with a single click into a 50-step macro I have to build
manually. That may simply be the price I have to pay to get things set
up exactly the way I like them.
For anyone fluent in Better Touch Tool’s action set, building the same
kind of workflow as Keyboard Maestro is absolutely possible. It looks
something like this:
Navigate to the Space where you want to launch an app
I’m new to this gadget. It provides a physical interface that ties
together Shortcuts, Keyboard Maestro macros, Moom hotkeys, and scripts
of all types. There’s simply no way I can cram many more hotkeys and
trackpad gestures into my brain. I’m full.
Raycast is another daily driver with window-management capabilities. I
love the “almost maximize” command and invoke it instantly whenever an
app tries to force full screen on me.
Stay remembers where your app windows live and puts them back there when
displays change, apps relaunch, or the system restarts. It’s a
persistence tool, not a controller—you arrange things once, and Stay
enforces that memory. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work consistently. It’s
effectively abandonware and seems better suited for people who
constantly connect and disconnect external monitors.
My Basic Stack
The mysterious and obscure stack I’m using that’s causing me all these
issues (/s) is listed below, If you are interested in why I use these
apps, click the links.
My career was in educational technology, and I moved from school to
school with a MacBook to put out fires and manage networks. I had one
15- or 16-inch display, and that was it. Now that I’m retired and have a
desk of my own—complete with two 27-inch displays—I’m trying to create
some new habits. As part of that, I’m attempting to use Spaces and
Desktops in my workflow for the first time.
On a laptop with a single display, I was in the habit of running every
app in full-screen mode and switching back and forth as needed. Now,
with all the screen real estate I have, duplicating that workflow feels
absolutely wasteful.
I settled on using four desktops per display, for a total of eight. I
typically run around a dozen non–menu bar applications at a time, and I
change them up depending on what I’m doing. I have one set of apps I use
when I’m writing, another set for media management, and a third set for
experimenting with automation tools and my self-hosted server.
When it comes to sharing data from a Mac, there are plenty of
scenarios and plenty of methods. Identifying the right tool for the job
comes with experience. Whatever method you land on today might not be
the best method in a year--and that's OK. Sometimes a system you already
know how to use and troubleshoot is better than something new and
unproven, no matter how many bells and whistles it has. And then there's
the gradual enshittification of tech, where the useful and free tool you
once loved slowly becomes expensive and exploitative.
Regardless of circumstances, the criteria most people use to judge these
tools in today's tech world are security, speed, and reliability.
My Use Cases
There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for sharing files.
It depends on the type of data you want to share: an image, a link, a single document, a 20 MB DMG, or an 11 GB MKV video.
The type of device the intended recipient is using.
The sensitivity of the information. There's a big difference between a funny meme and a copy of your tax returns.
How soon the information needs to be available to the recipient.
Scenario 1 -- I have a link or image and I want to share it RIGHT NOW to the iPhone, iPad, Windows laptop, or MacBook my partner is using.
If you're going from one Apple device to another, built-in tools like
AirDrop, Messages, or email are all viable options, with AirDrop being
the flakiest. That's usually because both sender and recipient need the
correct settings, and the recipient has to be savvy enough to know where
the received file ended up on their device.
If you're sharing with a Windows or Android user, a cross-platform
messaging service like Signal or Telegram can work. For the tech-savvy,
LocalSend
is a useful app that's cross-platform, free, and powerful, with a few
gotchas. It has to be running on both devices, and anyone with a
complicated firewall setup may be in for a headache.
Scenario 2 -- I have several documents I want to share with my partner, who will need to download and use them on her MacBook.
When you're at home, there's no need to send the information through the
internet. LocalSend is a good option. You can transfer files even if
your internet connection is down.
While it's relatively easy to turn on local file sharing for Macs on the
same network, it's a best practice to leave that turned off, as it opens
up another attack vector for bad actors. If you resort to email, get in
the habit of sending files in password-protected ZIP archives. Free
tools like Keka
can handle that easily. Another easy-to-use and powerful encryption tool
is Encrypto.
If it better suits your purpose, most cloud services (iCloud, Dropbox,
Google Drive) have Finder integration that lets you share links to
files. Just make sure you know whether you're sharing a copy of a file
or sharing access to the file--there is a difference.
I don't use US-based cloud storage for most of my files. The two
services I do use, Koofr
and kDrive, both offer sharing through links. Koofr offers lifetime
access to 1 TB of storage for $139. kDrive has a 3 TB
subscription plan for just €4.99 a month.
Scenario 3 -- I have a collection of documents, images, and links I want to access from my phone, iPad, and Mac, with changes made on one reflecting on the others.
This is where you need a reliable cloud service. iCloud is built in, but
results can vary wildly for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes I have
folders on two Macs that live about three feet apart, and they'll go
days without syncing Desktop and Documents.
If you're tech-savvy, there are self-hosted options like Immich
for photos and Nextcloud, a
roll-your-own cloud service with many compatible apps and plugins--but
did I mention that it's slow?
Scenario 4 -- I have 16,000 books, 150,000 photos, and 32,000 songs I want to continually sync between four computers on the same LAN for reasons that make sense to me.
For giant jobs like this, the champ is Syncthing.
The situation I describe above is my real-world use case. I like to
manage my images on my relatively fast MacBook, but I sync copies to two
ancient iMacs (running Linux) that I use as giant digital photo frames,
while also maintaining multiple backups of my photos.
I also manage my ebook collection on my Mac, while syncing it to my
self-hosted server so I can use Calibre
Weband Audiobookshelf
for remote access.
Scenario 5 -- I am traveling and need to get files onto the hard drive of my home computer so I can remote in and do X to those files.
If your cloud service of choice isn't an option--because it's acting
flaky, you have space limitations, or for other reasons--using Blip
is worth considering. Blip is a free service that can handle large,
multi-GB files and resume transfers if they're interrupted. It uses TLS
1.3 for in-transit security.
It's not pure peer-to-peer; your data uses Blip's infrastructure for
signaling. I sometimes have problems getting my devices, all signed into
the same account, to see each other. Unlike LocalSend, Blip works across
the internet, and plenty of people use it without issues.
My other suggestion in this category is Taildrop, the file-sharing
protocol between your personal computers on the same Tailscale
network. It's as easy as using the share menu on your Mac or mobile
device. It's relatively new and still in alpha, but it's free, and I've
never had an issue with it.
Scenario 6 -- I need to share a large file with a random internet stranger I may never talk to again.
This is a case where using a shared link from a cloud service or
Nextcloud is your best bet. There are also browser-based sharing
services that might work. PairDrop
works well as a PWA in Safari.
Scenario 7 -- I have a collection of files I want to share with the internet at large and be able to update and change them.
There's no need to buy a domain name or open an account with a hosting
service and CDN. Just use GitHub.
I'm no coder, but I've had a GitHub account for ages for several
different reasons. It's what I use to share my automation settings for Keyboard
Maestro, Hazel,
and Better
Touch Tool. Using GitHub Desktop, I can move files into a folder on
my Mac and sync them to GitHub in just a couple of minutes.
You don't have to understand pull, push, or git to make use of GitHub.
Once you have an account, you can also use it as a free backup service
for Obsidian or even blogging platforms like Micro.blog.
A Couple of Newcomers
If you're interested in these kinds of apps, there are a couple of new
ones worth keeping an eye on.
Droplet
-- still in TestFlight. I'll be writing more about this when it's
released. Droplet is an app for almost instantly moving files between
Macs and iOS devices. It offers a simple drag-and-drop interface that
literally takes about 15 seconds to learn.
Someone asked me to name the best free app available to Mac users in
2026. I didn’t hesitate before choosing Tailscale.
Tailscale is a VPN, but not in the usual sense. It’s a private,
encrypted, identity-based network where your devices recognize each
other no matter where they are. It uses WireGuard technology and is
often described as a mesh network. The terminology isn’t important. This
isn’t the kind of VPN that simply masks your home IP address or
anonymizes web traffic.
Tailscale lets you treat a collection of devices in different geographic
locations as if they were all in the same building, plugged into the
same network and connected to the same switch. In practice, you can link
computers in your home, at your office, while staying in a hotel, and
even machines belonging to family members. It works across platforms,
and all traffic is end-to-end encrypted. You don’t mess with opening
ports or exposing your home network to the internet. You don’t have to
learn AWS, firewalls, or how to configure TLS certificates. The
computers associated with your free Tailscale account are referred to as
your Tailnet.
You don’t have to feel like you’re studying for your CCNA whenever you
use software that relies on networking. If some of the details sound
confusing, that’s fine. Tailscale doesn’t require you to understand
subnets, routing, or DNS to be useful. You install it, sign in, and your
devices can see each other.
If that sounds confusing, don’t worry. You don’t need to fully
understand it to take advantage of the power of this free tool. You just
need to learn how to use the Tailscale app, which isn’t overwhelming at
all. You don’t have to understand subnets or routing.
One of the most useful features of Tailscale is the concept of an exit
node. An exit node is a computer you control that has internet access.
When you need to access the internet in a private and protected way from
another computer, you can toggle a single switch in Tailscale to route
your network traffic through that remote machine, no matter where you
are.
I recently vacationed in Central America and relied on hotel Wi-Fi. I
didn’t need to enable—or even install—a conventional VPN on my laptop. I
simply chose a computer in my home, 2,000 miles away, as my exit node
and used it as my gateway to the internet.
If you have a VPN subscription to a service like Nord or Mullvad that’s
limited to a small number of devices, you can sometimes work around that
limitation by using one of your machines as an exit node. You can even
access that exit node from your phone, whether you’re on a cellular
network or Wi-Fi. Once connected, all of your traffic appears to the
receiving services as if it’s coming from your home computer.
I use a private tracker to download what are commonly referred to as
Linux ISOs. That tracker only works when it sees my computer as being
connected from the IP address assigned to my home router. If I’m
traveling and need access, I just connect through the Tailscale exit
node on my self-hosted server and everything works as expected.
There’s also an Apple TV app for Tailscale. I gave my brother, who lives
on the opposite side of the country, access to my Tailnet so he can
watch regional sports like NCAA basketball that are only broadcast
locally.
The Tailscale App on my home computer
Tailscale isn’t a replacement for every kind of VPN. It won’t
automatically anonymize all your traffic the way a commercial VPN
service does, and it doesn’t make unsafe devices magically secure. You
still need good passwords, disk encryption, and basic common sense.
What it does exceptionally well is remove friction. It gives your
devices a private, encrypted way to find each other without turning you
into an amateur network engineer.
Using an iPhone or iPad with an SSH client, I can connect to my
home-based Macs and Linux boxes to run scripts, reboot machines, restart
services, and transfer files.
Because I can use macOS Screen Sharing, I can also easily access Macs
belonging to family members for whom I provide technical support. When I
need to remote into their machines, there’s nothing to set up. They
don’t have to find or report their IP address to me. I can see
everything I need in the Tailscale app.
Another use case for power users is remote backups using rsync. This is
especially useful if you follow the 3-2-1 backup model: three copies of
your data, on at least two different types of media, in at least two
different geographic locations. You can set up a headless Mac or Linux
box at a friend’s or relative’s house and sync your important documents
and media with a simple script. As far as your computer is concerned,
that remote system might as well be sitting right beside it.
A free Tailscale account allows you to add up to 100 devices and assign
management access to three users. If you’re setting up computers for
family members or friends who aren’t technically proficient, you don’t
have to give up one of those seats. You install Tailscale using your
account, and they rarely—if ever—have to do anything other than turn
their computer on. From there, you can use tools like Keyboard Maestro,
Hazel, and other automation utilities to get real work done.
Tailscale is good, solid technology packaged in easy-to-use apps. It
still requires sensible password management, like any other tool. You’ll
still want a conventional VPN if you need to anonymize traffic from at
least one device. But Tailscale removes barriers that once made these
kinds of setups the exclusive domain of network engineers—and it does so
quietly, reliably, and for free.
I've tried a variety of notch apps, and I haven't been truly happy with
any of them. I'm not sure whether the novelty of the interface is the
problem, or if it's the design of the apps I've used that bothers me. I
recently installed Droppy,
a free and open-source app built entirely with Swift for speed and
stability, and I like it more than the other notch apps I've used.
It isn't overloaded with superfluous features, and the features it does have can be toggled on and off easily. It also seems very
stable--I haven't encountered any bugs so far.
Utility Replacements
Depending on which features you enable, Droppy can replace several
categories of single-purpose apps:
Clipboard Manager -- Toggled off by default, you can enable a clipboard manager that's accessible from the notch interface. If you cut and paste a wide variety of elements all day long, you'll want something more powerful, but for casual use it gets the job done. It has keyboard controls, lets you choose how many items to keep in your history, and includes privacy protections like disabling password storage or excluding entire apps. If you copy an image containing text--whether it's a photo or a screenshot--Droppy can use OCR to extract that text.
Mini Music Player -- The mini music player displays the current track and album art in the notch, with the usual controls for previous and next tracks, play, and pause.
File Shelf -- Droppy lets you drag files in and out of the notch or into a floating window, much like apps such as Dropover, Yoink, and Gladys.
Extensions
Droppy's architecture allows you to add or remove features through
extensions. This keeps the bloat down. You won't be faced with menu
options for Spotify or Alfred if, like me, you don't use either of those
products. The currently available extensions include:
AI background removal
Alfred integration
Adding the Services menu
Spotify integration
Screen capture of UI elements
Window snapping
Voice transcription
Other Features
A heads-up display appears when you use the keyboard controls for brightness and volume. You can also enable an HUD for AirPods if you use them with your Mac.
On my M2 MacBook Air, Droppy uses about as much memory as Apple Notes or Messages--that is to say, not much. It does consume some CPU cycles and power, but it's not going to hog your system resources.
You can choose to have Droppy appear as a notch even on Macs that don't actually have one. Alternatively, you can have it appear as a Dynamic Island to mimic the behavior on the iPhone. The functionality is the same either way.
Other Notch Apps
I tried Notchnook shortly after it came out, and it felt more like a
minimally viable product than a finished app--despite its $25 price tag.
It left a bad taste in my mouth.
My second choice in this category is Dynamic
Lake Pro, which sells for $15.90 on Gumroad. It has a couple of
features Droppy doesn't, such as a weather and calendar HUD and
notification support. It's updated frequently, and the developer is very
responsive to bug reports and user questions.
Apps gain new capabilities through updates. Our preferences change, task
requirements shift, and workflows evolve right along with them. It pays
to periodically reevaluate the tools and methods we rely on. As a writer
and blogger, I go through a surprising number of images every day. My
goal is simple: images should be optimized for file size, renamed
intelligently, and land exactly where I need them for current projects.
After 24 hours, they should be archived--still accessible, but no longer
cluttering my active workspace.
Start with Downloads
Clotski
is a menu bar utility for browsing, tagging, renaming, and editing
metadata for images in user-specified folders--most often Downloads,
Screenshots, and project folders. Its superpower is the ability to
automatically save images from your clipboard to a location you define
in the app's settings. In my setup, copied images are saved as JPGs
directly into the Downloads folder.
NameQuick Steps In
NameQuick
is a powerful automation tool that has improved significantly since I
first started using it. Beyond AI-assisted renaming, it can move, tag,
add comments to, archive, or trash images based on rules you define.
In my setup, NameQuick evaluates images in Downloads. Screenshots are
renamed based on their content and the app that created them, with
"Screenshot" appended to the filename. Once renamed, the files are moved
into the folder where my current project files live. I use CleanShot X for
screenshots for many reasons, but especially for how well it integrates
with Raycast,
ExtraBar,
and CirMenu.
Other images follow a similar path: they're given short, descriptive
filenames and moved into the same project folder.
Optimization
There's no reason to work with image files that take up more disk space
than necessary. For that reason, I use Clop
to automatically optimize every image I work with, unless there's a rare
and specific reason not to. Clop watches the project folder and, when a
new image appears, runs a process to reduce its file size. Its interface
also makes it easy to upload files to cloud services, send images to an
editor, compare diffs against existing images, and handle a handful of
other related tasks.
Cleanup with Hazel
Most images in this setup exist for an immediate purpose: a blog post or
a document I'm actively working on. By the next day, I usually don't
need them anymore. To handle that, I use a Hazel rule that moves any
file older than 24 hours into an archive folder. From there, another
Hazel rule permanently deletes those files after 90 days.
You don't need wads of disposable income to enjoy new software on
a regular basis, and you don't have to rely exclusively on freeware to
get useful work done on your Mac. You're the only one who knows what
your budget can support. I've been buying independently developed
software since before people called them apps--back when you
dialed into a local BBS to download shareware from the computer
eccentric you met at the last user group meeting. My hometown even had a
store in the '90s where you could rent commercial software.
This was before Little Snitch mattered, because most home users didn't
even have Internet access.
Saving Money Without Being Miserable
Look for alternatives before you buy. Use AlternativeTo, a site that suggests apps similar to the one you're researching. The listings are rated and reviewed by regular people and clearly labeled as free or paid, open source or proprietary, with links to download or purchase.
Here’s an example using Hazel as the starting point–I got 19 alternative suggestions in seconds.
Cancel free trials immediately. When you download an app with a free trial from the App Store, cancel the subscription right away. In 99% of cases, you'll still get the full trial period without the risk of forgetting and getting billed. You'll also get a reminder when the trial is ending, giving you time to decide whether the app is worth keeping.
If you do subscribe, yearly plans are almost always cheaper than monthly ones. Be especially wary of weekly pricing. I recently tried a translation app that cost 49 cents for seven days–after that, it jumped to $10.99 per week.
Use software deal sites you trust. Bookmark a few reliable discount sites and check them regularly. The folks at Bundlehunt are building their own app store (currently in beta) with discounted apps like MacPilot, Menubar X Pro, KeyKeeper, Workspaces 2, and Alarm Clock Pro. Another solid option is Apps.Deals, where top-shelf apps like Spencer, TextSniper, and ProcessSpy are frequently discounted. All are on sale now.
Buy in November if you can wait. November is the best month of the year to buy software. In the indie world, offering Black Friday savings has become a tradition with deep discounts. Reddit, GitHub, and tech bloggers usually maintain running lists of deals. With a little patience and research, 40--50% discounts on premium software are common.
Use AppRaven to track prices and freebies. Appraven is an iOS app that connects you to a community of people who genuinely love software. It tracks current and historical App Store prices across Apple platforms, which makes it easy to tell whether a "sale" is real. You can get near-instant notifications when paid apps temporarily go free, browse curated user-created lists, and create wish lists that notify you when prices drop. One of my favorite lists to follow is focused on apps that support Apple Shortcuts.
Use educational discounts if you're eligible. If you have an email address tied to a K--12 or higher-ed institution, there are a lot of legitimate discounts available. There's even an education-only app store called Student App Centre. Apple also offers education pricing on hardware.
Stick to curated sources for free software. Curated lists reduce the risk of downloading an unvetted GitHub project that turns out to be malware. A few good starting points:
Don't download cracked or pirated software. It's easy to find sites with
massive catalogs of apps, usually delivered at glacial speeds unless you
pay for "premium" access (Bitcoin preferred). Even when the apps are
recognizable titles, they're often modified in ways that break
Gatekeeper, Apple's built-in malware protection.
To compensate, these sites usually provide a mysterious Terminal script
you're told to run. None of this is smart. Even if nothing immediately
bad happens, you're often left with an app you can't update without
breaking it.I don't lose sleep over Adobe's or Microsoft's
profits, but stealing a $4.99 app from an independent developer who
built something genuinely useful is just low-class.
I also have mixed feelings about asking developers for freebies or
discounts. Some--like Sindre Sorhus--openly encourage students and users
in low-income countries to reach out, which makes sense. I'm privileged
enough not to need that. On the flip side, I regularly get emails from
people who assume I'm the developer of an app I reviewed. Most are
polite; some are pushy. Decide where you land, and act accordingly.
