AppAddict Newsletter

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 website, you also get a PDF with detailed information on reading the report if you need it. You can also install via Homebrew using the command 

brew install --cask thetimemachinemechanic

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 extremely popular free plan. Today, the cheapest plan is $130 a year. The free plan is limited to 50 notes on one device. Although legacy users can still access all the notes they created in the past, many complain that the user experience is marred by constant pop-ups asking them to become paying customers. The Evernote subreddit is almost all complaints and people asking for ideas on alternatives.

To its credit, Bending Spoons has made a valiant effort in 2024 to add extra value for its remaining subscribers. Calendar integration now includes Google and Outlook. Other new features include:

• Table of contents
• Daily Notes
• Slash commands
• Quote blocks
• Collapsible Notes
• Revamped mobile app
• Redesigned tasks
• File management
• Voice-to-text
• Improved import features
• Metadata improvements

Many former users have moved to free and low-cost alternatives like Obsidian, Joplin, Notion and One Note. I am currently in what will be the last year of an Evernote subscription. I migrated most of my 7000 notes accumulated since 2008 to Obsidian months ago. It's nice to see what Bending Spoons is doing with the app, but it's not worth what they ask for a subscription.

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 type of backup record) from the old setup and import it into the ARM version of Homebrew and Cask confirmed that I had the same number of formulae and taps. Getting the casks (GUI apps like Firefox, Notion, Alt+Tab) was a little more labor intensive but didn’t take long. The Cork developer helped me figure all this out via email.

Once I had Cork set up, I was able to see all its features, which are plentiful. The first thing you notice is the Cork home screen which lists the number of formulae, taps and casks you have installed. When you launch the program, it checks for any available updates, and you can choose to install them or not on an individual basis.

When you click on a formula the in sidebar, you are given info on the currently installed version number, what it is a dependency of, which tap it came from, the homepage where more info can be found, when it was installed and its size. You can also uninstall the formula from this screen or choose to lock yourself to the current version number if you don’t want it to check for updates. You can also right-click on the formula in the sidebar to get options to view the Finder location, purge the formula or tag it.

You can click on the plus sign in the menu bar to add a formula or cask, which you can search for by name. If you don’t find what you are looking for, you can add the tap by name where your package resides.

Cork has a built in maintenance feature that uninstalls orphaned packages, purges the Homebrew cache, deletes downloaded installation files and performs a health check on your installation.

You can get more information about Cork on its GitHub page.

You can download a demo of Cork or purchase it for €25 at the dev’s website. 

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 in view
• Configurability
• Color implementation
• Mouse Integration
• Notification Center integration
• Profiles for connecting to different hosts
• Timestamps for every line it terminal
• Built in password manager

iTerm 2 is free and the source code is available on the developer's website.

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 Noise, Playground, River Stream, Sailing Yacht, Sea Waves, Ship Hull, Space Drone, Subway, Summer Night, Sunny Day, Thunderstorm, Tropical Birds, Vinyl Cracks, White Noise, Wind Chimes, Winter Wind, Alpha Waves, Beta Waves, Gamma Waves, Delta Waves, Theta Waves.

You can choose a single sound or any combination and save the mix as a custom loop. Noizio has a master volume but each sound also has it’s own volume control so you can really fine tune what you hear. The mixes are played in a continuous loop, although you can set a timer to have them quit whenever you want. You can use the app offline, so it’s perfect for providing background noise even when you are away from wi-fi.

Noizio has been downloaded over 1,000,000 times and has a 4.8 satisfaction rating in the App Store. It does not collect any data about you.

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 include:

• Vignetting
• Borders
• Film Simulation
• Oil painting

I gave it 15 files of various images with formats of jpg, png, and webp. I told it to resize every image to 900 pixels wide, sharpen, vignette and save the final product as webp. It took about 10 seconds. 

It can output files, compressed files, straight to email or to FTP. The program has been converted to over 20 languages. It supports macOS 10.12 and later. It was last updated 10 months ago. The developer’s website has more info. You can download the app from the Mac App Store.

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 Wins.

After downloading and installing Wins, I’m impressed with the way it can be customized and how well it works with keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures. I’m going to experiment with some of the features to see if they will improve my workflow.

Features

• Shake a window to hide other windows.
• Access an overlay of suggested window positions by dragging windows to it.
• Integrates with System Settings.
• Move windows, including to another display, with the keyboard.
• Hide windows with keyboard shortcuts.
• Drag windows to snap.
• Hide all windows with the keyboard.
• Low memory and CPU usage
• Dark mode interface to match system
• Keyboard shortcuts for multiple window positions

A single license for Wins is $13.99. A second license if half off. Educators and students get a 40% discount.

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, I chose five apps:

• Apple Messages
• Facebook Messenger
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Outlook (with three email accounts)
• Discord

You can choose how the icons are displayed in the menu bar, always shown, transparent when inactive or hidden when inactive. You can also choose to have the icons hidden unless there is a notification, which is what I went with. Clicking on an icon switches to or launches the app. Only active apps display notifications.

I was satisfied with the default application icons, which display in color. but if matching aesthetics are important to you, you can choose custom monochrome menu bar icons.

Badgeify is free for up to three apps with limited choices on icon display. A single computer license is $19 and a two-computer license is $29. Both of these options feature unlimited apps and your choice of icon display options. It is fully compatible with menu bar management apps like Bartender, Ice and Hidden Bar. Badgeify is compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina and all later versions.

Badgeify is based on Doll, a free app available on GitHub.

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 much a fan of PDF Gear, available for free on the App Store. It’s worth a look for anyone at any level who needs document conversion, merging, separation or merging. If you can overcome dependance on the bloated expensive monstrosity from Adobe, you might end up very pleased.

PDF Gear offers a plethora of features for the average and power user:

• View and Print
• Annotate
• Stamp
• Signature
• Bookmark
• Converter
• Page Editor
• Compress 
• Form Fill
• OCR

It has numerous AI features allowing you to describe what you want to do in natural language and to ask questions about your document. Because it's free, some have concerns about its privacy policy, however the only thing it does is collect usage data not connected to your identity. The developers have stated that they may charge for the use of certain features in the future, but they've been saying that for a while and so far have not acted on it.

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 alternative to services like RescueTime, ManicTime, and WakaTime. 

Aside from the informative reports and graphics in the web interface, you can also download all the data collected as JSON files. Other useful features include a built-in stopwatch for you to use as you see fit and a timeline view.

The views available on the report page include:

• Top Applications
• Top Window Titles
• Top Categories
• Category Tree
• Top Browser URLs
• Top Editor Files

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 app will download and install every time you run 

mas upgrade 

or topgrade. You can also run 

mas list

 to see everything you have downloaded from the MAS, to include a separate list of apps that are no longer being maintained, useful if you want to remove them from your system.

Next, topgrade checks to see if there are any updates available from Apple for macOS. If so, it stops and offers you the yes/no choice to install the upgrade.

Finally, it moves to Rust and VSCode extensions.

I find topgrade an easy thing to run frequently. There are no fancy commands or switches to remember. Converting as many of my apps as possible over to Homebrew casks was easy enough using the GUI Homebrew App Store, Applite and now keeping them updated is easy using topgrade. 

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 searches on a wide variety of sites which you can enable or disable as needed. You can also create custom searches for any site that allows it (e.g., Netflix, AllMusic).

The included sites include:  

• Google  
• Bing  
• DuckDuckGo  
• Wolfram Alpha  
• GitHub  
• Amazon  
• Wikipedia  
• Unsplash  
• YouTube  
• Reddit  
• Mac App Store  
• Twitter  
• Perplexity AI  
• Pinterest  
• Ecosia  
• Apple Maps  
• Apple Dictionary

The developers of Haste also have a website where you can download other searches, including Google, Reddit, Bing and DuckDuckGo searches with specific criteria, as well as other sites like ebay and Etsy. For Safari users, there is a Haste extension that will use any selected text as the search criteria

Haste is free to try for 30 days and then it becomes feature limited unless you elect the $5.99 IAP. You can download it in the Mac App Store. 

Mac Tube is an ad-free YouTube player currently also supporting AppleTV, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Max, Disney+, Peacock, Tubi and CrunchyRoll as well as Vimeo, Twitch, Ted Talks, BigThink and TikTok. The developer’s website doesn’t it make it clear, but the Mac App Store version of the app, known as Pear Tube, only supports YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch and TikTok. The app is $4.99, a one-time, no subscription fee whether you purchase it straight from the developer or the feature limited version on the App Store.

The interface to access each service is basically a browser page and you have to log in to each service to get to your content, subscribe to YouTube channels etc. This means that your privacy is the same as it would be through a web browser

Core Features

• Automatically blocks YouTube ads.
• Native app experience for macOS.
• Supports 4K (2160p) video resolution.
• Optimized for video playback. No lagging, less buffering.
• Video playback loads 3x faster when compared to traditional browsers.
• Features auto dark mode that syncs with your system.
• Allows navigation to specific videos by directly pasting URLs from supported services
• Lightweight, seamless solution for organizing and enhancing all your video streaming needs.

If you are primarily interested in YouTube, I would recommend using FreeTube, since it requires no YouTube login, supports private playlists, has a built-in downloader and also has Invidious support. It does not support Twitch, Vimeo and TikTok, or any of the streaming services, so if you want access to that in a standalone player, go with MacTube.

If you’d like to take a crack at setting up some Mac automations without spending the money that Keyboard Maestro ($36)  or Better Touch Tool ($24)  will run you, then you should download and try Keyboard Cowboy, a free and open-source automation tool available from the dev’s Github site. It doesn’t come close to having all of the features of the more advanced apps, but it has plenty of functionality, nonetheless.

The app features three kinds of triggers: 

• Keyboard shortcuts
• Applications
• Snippets

Keyboard Cowboy features a number of categories Including:

• Automation - MenuBar Command, Window Management, Mouse Command
• Applications - Launch applications
• AppleScripts - Run Apple Scripts
• Files & Folders - Open files and folders
• Rebinding - Key Binding
• Shortcuts - Launch shortcuts
• ShellScripts - Run shell scripts
• Websites - Open Web Sites

Available System Commands for Automation

• Activate Last Application
• Application Windows
• Minimize All Open Windows
• Mission Control
• Move Focus to Window on Left
• Move Focus to Window on Right
• Move Focus to Window Upwards
• Move Focus to Window Downwards
• Move Focus to Next Window of Active Application
• Move Focus to Previous Window of Active Application 
• Move Focus to Next Window
• Move Focus to Previous Window
• Move Focus to Next Window (All Windows)
• Move Focus to Previous window (All Windows)
• Show Desktop

I am partial to Downie  when it comes to downloading video from the Internet, but I recently discovered a good free alternative for those looking to use something without incurring a cost. Clipgrab is a video downloader for YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Daily Motion and many other sites. It downloads and converts videos into :

• MPEG4
• MP3
• WMV
• OGG Vorbis & OGG Theora
• Original Format (MPEG4, FLV or WebM)

ClipGrab essentially provides a GUI front end for yt-dlp, a CLI downloading program. You will be directed to download it from GitHub if you do not already have it installed.

My search for a good multi-device battery monitoring app ended today when I discovered Air Battery. In just a few minutes I had a widget installed in notification center with accurate battery readouts of my Macbook, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. I didn’t have to install any client apps, just one on the Mac. 

Facts

• Displays on Dock, Menu Bar or as a widget - or all three, you pick
• Can be configured to show the battery levels of all Macs on your LAN
• Homebrew installation

brew install lihaoyun6/tap/airbattery

• Runs on macOS 11 or later
• Hide any devices you do not want to see

Devices

• Laptop
• iPhone
• iPad
• Apple Watch
• Air Pods
• Magic Keyboard
• Magic Mouse
• Magic Trackpad

Air Battery is a free app and is distributed under a AGPL-3.0 license.

Free Apps

• Apparency - The Apps That Opens Apps 
• ToyViewer - A Preview Replacment
• Chrome Remote Desktop - Free Remote Control
• BBEdit - It Doesn't Suck
• Blip - Free Cross Platform File Transfers
• FreeTube - Maybe the Most Underrated App
• Bean - A Free, Lightweight Word Processor
• Maestral, an Open-Source Dropbox Client
• Zavala - Free, Open-Source Outliner for Mac, iPhone, iPad
• Velja Browser Picker by Sindre Sorhus
• Omnivore, a Free Open-Source Read It Later App
• Why Haven't You Installed Keka Yet?
• BlockBlock and KnockKnock from Objective-See
• Things You Can Do with Obsidian
• Applite - An App Store for Homebrew
• Open Core Legacy Patcher
• Angry IP Scanner
• Upscayl - A Free and Open-Source Image Enlarger
• Amphetamine - Ultimate Sleep Prevention for Your Mac
• Stats Is a Free Alternative to iStat Menus
• OnlySwitch - Free App for System Controls & More
• App Cleaner vs. Pear Cleaner
• Disk Drill Has Six Free Tools
• Network Utility is Back!
• Cryptomator Free and Open Source Cloud Encryption
• DockDoor Adds Functionality to macOS
• TRANSNOMINO - Free File Renaming Utility with Pro Capabilities
• ReiKey and Task Explorer from Objective-See
• Rocket - Free, Slack-Style Emoji Picker
• WordService - Another Free Utility from Devon Technologies
• Karabiner Elements to the Rescue
• Swift Shift - A Free Tool to Move and Resize Windows
• Onyx for Mac
• Meteorologist - Free and Open-Source Menu Bar Weather
• SilentKnight - Free Security Checks for Your Mac
• Folder Peek FTW
• FlowVision - Image Viewer
• ImageOptim - Free and Open-Source Utility to Reduce File Sizes
• XMenu - Free Menu Bar App Launcher

For the first time in years, I’ve started using my Mac’s desktop as a place to check for information and interact with my computer. For a long time, I kept the desktop hidden behind windows and full screen apps. I don’t save files to my desktop or launch applications from there, but it is an information center today, thanks to both native widgets and the app Widget Wall, available on the Mac App Store.  The app comes with eight free widgets and more can be added through an IAP. You have the option of buying Widget Wall outright ($34.99), getting it through Setapp or a monthly ($1.99) or year subscription ($19.99).

Some of the widgets in Widget Wall are powerful enough to replace standalone apps like the Timer, Pomodoro, Chat GPT, Music Player and Browser. Having a single place to view my calendar, reminders, weather, computer hardware stats and notes all at once is also very convenient.

Free Widgets:

• Confetti!
• Clock
• Calculator
• Photos
• Stopwatch
• Timer
• App Shortcuts
• Video

Premium Widgets, available with an in-app purchase:
White Noise

• Pomodoro
• Alarm
• Countdown
• Countup
• Emoji Browser
• TikTok
• Weather
• Stats
• Music
• Calendar
• Reminders
• Notes
• Browser
• Chat GPT

I recently purchased the single purpose utility, Screen Memory on sale from Bundle Hunt for $6. On the developer’s website it goes for $27 and can be used on up to three computers. The app takes screenshots of your entire monitor (or monitors) at a predetermined interval. The default is 60 seconds. It maintains a searchable database of those screenshots for a user determined period of time. The default is one week. You can also take manual screenshots from the menu bar icon, and you can pause recording at any time. If you use more than one monitor, you can opt to have screen shots of all your monitors taken each time the program activates, or you can choose to have only the active monitor captured.  I am using the defaults and capturing two 24-inch displays on a computer I use eight hours a day and the amount of space consumed comes to around 2GB a week. Obviously if I chose to have more frequent screenshots maintained for a longer period of time in 30-inch 4K monitors, my database would be larger.

The program performs OCR on your screenshots making them somewhat searchable. You can choose to omit selected apps, such as password managers, from having their data captured. Screen Memory features a calendar to show the days where it’s recorded content. Each day has a timeline with a different color representing each app that you used. The app allows you to make notes to accompany a screenshot and it has a graph showing the amount of time you spent in each of your apps.

In my day job of IT support and system administration I have been running the app for a month. I haven’t found a use case for it yet. I spend most of my work time in a browser or in a VM to a Windows Server. I don’t have a boss that demands an accounting of my time minute by minute and I have a decent enough memory to recall what I’ve been doing so as not to need screenshots of it. I’m not sure how much longer I will use Screen Memory unless I find a reason to. It’s no fault of the app. It does exactly what it says it will.

What is in your menu bar?

At Macworld 2014, Mac Developer Brett Terpstra turned heads when he revealed what he had running in his menu bar while sharing his screen. In all, he had 42 menu bar icons and people were amazed because he was on a MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM. Brett is considered a Mad Scientist. Aside from his day job at Oracle he’s made a ton of apps over the years including NV-Alt, NV-Ultra and Marked. He proved to folks that Macs can handle a lot of background processes and still work just fine. That’s been my philosophy too, so I have never really limited myself on startup items unless I noticed problems. Today I checked to see what I’ve got in my menu bar and lo and behold, I have crossed the Terpstra Threshold. What’s in your menu bar? (Some links are to reviews with download, pricing and alternative app info).

Visible

1. Menu Bar Manager - Bartender
   2. Dato
   2. Default Folder X
   3. Shortcuts
   4. Dropzone 4
   5. RewriteBar
   6. Keyboard Maestro
   7. Folder Peek
   8. Scrap Paper
   9. Start
   10. TextSniper
   11. Trickster 

Hidden

1. Karabiner-Menu
   13. App Tamer
   14. HistoryHound
   15. 24 Hour Wallpaper
   16. WidgetWall 
   17. Dropover
   18. CleanMyMac X Menu
   19. TextExpander
   20. Little Snitch
   21. Hazel
   22. PopClip
   23. CleanShot X
   24. BetterTouchTool
   25. Witch
   26. Time Machine
   27. Clop
   28. ScreenMemory
   29. SetappLauncher
   30. Velja
   31. DockDoor
   32. Qspace Pro
   33. Mission Control Plus
   34. Google Drive
   35. One Drive
   36. Maestral
   37. Clock
   38. Control Center
   39. Time Machine
   40. Wi-Fi
   41. Spotlight
   42. Focus Modes
   43. Alarm Clock Pro