AppAddict Newsletter

If you’d like to explore some of what’s available in macOS through Homebrew, the command line package manager but you are a little intimidated by the terminal, you are in luck. There are some apps with graphical user interfaces to help you see what’s available, what you have installed and what needs updating. using them in concert doesn’t hurt one bit.

Get Homebrew here

The first app is Applite, is a free application manager using a graphical user interface for apps installed using the CLI Homebrew package manager. Applite allows you to download, manage and update your Homebrew installed apps, even the ones you installed prior to using Applite. It has a clean and simple user interface and is designed for non-technical users. It is free and open source. There are no trackers.  One complaint I've heard from users is that does not seem to update all packages they have installed. It doesn't list everything they have installed either. Some of the packages (for example, ffmpeg) are not available on Applite when searched for.

The second app is CakeBrew. CakeBrew can also download and update apps but it has a feature Applite doesn't have, the Homebrew Doctor. The doctor is a Homebrew feature that detects the most common causes of errors. 

The third app is Cork, and I know it only from its great reputation. I hope to have a copy to fully check it out soon but based on other reviews and the developer's GitHub site, Cork simplifies the HomeBrew experience and speeds things up quite a bit. You can compile it yourself from the code on GitHub or buy it for 25€ from the developer (includes updates). Some of the things Cork does that Homebrew does not include:

• Automatically respecting system proxy.
• Clearing of cached downloads.
• Updating packages from the Menu Bar without having an app open.
• Seeing much info about a package in one convenient location.
• Tagging packages. This is a Cork-only feature that lets you mark any number of packages you'd like to keep track of.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with Cork.

The native Mac tools are great but most of them can be replaced with third-party apps that add extra features. Even the geeky apps like Terminal and Activity Monitor have apps like iTerm and Smotrite to serve as alternatives. There is one app though that I think is perfect the way Apple designed it. Every time I use it, I am amazed at how well it works. That app is Migration Assistant.

Last year I bought an M2 MBA to replace a 2020 Intel MBP. I had hundreds of apps and cloud storage from iCloud, Google Drive and Dropbox. I had countless tweaks and automations tied into the system through apps like Keyboard Maestro, Better Touch Tool, Hazel and Karabiner Elements. Many of the apps I had installed were licensed apps purchased directly from developers, not from the MAS. As a long time Mac user, I had a large iPhoto library, wallpaper collection and personal files going all the way back to the mid-90s. Then there were a few dozen wireless networks to which I’d authenticated and the settings for my VPN.

I brought home the new Mac, turned it on and when prompted by Migration Assistant,  I plugged in my Time Machine backup and selected from a menu what I wanted to restore: two user accounts, Applications, other files and folders and the system. I kicked off the restore process and figured it would take hours. It took 20 minutes. It was so fast that I thought something was wrong. When I logged in to the new machine, I had to approve a ton of security requests from the apps in my login settings, a one-time hassle. The rest of the process was painless. My apps were there, properly registered and licensed. My keyboard shortcuts and automations worked. There was very little fiddling to do.

Four months later, I bought an iMac for work and repeated the process. I got the same result. Migration Assistant is such a great app. You can run it at any time. If your partner’s computer dies and all you have is a Time Machine backup, you can use Migration Assistant to import their account, apps and settings to your Mac. You can also use Migration Assistant straight from another computer on the same Network or connected physically with a USB cable. Products that try to do this in the Windows world are expensive and they don’t work anywhere as seamlessly as Migration Assistant does.

Copying the information from one Mac to another is painless. Some people would rather always do a clean install because they feel like that’s the only way to clear the cruft from their setup. More power to them. You can avoid having a messy Library folder by using an uninstaller like App Cleaner from day one and by doing periodic maintenance on your machine. I’ve used Migration Assistant in an unbroken chain since at least Mavericks with no ill effects.  

ImageOptim is a tiny utility that every Mac user should have in their toolkit. It integrates a half dozen image optimization tools behind the scenes to quickly and efficiently provide an optimum file size without quality loss, including MozJPEG, pngquant, Pngcrush, 7zip, SVGO and Google Zopfli. As part of the file reduction process, it removes EXIF data that could compromise your privacy like GPS location and camera model.

There are a variety of ways to access ImageOptim. You can drag and drop a file or group of files on the open program interface or the icon in the dock. You can also use the Services menu and assign a keyboard shortcut. There is even a CLI.

If you enable lossy minification, you can reduce file sizes to smaller than what you get with the default settings. The program operates really quickly on my M3 iMac, but if you have speed issues with PNG files, you can turn off PNGOUT and Zopfli to get a quicker operation with a small increase in file size.

ImageOptim was developed by Kornel Lesiński. It is offered free of charge in every country in the world. You can download it at the developer’s website. 

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I’ve used the Mac and iPadOS versions of Mind Node mind mapping software for about 10 years. I checked my documents folder and found mind maps for deploying different versions of Mac OS X server when that was a thing, plus deployment plans for new laptop models, tech support documents for implementing a corporate password manager and all sorts of work projects as well as articles I’ve written on various software products. Mind mapping is a visual brainstorming technique that organizes ideas, concepts and information branching from a central idea into branches or nodes. It’s very flexible and lends itself to creativity and collaboration. 

• Mind Node is a very mature product that's added a lot of features over the years:
• Mind Map view or focused view (one branch at the time)
• Tags to connect ideas from different branches
• Convert ideas to tasks and track them
• Quick entry from the menu bar 
• Widgets
• Stickers with adaptable colors for use in illustrating your ideas
• Themes
• Adaptability features
• Export to plain text, rtf, docx, csv, opml, pdf, image, markdown, or TaskPaper. 
• Send tasks to Apple Reminders, Things 3, or OmniFocus.
• iCloud sync

Mind Node is available in the Mac App Store. The free version is adequate for the creation of fairly complex mind maps. It has extensive import and export features. The pro version is $24.99 a year ($2.99 a month). It adds tags, notes, stickers and expanded outlining among other features. That price includes the iOS and iPadOS versions.

I don’t see my desktop during my working moments, but when I lock my computer, I have a different wallpaper displayed on each of my monitors. I also have a Keyboard Maestro macro that runs when I unlock my computer and hides all open apps for privacy reasons in case someone is. standing behind me when I go back to work. For the past eight months, I’ve relied on 24 Hour Wallpaper from Jetson Creative to provide me with full 5K wallpapers with a variety of professional quality images.

The app changes the displayed image to reflect the sunlight conditions outdoors, although it can be offset if desired. There are 125 full-sized 5K images available so frequent repition is not a problem. I get a different image on each monitor, which is the default behavion, but it can be changed. I usually just let the images rotate using the default program settings but there are different categories to choose from for anyone who wants a specific type of photo including:

• Artistic
• Astronomy
• Big Sur
• Catalina Island
• Cityscapes
• Desertscapes
• Fall Colors
• Mojave Desert
• Monterey Bay
• Naturescapes
• Ventura
• Watercolor
• Winterscapes
• Yosemite

There is minimal CPU, GPU, and Battery use. Your computer only engages with the app when wallpaper is download or changing.

You can download 24 Hour Wallpaper for free on the App Store with three images included. More can be purchased through IAPs. The program and the entire catalog of images are available on Setapp. 

Start by Innovative Bytes is an app launcher with extra features that make it different enough from FolderPeek  and XMenu to be worth checking out. Like the other two apps, it offers a way to access your favorite apps, folders, files and URLs from the menu bar. It also lets you access your shortcuts, which is a welcome addition. Like the Apple Menu, you can add recent files, recent apps as well as running apps to your menu choices.

What really makes Start different is its use of tags. It uses Spotlight to assign a few of your apps to tags it creates automatically. For example, it created a tag called Office with subfolders for Microsoft and Apple’s productivity suites. You can rename the tags easily and you can create your own on the fly. You can choose different icons and colors to differentiate them. You can also make comments on any app and the tags and comments are searchable from within the app. Right-clicking on an item in the Start menu also gives you the option of revealing the item in the Finder or copying the path to the item.

You can designate any menu item as a favorite and then opt to have the menu open to those chosen items for quick access. You can also choose to have it open to any to the other submenus. Other view options include the ability to change the menu icon and the size of the program interface. You can assign keyboard shortcuts to any menu or menu item.

Like Folder Peek, you can use Start to browser the folders you include in the menu choice. You can’t perform any functions on the enclosed files beyond opening them, getting the path or adding them to your favorites.

Start is $8.99 on the App Store. It is also available through Setapp. 

Almighty, a collection of tweaks and utilities bundled into one app is by Khoa Pham, the same developer behind the popular low-priced clipboard manager PastePal.  There are 50 different settings and utilities in the app, and you can enable and disable at will. They can be launched from the menu bar or user configurable keyboard shortcuts. 

The utilities I found most interesting are ones that could potentially replace other standalone apps if you need basic functionality and not advanced features. 

• Emoji alias - allows you to type and create Slack-style emojis from the keyboard
• Emoji picker - puts an emoji picker in the menu bar, like Rocket
• Extract Text from images - similar to Text Sniper
• Hide Menu Bar Items - similar to Bartender, Hidden Bar and Barbee
• Increase Brightness - a feature of Better Display
• Keep Mac Awake - similar to Amphetamine
• Mechanical Keyboard - makes sounds like Klack
• Mouse Jiggler - mimics several apps like Jiggler and iShake
• Preview Dock Window - similar to DockDoor
• Snap Windows - similar to Better Snap Tool
• Visualize Keystrokes - similar to Keystroke Pro

The version for sale on the developer's website is full-featured and goes for $19.99. The Mac App Store version has some limitations and is $15.99. It is also included as part of Setapp. The app has no analytics or data collection.

After seeing the developer of FlowVison, a free image viewer for macOS, post about his new app on Reddit, I downloaded it and have been using it for the past week. The app has a Finder style interface similar to what you see when you enable icon view and enlarge the display size. Unlike Finder, you can open individual images within the app and scroll through them using the mouse or keyboard. You can also zoom in and out on the image and perform the “get info” action. You have a choice to run the app in light or dark mode or to match your system settings. When viewing files, you can elect to include or omit camera raw files and videos. The way that FlowVision presents files provides more options than Finder. Finder only shows images in a grid when in icon mode, but FlowVision offers a justified view and a waterfall view.

You can also rename, move and copy files from with FlowVison and open them with the app of your choice. It is compatible with utilities like DropOver.

FlowVison doesn’t provide any image manipulation tools, so it isn’t a replacement for Preview or ToyViewer but it is handy to bring up if you don’t want to change your Finder settings around. 

You can install FlowVison via Homebrew

brew tap netdcy/flowvision
brew install flowvision --no-quarantine

You can also download it from the developer's GitHub site. 

Folder Peek by heroic Indy Developer Sindre Sorhus is the GOAT of menu bar access apps. I liked XMenu from Devon Technologies, but Folder Peek has more features and is just as rock solid in performance. Folder Peek lets you put folders full of whatever you want on your menu bar. You can make a folder with app aliases for your most used apps or add your entire applications folder. Give your documents folder its own menu bar icon or add an alias of it to another folder. My personal setup is a single folder with aliases for:

• Home folder
• Documents
• Downloads
• Screenshots
• Approximately 20 apps

Where Folder Peek Shines is in performing actions on files in the folders you include.

• You can open files or show them in the finder
• You search for files by typing the name when the folder is open
• By using the option key, you can copy a file's path
• By using the option key you can get an image's dimensions
• You can move files to the trash, copy them or access the share menu
• By using the shift key on subfolders, you can get info or change the sort order

You can use Folder Peek to access links too. Drag and drop the URL from a browser address bar into a folder. You will end up with a file with a .webloc extension. When you click that file in Folder Peek, it will open in your default browser.

Folder Peek has an Apple Shortcut to hide folder visibility. This way you can have a folder for work apps and files during work hours and a folder for personal stuff afterwords. You can use shortcut automation to have this occur at a certain time.

It is available from the developer’s website (including older versions) and on the Mac App Store. 

St. Claire software makes an app that can help control heat and fan noise, extend your battery time and increase the amount of CPU power available for you frontmost application. App Tamer comes preconfigured to automatically reduce the CPU and battery usage of Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, Spotlight, Time Machine, Photoshop, Illustrator, Word and many other applications when they are idle. It’s similar to the built in Mac feature called app nap. but app nap only works on hidden applications or applications whose windows are completely covered.

App Tamer takes advantage of the Apple silicon processors by transferring background apps to the efficiency cores while keeping active applications on the faster performance cores. You can let App Tamer run automatically or you can set your own parameters for specific apps. If App Tamer detects high CPU usage from an an app, you will be alerted and offered a chance to throttle it. This helps identify apps with bugs that cause excessive CPU use you may not be aware of.

App Tamer is available from the developer’s website for $14.95 and it has a two week free trial. 

Back in the days when Apple still made hardware servers and an operating system to go with them (at $1K a copy) we used to have to deal with hundreds of user home directories in my line of work as a K-12 system admin. Most user’s files got deleted at the end of the school year but some, mostly teachers, got carried over. We would have to back them up and restore them. Invariably there would be permissions errors for some people along the way and the utility we turned to time and again was BatchMod. It’s a GUI for changing permissions on files and folders (including the files in them). I needed to change some file permissions this afternoon and when I went to download the app, I found it still available from third-party sites but the developer is nowhere to be found and doesn’t appear to be maintaining it any longer.

I downloaded it from another site and tested it on files and folders in macOS 14.6.1 Sonoma. It was able to change the read, write and execute for owner, group and everyone on a folder and the enclosed files. Unfortunately, the feature that would force empty the trash is no longer functional. Although the download site claims it was last updated in 2023, the actual date on the files is from 2016.

Don’t download this and attempt to use BatchMod on system files. If you know what you are doing and know how to us chmod (or the Get Info modal in some cases) to change permissions in case things don’t work out, you may get some limited use from BatchMod. The last released edition is 1.7b5. I downloaded it at Softonic.

SilentKnight from The Eclectic Light Company is a free utility to check the security settings of your Mac. it will let you know of any uninstalled security upadtea you may be missing and offer to download and install them from you. It’s often better to run these updates from Software Update in System Settings so you can set SilentKnight to inform onlu mode and it will allow you to download security updates that way.

Silent Knight covers firmware, security settings and data files, and now checks macOS malware scans. It will let you know how often the bulit-in macOS malware scanner has run in the past 24 hours. SilentKnight has both a summary Help page and a detailed reference. The most recent update improves compatibility with Sequoia. There are versions available for download for older versions of macOS.

Don’t be alarmed if SilentKnight says you have reduced security. two features that are off by default can cause this: file vault and secure boot.

You can get the app at the developer’s website and check the entire arsenal of security freeware that is offered there. 

Paletro, by appmakes.io, is a $6.99 utility that gives you a command palette in any app. Large, multifunction apps with many commands like VScode, Sublime Text or Obsidian can have dozens of menu commands and good luck to the intrepid user who tries to remember them all. That’s why those apps have a command palette that lets you summon an alphabetical list to effectively browse for the command you’re looking for. Paletro brings that functionality to any app. Using the default short cut of ⇧⌘P, you can bring up an alphabetized list of the app you’re in. It differs from apps like MenuWhere that allow you to browse the traditional hierchical menu structure in that you don’t need to know where the command is located, you just need to know the name of it. Of course, nothing prevents you from using both utilities in tandem.

You can get a 14-day free trial when you download the app from the developer’s website. You can also get Paletro if you are a Setapp subscriber. 

Type is a menu bar app designed with one purpose in mind, to capture time-stamped notes in plain text or Markdown format quickly and to get out of your way. It’s fast and more versatile than using the fn+Q Apple Quick Note feature which doesn’t time stamp and is available only in Apple Notes which isn’t universally used. I set my shortcut keys to ^+, (control+comma) and I saved my default note as a .md file in my Obsidian vault. Now I have a super quick way to add lines to the note throughout the day. Obsidian doesn’t even have to be open to add to your note, but if it is closed and you want to open it, you can do so from within Type.

You can have more than one active note at the time. The interface allows you to use the mouse or arrow keys to switch between them.You can create a new note at any time. The preferences are pretty utilitarian. You can set you shortcut key, choose to have the app open at login (recommended), choose to have a menu bar icon and select an app to open your notes, as mentioned, that is Obsidian in my case.

You can also set your formatting options for the date and time and choose whether you want new notes to appear at the top or the bottom of documents.

Type comes with a one-week free trial before reverting to read only mode. It is a $4.99 one-time purchase in the Mac App Store. 

Keeping track of current weather conditions and forecasts is a breeze (no pun intended) with the free and powerful menu bar app. Meteorologist, an open-source utility available on Sourceforge. I’ve user Meteorologist for years and have been impressed by a steady stream of updates. 

To save on space, the basic display on the menu bar is just a city name and the temperature, plus an icon displaying current conditions or if there are weather warnings. Clicking on the menu bar display gives you info for up to 12 user configurable cities.

You can also access the following for each city in your list:

• Details on current conditions
• The name of the weather provider
• Current radar
• Hourly forecast
• Extended forecast

The preferences menu is extensive and allows you to control the amount and variety of information presented along with its appearance. Meteorologist is suitable for international users since all of its measurement units are user configurable. There are seven weather information providers available to choose from and you can use different providers for different cities if you want to.

Every once in a while, an app is so well received that an entire community grows up around it. Evernote used to be like that before it started to suck. Obsidian is like that, just look at the YouTube videos and blogs. I’ve recently discovered that Twos, a combination calendar, to-do, notes plus collaboration and social media app has a devoted following and quite a large community in its built in “Twos World” feature and on Discord.

I have to say that the app is beautifully designed and it’s theme-able. It is free to use . It’s cross platform, so not only can you use it on a Mac, it can be accessed on iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and Chrome extensions (for Chromebooks). Unlike Notion, a competitor, Twos can be used offline and will sync when connectivity is reestablished. It generates a new list for “things” every day. That’s what it calls its data points whether they be notes, calendar events, or todos. Its interface lends itself very well to bullet journaling.

It’s todo lists offers tasks and subtasks and it supports Siri shortcuts so you can verbally add data. Unfinished items automatically carryover to the next day. You can set auto-reminders for todos or calendar events.  Its calendars import from Google, Apple and Outlook. They can also write to those calendars. You can share you lists via links even with people who don’t have the app. Twos supports text only data entry via email, texts and WhatsApp.

Some advanced features can either be purchased or earned through the in-app gamification of earning coins by using certain features, referring friends or participating in Twos World, the built in community feature. The purchase price is low though, $1.99 per feature for:

• Hyperlinks
• Alerts
• Weekly reports
• Suggested times
• Sublists
• AI

They also offer a quasi-subscription/donation option to let you gain access to any new features or just to support future development. It's available on the Mac App Store or at the developer's website. If you want to do me a solid, sign up with my referral code. 

Since 2003, Titanium Software has been issuing its free system maintenance and tweaking utility, Onyx for every major release of macOS. Currently there is a mature version of Sonoma and a beta version of Sequoia, although you can still download versions going all the way back to Jaguar, Mac OS 10.2. 

The current version of Onyx features a whole suite of features:

• Verify The Structure of the System Files 
• Run Miscellaneous Maintenance and Cleaning Tasks
• Configure Parameters in The Finder, Dock, Safari, And Some Apple Applications
• Delete Caches
• Remove Certain Problematic Folders and Files
• Rebuild Various Databases and Indexes

A few other things you can do include:

• Delete old media libraries and Xcode files
• Access all of the UNIX man files on your system
• Granular wake, sleep and shut down controls
• Provide easy access to hidden system utilities like Directory Utility and Wireless Diagnostics
• Change the visibility of files, folder and applications
• See status and toggle security tools like Gatekeeper and Firewall
• Advanced file finding
• Info and reports on hardware, memory, volumes and software

Onyx is signed by Titanium Software and notarized by Apple. It is available for downloading from the developer's website.

I need to write to external NTFS formatted drives from my M3 iMac on a regular basis for my job. I investigated the free options, primarily Mounty and found them to have a little too much friction for me on a computer running Sonoma with the aforementioned Apple Silicon. I opted for paid software for this mundane task. My choice was iBoysoft NTFS Mounter for Mac and in the four months since I installed it, I haven’t had a single read/write error.

NTFS Mounter works in the finder and in alternative file managers like Path Finder and Qspace. It adds the ability to format drives with NTFS using Disk Utility. It installs as a startup item and lives in the menubar of your computer. I never need to access its settings, since the defaults work perfectly well, so I used Bartender to hide the icon. It works with SSD drives connected via USB-C and with various thumb drives I access through a USB 3.0 hub. The speed is slower than natively formatted drives, but it is bearable.

The one thing is cannot do that I wish it would - access NTFS drives encrypted with Bitlocker. I still have to use a PC when that need arises, which is seldom.

There is a free trial of 14 days. When that’s over you can purchase it for $49.95 or opt for a yearly subscription for $19.95. You can get it on the Mac App Store as well as the developer’s site.  It’s also available through Setapp which is how I found it.

In my ongoing search for an app to take advantage of the notch on my M2 MacBook Air, I bought Dynamic Lake Pro today after the developer offered a 20% discount on Reddit.  The app provides a variety of information from system controls and applications.

General Controls
You can elect to display a graphic in the notch when you use the function keys to control the screen brightness or the volume. The color of the text is user configurable, and you can toggle sounds to your liking, on or off.

DynaMusiX
The primary display of the app show media controls that are a little fancier than what Control Center shows the added benefit of being always visible.

DynaGlance
By hitting fn+space, you can bring up DynaGance which features date, time and local weather (F or C). With a two-fingered swipe on the trackpad you can switch to a calendar view with appointments listed. Currently the appointments are a little hard to see because they are dimmed with no apparent way to make them brighter.

DynaSwitcher
Pressing fn+tab bringers up an application switcher in the notch showing your open apps and a small preview window. Like the default Mac app switcher, there is no way to choose a specific window if you have an app that has multiple windows open.

Notifications
You can choose to display notifications from WhatsApp, Apple Mail, Messages and Facebook Messenger in the notch. Presumably you’ll want to turn these off in Notification center. You can reply to messages in the notch as well. It took me a minute to figure out that in order to remove the notification that you need to swipe it away. You can also elect to get calendar and battery notifications in the notch as well.

A single license is $13.90 on Gumroad and entitles you to use the app on three Macs. For a limited time, enjoy a 20% discount with the code: AJHBEDO. You can get more info at the developer’s website. Based on reviews and feedback from other users, it seems that the developer is responsive to bug reports and is working hard to improve the app.