AppAddict Newsletter

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

Here are my favorite apps that have both a macOS and an iOS/iPadOS version.

 Drafts

I use Drafts for a great number of tasks. I collect quotes there until I am ready to process them into my collection. Whenever i need to convert HTML into markdown, it's as simple as pasting it into Drafts. On iOS it serves as quick entry into Obsidian. On macOS it holds templates I convert into reoccurring projects in my task manager.

Obsidian 

Obsidian is my second brain. It contains notes relating to my job, my writing and everything in between. I do most of my note creating on my Mac, but I use it often on my phone for reference. The mobile app is getting better and better but it still isn't quite there yet, thus my reliance on Drafts for data entry.

Scrap Paper 

Scrap Paper is a floating notes app for macOS that synchronizes with iOS. It can be summoned with a keyboard shortcut and the window stays on top of other windows. You can manually run a sync if the automatic sync isn't fast enough. Whenever I need to manipulate text I do it in Scrap Paper because it's always there in the menu bar waiting for me.

Things 3 

Things 3 is the award winning, highly regarded task manager from Culture Code that can be used for simple lists on one end of the spectrum and complex projects on the other end. Every day starts and ends for me reviewing Things 3 on whatever device I happen to be on.

PastePal 

I go back and forth between using Raycast and PastePal for my clipboard management needs. PastePal has the advantage of being cross platform and iOS synced so that things I copy on my work computer are available to me on my home computer and phone, a feature Raycast does not have.

Anylist

My choice for several lifestyle categories is Anylist. it's my grocery shopping list, my recipe management app and my packing list compiler. Not only are there macOS and iOS versions, there is also a web interface where I can get to my info from anywhere.

Edge 

I know some of you are pressing the downvote button right now while shaking your head but hear me out. I started using Edge when I was on a PC at work and a Mac at home. I stuck with it because I work in a Microsoft 365 environment. Its syncing between computers and devices is rock solid. It has the extensions I need and it has a unique feature called collections which is very handy when I don't want to bookmark a page but want to reference later. It also has profiles and workspaces that neatly separate my person stuff from my work stuff. Don't hate. I have reasons.

Sequel 

Keeping track of upcoming TV shows can be a job and I'm just as liable to hear a good suggestion at work as I am home. I keep track of my unified watch list in  the feature rich app, Sequel, which also tracks books, audiobooks, movies and video games.

Play 

Play is a four platform threat because your App Store purchase also gives you access to the Apple TV app. Play is a watch-it-later app for YouTube that also allows for subscribing to cahnnels and extensive filtering and tagging. It has multiple ways to add videos to your playlist on iOS and macOS.

Day One  

I've been using Day One for over ten years and I have 18,000 entries in the journaling app. Using IFTTT integrations I have included almost my entire Twitter history, blog posts, scale readings, GPS tracks, and thousands of photos. I can add to it on the fly from my phone and do derious curation at night or the weekend on my Mac.

Like most members of the Apple ecosystem, I use iOS and macOS depending on the environment. I also use an iPad from time to time. A universal app, according to most definitions is an app you pay for one time and then can use on any Apple platform. Some apps have a separate price per platform. For the purpose of this review, I have included both types.

Aside from browsers, I have several apps on my hard drive for collecting and organizing bookmarks:

• Goodlinks (also has read it later features) 
• Bookmarks 
• One Bookmark 
• Raindrop.io 

There are many more with Anybox and Pinboard and its various clients also being very popular.

My personal favorite, hands down, is Raindrop.io for many reasons. The free version of Raindrop.io offers enough features for many users.

• Unlimited bookmarks
• Unlimited collections
• Unlimited highlights
• Unlimited devices
• More than 2,600 integrations (via IFTTT)
• Apps for Mac, iOS, Android, Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge.

I love how it integrates with browsers. I can type "rd" in the menu bar and hit the tab key to begin searching my collection (of 800+ bookmarks). Raindrop uses both folders and tags to organize and I take advantage of both. The iOS share sheet is as easy to use as the browser extension is and both let me make notes on any page I bookmark. I can also save highlights in the app and sync everything to Obsidian with a free plugin. For users of the pro version, Raindrop.io saves a copy of every page on its server, so that if the page is ever taken down, they will still be able to access the content. For people who have a large PDF collection, you can upload them to Raindrop's server too and access them from any computer. Even free users can upload 100mb a month of PDFs. I use an IFTTT integration with my RSS service, Inoreader, so that any article I star there gets added to my Raindrop bookmarks. I also have an intergration with YouTube so that any video I like gets added as well.

If you want extra features beyond the free plan, there is a pro version for $2.99 a month or  $28 a year. The pro version offers:

• Everything on the free plan
• Al Suggestions for folders and tags
• Full-text search of every page
• Permanent library
• Reminders to review pages
• Annotations
• Duplicate and broken links finder 
• Daily backups
• Upload 10 GB of files per month 
• Priority support by email
• Enabled in all platforms

A couple of weeks ago I saw a post on r/MacApps for a utility that purported to back up your preferences for a large number of apps, including perennial favorites Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Bartender, Text Expander and others. The name of the utility is Mackup and it is available on GitHub. Like I often do when discovering new apps on this sub, I downloaded and installed it. I proceeded to follow the instructions to backup my system. And then, I was so hosed. The preferences for many of the apps it “backed up” were not only set back to default, they were also set to read only so that I could not redo them. Every time I reconfigured an app and restarted it, nothing was saved and all the changes I just made were gone. In order to get around the problem I had to use App Cleaner to uninstall each app and then reinstall and reconfigure it.

I complained bitterly about this on social media, as one does, only to find out that other app curious folks had the same experience. Finally someone sent me a link to documentation from GitHub of other users raising hell over the issue.

This app should be removed from GitHub, or at least its destruction of all app and OS preferences should be clearly indicated as a warning to future users atop the readme.

Um, maybe that should be communicated via the app itself!?!?! I just lost all my configs after doing a backup - I even ran with the dry-run option first to make sure it was going to add what I expected. Rebooted this morning, all preferences are gone and iCloud does not keep backups. Yeah, this is an egregious abuse of user trust.

Yes, mackup does not work correctly in Macos Sonoma, since it doesn't support symlinked files for preferences as it previously. For more information, see \#1924 and especially this comment.

To be clear, I accept responsibility for my own actions. I have a robust multi-backup system in place. I'm also an experienced user with intimate knowledge of my important apps and I was able to get everything back to normal in short order, but for anyone without backups or less experienced this could have been a real disaster. I thought I'd warn folks.

I took advantage of an offer at AppSumo this week to get a lifetime license to Rambox Pro for $5 (discontinued). It’s normally $5.83 a month, although the free version has most of the paid features minus extension support and syncing between devices. Rambox is a specialized Chromium browser designed to create workspaces for a wide variety of apps, many of which have configurations already built into the app.

I set up a Microsoft 365 workspace on my work computer and added:

• Outlook
• Teams
• Word
• Excel

In the same window I have a Google workspace with:

• Gmail
• Google Drive
• Google Calendar
• Gemini

In addition I have the following apps:

• Dropbox
• Discord
• Mastodon (custom instance)
• Yahoo Mail
• Jira

There are 758 apps preconfigured and it is simple to make your own.

Each app can have the sound and notifications toggled on or off. There is a combined notification center for app apps. You can also choose to display the mobile version of the app if you want. If you have development chops, Rambox makes it easy to inject your own CSS and JavaScript to customize the interface. There is a focused mode to toggle all notifications which you can set on/off or for a specified period of time. You can decide to let apps sleep to save power after a period of inactivity or to stay awake. Navigating within the app is supported by a variety of keyboard shortcuts.

One of my favorite features of macOS is QuickLook, activated by pressing the spacebar when you have a file highlighted in the Finder, it enables you to view the contents of a file without having to open an application. The problem is that there are many file types that don’t have native support, including compressed files, certain video formats and Markdown. Luckily Apple permits plugins for the QuickLook architecture and the Apple development community has a great many of them free to download and install.

1. Better Zip is a free file compression app that, when installed, also provides a QuickLook plugin for seeing what's included in zipped files. 
2. QLMarkdown is for viewing Markdown files rendered as HTML 
3. QuickLook JSON 
4. Apparency is an app that when installed will give you plentiful information with QuickLook and even more if you choose "Open with Apparency" 
5. QLVideo - This package adds support for wide range of other codecs and "non-native" media file types, including .asf, .avi, .flv, .mkv, .rm, .webm, .wmf
6. SourceCodeSyntaxHighlight - for developers
7. QLFits - for Garmin watch files
8. QuickLook-gpx - for GPX (map) files
9. QuickLook-csv - for comma separated value files
10. Suspicious Package - shows the contents of macOS package files
11. Simple Comic on the Mac App Store - view comic book files in QuickLook

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. 

<a rel=“me” href="https://social.lol/@amerpie"&amp;gt;Mastodon&amp;lt;/a>

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.