AppAddict Newsletter

EtreCheckPro is an app that displays important system configuration details and allows users to copy that information for analyzation and use elsewhere. It helps identify and address system issues by generating detailed reports after analyzing the system’s performance. It is often requested by experts among Apple Support Communities to help diagnose issues for people requesting help. EtreCheck automatically removes any personally identifiable information from the output.

EtreCheck will automatically alert you to serious problems like adware, insufficient RAM, or a failing hard drive.

Using the program is simple. At startup, it asks you to choose a problem from a list or you can choose “just checking”. Then you click the start button and wait a few minutes while the program runs a scan. When it’s complete, information is provided in the following categories.

Major Issues - Anything requiring immediate attention
Minor Issues - Anything that could potentially negatively affect performance
Hardware - Includes computer, RAM, processor, battery (includes cycle count and percentage available) and video
System - Informations on your most recent notifications from apps with notifications enabled, virtual memory, diagnostics performed in the last 60 days with links to the logs containing the reports
Storage - Information on every partition describing what it is used for, an option to scan your HD for a usage report, Details on your Time Machine backups to include snapshots on your local HD
Network - Detailed info on every network interface, information on enabled sharing services, a section on  Top Processes Snapshot by Network Use listing the top five
Security - Lists status of built in tools like Gatekeeper, notes if you are running AV software, lists all enabled proxies and sharing services. Gives detailed info on all unsigned files to include unsigned launchd files, unsigned running apps, unsigned login items and total unsigned apps installed.
Software

• Information on System Extensions, Kernel Extensions,  System Launch Daemons, System Launch Agents, Launch Daemons, Launch Agents, User Launch Agents, User Login Items, Applications
  Performance - Detailed reports on CPU usage, memory us and energy use
  Report - a plain text report that can be emailed or posted in a tech support forum

The program to run the report is free.

There is an in-app purchase ($17.99 for up to six machines) to upgrade the program for people who want the following features:
1. See computer-generated Solutions - for people who don’t want to post anything on the internet
2. View detailed results and supporting information about hardware, operating system, storage, networking, software, and performance
3. Dive deep into analytics
4. Compare your computer and your report to others

The program is available here.

(Note: There is an anonymous and poorly written document floating around the Internet purporting that EtreCheckPro is malware. The EtreCheckPro developer says the article was written by a long-time stalker of his engaged in serial harassment. I believe him but use your own judgment.)

There is no shortage of shelf apps for the Mac. With popular apps like Yoink, Unclutter and Dropzone in the mix, Dropover Pro, a $5.99 app in the App Store still manages to rise to the top based on price, usability and popularity. Its premise is simple, grab any content type from files, including folders, documents, images, URL’s, text snippets to even web images from your browser with your cursor, shake your mouse and a shelf appears on the screen where you can park the item while you make your next move. You can also designate folders to automatically create a shelf whenever a file is added, a feature I use with my downloads folder.

Dropover is integrated with multiple cloud services. You can move items from a shelf to iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, AWS, OneDrive and Imgur and instantly receive a shareable link.

If you are gathering files from various locations, you can have multiple shelfs open at once. Each shelf has a quick action menu that allow you to use the share sheet or native menu to send the file by email, Airdrop or Messages. Other file operations like image resizing, PDF stitching and text extraction are also available.

To differentiate shelfs, you can give them custom names and colors. Shelfs can be docked to the side of the display and temporarily hidden until you need them. You can reopen your last 10 shelfs if you need to reuse them. Items on the shelf can take advantage of Quicklook and you can add to a shelf from the clipboard.  The developer has also added Shortcut and Widget support to the app. There are keyboard shortcuts available to create and use shelfs with using the mouse. There are even Raycast and Alfred integrations.

When I leave work on the days my wife works from a home, I just press an icon on my phone that sends her a text to let her know I’m leaving and approximately what time I will be home. In the morning, I start a daily note in Obsidian and with a couple of clicks a weather forecast and my daily appointments get added. When I’m ready to begin working on a certain type of project at work, I just select an item from a dropdown menu and all the apps I need for the project open up. All of these tasks and dozens more are accomplished with the help of Apple’s Shortcuts app, a built-in feature on the current versions of macOS an iOS.

To enhance your shortcut experience, there are a few apps you can install that add capabilities to the native functionality.

Actions

• Adds functionality for Audio transcriptions, Bluetooth, Color, Data, Device functionality, Dictionary, File Management, Formatting, Images, Lists, Location, Math, Music, Numbers, Text, URLs, Video and much more.
  

Toolbox Pro - Adds actions for Audio, Calendar, Contacts, Date & Time, Dictionaries, Files, Health, Images, Location, Math, Media, Reminders, System Actions, Text and more

Data Jar - Lets you persist key value pairs inside the app Mine holds information on my App wish list, Coffee habits and snippets to use in other shortcuts.

Pushcut

• Use your Mac to design automations that can be triggered at certain times of day or by the location of associated iOS devices. Most useful for Homekit devices and qualified notification settings.

Actions for Obsidian - Adds missing functionality to Shortcuts that allow you to do things like import content from the web, import from your calendars and contacts, integrate health data with notes and more

To find shortcuts that may enhance your workflow, check:
Routine Hub
Matthew Cassinelli
Shortcuts Gallery 

For many, the desire to watch all of the latest shows on streaming channels is complicated by the expense of multiple subscriptions. It seems like every month one or more of the channels I subscribe to is raising their price or instituting advertising that I have to pay to opt out of. The smartest strategy to cope with this is to only have active subscriptions to the channels you’re going to be watching during a given period. With channels renewing on different days and some programs being released once a week vs. others being dropped all at once, it can be difficult to map out a strategy that makes sense, but as we used to say in the olden days, there’s an app for that.

Seasons, released in April 2024 walks you through a setup process that has you adding shows from your various watchlists, then adding your channel subscriptions along with their cost and renewal dates. It will tell you how much you are spending per day for your current subscriptions. It will also calculate for you when you should unsubscribe and resubscribe from various channels to maximize your entertainment dollar. You can add both current and upcoming shows as well as movies. Unfortunately, it does not import watchlists, so you will have to add everything manually. On the flip side, you don’t have to use other apps to add shows and Seasons has its own recommendation algorithm based on your interests and user ratings.

Currently, Seasons has a lifetime license available for $3.99 on the app store.

In the modern age, it takes a real strategy to protect yourself from invasive mega-corporations who want to track you, bad actors on the malware front and in your face non-stop advertising. Whatever tools you choose have to balance with usability because we all have work we have to get done.

Nord VPN

My first level of protection starts with my VPN choice, Nord. I run Nord on all my devices, Macs, iPhones, iPads and Apple TV. I don’t have a compatible router, but it can be installed on ones that are. Nord has many security features including a malicious URL blocker, web tracker blocker, ad blocker, URL trimmer and a DNS filter to block ads and malicious domains before they reach my device.

Before I got a VPN, I used Open DNS, which I can highly recommend for some basic protections (but without the privacy features).

Little Snitch Firewall

Little Snitch from Objective Development is truly the most configurable consumer oriented firewall for the Mac platform. The Little Snitch Network Monitor shows you where your Mac connects to on the Internet. You decide what you want to allow or deny. If an app has no need to access the Internet, you can cut off its access. It’s easy to use and configure and as a bonus, you can download and install preconfigured block lists from several sources to make your computer safe.

Other firewall options are Lulu from Objective-See and Lockdown Privacy Desktop, which is what I install on my Mom’s Mac because it is set it and for get it.

Block-Block for Realtime Protection

BlockBlock monitors common persistence locations and alerts whenever a persistent component is added. It alerts you whenever something is installed and you can decide whether to allow that or block it. It’s a free product. You can get more features in the paid version of MalwareBytes or use their free scanner that must be run manually.

uBlock Origin for Browser Based Protection

There are many factors that go into making a selection of what browser to use. I personally use Microsoft Edge for several reasons. I use the uBlock origin multi-spectrum content blocker plugin to block ads, trackers, malicious URLs and more. Among the most security conscious Mac users who don’t need to use a Chromium browser, it is generally accepted that Firefox with uBlock Origin provides the best experience. Upcoming changes in Chromium browser plugin specifications, known as Manifest 3, may weaken the effectiveness of uBlock Origin on Chrome and Edge.

These products all work together to provide as safe an environment as I feel I can craft on my Mac. If you have ideas for improvement, please contact me. 

Obsidian is a pretty well know app, especially among the more technically inclined crowd. At its core, Obsidian is a free note taking app that saves all it’s content as plain text Markdown files on local storage, whether that be on your Mac, phone or iPad. There are also Windows, Android and Linux versions and many options for syncing (iCloud, Syncthing etc,) including a $4 a month option built into the app. What gives Obsidian superpowers are the 1600+ plugins, all free, that you can use to make the program do all kinds of customizable things.

Here are a few examples:
1) Consolidate your books read, music listened to, and movies and TV watched into a super media database using RSS More Information
2) Keep a journal that syncs your completed to-dos, appointments, and the weather along with whatever content you manually enter More Information
3) Backup your bookmarks, notes and highlights from Raindrop.io More Information
4) Serve as a local archive of web pages you want to keep for reference More Information
5) Publish straight to blogging services More Information

My resources kit for beginners.

If you are interested in learning Obsidian, please check out the complete list of my tips, workflows and resources. Feel free to shoot me any questions.

One thing that happens to some apps over time is bloating through feature creep. Customers demand constant updates to justify subscriptions or to satisfy some imaginary metric in their heads thats their apps aren’t abandoned and the next thing you know, your favorite notes app has AI and your calendar apps can order you an Uber and it just all gets out of hand. That’s why I like apps that do one thing well and that’s it. I have a few favorites.

Mission Control Plus

Mission Control Plus adds the ability to close and minimize apps and windows from the Mission Control Screen. That's it and that's enough. When you have to many apps open and your workspace is getting cluttered, just invoke Mission Control with  a hot corner or F3 and start clicking some X buttons.

QuitAll

QuitAll labels itself as a fresh start without a restart. While it's possible to quit all open apps with an AppleScript or a Keyboard Maestro macro, QuitAll lets you toggle between quitting and force quitting your open apps. Quit one, some, or all apps from one tidy spot. Apps will prompt you to save any unsaved work before they close. You can even adjust your settings to quit background apps if you want to.

One Thing

One Thing by Indy App developer Sindre Sorhus lets you put a single task or goal in your menu bar. Based on the principal that "You can achieve almost anything in life — as long as you focus on achieving one thing at a time. It’s a time-tested strategy that’s been shared by many successful people."

There are lots of places to find YouTube videos aside from the website itself. You see links on social media, in texts from friends in blog posts and elsewhere. Using the universal app, Play ($2.99 on the App Store), from Apple developer Marcos Tanaka, you can add videos to your own personal database that has many more features than the native “watch later” list on the Google owned site. Adding a video is as simple as using the share sheet, although you can paste single or multiple URLs directly in the Play interface. You can import playlists if you already have some built. Once you have a list of videos in the app, you can sort and view them by any metadata criteria, including release date, length, and creator.

If you have the video downloader, Downie by developer Charlie Monroe installed, you can download videos straight from play using the hot key ⌘+D. Play has widgets and extensive shortcut support if that is your jam. By being a universal app with iCloud sync, Play makes it easy to collect video while using your iPhone. Then you can easily organize them using the more roomy Mac interface and then watch them using the Play app on AppleTV. The in-app player on each platform allows you to use Invidious, so ads are not a problem.

As a premium/subscription based feature, you can subscribe to YouTube channels with filtering. If a creator makes videos on a variety of topics but you only want the ones on Obsidian, you can create a filter so that only those video are imported. You can set up auto-tagging based on metadata to group videos to your specifications. The channels section of the app is separate from your playlists. There, you can choose to add to playlists, mark as watched or delete the video according to your needs.

Most long-term Mac users have at least heard of if not used Default Folder X (DFX). The program traces its roots all the way back to DefaultD released in 1987. I’ve owned a copy since before I had Gmail since a search for my original purchase only turned up an upgrade offer from 2005 for $2.50! The program’s purpose is to streamline and enhance finding, opening, saving and moving files and folders.

Your open and save dialog boxes are enhanced with an overlay that will leave you wondering why Apple hasn't managed to build this into the OS. The overlay contains dozens of features. Some of the most prominent are:

• Setting a default save folder on a per app basis
• Saving the last folder you worked in as the location for your next save
• Navigating with the mouse or keyboard through a list of your most recently used and/or favorite folders
• Using an open finder as a save location by holding down a modifier key (I configured it for Control), hover over an open window on any display, and click to select it

DFX gives open/save dialog boxes many of the powers of the finder: renaming files, using Quicklook, using the right-click context menu to do things like compress files. The settings allow you to open any folder on your Mac with a user-definable shortcut key. Actual Finder Windows are enhanced with a new shelf to use as a temporary holding area for multiple files and folders. A DFX button is added to both the Finder and Mac menu bars, giving you instant access to your favorite disk locations. If you have multiple Macs, you can sync the settings between them with iCloud.

Default Folder X is a one time purchase for $39.99. There are typically several years between upgrades and existing license holders are granted a discount when that happens. The program is also available through Setapp.

Anyone who tells you that Macs don’t get viruses is misinformed, and you shouldn’t rely on that person for computing advice. Mac malware exists. Having said that, the average Mac user is in much better shape than the average Windows user because the bad actors of the world tend to concentrate on the platform with the largest market share. Additionally, those who have a modern Mac running a fully up to date OS have built-in behind the scenes protection that requires them to very little in order to be safe. If that’s you and you get all your software from the App Store, move along and have a nice day. But, if you download software from developer web sites, Github or if you are living the Pirate’s life (you gangster, you), it’s probably a good idea to take the extra step to protect yourself.

The Objective-See Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation that has been around since 2015. It provides free, open-source security software for the Mac platform

BlockBlock
BlockBlock is a utility that loads at login and monitors your Mac for the installation of any persistent program, a category that includes most malware. When BlockBlock encounters a new persistent installation, it alerts you and asks for your input. Do you want to allow this or forbid it? “If the process and the persisted item is trusted, simply click ‘Allow’. If not, click ‘Block’. Both actions will create a rule to remember your selection (unless you selected the ‘temporarily’ checkbox). If you decide to block an item, BlockBlock will remove the item from the file system, blocking the persistence.”

KnockKnock
KnockKnock serves as an on demand file scanning utility. “Press the ‘Start Scan’ button to instruct KnockKnock to scan known locations where persistent software or malware may be installed. By design, KnockKnock simply lists persistently installed software. Although by default signed-Apple binaries are filtered out, legitimate 3rd-party software will likely be displayed.

“If the item is an executable binary, KnockKnock automatically queries VirusTotal with a hash of the binary in order to retrieve any information. While VirusTotal is being queried, this button displays ‘■ ■ ■’. Once the query is complete, the title of the button is automatically updated with either the detection ratio, or a '?' if the binary is not known to VirusTotal.”

“With the query complete, the button can be clicked to reveal a popup containing VirusTotal-specific information about the file. If the file is unknown, clicking the ‘submit?’ button will submit the file for analysis. Known files contain a link to the full analysis report and a ‘rescan?’ button that will rescan the file.”

Other Options
Objective-See makes other security products including LuLu, an open-source free firewall and ReiKey, which detects keyboard trackers.

If your primary security concerns center around places you go online vs. the software you install, I would also suggest running a periodic scan with the commercial product, Malwarebytes, which has a free version for manual scans and a paid version for more extensive real-time protection. 

Mac users are blessed with several very good recipe collection apps, including AnyList, Paprika and Mela, all of which allow you to clip recipes you find online into a database and personal cookbook. AnyList and Paprika also have built in grocery lists that sync via the cloud, while Mela uses Apple’s Reminders app for grocery list management, including the shopping specific features included in iOS 17.

AnyList and Paprika both have extensive meal planning features. They create a calendar which you can share like any other. You can also share all information via cloud syncing and built in email capabilities. Anylist features include widget and shortcut support, while Paprika’s do not.

Where AnyList stands alone is the incorporation of other list types. It can manage three types of lists: grocery lists, categorized lists and simple lists. I have used it as a packing and camping list for years using variations of the same templates based on the type of trip. It integrates easily with Siri and with Amazon Alexa, making voice control in the kitchen or on the road a breeze.

AnyList is a universal app that also features a fully functional web version so that you can access all the features from a Windows computer or a work Mac where you can’t install the software. The Android version uses the same database as the iOS version so if you live in a multi-platform home, you can still use it. It is a subscription-based app with a single license going for $9.99 a year and a household license going for $14.99.

List features include:

• Quickly add and cross off items. Autocomplete suggests common items as you type.
• Add notes to list items to indicate quantity, brand, coupons, etc.
• Create multiple lists to organize items by store or occasion.
• Grocery items are automatically separated into categories.
• Create your own custom categories.
• Reorder categories to match the layout of your local store.
• Save items as favorites, then browse your favorites and add them to your current shopping list.
• View recent items from your past shopping trips, then add them back to your current list.
• Everyone creates their own AnyList account, so you can share some lists, while keeping others private.
• Optional push notifications let you know when a shared list has been modified.
• Choose a color for each list to help distinguish lists.
• Move or copy items between lists.

Recipe Features Include:

• Enter your own recipes, or copy & paste them from another source.
• Add ingredients from your recipes to your shopping lists with a single tap.
• Organize recipes into collections by type or occasion.
• Search your recipes by name or ingredients.
• Print recipes, or send via email.
• Share your recipe collection with a trusted partner. Any changes to recipes will be instantly visible to both of you.

Note: There is another relatively new recipe and list app available, Crouton which I have not had a chance to review, but I would be interested in knowing more about it if anyone has used it.

For true App Addicts, even the ones who don’t spend a lot of time at the command line on their Mac, exploring the Homebrew universe can still be rewarding. Simply put, Homebrew for Mac is a package manager that simplifies the installation of software on macOS. It allows users to easily install, update, and manage software packages through the command line. Some of these programs install right into your applications folder as regular apps with a GUI, indistinguishable from an app from the App Store or that you extracted from a DMG or ZIP file. Other Homebrew packages are CLI (command line interface) programs where you have to learn the commands to type in Terminal to make them work their magic. Don’t worry, the documentation is usually sufficient to get you started.

This post isn’t intended to be a guide to installing or configuring Homebrew. Head to YouTube and Google to jump that hurdle. Instead, this is a chance for you to download a few helpful Homebrew apps that I’ve found to be helpful and relatively easy to use.

YT-DLP

yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with support for thousands of sites, most importantly, YouTube

TOPGRADE

Using TOPGRADE, one command upgrades Homebrew itself, all of your Homebrew packages, your Mac App Store apps and any updates made available by the operating system (it will ask you first). Set a reminder and run this once a week to update all the things.

OCRmyPDF

You can use OCRmyPDF to perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on PDF files. This tool can be helpful in converting scanned PDF files into searchable and editable documents.

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a powerful multimedia framework that can decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter, and play almost any type of media files

Tesseract

Tesseract is an open-source optical character recognition (OCR) platform. OCR extracts text from images and documents without a text layer and outputs the document into a new searchable text file, PDF, or most other popular formats.

Mac users have several choices when it comes to file finding apps ranging from the built in Spotlight utility up to professional grade tools like Foxtrot, costing north of $100. The best app for you depends on your use cases. I tend to do the same type of searches over and over, so I need a utility that has saved searches or templates. I also often search for a specific file, so I want a nice, clean interface that’s easy to launch and access.

Launchers - App launching utilities like Alfred, Raycast, Launchbar and Quicksilver all have file finding capabilities and various other tricks up their sleeve like the ability to open the found files in apps other than the default.

EasyFind (free) from Devon Technologies finds files and folders by name, content, tags, or comments using advanced Boolean operators, wildcards, phrases, even regular expressions. It does not require indexing, is fast, and uses very little memory.

Find any File ($6) -  FAF can find files that Spotlight doesn’t, e.g. on network (NAS) and other external volumes, hidden ones inside bundles and packages, and those in folders that are usually excluded from Spotlight search, such as the System and Library folders. It can even search in other user’s folders if you use FAF’s unique root search mode.

Scherlokk ($19) is a file search utility build for precise and reliable search of every file which meets the search criteria. Music, pictures, bookmarks, documents, etc can be found quickly and easily. Search can be made on any kind of build in volume, portable volume (thumb drives, memory cards, USB drives), network drive (AFP, SMB, FTP). It does not use the Spotlight Index. 

ProFind ($6.99) - With support for innovative natural language queries, application launching, saved searches, history, scripting and more. It includes an iOS app that lets you search your Mac from your phone.

Foxtrot Professional Search ($120) - Made for search on a NAS or file server. Features include multiple indices, advanced search criteria. It has advanced in-document searching. It finds hidden gems in terabytes of PDF, word processing, email, presentations and 300+ document types and their metadata.

Houdah Spot - ($34, included in Setapp) A fast a very configurable utility offering hundreds of criteria, exportable results, featuring templates for reoccurring searches, like the one I do every Sunday for Markdown files created in the last seven days to import into Eagle Filer. This is my personal Go To.

Tembo ($15) - Made by Houdah Software, this utility is very fast and rarely lets me down. It’s what i use when I’m searching for one particular file.  The real power of Tembo is revealed when you drill down into a group. Filters appropriate to the current group help you quickly find what you are looking for.

More file search utilities, including Windows at AlternativeTo.net

Troubleshooting a misbehaving Mac can be tough at times when the problem is caused by a background process that keeps failing and being restarted by the OS. Using just one of the many functions of the utility program, Lingon X, you can find and disable leftover junk you might not even be aware of.

Lingon’s superpower is the analysis of the software that runs in the background on your machine. It looks at the processes that are particular to your account, those that apply to all users, those assigned to root, at all login items and at privileged helper tools. You may very well find remnants of programs you thought you deleted or disabled long ago. If you have now or ever had Adobe products running on your computer, you have stuff you can turn off. If you have login apps prone to quitting, you can set them to restart automatically. For the remnants of old programs, Lingon reveals where that stuff is located in the finder for you to remove manually.

The primary function of Lingon X is to run scheduled tasks, a feature shared with other automation apps like Keyboard Maestro and Hazel. With it you can schedule reminders, send emails, and move files. It will also open your essential apps, launch scripts, and run commands at specific times or when triggered by events. The latest version can even wake or sleep your Mac. Any script you set to run can be launched as root if needed. It’s powerful enough for CLI junkies to do voodoo but simple enough for even non-technical users to schedule simple tasks.

Lingon X comes in two versions. The one I’ve reviewed is $19.99 and is available from the developer’s website. It can often be found offered in software bundles from places like AppSumo and BundleHunt.

There is a version on the App Store for $5.99, but is many fewer features because of sandboxing and I do not recommend it.

If you’re going to get into the software and file downloading game, you’re going to end up seeing some strange compressed files. Although macOS had built in decompression capabilities for some file formats (ZIP, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2, WAR, CPGZ and CPIO), it doesn’t come close to supporting the formats that the free utility, Keka supports: 7Z, ZIP, RAR, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2, XZ, LZIP, BROTLI, ZSTD, LRZIP, DMG, ISO, LZMA, EXE, CAB, WIM, MSI, PAX, JAR, APK, APPX, XPI, IPA, CPGZ, CPIO, XIP, CPT and more.

Furthermore, if you want to do some file compression yourself, macOS will let you make ZIP files and DMGs. That’s it. By installing Keka, you’ll gain the ability to create files in a variety of formats: 7Z, ZIP, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2, XZ, LZIP, BROTLI, ZSTD, LRZIP, AAR, WIM, DMG and ISO.

Keka can divide large files into multiple parts that will automatically reassemble after decompression. You gain the ability to use 256 bit encryption. You can also take advantage of a drag and drop interface into the Keka main window or by simply dropping files onto the Keka icon in the dock.

There is also a version of Keka available for iOS.

If you have a legacy version of macOS running, it’s no problem, you can freely download the current and past versions on the Keka website. If you want to kick the developer some dough, you can also get Keka on the App Store for $4.99 and take advantage of having it updated automatically. In order to set Keka as your default extraction app for compressed files, you’ll need to download a free helper app on the developer’s website. The developer is Jorge Garcia Armero. If you like the app, buy him a cup of coffee. He has given a lot to the Mac community.

The privacy policy is rock solid. No data leaves your computer.

According to my notes, I bought the audio recording and transcription app, Just Press Record nine years ago. It’s had a place on my Mac, iPhone and Apple Watch ever since. For a one-time purchase price of $4.99 it gives you the ability to record an unlimited number of audio files that you can leave in iCloud or download onto your Mac. You can edit both the audio itself and the transcription right in the app. Using the share sheet you can export the text and the underlying audio wherever file storage is permitted on your setup. If you are recording a podcast, you probably want to get something more sophisticated, but if you just want to dictate into your watch or iPhone and edit on your Mac, this is the app I recommend. Unlike some free apps that handle dictation and transcription, the developer of Just Press Record doesn’t collect any data on you or your device. Zero. Nada.

There are too many features to list them all but here are the highlights:

• Record in WAV, AIF or standard iTunes M4A (ACC) formats
• Adjustable playback speed
• Support for over 30 languages, independent of your device's language setting
• Text - make corrections and add new text to your transcriptions
• Print a hard copy of your transcripts
• Search by filename or transcription content
• Just Press Record does not record calls or audio from other apps

Just Press Record on the App Store

Most knowledgeable Mac users run multiple layers of protection on their devices from custom DNS configurations, custom firewalls, VPNs and ad blocking software in their browser. If you want a free, open-source firewall with preconfigured rules that places a minimal load on your computer, Lockdown Privacy Desktop and its companion iOS app Lockdown Privacy Ad blocker VPN do a great job on both platforms. The setup procedure is minimal, and the basic configuration is done for you. Lockdown also lets you create custom rules and is capable of blocking any site. I’m not recommending the paid VPN though because there are better and cheaper choices out there.

To be clear, there are firewalls out there with more features. The new release of Little Snitch is great and costs $59. Lulu is another option. It’s free and open source but it’s not preconfigured to block all of things Lockdown blocks. Getting Lulu set up takes several steps and making it work the way you want it to requires some technical know-how. Lockdown is a good option to set up if you are helping anyone with a Mac and they aren’t comfortable with the more technical aspects of things. I put it on my mom’s iMac.

Lockdown is certified by the Openly Operated foundation and every aspect of the product is 100% transparent, including code, infrastructure, privacy and security claims, and even company location and owners. All claims and information is backed by public proof that anyone can check, and verified by independent auditors. Lockdown was developed byDuet Display CEO Rahul Dewan and former iCloud engineer Johnny Lin.

The preconfigured rules block the following:

• Amazon Trackers
• Crypto mining
• Data Trackers
• Email Trackers
• Facebook Trackers
• Game marketing
• General marketing
• Google shopping
• Marketing trackers
• Ransomware
• Reporting
• Snapchat trackers
• WhatsApp trackers

In my testing, even with Little Snitch running 140,000 different rules, Lockdown still continued to find things to block on my Mac, mostly Google trackers. I won't go into a lot of detail on the iOS app but I'll just say my iPhone installation has blocked 82,000 trackers.

We all have our ways of discovering new music, friends, blogs, magazines

• but what do you do when you hear about a new tune or album, and you don’t have the time to listen to it at the moment? If you get a copy of MusicBox for $2.99 from the App Store, you can add songs from Apple Music, Spotify or Tidal to your own custom curated lists.

Adding songs is as easy as using the share sheet or copying and pasting one or more URLs into the app. MusicBox is a universal app, so you can hunt for tunes on your iPhone, iPad AppleTV or Mac. Using Shazam, you can even add a song you hear playing on the radio or on someone else’s device. You can add entire playlists from Apple Music and with the latest release add podcasts and radio stations.

When you add a song in MusicBox, you get access to the metadata too, including release date, genre, record label and other user configurable fields. You can play songs from within the app itself, with your music provider’s app or with a third-party app like Marvis Pro.

Features include auto-tagging, smart search, home screen widgets and extensive shortcut support. There are no subscriptions or IAPs.

MusicBox is the creation of Marcos Tanaka, who also created Play, MusicHarbor and MusicSmart.

Bebop Quick Notes is a simple to use and configure app that allows you to quickly capture information via the keyboard or share sheet. You can set it up to save its notes to the location of your choice in the files app such as your Dropbox folder or an Obsidian vault. Using it in conjunction with Obsidian ideal. Obsidian is a great app, partially handicapped by its slow startup on mobile. Bebop starts quickly and is instantly able to capture text. You can choose to save the files using one of four file extensions:

• .txt
• .md
• .markdown
• .mdown

Even the free version lets you create an unlimited number of notes. There are no ads, trackers or logins in the free or Pro version.  Upgrading to Pro via a $4.99 IAP lets you use Bebop itself to recall a greater number of notes (as opposed to viewing them in another app). Pro users also get to choose different color themes in the app.

The Developer, Jack Cheng, describes his app thus “Bebop is an iOS notes app built with a capture-first mentality. It assumes that review and organization are better done on larger screens, and a mobile interface should be lightning-fast and clutter-free."

When it comes to file syncing utilities, people have wildly varying needs. They may have a USB drive with a set of files they need for work but want to keep a canonical copy of the same files at home. Perhaps they like to have a full disk clone as a backup or, like me, a regular copy of an Obsidian vault copied to a cloud service.

If you are a master at the terminal, you might be able to make rsync do everything you want, since most file syncing utilities are GUIs for rsync with a few bells and whistles thrown in, but if you are a mere mortal, you probably want to opt for an app.

Free File Sync is an excellent choice. It’s backwards compatible on Macs all the way back to OS X 10.10 Yosemite. It’s free, open source and cross-platform with Windows and Linux. I use it on a Mac (in conjunction with NTFS for Mac) to sync files between a USB drive and a directory an external NTFS SSD. The default settings work for many use cases and it’s a breeze to create and save sync jobs.

The other app I recommend, Sync Folders Pro, is $8.99 in the App Store. It has two features that Free File Sync doesn’t have including a set it and forget it scheduler. I have a Keyboard Maestro macro that launches Sync Folders Pro every day at 1:59am and closes it five minutes later. In the interim, a scheduled sync of my Obsidian vault occurs with a folder on my Google Drive. If you purchase Sync Folders Pro from the App Store, you can download the Plus edition from the developers web site at no added charge. This edition gives you the ability to make full disk clones.

Key Features

• Supports Macs, iPad, iPhone, iPod.
• Bootable backup on an external drive (SSD, HDD)
• Bidirectional synchronization, one-way synchronization, mirroring backup.
• Powerful preview mode. Ability change file operations before sync. "Line by Line" comparison.
• Automatic scheduled synchronization.
• Synchronization any number of pair folders at same time.
• Auto-updating help in the app. Periodically adding answers to frequently asked questions.

Other top choices in the sync and backup field that I've tried and can recommend are Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper.