AppAddict Newsletter

There are several companies that offer periodic deals on Mac software at huge discounts. I put up with emails from these companies just so that I get notifications when these sales happen. Probably my favorite of these companies is Bundle Hunt. I’ve been buying from them for over a decade. In their last sale, I got a great app, Alarm Clock Pro, the most full featured clock app I have ever used. It’s a vital part of my workflow at my day job. Not only does Alarm Clock Pro alert me at specified times, it also automatically opens a web page to the time clock website my employer uses so that I can punch in or out as appropriate.

You can also have Alarm Clock Pro launch apps at specified times, useful for starting up the file syncing software that backs up my Obsidian vault every morning at 2am. Other features include multiple world clocks, a timer, a stopwatch and scheduling of emails and texts. The alarms can include a custom message in a dialog box or full screen message, custom audio files or music. It will take a photo from a web cam or a screenshot at a specified time. It can log you out, sleep or restart your computer on a schedule. It can even open files and folders at a specified time.

The downside is the price if you don’t get it on sale. A monthly subscription is $1.83. A one-time purchase with no upgrades is $29.99 and a lifetime purchase with upgrades is a whopping $119. One upside is that a license includes both the Mac and Windows version of the program if you live that cross-platform life. You can also get an App Store version for $24.99.

Sometimes you don’t need or want the latest and greatest app. You’d rather have something tried and tested, something venerable or even iconic. ToyViewer, a free graphics viewer and editor, has been part of the Mac ecosystem since 1995. It’s fast, dependable and flexible. On my Macs, I use it as the default app for opening graphics instead of Preview. (I use something else for PDFs) It can open TIFF, GIF, BMP, PNG, JPG, BIE (JBIG), PCX, PCD, PICT, PNM (PPM, PBM, or PGM), XBM, MAG, SUN Rasterfile, JPEG2000 (JP2, JPC, J2K), WEBP and other formats supported by macOS. It supports exporting (save as) as TIFF, PDF, GIF, BMP, PNG, JPG, JPEG2000, BIE (JBIG), PNM, or XBM.

ToyViewer Features:

• ToyViewer can attach a custom icon to any file as well as newly saved image file.
• ToyViewer can read and write GIF or PNG files with transparent color, and also can read and write interlaced (progressive) GIF, PNG, or JPG files.
• ToyViewer can scan (auto-display) image files in a folder.
• You can also display images in full-screen size.
• Displayed images can be scaled (enlarge/shrink).
• You can rotate, flip, or clip images.
• ToyViewer has ability to adjust brightness, contrast, color tone of images, and has some typical operations to images, such as enhancement, embossing, and so on.
• You can replace specified color with other color or transparent color.
• Full color images can be reduced into 256, 64, or 8 colors. Also, each color value of images can be cut down to 4-, 2-, or 1-bit.
• ToyViewer can make images monochrome (8-bit gray, 2-bit gray, or bi-level). Images can be printed.
• You can set ToyViewer to display any image format if there is a filter program to PPM format.
• ToyViewer provides image-conversion filter services for other applications.
• You can add comments to images (comments are written into only GIF, PNG, JPG, or PNM formats).
• You can make Aqua-button-like images.

It hasn't been updated since 2022 but is fully compatible with Sonoma. ToyViewer is available in the App Store. It is not abandonware. 

Since Logitech decided to add their unremovable AI junk to Logi Options+ you may be looking for a new driver.

Turns out BetterMouse can turn your Logitech MX Master into a Magic Mouse. You get two direction scrolling, proper gestures and smooth scrolling. It uses less than 1% CPU and 100MB memory. The Logi AI driver was already sitting at 250MB without it being used once.

BetterMouse is under active development and was just updated last week. For people in the US, its $7.99 for a five-device license, with a full-featured seven-day trial.

Configurable elements of the user interface include:

• Scrolling
• Cursor
• Button Gesture
• Keyboard
• Exception Apps

Other mouse drivers available include Better Touch Tool (also good for trackpads), Linear Mouse (free), and Steer Mouse.

If you are looking for a new mouse to use with your Mac, here are some current recommendations.

If you don’t understand the need for computer backups, then you probably haven’t been using a computer very long. If you are using a Mac, there really isn’t an excuse for not buying a cheap drive like this one (2TB for $69) and configuring Time Machine. It’s dead simple following these instructions. Once configured, all you have to do is plug in your drive and let it run - most of the time. Every so often there is a system glitch that requires a little troubleshooting. Unless you make it a habit to go in and check your settings though, you may not be aware of any problems. That’s where this widget steps in. It lives in your notification center (or on your desktop) and it has one job - to let you know the times of your last successful backup. Just a glance at it and you find out a vital piece of information about your system. It’s a set it and forget app and requires no fiddling once running. You can get it for $3 on Gumroad.

Features

• View the status of your latest Time Machine backups on your desktop or Notification Center.
• Configure the backup disk for which you want to see the status.
• 3 widget sizes to choose from: small, medium, or large.
• See details of a backup disk, e.g., its encryption state.

For the avid app collector there are a few tools available to help catalog and curate the assortment of programs that accumulate over time. You can use Apple’s built in system report to get comprehensive information but it’s rather dense and not illustrated. You can use an app like Apparency, but then you are limited to a single app at the time. MyApplications, available in the app store for 99 cents, serves as both a database and a launcher for your computer.

The MyApplications general interface includes a count of the number of apps you have installed, 414 in my case. It breaks the apps down into publishers, for example I have 92 apps from Apple itself and six from the wonderful developer Sindre Sorhus. Apparently, many apps don’t provide publisher information because I have a lot that are not listed. It also breaks the apps into categories such as utilities, productivity, developer tools, graphics and design etc. The categories, while helpful, are a little too broad for my taste, for example I have 124 labeled as utilities and it seems that could have been further narrowed into categories like disk utilities, archive utilities, etc.

The app interface lets you choose sorting by name or last launched. It tells you how many apps you currently have running and how may you have launched in the past day. If you click on individual apps, you have the option to launch them or to get more information regarding size on disk, location, language localizations, download date and date of last update. A complete permissions report is included. The package contents are listed as is a complete description, apparently from the App store or developer’s web site if provided. There are even screen shots provided.

Path Finder, an alternative file browser by Cocoatech, has been around as long as Mac OS X. It introduced features later adopted by the Mac Finder such as a tabbed interface and smart sorting (showing folders before files). It offers dual file panes reminiscent of other power browsers, like Norton Commander. Features include:

• Breadcrumb navigation
• Drop shelf file copying
• Root access
• Terminal Emulation
• Bookmarks
• Folder comparison and synchronization
• Active process viewer
• Graphical ACL
• Built in text and hex editors
• File compression tools

Path Finder is available through Setapp, subscription or one time purchase w/out upgrades.

Most people realize that one of the secrets to becoming more productive on a Mac is the ability to control the computer and its applications from the keyboard using the shortcuts native to most programs. Most people also realize there is no way in hell they can remember more than a handful of their most used shortcuts without help. That’s where KeyClu steps in. Once installed and running, all a user has to do is press the command key twice to bring up a cheat sheet with all the keyboard shortcuts for the app listed on the display. KeyClu is available for download on Github.

Custom Shortcuts by Houdah Software is a free application that allows you to assign your own keyboard shortcuts to any menu item in any application. In these days of do-it-yourself progressive web apps, you may have many applications without any native keyboard shortcuts and this small utility is the solution to that problem. Its features include:

• Auto-completion to help you navigate menu hierarchies
• Making sure you get menu titles exactly right
• Checking for ambiguous menu items
• Copy & pasting shortcuts between applications

If you are a KeyClu user, you'll find that Custom Shortcuts is 100% compatible and accessible from the KeyClu interface, a simple and handy overview of applications shortcuts. Easy to use: just press ⌘ twice and hold to see the list.

Back in the days of Classic Mac OS (pre OS X), the Apple menu offered a way to launch applications and access folders. The closest you can get to that today is through Devon Technologies free menu bar app, Xmenu. It provides six pre-defined categories of accessible shortcuts:

• Applications
• Developer Applications
• Home
• Documents
• User-Defined
• Snippets

The interface has different custom options for sorting, font size, icon size and menu titles. Xmenu is a real app, not a hack and works best when added to you login items. Xmenu on the App Store

For technically inclined Mac aficionados, Apparency by Mothers Ruin Software is an app that also serves as a plugin for the macOS QuickLook feature. After installing Apparency, you can select an app in the Finder, press the spacebar and get a variety of information in the resulting window. You can take it one step further and choose to open the app in Apparency to answer even more questions including:

• What did Gatekeeper say?
• Was it notarized?
• Is App Sandbox enabled?
• Inspect the code signature
• Browse entitlements
• Browse the Info.plist
• Find the executable
• See macOS version info
• Inspect linked frameworks
• See identifiers and versions
• Browse “components” inside
• See document types and URLs

Apparency is a free app and currently supports Intel and Apple silicon processors on Mac OS versions 12, 13 and 14. Download here

Apparency was updated to v2 on 2024-04-24. The major changes were:

• You can now use AppleScript to automate Apparency. Read about what you can do with AppleScript and Apparency or use Help > Open Scripting Dictionary to browse Apparency's terminology, along with many example scripts.
• Improved performance when opening components, especially for large or complex apps. Apparency now does more of its analysis in the background, which means the window will open more quickly, and the app shouldn't SPOD while doing analysis. Also, the top-level component is now given priority to start signature verification, so that this most-likely-to-be-interesting information is shown as soon as possible.
• When opening a Developer ID-signed app, Apparency will now request an updated notification ticket from Apple servers before evaluating the Notarization and Gatekeeper status. This is to avoid a misleading Unnotarized Developer ID status on an app that actually is notarized, but that wasn't “stapled” and hasn't been launched yet. https://www.mothersruin.com/software/Apparency/relnotes.html

Opener is so integrated into the way I use my phone that I forget it’s an app and not built into iOS. When you’re browsing the web in your iOS browser and you come across a link you want to open, usually you have to copy and paste the address to get it into the app you want. Using Opener, you can go straight to the app from your browser or any app that allows sharing a URL. If, like me, you use an iOS browser other than Safari, Opener lets you send links to the browser of your choice. In fact it supports over 40 browsers! It’s fully integrated into the share sheet and I have it at the top of mine. Out of the box it supports 240+ apps to include YouTube, Twitter, Ivory, Amazon, Spotify, Reddit and more. You can see a complete list on the developer’s web site. It’s $2 and well worth it in the App Store.

In the example below, I have an App Store Link on the clipboard. Opener presents all of these options for opening it.

Shortcuts on the Mac is missing the built-in automation features offered in iOS but Shortery from UnitNo5 steps in admirably to fill the gap. With a comprehensive list of 17 triggers, Shortery can automatically launch shortcuts to accomplish all sorts of tasks. Some of my use cases are:

• Launch my five "morning apps" at 4am so that my computer is ready to use when I wake up
• Automatically convert RAW and HEIC photos to JPEG when I export from Photos app
• Minimize all open Windows on my work iMac when I unlock the screen to hide  everything from prying eyes
• Automatically eject my backup drive every morning so that all I have to do is unplug it from my laptop
• Launch a file syncing app every day at 2am to back up my Obsidian vault

Triggers

• Appearance - Run a shortcut when your Mac changes dark and light mode
• Application - Run a shortcut when you start or quit an app
• Audio - Run a Shortcut when you start, stop or record audio.
• Calendar events - Run a shortcut when a meeting starts/ends
• Camera - Run shortcuts when your webcam is switched on/off
• Devices - Run a shortcut when you connect/disconnect any USB or Bluetooth device
• Focus mode - Trigger a shortcut when focus mode on your Mac is enabled
• Folder Contents - Run a shortcut when the content of your folders change
• Keyboard - Define a global hotkey for your shortcut
• Login & logout - Use the login-trigger to get your day started
• Monitors - Trigger a shortcut when you connect/disconnect a monitor
• Power - Run a shortcut when you plug in a power adapter
• Screen - Trigger a shortcut when you lock or unlock your screen
• Sunrise & sunset - Run shortcuts when the sun sets or rises
• Wake up & sleep - Run Shortcuts before your Mac goes to sleep or wakes up
• Time - Set a time when the shortcut should run and define how often it should be repeated
• WiFi - Run a shortcut when your WiFi connection changes

Shortery has a free version, but you get full functionality for $9.99 a year in the App Store.

Better Display is a menu bar app that lets you do things with your built in or connected displays you never thought possible. It does: 

• Custom Resolutions - Define favorite resolutions and reach them using the app menu, resolution slider or keyboard shortcuts.
• XDR/HDR Extra Brightness - DR brightness upscale to 1600 nits, external HDR display brightness upscale depending on the display's capability. Native XDR, color table (Apple Silicon) and Metal (Apple Silicon and Intel) methods are all supported.
• Virtual Screens - Including custom displays for headless Macs (servers)
• Picture in Picture
• Display Disconnect and Reconnect
• Display and EDID overrides 

It even gets rid of the notch on MacBook displays! The free version offers access to many features and full access is $18. 

It’s refreshing to download an app that has the capability of collecting personal data - but doesn’t. Listy, a private list manager is an app you just download and start using. It has customized templates for tracking all types of lists. My personal categories are movies, TV shows, books, apps, YouTube and restaurants. I add items to the list from my phone most often using the share sheet, but the app is also available on my iPad and Mac. For media lists you get release dates, ratings, descriptions and additional metadata for every category. You can use it as a read it later app by using the links category.  It’s available with a lifetime purchase or a yearly subscription. Listy in the App Store.

I’ve been collecting quotes for a long time. I first used the great Quotebook app from Lickability, but it was removed from the App Store in 2016 and I don’t know how much longer it will work. Thankfully, this free app (w/IAP) from Henri Bredt is a worthy successor to manage quotes, authors and tags. It creates a personalized feed from your collection that you can view from a widget. If you already have a collection, you can import into thoughts from a CSV file. It also offers shortcut support.You can create mini-art works with selected quotes for sharing. If you are having trouble finding quotes, Thoughts offers access to curated collections. Finally, it offers iCloud backup and sync for use on more than one device. Thoughts on the App Store

Practically everyone has a need for a habit tracker. Streaks strikes just the right balance between ease of use and richness of features. An Apple Design Winner, Streaks makes it easy to create up to 24 habits to track daily or at user-determined intervals. It ties in with Apple Health and can automatically determine things like your step count, heart rate and recorded blood pressure. It can help you remember other habits like journaling, dog-walking, language practice and more. It’s a universal app with editions for iOS, Apple Watch and macOS - all synced with iCloud. It even provides detailed charts and graphs on your progress and completion rate over time. Streaks on the App Store

I don’t have an app review tonight, just a link to a longer form piece on the 34 apps that launch every time I log in on my Mac. I do my best to explain why I use so many apps and I provide a link to and a description of every one. 

Open at Login - The Balancing Act: Every App You Run Has the Potential To Slow Your Computer Down But Some Stuff You Just Can't Live Without

Scrap Paper is the ultimate scratch pad for macOS and iOS. On the Mac it lives in the menu bar and can be brought to the front with a hotkey, giving you the same functionality as Raycast’s floating note. You can choose the text and background colors , as well as the font. You have the discretion to keep the open window on top of all other apps (recommended). When not in use, you just close the window and it keeps the content safe. You can export the text via the share sheet and because it’s text, you have access to tools like spelling and grammar, search and replace and even text to speech. You can even keep Scrap Paper synced between Macs and iOS with iCloud. I use the app a dozen or more times a day. You get all of this for $2.99 in the App Store.

If you’ve been on the Internet longer than about 15 minutes, you realize that there may, in fact, be people online who do not tell the truth. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Except this time, it’s true. Read the whole incredible offer on the website for the FreePrints app, which works with Google Photos and Apple’s Photos app, and delivers you up to 1,000 free prints a year and charges nothing more than $1.99 in shipping and handling when you order 4x6 prints.

WHAT DO I GET FOR FREE?

• Up to 85 free 4x6 prints per month
• Limit 1 free print per photo
• Up to 1,000 4x6 free prints per year

WHAT DO I PAY FOR?

• Additional 4x6 prints
• Other sizes — 5x5, 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, 12x18, 16x20, 20x30, Wallet
• FreePrints Shipping & handling — starts at $1.99, never more than $9.99, no matter how many prints you order

FreePrints on the App Store

Before Elon Musk ruined Twitter, in part by eliminating third-party apps, I was a big fan of Tweetbot. After the Twitter-pocalypse, I stayed away from social media for awhile (except for Reddit), until I found out that most of the tech folks I enjoyed following had moved over to Mastodon.  There are a variety of apps for accessing the network including a native app, Mona, Ice Cubes, Mammoth and Radiant but the one I chose was Ivory for Mastodon by Tapbots, the same developers behind Tweetbot.

Features include:

•  Beautiful design
•  Fast performance and  smooth scrolling
•  Many theme and app icon options
• Support for multiple accounts
•  Create and view content warnings
•  Create and participate in polls
•  Easily search for and post gifs
• Customizable push notifications and viewable notifications tab
• View post statistics for the day and graph for the week in the stats tab
• Powerful mute filters with regex support
•  Ability to follow hashtags
•  Bookmark posts to refer back to privately
•  View local and federated timelines as well as trending posts
•  Powerful timeline filters to quickly show/hide posts of different criteria
•  Never lose your place in the timeline across Ivory on multiple devices including iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

Ivory for Mastodon on the App Store