AppAddict Newsletter

To preserve more of my privacy, I am now using different browsers on a rotating basis. This helps to cut down on fingerprinting to an extent. I am used to customizing my browsers extensively so it's been an ongoing project to get extensions installed, DNS over https set up, changing default download behaviors, testing ad blocking and more. I have not regularly used Safari for many years, even on iOS, so it's taken some getting used to. There isn't 100% overlap between what's available for Mozilla and Chromium browsers and Safari. Additionally, many popular Safari extensions cost money, much more so than on other browsing platforms.

One extension that I got today is one that I've been looking at for a long time, but never tried is StopTheMadness Pro, by Jeff Johnson of Underpass App Company because a universal license is $14.99 and that's a little much for something I wasn't going to use frequently. But, times change, and today I installed it and started configuring the many, many options. I immediately found out that since the last time I looked at it, the developer has released extensions for Chrome and Firefox. There is one primary reason for installing this extension., social media and marketing web developers use all sorts of underhanded techniques, and that's part of the madness this app lets you combat.

The extension has gotten a lot of praise in the tech press from noted journalists like John Gruber of Daring Fireball:, Federico Viticci of AppStories/MacStories, and Glenn Fleishman of Macworld.

Have you ever noticed that when you visit certain websites, the contextual menu (Control/right-click) gets disabled? And other things change too. You can’t copy and paste elements on the page. You keep typing in a field, but extra characters aren’t recognized, and you don’t even get a warning. Likewise, you can’t select text or drag an image from a page to the Finder. And when you try to close a tab, you have to click a Safari warning to proceed. Autocomplete and autofill don’t work or mess up. You can check out the StopTheMadness’ demo page without the extension installed to see these restrictions in action.

The extension has more features than I can fit in a single review. It supplements rather than replaces your current ad and tracker blocking. It doesn't have GreaseMonkey's full set of tools for user scripts, but the ones it does have are useful. Furthermore, it can hide page elements and let you use custom CSS on any site.

The pro version that was released last year added:

• Universal Purchase in the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac
• Automatic iCloud sync of StopTheMadness Pro settings between all of your devices
• Platform-specific settings, so you can have different settings on iPhone, iPad, or Mac while still using iCloud sync
• Presets: Easily assign the same specific website options to multiple websites
• Customize the list of query tracking parameters automatically removed from URLs, including URL domain-specific removal
• Hide Page Elements: New global list separate from the custom CSS option, so you can hide web page elements without creating new website options
• Contextual menu item to Hide Page Elements (macOS)
• Stop websites from overwriting your system clipboard
• Set custom cookies on websites
• Stop web animations
• Tab Rules enhance and replace New Tab Behavior
• Hide "We'd like to send you some notifications" banners on many websites (macOS)
• Automatically toggle off the YouTube autoplay button
• Temporarily disable the extension just on the current page
• Import and export settings files with the Files app (iOS)

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The problem of the day for me was finding an extension for Safari to automate opening paywalled websites at the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, the only extension in the App Store that does that is not available in the US. So, I turned to my go-to site for Apple Shortcuts, Routine Hub, to look for a solution there. I wasn't surprised to find one immediately.

I downloaded it and set it up to work with Carlo Zottman's new app, Barcuts, which replaces the default menu bar for Shortcuts with one that is application-specific.

I ran the shortcut on a paywalled article from the New York Times...and nothing happened. So, I went to the Shortcuts app to watch it run step by step to see where it was failing. It turns out that the URL scheme it was using was somehow not associated with Safari on my machine. I had no idea how to fix that, so I went to ChatGPT for help. It suggested an obscure free app from GitHub called SwiftDefaultApps. I was mildly skeptical because it hasn't been updated since 2019, but I tried to anyway. It has 1500 stars. Just a note -  it installs in System Settings rather than into the /Applications folder.

There was no URL scheme listed for the one that was failing in the shortcut, but the app let me create it and associate it with Safari, figuring out how to do that was simple and intuitive. I tested the Shortcut again on the same article and it worked the very first time.

SwiftDefaultApps also lets you see every file association on your Mac and change them. You can also change your default apps for:

• Web browsing
• Email
• FTP
• RSS
• Instant messaging

You can also change the apps associated with Uniform Type Identifiers.

Based on its effectiveness in solving my particular problem and the variety of features it offers, I'm going to leave it installed. If you are one of those folks who gets the vapors over software that wasn't updated last week, it probably isn't for you.

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In trying to stay away from proprietary formats, like spreadsheets from Excel or even Numbers, I opt for using comma separated value (CSV) files as often as possible. These files are simply plain text that can be edited and viewed with anything capable of reading plain text. They will never be obsolete as long as computers are in use. Text editors aren't the best tool for working with data in table formats, however. It's difficult to copy, cut and paste columns and rows of data.

Delimited, a CSV editor that adheres to the RFC 4180 standard, by developer Willem Kempers, is a bargain for $3.99 in the Mac App Store. In adherence to the standard, it can also word tab separated values (TSV) as well. You can treat the first row as data or a header. You can add columns and rows and move data by cutting and copying at will. The developer states that it can handle datasets as large as two million rows without choking. The app is written in 100% Swift and follows typical Mac standards. You can customize the toolbar. On all of my Macs, it is the default handler of CSV files.

Delimited is also capable of creating files from scratch, not just editing existing ones. You can get more information at the developer's website.

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One of the most frustrating situations for me when traveling is being locked out of remote access into my home computer. If my remote access software has some sort of glitch or my whole workstation needs to be restarted, short of calling someone to go to my house and sit at my desk, I have been out of luck. Thanks to a post I saw on Reddit yesterday, those days are behind me now. Using some tools I already have, it is now possible to do any number of remote actions to my remote computer from my phone, traveling laptop or a borrowed computer.

In my use case, the tools I am employing are:

• Dropbox (but any syncing service will work, e.g. iCloud, Google Drive)
• Hazel
• Shortcuts

Step One - Dropbox

Create an empty folder in Dropbox. I called mine "Actions".

Step Two - Hazel

On your home computer, create rules in Hazel that are triggered by a) full name b) matches c) FileName.txt

Then set an action telling Hazel to rename the file so that it doesn't go into a loop.

Finally, set an action that runs an AppleScript or an Apple Shortcut to complete the task you want. ChatGPT can write the AppleScript for you if you just describe what you want to do.

Step 3 - Shortcuts (optional)

You can make shortcuts that will automatically create the files you want in your Actions folder and run them from your iPhone if you want to fully automate the process.

When you are away and you want to perform one of the actions you have set up, all you have to do is create an empty text file in your Actions folder with the name that corresponds to the action. For example, if I create a file called restart.txt, it triggers Hazel to run an AppleScript to reboot my machine.

Ideas

A few of the things you can do remotely are

• Restart your computer
• Log out the current user
• Start any app
• Move or copy files from a non-synced location to a cloud drive

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I have been using Chrome Remote Desktop when I need to remote into computers in my home when I am away. It's free, requires practically no setup beyond installation, adding a computer names and setting up a password. It works through corporate firewalls and local VPNs with no trouble. The only problem is the compnay who makes it. I am opting out of Google products for email, cloud storage, search, photos, browsing and maps. There is no reasons to use their remote solution when others are available.

The solution I found is the free and open-source Hop To Desk product. It has all the benefits og Chrome Remote Desktop and more.

Features

• Chat
• File transfer
• Works on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and ChromeOS
• Can be run from a thumb drive as a portable app
• End to end encryption
• Share screen with remote user or exercise remote control
• Direct IP access, IP whitelisting and SOCKS5 proxy connections are supported
• Does not require network configuration like port forwarding or firewall adjustments
• Connect to unlimited remote computers (Commercial use is OK)
• You may setup your own private HopToDesk network on your servers or existing infrastructure. Self-hosting can also be accomplished with AWS or Cloudflare Workers.
• Use optional web-based dashboard to manage connections and generate share links

I was able to set up my home network of Mac, iOS and Linux devices in about 15 minutes. The macOS version requires screen recording and accessibility permissions.

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Here are a few small apps I found this week from my usual sources and tips from Internet friends:

Sentinel - from indy dev, Alin Lupascu, the guy behind the popular uninstall utility, Pearcleaner, Sentinel has a couple of Gatekeeper related functions:

• Removes app from quarantine
• Self-signs apps

iCloud for Linux- If you occasionally use Linux, perhaps to get some life from an older Mac or just as a learning experience, and you want to access your iCloud data - well there in an app for that.

Substage - This app uses AI to generate command line commands to do things like convert documents, images and videos, get word counts in your current document, move and compress files, perform commits and pushes on GitHub, do calculations and more. It has a two week free trial, then subscription or lifetime purchase options using various commercial or local LLMs.

The SeaMonkey Project - If you are an old who remembers the days when Firefox came as an all in one application suite, with a browser, email, chat and web creation tools, you may be pleasently surprised that the concept lives on in this project. I created my first websites back in the 90s using this kind of suite.

Macs Fan Control - I have a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro used as a server in my living room and it occasionally drives me nuts with fan noise issues caused by my decision to replace the HDD. This app lets me create presets and control the fans as I like. There is a free and a pro version costing $14.95.

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One year ago I posted my first app review on AppAddict. I'd recently subscribed to a new blogging service and I was trying to figure out what to write. I figured that my love of downloading and testing new software was something worth sharing. Besides, I was trying to figure out DNS for websites and using different domains and subdomains with different providers. The first review was about Rond Life Mapper, an iOS app for recording your GPS coordinates as you go through your day. Since then, I've posted 370 times. App Addict has been quoted in Lifehacker, The Verge and in newsletters like The Hiro Report and Labnotes. The moderators of r/MacApps on Reddit helped me out a bit by adding a link in the sidebar to the blog.

Halfway through the year, I purchased a new domain and moved all the content to it. I started a news letter a couple of months ago and I  continue to hear from folks who subscribe via RSS. The blog is still not monetized. I've never run a single ad nor have I ever charged for content. I don't have any plans to change that. I love hearing from developers with new apps they want me to try. I also feel flattered that the people behind some of my favorite Apps like Popclip and Default Folder X have contacted me to express gratitude after I gushed about them in a blog posts.

I've worked out a system for finding news apps. I have a long list of prospective candidates bookmarked and a collection of web pages I check regularly for newly announced titles or updates. I am thankful for the great Mac community, free speech and the IndieWeb scene. I'm glad a subscribed to SetApp so I could discover a long list of great titles to adapt into my workflow. Thanks for reading. I hope to be here for another anniversary next year.

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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There are plenty of apps and websites that allow you to download vast quantities of information as single comma separated value (CSV) files. You can get

• Your entire Netflix viewing history
• All your Letterboxd reviews
• Books you entered in Goodreads
• Purchase histories from various vendors
• Your passwords and more.

The problem with big flat files like that is that they are not designed for reading. Most people view them in spreadsheet programs like Excel or Numbers.

There is a free repository on GitHub with everything you need to convert CSV files into individual Markdown notes to use in apps like:

• Obsidian
• Bear
• Logseq

The easiest way to keep this up to date is by downloading GitHub Desktop for Mac.. This app lets you easily create and upload your own repositories and download ones that other have posted. Using Github is a free way to share files for other users to download, even if you are not a developer. I have a repository where I share my quotes collection as Markdown files and another one where I share my settings for Mac automation apps like Keyboard Maestro, Better Touch Tool and Hazel.

Once you download the repository, using it is simple. Make sure you have installed Python. The latest version is 3.12. Move your CSV file into the folder with the scripts in it and run the command from the terminal of your choice. I've been using Ghostty lately. The script will begin to run a wizard that asks you which field to use to name your Markdown notes. Then it asks you if you want the information in the YAML front matter or in the body of the not, or both, After that it asks you how you want each column of the CSV file to be formatted (e.g, as is, as text, as formatted text, as links etc.) After you complete the wizard, it instantly creates a data folder within the folder you've been working in with all the Markdown notes. It will create 500 or more notes in just a second or two. It's amazing.

Obviously, you'll want to remove any columns you don't want from your CSV files before using the script. If, after creating the notes, you want to make batch edits via search and replace or be deleting elements, an app like BBEdit or VSCode can do that for you across all the files in your folder.

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I'd stayed away from TeraCopy for Mac for a long time because it didn't have good reviews. It was updated for Apple Silicon earlier this year, so I decided to try it out. I have some huge folders with tens of thousands of images and audio files that I need to copy to and from external drives and computers. I easily set up a job on a 2019 MacBook Pro to copy 135GB from an external mechanical hard drive to the internal SSD over a thunderbolt port. It took about 30 minutes and I was able to use the functionality of TeraCopy to verify the integrity of the files.

Features

• During transfers, any problematic files will be tagged and skipped without aborting the whole process. After the transfer is complete, you can retry only the skipped files.
• You can proactively handle any file naming conflicts that occur during transfer by selecting the "skip all" function. After copying you can generate a report of the transfer, generate checksum files and run scripts automatically.
• Integrates with MacOS by preselecting as source and target the folders you have open in Finder. TeraCopy can copy files to a folder opened in Finder with Cmd + Alt + V shortcut.
• TeraCopy preserves the original date and time of your files.
• The pro version can save file lists with all related information as HTML and CSV files.
• The pro version allows you to omit certain file types and folders when copying which is great if you want to copy just the photographs and not the videos from Apple's live photos.

You can get TeraCopy on the Mac App Store.

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I first heard about the free and open-source file syncing app, Syncthing, when I started using Obsidian and may people were suggesting it as the back end of their DIY vault syncing strategy. I ended up using another method for Obsidian, but larley I have been exploring numerous ways to share files in my home lab setup, which features Macs, iOS devices an Ubuntu Linux box and VMs of all different sorts, including Windows.

The aptly named Syncthing Foundation is behind the app that they describe thusly

Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, whether it is shared with some third party, and how it’s transmitted over the internet.

Syncthing is private and secure.

• Private - no central server. Your data is only on your machines
• Encrypted - secured using TLS
• Authenticated - every device is identified by a strong cryptographic certificate.

Open

• Open Protocol - Adheres to a documented specification
• Open Source - All code is available in GitHub
• Open Development - When bugs happen, they are dealt with and not hidden
• Open Discourse - In the Syncthing Forum

Easy to Use

• Powerful - Sync unlimited folders with different people or just between your won devices
• Portable - Administered through a web browser
• Simple - "Syncthing doesn’t need IP addresses or advanced configuration: it just works, over LAN and over the Internet. Every machine is identified by an ID. Give your ID to your friends, share a folder and watch: UPnP will do if you don’t want to port forward or you don’t know how."

My first use case with Synthing is going to be loading downloaded videos from my Mac onto my iPad for use when traveling. I'll let you know how it goes.

Download Syncthing here.

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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I'm going to turn the tables today. Instead of giving YOU information on software, I'm going to ask you to give me some recommendations. Specifically, I am looking for a photos app. Since I am eliminating Google and Amazon from my online life, I won't have access to their photo management tools, which, I will admit are pretty good, considering that both companies will mine every bit of data they can from my images in an attempt to extract money from me for their billionaire owners.

Here are the features I'd like to have:

1. Facial recognition to be able to identify people in photos and to be able to group photos of the same person together
2. Object search (e.g., dogs, landscapes, babies etc)
3. Being able to search by dates is a must
4. Tagging
5. Smart folders/albums
6. The ability to use photos in my file system without the need to enter them into a proprietary system like Apple Photos Library
7. The ability to at least read EXIF data and ideally to be able to (batch) edit it.
8. A free trial or money back guarantee
9. A companion iOS or iPadOS app would be awesome.

Potential Apps

So far, these have been suggested to me, but not buy anyone who actually has any experience with them:

• digiKam
• Excire Foto
• Mylio Photos
• Peakto
• ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac

If you know of or use a photo viewer or management program with all or most of these features, please use one of the contact methods at the bottom of the page to let me know. I appreciate it! Thanks for reading App addict!

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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A global keyboard shortcut is a combination of keys you can press while in any application on your Mac to execute an action belonging to a background process. I typically have a half dozen or more apps running in the background that use glocal keyboard shortcuts. Some of these include:

Keyboard Maestro

Keyboard Maestro is an automation app that allows you to initiate or control just about any repetitive process. Don't let the name fool you though. Keyboard Maestro can execute actions based on two dozen triggers, not just keyboard combinations. Some of the actions I launch with the keyboard from Keyboard Maestro include typing in extra long passwords with a shortcut, launching apps using keyboard combinations, launching a shortcut that queries OpenAI using my API key, activating templates in Drafts, running AppleScripts and more.

My Top 10 Keyboard Maestro Macros

Raycast

Raycast is a keyboard app launcher with over 1000 available plugins, including an emoji picker, window manager, clipboard history manager, notes, passwords and many more. You can assign hotekys to any action. Some of the ones I use most frequently are searching Kagi, generating alt-text for images I post on the Internet, opening my downloads folder, searching social media sites, searching Reddit, searching YouTube, sending clipboard text to Drafts and Obsidian.

My 10 Favorite Raycast Use Cases (and all the apps it replaced) | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Things 3

Things 3 is a task manager with clients for macOS, iOS and iPadOS. It has two built in global keyboard shortcuts: 1) The Quick Entry window lets you enter new to-dos into Things from anywhere without having to switch applications. Use the keyboard shortcut to make the window appear. 2) With Autofill, the Quick Entry window is automatically pre-filled with useful information from the application you are working in. From Mail, for example, it will create a link to the email you're reading. In a browser, it captures the URL of the page you are on.

Things 3, Maybe the Pinnacle in App Design | AppAddict

Dropover

Dropover is the king of shelf apps. Shelves are mini-platforms to hold files while you wait to move them or perform actions on them. Some of the actions you can accomplish from Dropover include sending a file to cloud storage and sharing the link, converting or resizing images, sending a file by Airdrop, in a message or email, attaching a file to a note. You can invoke Dropover when you are in any app, which is very convenient for grabbing an image from a web page or some text from any app. Dropover works well with Apple Shortcuts too, making it easy to move and manipulate files.

Dropover, Best in Class

Supercharge

Supercharge is a an that features a variety of tweaks and shortcuts for a number of tasks. My favorites are quit all apps, hide all apps, close all notifications, open Passwords and toggle desktop widgets on and off.

Using Supercharge | AppAddict

Better Touch Tool

Better Touch Tool is anoter automation app that can do a couple of things that Keyboard Maestro and Raycast can't do, such as use the fn key and trigger actions from text strings. I use simple double taps of modifier keys to activate and deactivate Notification Center and Mission Control.

Better Touch Tool Favorites | AppAddict

Others

• Fantastical and BusyCal both allow you to create new appointments and tasks from anywhere on your Mac.
• Language Tool is a writing aid with spelling and grammar checking. You can invoke it anywhere you enter text.
• Default Folder X has a search tool that can bu sommoned from its menu bar interface at any time.

Making It Easier

Two free apps to get to make life as a keyboard warrior easier are Karabiner Elements for remapping keys and creating macros and KeyClu, which gives you a heads-up display of keyboard shortcuts in any app, allowing you to enter your own for apps that it doesn't detect automatically.

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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There are quite a few apps with GUIs available for Macs that let you connect various cloud services to upload, download and move files. Most of them are costly. Today I needed to move files from Google Drive to a kDrive, a cloud storage company in Switzerland, Instead of using one of the expensive apps, I opted for a free command utility, rclone, and in just a few minutes initiated a complete transfer of the data on my drive.

If you've dealt with cloud storage, including iCloud over the past few versions of macOS, you might agree with me that Apple has made a mess of it. They insist on hiding your files away in ~/Library/Cloud Storage and other non-obvious locations. By default, the files stay in the cloud, making utilities like Hazel ineffective managing them. You just never know when you click on a file if you are going to have to wait to download it or not. The official clients for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box.com us that strategy. Even when you select the option to keep a folder downloaded, you get no notice that the download is complete and, in my experience, I have found that the settins revert from time to time with no notice, forcing me to redownload files.

So, I was really happy today to take the time to set up rclone to move the files. You can get a good overview of rclone's history and capabilities from Wikipedia.. You can use rclone with a long list of cloud services.

You can download and install rclone right On a Mac from the terminal, using the command

sudo -v ; curl [rclone.org/install.s...](https://rclone.org/install.sh) | sudo bash

Documentation

You can read the documentation on rclone at the official GitHub repository.

Here are links on how to set rclone for a few common services:

• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• OneDrive

Full Compatibility List

• Alibaba (Aliyun) Object Storage System (OSS)
• Amazon Drive (See note)
• Amazon S3
• Aruba COS[27]
• Backblaze B2
• Box
• C14
• Ceph
• Citrix ShareFile
• Cloudian[28]
• Dell-EMC ECS[29]
• DigitalOcean Spaces
• Dreamhost
• Dropbox
• Enterprise File Fabric[30]
• FTP
• Google Cloud Storage
• Google Drive
• Google Photos
• HDFS
• HTTP
• Hubic
• IBM COS S3
• Jottacloud
• Koofr
• Mail.ru Cloud
• Memset Memstore
• MEGA.io
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
• Microsoft OneDrive
• MinIO
• NetApp StorageGRID[31]
• Nextcloud
• OVH
• OpenDrive
• OpenIO[32]
• OpenStack Swift
• Oracle Cloud Storage
• ownCloud
• pCloud
• premiumize.me
• put.io
• QingStor
• Rackspace Cloud Files
• rsync.net
• Scaleway
• Scality[33]
• Seafile
• Selectel[34][35]
• SFTP
• StackPath
• SugarSync
• Tardigrade
• Tencent COS
• Wasabi
• WebDAV
• Yandex Disk
• Zoho Workdrive[30]

GUI Alternatives

File Managers/Browsers

• Odrive - $99 a year
• Multcloud - $189
• Raidrive $34 a year (limited free tier)
• Expandrive $75 lifetime

FTP/SFTP/Cloud Clients

• Cyberduck - FOSS
• Transmit - $45
• Forklift - $20

Mounters (Network Drive Mappers)

• MountainDuck - $39
• CloudMounter - $75
• Netdrive - $50

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When it comes to the new breed of social media, I prefer the federated and independent nature of Mastodon over everything else. I want nothing to do with Threads or anything else tainted by Meta. I like the atmosphere at Bluesky, but we have to face that it is a company founded by a billionaire, funded with venture capital and it's going to be enshittified one day - breaking the heart of millions. Mastodon, on the other hand was founded in Europe and is out of the control of the American fascist movement. Unlike the reality with Blue Sky, you really can have your very own Mastodon server. While it has an undeserved reputation for being difficult for normal people to use, there is only a single extra step to get started and there are many guides and walk throughs o hold your hand throught that step. In the 15 months of being on Mastodon, I have yet to witness the kind of hate filled craziness seen on corporate owned social media every day.

There are almost 100 different apps with Mastodon access available for Apple hardware and a few online, browser based clients as well. Here are a few unique offerings that can compliment or replace your primary Mastodon client.

Newsmast (free)

In a first for the Fediverse, we’re seamlessly integrating content from your home server with Newsmast’s hand-curated, knowledge-sharing Communities, hosted on our customised Mastodon instance, newsmast.social. There’s no scraping or content aggregation - all the community content comes from Newsmast users or via federation, and is moderated by applying the Oliphant Tier 0 blocklist, filters that keep out NSFW, crypto and hate-speech, and our human team.

Automadon ($14.99 year)

Automadon provides a suite of Shortcuts actions for Mastodon with support for multiple accounts. Actions available within Shortcuts include: • Post to Mastodon • Full-text search • Get account details, timelines, and following/follower lists • Interact with posts, including boosting, favoriting, and bookmarking posts • Follow/unfollow, block/unblock, mute/unmute accounts

Toot Later for Mastodon ($4.00)

With TootLater, you can: • Schedule multiple posts with different dates and times • Add multiple Mastodon accounts and switch between them easily • Attach images to your posts and preview them before sending • TootLater uses the official Mastodon API to ensure your account and posts are secure

Video for Ants ($3.99)

Got videos that are too big to upload to Mastodon? Everyone does. What kind of limits are these?! All you have to do is pick your video and then tap a button and video for ants will automatically convert the format, compress the bitrate, and optimize the fps (frame rate) as needed to make them fit. You only have to tap a button. That's it. That's the app.

Threaditor: write for everyone ($9.99)

• Draft threads for popular microblogging platforms all in one place
• Save unlimited threads to the cloud - always pick up where you left off
• Link your accounts to automatically publish, and group accounts to post to multiple places at once
• Add images and polls to your posts

Re: Toot ($2.99)

Re: Toot turns Mastodon posts into images that are suitable for quote posts. Images are accompanied by attribution to the original author and an alternative text. Images created by Re: Toot can also be shared to other social networks and messaging services. To create an image from a Mastodon post, just copy the link the post and open Re: Toot or invoke the app through the Share Sheet.

Still Followers for Mastodon (Expensive - just use the free features)

Still Followers is a useful analytics tool to keep you fro getting suckered by the people who game social media by following and unfollowing people. The free version offers several useful tools for the casual user.

AppAddict Picks

• My favorite Mastodon client isMona for Mastodon, a one time purchase with more features than any other Mastodon client.
• My favorite Mastodon instance is social.lol, which is for members of OMG.LOL and IndieWeb platform with multiple features inlcuding a link in bio page, a blog, photo hosting, an omg.lol email address and much more, all for $20 a year.
• My favorite social media tool for analytics, scheduled posts. account discovery, reports and more is Fedica. The free tier is useful. A paid membership is insane. Works with 10 different social media platforms.
• If you want to learn more about the Fediverse, how to use it, what it can do - head over to Fedi Tips.

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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This is a special edition of AppAddict. Tonight, I'm covering one of the best sources of computing functionality that often goes overlooked in the hunt for productivity enhancements and better work flows. There are many browser extensions that replace or enhance apps you use every day. This is my personal aresenal that I use in my daily workflow.

A modern Mac is a miraculous machine. My decidedly middle of the road laptop is an M2 with 16GB od RAM. I bought it in December of 2023 and hope to continue using it for years. The number of programs I have running at login (~40) would give Y2K Lou nightmares. The sheer number of installed applications would freak (628) that guy out. Finally, there are my browser extensions, and I'm only talking about the ones for my daily driver, Vivaldi, not the ones in the other five browsers I have installed. Where once I would have been concerned with somehow slowing down the Internet, today I just want to get the maximum amount of functionality out of my interface with it. I use A LOT of extensions. Let's get to them, shall we?

Aboard

Aboard does a a great many things but the way I use it is simple. It what I click when there is a webpage I want to share with my wife. She gets a notification on her phone when I share something and she can view it in the Aboard app or in a browser at the website. It's how I share shows I want to watch, restaurants I want to check out or news items that are blowing my mind.

Activity Watch

Activity Watch is a free time tracker that tells me how long I've been using my computer, which apps I use and for how long and what websites I visited and for how long. I can assign apps and web pages to categories and make the reports it creates as granular as I want to.

Activity Watch - Free No Effort Time Tracker | AppAddict

Language Tool

I use the paid version of this grammar, paraphraser and spelling tool, but I have used the free version as well and it is definitely a step up from native tools.

Language Tool - Free is Good, Paid is Better | AppAddict

Anylist Recipe Importer

I only activate this when I'm looking for recipes. Anylist importer clears all the cruft away from recipe sites and kust imports the ingredients and directions and leaves out all the SEO crap. It works with the Mac/iOS/Web app called Anylist, which is an app I've used for over a decade for shopping and packing lists and collecting recipes.

AnyList for Recipes, Shopping and More | AppAddict

Archive Today Automator

This is the extension I couldn't live without. Whenever I want to read a paywalled article from the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Verge, Medium, The Wall Street Journal or practically any other site, I just hit this button in my toolbar to obtain immediate access to a version from the Internet Archive. I subscribe to and support several progressive news organizations so I don't feel bad for reading MSM sites for free.

Block Party

Block Party is a paid service that inspects settings on invasive websites and changes things with your consent to offer yoy the most privacy possible. It works with Reddit, Google, YouTube, Strava, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, amd Instagram.

Bluesky Sidebar

Bluesky sidebar loads on web pages from the Bluesky social media platform and gives you extra information on the people you follow, the people who follow you, trending topics and the lists you are subscribed to.

Cloudhiker

Cloudhiker is a freemium service that is the closest thing you'll find on the wen today to the old Stumble Upon website. Use Cloudhiker to suggest and discover new sites in a large number of categories.

Cloudhiker - StumbleUpon for the IndyWeb | Linkage

Fedica

Fedica is a freemium service that allows you to schedule posts on all the major social media sites, you can crosspost to several of them at once. Paid customers get analytics and research tools, pluse reports from certain sites, like Mastodon and Bluesky.

Fedica - Post to Multiple Social Networks at Once, On a Schedule - For Free | AppAddict

Kagi Privacy Pass

Thiis extension is iused to authenticate to the paid Kagi search engine if you want to block all access toy what you are searching for. With this enabled, there is no history of your search activity using Kagi.

Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips | AppAddict

Markdownload

This is another one of my favorite extensons. It copies webpage links as Markdown links for insertion into posts and documents. It cam also copy whole pages as Markdown, although now that usefulness has been supplanted by the Obsidian Web Clipper. Finally is will create a markdown list from all the open tabs in a browser windos. It's great for bloggers and researchers.

MarkDownload - The Browser Extension that Works With #Obsidian | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Mastodon Redirector

No matter what Mastodon instance I land on while browsing and following toots from others, clicking this button opens the page in my home instance, allowing me to like, follow and comment with ease. I find that ut works better for me than Graze, another plugin with similar features.

Obsidian Web Clipper

This free tool uses templates to download web pages as markdown files. Using AI, you can get summaries of the page and automatically assign tags. It will even download the transcript from YouTube videos. I have templates for IMDB, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, YouTube, Medium, Wikiepedia and general web pages.

Privacy Badger

This free extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is not an ad blocker. It works hand in hand with them to detect and block trackers using an algorithm and machine learning. The EFF is working on ways to prevent browser fingerprinting, the strategy used by tech companies to follow you around the web without cookies.

Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation | AppAddict

Raindrop.io

Raindrop is a freemium bookmarking service from which I gety great value. I use it to create webpages of links I want to share, to save canonical copies of stories so that if the are removed from the Internet, I can still access them. I have never used my bookmarks more than I have with Raindrop.

Battle of the Bookmark Managers | AppAddict

Quick Pocket

I am a big believer in automation and in reading the work of smart people at depth. Aside from using Pocket as the excellent read it later service that it is, I also use it's integration with IFTTT and RSS to automate the saving of full text blog entries from Matt Birchler and Jarrod Blundy, two of my favorite tech oriented bloggers. Their articles are routed through Pocket right into Obsidian or Day One for preservation and reference. Pocket is owned by the Mozilla foundation.

Ublock Origin Light

The Original Ublock Origin is still the best as blocker ever made. It is no longer compatible with Chrome, Edge and Vivaldi, although Forefox users can still use it. Using a complete security toolkit that includes a customer DNS server, built in blockers in Vivaldi, Ublock Origin light and Freetube for YouTube, I routinely score 99 or 100 on ad blocking tests.

My Online Security Setup | Linkage

The other newsletter is for this blog, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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I've been working on getting all my software licensing information into KeyKeeper, an app by the same team that operates Bundlehunt. I've been buying Mac software since the days of the classic OS. Believe it or not, some apps I purchased as far back as 2004 are still functional, requiring the original license ket when I set up a new system. Shout out to SuperDuper!

I've used various methods to track licensing information: a spreadsheet, Evernote, an email tag, Obsidian, the freeware app, Licensed All of them are functional enough, but when I saw the features in KeyKeeper, available for $4.99 in the current bundle, I decided to try it out.

KeyKeeper is security focused, requiring a password to enter the database. The design follows modern Mac conventions. There are all of the database fields you'd expect for this type of app, but you can add unlimited custom fields and file attachments, useful for screenshots and apps that have downloadable license keys. The fields for URLs are live, so if you need to visit a product website or redownload the app, you can do both right from KeyKeeper. A feature I like is the ability to create your won categories for your apps and make your own assignments. You can also create a favorites list. If you've been tracking your app purchases in a speadsheet, you can import the data into KeyKeeper and save yourself all the manual data entry. Once you have the data in KeyKeeper, you can export it into a spreadsheet as well. You can use Python to convert the exported spreadsheet into Markdown notes for Obsidian, if you think that would be helpful.

A single license for KeyKeeper is good for use on two Macs. The regular price is $11.99 if you miss the Bundlehunt special.

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For anyone with a home lab or who is invested in the Internet of Things, the ability to scan your network is a tool that you want in your management arsenal. Additionally, if you live in an urban environment, being able to monitor the devices on your Wi-Fi network is important if you suspect one of your neighbors might be attempting to access anything they shouldn't.

iNet Network Scanner from BananaGlue GmbH is a particularly useful tool for anyone with a home network that's heavy on Apple devices. It's scanner can correctly identify laptops, desktops, iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs and HomePods. It can also pick up other computers, tablets, thermostats, picture frames and similar devices.

Network Scanner

• Displays information for all devices powered on and connected to the network including their IP and MAC addresses.
• Customize the names of the devices in your network and assign them custom icons
• Set the IP range to be scanned or the interfaces to be scanned
• Export the scan results as an Excel (csv) or PDF file
• Connect to devices with different protocols from within the scanner (e.g., SMB or SSH)

Bonjour monitor

• Display of all running services (Bonjour) in real time (e.g. SMB. SSH, Media Sharing, VNC)
• Display of the services running on a specific device
• Display of detailed information about a service
• Selection of the active Bonjour domain

iNet Network Scanner also features wake on LAN controls to sleep, wake and restart compatible devices. For anyone still using an Apple Airport as a home Wi-Fi device, there are numerous monitoring features.

The app is available in the App Store for $24.99 as a one time purchase with lifetime upgrades.

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I recently converted my Windows laptop to Ubuntu. I don't rely on Windows for anything personally any longer so I didn't need a dedicated machine for that OS. However, as the extended family tech support guy, there are occasions when I need to use Windows 10 and Windows 11 to troubleshoot issues for my relatives who have yet to see the light and buy a Mac. I relied on Oracle's free VirtualBox for a long time to build VMs and I've had licensed copies of Parallels through work off and on through the years. It's a good product, but not worth the price just for occasional use.

My current choice for running Windows in a VM on a Mac is UTM. It's free and allows you to run an Intel based version of Windows on an M series Mac. It's slow and inefficient, not something you want to use every day, but for testing and troubleshooting, it's fine. You can't game with a UTM virtual machine. UTM does not currently support GPU emulation/virtualization on Windows and therefore lacks support for 3D acceleration (e.g. OpenGL and DirectX). If you need a Windows license, you can get one at Stack Socialfor $15.

There is a gallery of prebuilt VMson the UTM site.

Windows

• Windows 11
• Windows 10
• Windows 7
• Windows XP

Linux (multiple version of each distro)

• Arch
• Debian
• Fedora
• Kali
• Ubuntu

My choice for creating and running Mac VMs is Virtual Buddy. You can choose a Mac release (including betas) from a long list ranging from macOS 13.3 all the way to macOS 15.1 RC1. If you have a URL for another IPSW or an IPSW you have already downloaded, you can use them as well.

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I am in the process of de-Googling. I already moved my email to Fastmail. I changed my default search engine to Kagi. I am moving my photographs to Ente. Today, I took advantage of an ongoing sale at Stack Social to purchase a lifetime deal on 1 TB of cloud storage with the Slovenian company, Koofr For $120. I've been paying a monthly fee for cloud storage for more than 10 years and I'm delighted that is coming to an end. My de-Googling project is based more on my desire to preserve my privacy and protect myself from the US government, but I'm happy to save a few bucks while doing it. For anyone who wants to try out Koofr, they offer a 10GB account for free. If you just want an offshore place to store documents, that is a healthy amount of storage, but not enough if you are looking to have a safe place for photos, music and larger backups. You can also subscribe to Koofr monthly with plans starting at a trifling €.5 a month, going up in increments for an additional 10, 25, 100, and 250 GBs before getting to TB and greater options.

The Mac client for Koofr allows you to set up access to your storage as if it were a network drive. Koofr also sets up a folder in your home directory that is synced with its cloud servers. I like this much better than the default location in the ~/Library/Cloud Storage folder used by Google Drive, Dropbox and Box.com. You can add additional folders to sync with the cloud, something I typically do with my default downloads folder so that I can easily share those files between devices. If you have Dropbox, Google Drive or One Drive accounts, you can mount those providers inside of your Koofr vault, something I'm taking advantage of while I work on moving the files I want to secure over to European based storage, protected by European privacy laws which are much stricter than in the US. Koofr's search function will search the files on each of those services as well as itself. The Koofr app also allows me to set up local file sharing between computers on my home network where the data never goes to a could service, it's just a convenient feature to share data between devices.

I was also able to set up Koofr easily in my iOS file manager, FileBrowserPro, using WebDAV.

There is a Koofr client for iOS, Windows and Linux if you use those platforms.

Even free accounts can use use Koofr Vault for extra strong protection. Open source, client-side, zero-knowledge encrypted storage application by Koofr.

There are even more features than I have covered for collaboration, file recovery, data migration from Meta platforms, an image editor, duplicate file detection, drive space management and more.

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I recently crowd-sourced ideas for a better way to catalog, annotate and search my collected PDFs, mainly software and hardware user manuals with a few odds and ends thrown in. The top suggestions were:

• Zotero - the app I chose
• DevonThink - expensive when all I want is PDF searches
• Eagle Filer - what I've been using, but I want something that is native to Apple silicon, works on IOS and is lightweight as a way to search PDFs only
• Paperless-ngx - Interesting, but requires Docker
• Obsidia - not suitable because the plugin required for text searched creates too many support files

Zotero

I chose Zotero, because it's free, lightweight and offers an iOS app using the same data. Zotero can import multiple files at once. It has built in tools for highlighting and making annotations to PDFs. There are numerous plugins available, including:

• AutoIndex - Keeps the full-text index updated. Beta release. If you have ZotFile installed, Auto-index will also kick off auto-extraction of notes.
• PDF Translate - Provides PDF translation for the built-in PDF reader in Zotero
• PDF Preview - Preview Zotero attachments in the library view.
• Zutilo - Adds additional editing functions and exposes Zotero functions for keyboard shortcuts

Zotero is designed to  to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, something for which I have little use. I can however use its browser import tools and added ability to add epub and HTMS archives to my research library. It is compatible with SingleFile, an open-source project for saving HTML archives of web pages. Zotero allows you to attach notes to PDFs, retrieve their metadata and other tasks. You can organize PDFs in folders and collections. The Zotero website provides extensive information, including instructional screencasts, troubleshooting tips, a list of known issues, and user forums.

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