AppAddict Newsletter

In this post, I show you how to automate the installation of Mac apps in the two post popular formats ZIP and DMG, so that all you have to do is download a file from a developer’s website and with no further action from you, the app will end up in your Applications folder just like if you’d downloaded it from the App Store.

Typically, when you download a Mac app from a developer’s website, it will come in one of three formats

1. ZIP Archive
2. DMG Disk Image
3. PKG - Package Installer (requires manual installation)

You can automate the installation of ZIP archives and DMG dish images with Hazel and a ninety-nine cent app from the Mac App Store.

DMGs

The app that works best for me is RapiDMG. When you make RapiDMG your default app for opening disk images, double-clicking on the file mounts the disk image files, extracts the application contained in it to the Applications folder, deletes the DMG (if that is your preference) and then highlights your new installed app in the finder. To automate it, create the following rule in Hazel for your downloads folder.

ZIP Archives

You don’t need any additional software to extract and move applications. Everything is built into Hazel. You’ll need to add two rules for your downloads folder. The first will extract the app from the archive. The second rule will move it to the Applications folder.

I often have to create screen recordings on my job to distribute to the people I support for tutorials. Occasionally I do screen sharing through Microsoft Teams when conducting training. Facescreen, a utility from developer Ram Patra, provides a useful complement to these use cases. It adds a feed from my webcam with a small configurable view of my face to personalize the video. In addition to the image, Facescreen also lets me add text, such as my email or a website related to the subject of the tutorial or training. It’s a nice professional touch.

Facescreen, like other apps from this developer, lets you customize almost every element of what is displayed.

Image Adjustments

• Shape
• Aspect
• Orientation
• Size
• Zoom
• Color
• Mirror option

Text Adjustments

• Font
• Size
• Color
• Background color
• Radius
• Padding

You have the option to run Facescreen as a login item and to customize keyboard shortcuts to show and hide the webcam image, toggle the text and adjust the size of the image.

More information on Facescreen is available at its website. Facescreen costs $4.99. It’s a one-time purchase which includes all updates. It will soon be available on Setapp. Although there is not a free trial, the developer has a no questions asked money-back guarantee. For more presentation help from the developer, check out Presentify.

I first wrote about Disk Drill several months ago. The review is below. I recently had a chance to put the paid version of the data recovery tools to work in a real-world situation. I was presented with a 2TB NTFS formatted drive that would mount on my Mac, but displayed the message “Drive not available” and showed no files structure in the Finder. The drive belonged to a relative who lost access to her cloud account when switching jobs and ended up with only one copy of her files from a 20-year career - on a bad drive.

Disk Drill scanned the drive, and it was able to see files on it. It wanted me to make a byte for byte copy, but I didn’t have another 2TB drive on hand. I had two 1TB hard drives and a dual drive bay, though. I used the Mac disk utility to combine the two physical drives into one logical drive and tried to initiate the copy again, but still got a message that the drive was too small. Since I knew that there was less than 100 GB of actual data on the drive, I was able to adjust the size of the number of bytes to be copied and the backup started. Although data seemed to be moving quickly, the progress indicator said the backup would take 28 hours. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Rather than doing a byte for byte copy, which also includes unused space, I elected to Disk Drill’s recovery option instead. I initiated it and began to copy files, sometimes quickly and at other times seeming to stop. I got messages about the disk having physical damage, but the program never quit. After about 90 minutes, I had 86K files recovered.

I did not have to pay the full retail price to use the recovery tools because the app is available as part of Setapp, a $10 a month subscription that gives you unlimited access to hundreds of software titles.

Original Review 

Disk Drill 5 by Cleverfiles is marketed as data recovery software to retrieve lost files from internal and external drive media as well as iPhone, iPad and Android storage. Its website goes into considerable detail on its ease of use, its power and its ability to recover files. The free product allows you to preview what data is recoverable, but it takes the $89 paid product to actually recover your data using its full suite of tools. There are some free recovery options too, but they require you to implement some (included) tools before use.   

Free Tools

Even if you aren't in need of data recovery, however, Disk Drill is a worthy download because of the bundle of free tools it includes:

Disk Health
Free S.M.A.R.T. Disk Monitoring Stays Alert for Any Potential Disk Issues. It works on both internal and external drives.

Mac Cleanup
Analyze Disk Space, Locate Unused Files and Space Hogs, Free Up Your Storage Effortlessly.

Duplicate Finder
Easily Find and Remove Duplicate File Locations on Your Drive.

Recovery Drive
Create Your own Bootable USB Drive for Free Mac OS X Data Recovery.

Data Protection
Protect Your Data with Recovery Vault or Guaranteed Recovery. Recover it for Free.

Data Backup
Create Byte-to-byte Disk & Partition Backups for Future Mac OS X Recovery. In my testing of this feature on the internal hard drive of an M3 iMac, Disk Drill said “This drive is encrypted with the Apple M1/2 Security Chip. You can still back it up into a byte-to-byte disk image, but it probably won’t be recoverable.” This leads me to believe that a product like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! is better suited for the task. Disk Drill did fine, however, making a copy of a 500GB external disk.

You can download all of these tools for free from Cleverfiles.

If you’ve had enough of corporate owned social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram, and are investigating how to preserve your photographic memories, the quickest and easiest way, if you have space available, is to transfer them to Google Photos. You can do it from your iPhone.

1. Click the plus button at the top of the screen
2. Then click "Import from other places"
3. Select Facebook and when you authenticate, you will be offered the opportunity to import from your Instagram account(s) as well.

Other Reasons to use Google Photos for iOS

1. Cross-platform support - if you use both iOS and Android devices, perhaps two different phones or a phone and tablet, Google photos is much easier to access on an iPhone than trying to access iCloud Photos from a browser on Android.
2. Automatic Backups - Google photos can upload your iPhone photographs automatically and delete the originals to free up space
3. More Free Storage - Apple only provides 5GB of free storage with iCloud, while Google provides 15GB
4. Google Lens is baked in - In my experience, Google machine learning does a better job of searching through my photo collection than Apple's tools
5. Create Movies and Collages - Google photos also has decent editing tools in the stock app. You get even more if you have a Google One subscription.
6. Manage Everything in iOS - With Google Photos, you can do complete management of your library right from your phone: share photos, create albums, editing etc.

There's nothing stopping you from using Google Photos and iCloud for a redundancy. Just remember, both of these services are syncing services. That's different from a backup. If you delete photos from either app, using the wrong procedure, they will stay in your trash for a period of time, but then they will be gone forever.

One of the websites that stay open in my browser at all times is MacMenubar.com. It’s a deep resource for new Mac apps in multiple categories. It currently features links and short descriptions to over 1,000 applications. Here’s a list of the latest additions and links to all the different types of apps on the site.

• Kleanly - Clean your Mac's keyboard, trackpad and display - With just a tap, Kleanly lets you completely disable your keyboard and trackpad, allowing you to clean them without turning your Mac off.
• Trace - This menu bar app tracks the active apps and websites you visit without requiring any extra plugins or extensions (works with Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Arc, Brave, Chromium, and more).
• Onliner on the Mac App Store - Onliner keeps you “online” effortlessly by simulating undetectable mouse activity in the background. Ideal for remote workers and professionals, Onliner ensures uninterrupted focus and avoids idle status notifications. Simple, efficient, and smarter than any mouse jiggler.
• fayazarahawa A simple white noise app which sits in the menubar - Hawa means air/breeze in Hindi. This menubar plays ambient sounds to help you focus on your work or relax. You can choose from a variety of sounds, adjust the volume of each sound individually, or create your own mix.
• Deskeen - Capture your insight! - This menu bar app is designed to efficiently capture your screen. Every feature is accessible through quick keyboard shortcuts. Deskeen can read everything, from symbols to languages.
• RSS Ticker News Feed on the Mac App Store - This menu bar app is an RSS reader designed to mimic the ticker display seen on forex stock exchange boards. News feeds update automatically when their respective RSS feeds are refreshed. The free version is limited to a single RSS feed.
• Sudoku Anyway on the Mac App Store - This menubar app features unlimited puzzles, five difficulty levels, customizable board colors, and helpful hints.
• Learn Flags - Menu Edition on the Mac App Store - Learn world flags and boost your memory with this quick-access menubar game.
• Captain for Mac - Manage Docker containers instantly from your menu bar. See which containers are running and which have stopped.
• RightMenu Master 1.11.0 - This menu bar app is a Finder extension that adds powerful functionality to the right-click menu and toolbar in Finder.
• Overkill-for-mac Stop iTunes from opening when you connect your iPhone - This menu bar app makes sure iTunes never interrupts your work. If you have other apps you don’t want to launch automatically (e.g. Photos app), you can add those apps to the Overkill list as well.
• Let It Snow - A touch of winter with snowflakes that gracefully drift across your screen.
• MenuBarGrid on the Mac App Store - Turn Google Sheets into powerful menu bar apps. Customize layouts, automate updates, and manage projects effortlessly.
• Ping MenuBar - This menu bar app displays ongoing ping (ICMP) results as a compact visualization. The design is similar to Pingr.
• NeverNap in the Mac App Store - NeverNap keeps your Mac awake, preventing sleep or screensaver activation for 5 minutes or indefinitely. It ensures smooth operation without manual system adjustments.

Categories at MacMenuBar

• AI Apps
• Audio Apps
• Audio Apps (Music)
• Audio Apps (Podcast)
• Battery Apps
• Browser Apps
• Calendar Apps
• Cleaning Apps
• Clipboard Managers
• cloud apps
• color apps
• design apps
• developer apps
• display apps
• email & contacts
• files & folders
• Finance Apps
• Keyboard Apps
• launcher Apps
• Meeting Apps
• menu bar managers
• misc & others
• Network Apps
• note taking apps
• personal apps
• Productivity apps
• screen capturing Apps
• security apps
• Sleep control apps
• social apps
• system Stats
• system tools
• time apps
• time apps (pomodoro)
• Time Tracking Apps
• Time Zone Apps
• To-Do List Apps
• wallpaper apps
• weather apps
• window managers
• writing apps

FSNotes is a plain text note editor with the two-pane interface of Brett Terpstra’s classic Nvalt, which ceased development in 2017. FSNotes has an extensive feature set for run-of-the-mill notes and for developers. If you have an existing folder of plain text or Markdown notes, you can access them from FSNotes by moving or copying the files to the default folder or by changing the path to the folder you are already using.

There are built-in keyboard shortcuts for searching your notes database, creating a new note from the clipboard contents and for creating new notes. You can choose a default external editor if you want to use something like Bbedit or Cot. The two pane layout can be used side by side or over/under. You can change the appearance and color of the app, as well as light/dark themes and the fonts used for notes and code. Line spacing and margins are also adjustable. Aside from encryption, you can also lock the app with a master password.

Features Included

• Markdown-first. Also supports any plaintext files.
• Fast and lightweight. Works smoothly with 10k+ files.
• Access anywhere. Sync with iCloud Drive or Dropbox. (iCloud required for iOS syncing)
• Multi-folder storage.
• Keyboard-centric. nvalt-inspired controls and shortcuts.
• Syntax highlighting within code blocks. Supports over 170 programming languages.
• In-line image support.
• Organize with tags.
• Cross-note links using [[double brackets]].
• Elastic two-pane view. Choose a vertical or horizontal layout.
• External editor support (changes seamless live sync with UI).
• Pin important notes.
• Quickly copy notes to the clipboard.
• Dark mode.
• AES-256 encryption.
• Mermaid and MathJax support.
• Optional Git versioning and backups.

You can examine the code and download the current version for free on GitHub. If you wish to support development and receive automatic updates, you can get FSNotes on the Mac App Store for $8.99. There is also an iOS version which can sync with iCloud.

Unsplash is one of the largest providers of royalty-free images in the world. Without an account, you can search for, download and use any one of the millions of photographs on the site. For photography fans or anyone who enjoys aesthetically pleasing wallpapers, Unsplash provides a free app to cycle the wallpaper on your displays at regular intervals: hourly, daily, weekly. You can also manually cycle in a new image. When using the manual settings, the app has a built-in viewer so you can see a reasonably sized thumbnail preview of the available images. The selected image is downloaded to your computer, helping you to create a permanent collection if you want one. It provides wallpapers for all attached displays and virtual desktops.

You can select one or more categories of images, from which the app will select new wallpapers. The default categories included with the app include:

• Black and White
• Nature
• Beach
• Animals
• Space
• Textures
• Abstract
• Editorial

You can also browse the thousands of collections on the Unsplash website and choose collections to add to the wallpaper app. One drawback is that you can only add one wallpaper collection at a time. To add a new collection, you have to remove your previous custom selection.

The app is available in the App store for free. It does not collect any information connected to your identity.

When I am at work, I like to leave my system volume setting in the midrange. I want to be able to hear incoming mail alerts and calls on Microsoft Teams. What I expressly do not want is have anything from YouTube, or any other website suddenly playing through my iMac speakers. At home, I like to have music playing and I appreciate the convenience of having it stop and restart automatically if I decide to watch a video. The free app, Background Music can handle both of these tasks. You can set the volume for any app to a custom level (including muted).

The auto-pause feature currently supports the following music players:

• Apple Music
• Spotify
• VLC
• VOX
• Decibel
• Hermes
• Swinsian
• GPMDP

You can also record system audio with Background Music. With Background Music running, launch QuickTime Player and select File > New Audio Recording (or New Screen Recording, New Movie Recording). Then click the dropdown menu (⌄) next to the record button and select Background Music as the input device.

You can download Background Music on GitHub.

Homebrew users can install it by running this command in Terminal

brew install --cask background-music

I have hundreds of contacts and I know almost no phone numbers. My job requires me to gain entrance to numerous rooms secured with keypad combinations. Remembering hotel room numbers is always a challenge. Don’t put a gun to my head and ask me the license plated of my wife’s car. My solution for quickly referencing these little pieces of information regardless of whether my phone or computer is in reach or not is Cheatsheet, a synchronized notes app I that allows me to enter information on my computer or phone that I can easily get to from any device, including my watch, which is a huge help.

With Cheatsheet, I can format notes with rich text if I want and assign one of 200 icons to them for easy visual recognition. I can search my notes within the app or in Spotlight. I can even create new notes with Siri, including type to Siri. Cheatsheet notes can be organized into folders. For security, the app can be protected by a passcode. Both the Mac and the iOS apps can be accessed via the share sheet or in widgets. The Mac also has menu bar access. There is shortcut support for creating, appending to moving and finding cheats. The iOS app featured a custom keyboard for inserting up to 50 different cheats into other applications.

Cheatsheet has been around for over a decade but is frequently updates. The Mac version costs $7.99 in the AppStore. The iOS version comes in a free and a pro version, which is $5.99 a year but it is what provides the ability to:

• Remove limits on the widget, keyboard, and Watch app.
• Protect your cheats with Passcode Lock.
• Organize your cheats with folders.
• Sync your cheats between your devices with iCloud.

If you love the app but hate subscriptions, you can purchase a lifetime license, albeit for the steep price of $69.99

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I don’t know about you, but whenever I have to tether my laptop to my iPhone, I get nervous about the possibility of some unknown process running in the background and chewing up my data. Even though my mobile provider calls my plan unlimited, I know that there are always gotchas. I tried TripMode a while back, but it was overly complex for my needs, with more settings and options than I wanted to mess with.

I recently found a much simpler menu bar app that I prefer for its simplicity and ease of use. Datacever by developer sameh sayed is an inexpensive app available from the App Store for $6.99. You can allow or deny any app access to the Internet. For the apps you permit access to, you can set data caps. If you don’t want to set a cap, you can still monitor your traffic on a per-app basis. It does exactly what I need and nothing more. The privacy policy states that no data of any type is collected. Your browsing remains private.

If you have ever looked at the DNS logs of your Mac with the browser not running, you know that there are still plenty of apps trying to call home constantly. Control all of that with Datacever and don’t let your data be wasted by needless telemetry,

The command like application, FFmpeg is remarkably powerful but it is also overly complicated for people who don’t use the terminal much or who don’t have the headspace to memorize a bunch of esoteric commands. Thankfully, there are some good front ends. Lossless Cut is one whose main feature is specifically lossless trimming and cutting of video and audio files, which is great for saving space by rough-cutting your large video files taken from a video camera. It is extremely fast, allowing you to trim the video without having a loss of quality caused by having to do (slow) any encoding.

Some Example Lossless Use Cases

• Remove commercials from recorded TV shows
• Remove audio tracks from a file
• Combine audio and video tracks from separate recordings
• Split video into segments to meet social media length limits
• Rotating phone videos that come out the wrong way without actually re-encoding the video

Features

• Extract all tracks from a file (extract video, audio, subtitle, attachments and other tracks from one file into separate files)
• Losslessly rearrange the order of video/audio segments
• Take full-resolution snapshots from videos in JPEG/PNG format (low or high quality)
• Import/export segments: MP4/MKV chapter marks, Text file, YouTube, CSV, CUE, XML (DaVinci, Final Cut Pro) and more
• View FFmpeg last command log so you can modify and re-run recent commands on the command line

Many thanks to Scott Kingery from TechLifeWeb blog for pointing out this gem of a product. It's a good blog to add to your RSS reader for tech tips and leads to new software.

You can download Lossless Cut and get additional information on GitHub.

What about open-source software?" I hear you say. "I'll just review the source code and determine whether it's malicious".

"I would make several points in response to this. The first is: "LOL". Any nontrivial program consists of hundreds of thousands to millions of lines of code, and reviewing any fraction of that in a reasonable period of time is simply impractical. The way you can tell this is that people are constantly finding vulnerabilities in programs, and if it were straightforward to find those vulnerabilities, then we would have found them all"

From - Why it’s hard to trust software, but you mostly have to anyway

I’d say more than 90% of the people who choose FOSS over everything else, don’t have the chops to go to GitHub and look at code to really determine how safe a program is. I use a lot of FOSS and I have nothing but appreciation for the people who develop it, but I don’t think for one minute that it is all somehow safer than any commercial software.

When I was a younger man, I’ll admit to living the pirate life for music and movies. I was around for the original Napster and the birth of BitTorrent. That all came to a screeching halt one weekend when I sat down at my computer and couldn’t connect to the internet. I called tech support, and the stern-sounding lady on the phone told me to go to my computer and read what was on the screen. It basically said, “If I ever download something illegally again, my Internet will be turned off forever.” There was one checkbox, and it just said “OK.” I had to check it to get my Internet back. That was the sudden and dramatic end to my life on the high seas. Since then, I have resisted using a VPN or other methods of accessing content illegally. For one thing it adds a lot of friction and for another, in the streaming age you can get just about anything you want without breaking the bank.

There are legal torrent sites, most notably Archive.org. You can find others with a simple search.

A useful automated too to aid in downloading torrents via an RSS feed is Radarr. It also works on Usenet. Radarr’s features include:

• Adding new movies with a variety of information, such as trailers, ratings, etc.
• Support for major platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi, etc.
• Can watch for better quality of the movies you have and do an automatic upgrade. eg. from DVD to Blu-Ray
• Automatic failed download handling will try another release if one fails
• Manual search so you can pick any release or to see why a release was not downloaded automatically
• Automatically searching for releases as well as RSS Sync
• Automatically importing downloaded movies
• Recognizing Special Editions, Director's Cut, etc.
• Identifying releases with hardcoded subs
• Identifying releases with AKA movie names
• SABnzbd, NZBGet, QBittorrent, Deluge, rTorrent, Transmission, uTorrent, and other download clients are supported and integrated
• Full integration with Kodi and Plex (notifications, library updates)
• Adding metadata such as posters and information for Kodi and others to use
• Advanced customization for profiles, such that Radarr will always download the copy you want

It takes some time and some skill to get Radarr set up correctly, but there are good instructions provided.. There is also extensive documentation..

The easiest way to share files between computers or with other users is through a commercial cloud service like iCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive. The problem with using those services is that your data passes through someone else’s computer. If you are sharing apple pie recipes with your Aunt Sue, that’s not a problem, but if your data is ultra-private documents like financial records, proprietary business information or the like, you should consider a product like Resilio Sync, formerly a commercial product, now free for personal use.

Resilio Sync allows you to sync data between computers and to selectively share files with others. There are clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and several NAS configurations. You can “easily send one or more files to multiple recipients without sharing the whole folder or creating a permanent sync connection. Send photos, videos, movies, or any other large file directly to friends. Cloud free.

You can make sure sensitive data stays in your control. Change access permissions at any time using the ‘Advanced Folders’ feature. You can assign ownership to another user, revoke access, or modify read and write permissions on the fly. Sync has built in encryption.

Automatically sync folders to all your devices. Sync photos, videos, music, PDFs, docs or any other file types to/from your mobile phone, laptop, or other storage devices.

Using ‘Selective Sync’ feature, Sync will create placeholder files in your file-system that can be searched locally. Click to download only the files that you need, when you need them, without having to replicate entire folders on every device.

If you have bandwidth issues, you can set limits on download and upload speeds

Because I like checking out new to me software and writing about it, I usually install something new just about every day. Reading r/MacApps and lots of other software discovery sites is how I find new apps. I’ve experimented with several different ways to keep lists of apps I want to check out and here are a few of my favorites.

• Listy - A Private List Manager - this is good for both iOS apps and macOS apps. It tracks whether you've downloaded the app or not and gives you info on the app rating, category and developer as well as a link back to the app store.
• App Wish List & Price Tracker - this free iOS only app hasn't been updated since 2018 but it still works well via the share sheet. It has widgets and notifications for price changes and updates.
• AppRaven - Apps Gone Free (and more) - AppRaven lets you watch apps and developers and gives you notifications based on all kinds of criteria. There is a whole community of app fans using this app, writing reviews and giving folks a heads-up when apps have limited free offers. It has every app in the App Store for all Apple Platforms.
• Things 3 - This popular task management app also has features that serve list making well, including share sheet access, deep links, space for notes and more. If you use it for other things, it makes a good place for an apps wishlist. Works on Mac and iOS.
• App Wishlist Pro - An Apple shortcut that works on iOS and macOS
• Various Notes Apps - The benefit to using a notes app is that it keeps your data centralized, has plenty of space to post multiple links regarding one app (e.g., reviews) and doesn't limit you to just the App Store like some other choices.
  • Obsdian
  • Notesnook
  • Bebop Quick Notes
  • Simplenote
  • Notenik
  • Type
  • Twos

In blogging and in creating instructional documents at work, I go through plenty of screenshots, stock photography and open-source images from the web. In the course of crafting a single blog post, I might use four or five apps.

For screenshots, I use CleanShotX which I call from a keyboard shortcut or the menu bar. It also does annotation. The files are saved to my default screenshot folder that lives on a cloud drive so that I can readily access it from all my computers and devices.

When the file is saved, it activates Clop which optimizes the file size automatically. The optimized file is handed off to Dropover and then an Apple Shortcut (download link) runs that moves the file to another cloud folder, called “Optimized” and which also opens a Dropover shelf so that I can drag the file into place if my current working situation calls for it. Dropover also lets me rename the file, convert to another format and resize the file. I can even open the file in ImageOptim right from the shelf if I want to reduce the file size to a greater extent than Clop performed.

For images other than screenshots, they go straight to my downloads folder, where they get optimized by Clop and then moved to the “Optimized” folder by a shortcut ready for use.

Since I go through numerous images, I don’t want my “Optimized” folder to get bloated, so I use Hazel to move files that are more than one day old. It sorts the files in two ways. Screenshots (which have a special string in the file name)are moved to a “Screenshots-Old” folder. The rest of the image files, which can be jpg, png, svg or webp get sorted by file extension and moved to an archive folder. Hazel does all this based on pre-configured rules, and it all happens automatically.

For images other than screenshots, they go straight to my downloads folder, where they get optimized by Clop and then moved to the “Optimized” folder by a shortcut ready for use.

As multiple monitors become more and more common and as the typical user is much more likely to use a laptop than a desktop, dealing with screen resolutions for different use cases becomes more and more problematic if your Mac is an “everything” device where you game, watch movies and get work done. SwitchResXi s a preference pane utility (with an additional menu bar interface) that has various useful functions for resolution management.

SwitchResX Functions

• Save desktop layouts for any resolution. No more having to rearrange things when connecting a second monitor.
• Automatically switch resolutions when launching any app - useful for games, video players, graphics apps and presentation software like PowerPoint
• Name resolutions according to their purpose (e.g., Gaming, Video, Presentation ) rather than trying to remember esoteric number combinations
• Enables a finer desktop grid than the native Mac grid for more precise arrangements
• Create custom resolutions based on your hardware capabilities

SwitchResX is available from the developer's website and comes with a 10-day free trial. A license for a single computer is $16.00.

I am not the developer. I do not know the developer. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact him directly through the information on his website.

Mac users are notorious for being sticklers for aesthetics. Luckily, customizing the appearance of your device is made easier by various third-party utilities. One of those is Replacicon, an outstanding app that maintains a constantly updating catalog of alternate icons for your installed applications.

The Replacicon interface shows an alphabetic list of your installed apps that you can filter in different ways, showing only the apps in your dock or by permanently hiding apps you don’t want to see listed. It shows you each app’s current and legacy icons, allowing you to hide the current icon if you choose. If you have apps installed outside the default locations, you can add those folders to the ones Replacicon searches.

If you have your own icons for apps, you can import those into Replacicon. You can also use Apple Intelligence to generate new icons if your machine has that capability. The app runs on Intel and Apple Silicon, and on macOS 13 and higher. Your alternate icon selections are maintained across app and OS updates automatically.

Replacicon is a $5.99 one-time purchase from the developer’s website.

I have collected quotes for years. When I’m reading a book, watching a movie or listening to music, if I come across a line I want to remember I write it down. Years ago, the developers at Lickability made an app called Quotebook for iOS that was specifically designed for quote collectors, but it was removed from the App Store in 2016 - although for anyone who still has a copy it is fully functional in iOS 18!

I’ve looked all over for a suitable replacement, and the closest I’ve found is Quotemarks from indy developer Christopher Hale. It is a free app with an IAP just to leave a tip. Quotemarks is great because it lets you import your collection from a CSV file. Anyone who already has a collection is saved from having to manually enter their quotes. The fields you can import include:

• Quote
• Author
• Tag
• Notes
• Date Added

I wish there was a field for the source, but you can use the notes field for that. Of course, you can add new quotes you find one at the time within the app.

Some nice touches with the program include:

• Automatic import of images of well-known authors
• Links to the bios of authors on Wikipedia
• Select the style of quotation marks to use (including none)
• Backup and restore
• Schedule quotes to appear on certain days in a widget
• Use the share sheet to export quotes

Quotemarks is an iOS app that runs in Macs with M-series chips. If you have an Intel Mac you will have to use it on an iPhone or iPad.

If you are looking for quotes to use with the app or for your own personal collection, I have shared my collection on GitHub as either a ZIP file or in individual Markdown notes readable by any text editor or for use in Obsidian.

I am not the developer. I don’t know the developer. if you gave questions or suggestions, you can contact him using the information on his website.

Another good quotes manager is Thoughts

• Inspiration Manager.

I’m a big fan of automation apps for macOS but I’ll admit, even the best ones can have a steep learning curve. If you’ve loaded up at the App Store, you might not even know which app performs a task the best since some of them have overlapping features. You might also have a desire to get into Mac automation but the price of some of the apps makes them an investment rather than a casual purchase. Here is a roundup of information to help veterans and newcomers alike with becoming more productive.

Keyboard Maestro
My Top 10 Keyboard Maestro Macros

Keyboard Maestro Discourse

Hazel
My Favorite Actions for Hazel, the Preeminent File Management Software for the Mac

Noodlesoft Forums

Drafts
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