AppAddict Newsletter

Use the free tool, Integrity, to quickly crawl an entire domain or subdomain and check every link on each page within. See a report listing the URL of each page and see the server response code for all internal and external links found. From within Integrity you can quickly jump to any page within the domain and with the text of the broken link highlighted.

As corporate owned social media becomes more toxic and advertising invades every space available, more and more people are adopting the ethos of the Indie Web movement and creating their own websites in the form of personal blogs hosted on various independent platforms. Some opt for WordPress sites with complicated plugins and CDN management, while others use services that are basically online editors that operate like word processors with a “publish” button, like Micro.blog. For anyone interested in maintaining their own web presence, the bar to entry is low with domain registrations costing under $10 a year and blog  hosting as low as $1 a month..

One of the things that happens over time to all websites is link rot. Linking to news articles and other bloggers invariable results in links breaking over time as companies go out of business, switch URLs or simply remove content. It can be frustrating to people visiting a site to run into many broken links and if you are interested in appearing in search engine results, you’ll find that sites with link rot get downgraded.

Integrity, an app under continuous development since 2007 and was updated just this week. On a domain I own that contains two blogs, the crawler found 1717 pages and 3498 links. There were about a dozen 404 errors from websites that had closed down and social media posts that had been deleted. I also found an issue with Cloudflare and the way my blog host handles hashtags that led me to open a ticket.

Integrity is a free link checker best suited for personal blogs or smaller websites. The same developer has similar tools for professional use. More features and options such as exporting your data, authentication (logging in), managing multiple sites, sitemap generation, SEO checks, spelling & grammar are all available in two related apps; Integrity Plus and Scrutiny. Here is a comparison of major features

Integrity is available from the developer’s website or the Mac App Store.

If you do much research in your browser, and you’re past the stage where you just use Google everything, DEVONagent Lite gives you keyboard quick access to seventeen different categories of reference material, most of them with multiple sources to choose from. No longer do you need to find your browser bookmark for the website you want to use for search. You type your query right in the menu bar of macOS, choose the category and site you would like to search, and press enter. The resulting page opens in your default browser.

The search categories and some of the most useful sites are:

• Search - Google, Brave, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo
• Apple - App Store, Knowledge Base, Mac Update
• Blogs
• Computer Science - GitHub, StackOverflow
• Dictionaries - Onelook, Wiktionary, Info Please
• Directories - Open Directory, WoW, Yahoo Directory
• Discussion Lists - Yahoo Answers
• Government - USA.gov, Firstgov.gov
• Images & Videos - Google Video, Picsearch, YouTube
• Legal - Google Scholar, FindLaw
• Medical - FDA, HeathFinder, PubMed, WebMD
• News - BBC, Google News, Reuters
• Patents - US Patent Office, Google Patents
• References - British Library, Gutenburg.org, Wikipedia
• Science
• Shopping - Amazon
• Social Networking - Facebook Profiles

You cannot add or remove search sites in the free version, nor can you directly access any type of AI. DEVON offers an express version of the app with a few more features for $4.99 and a pro version for $49.99. You can check out the features for each version at the DEVON web site.

For those of you who are regular readers of AppAddict, I changed the domain name to something easier to remember . Old links will still work but if you use an RSS reader, you’ll need to resubscribe. I really appreciate everyone who stops by.

One of the websites I keep an eye on for new to me software is Thriftmac, which currently has a library of 428 categorized free Mac apps with short descriptions and links to developer sites or the Mac App Store. That’s where I found today’s app.

If you need a nice, simple , easy to use GUI front end for FFMpeg, , the free offering from developer Justin Bush, Video Converter - All-in-One Video Conversion is an easy to access choice, Available in the Mac App Store this app has a simple drag and drop interface.

To use the app, first drop the video file to be converted into its holding area. The options are:

• Output formats are suitable for use on AirPlay, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Cast, Xbox, PlayStation, YouTube and web hosting
  • MP4
  • MKV
  • M4V
  • MOV
  • WEBM
  • AVI
  • GIF
• Codecs
  • H.264
  • H.265 (HEVC)
  • MPEG-4
  • VP8
  • VP9
  • Apple ProRes
• Quality
  • Auto (with transmuxing)
  • Balanced
  • Better Quality
  • Smaller Size
  • ProRes Profiles

The app allows you to AirPlay your BluRay movie without sacrificing 4K quality or immersive Dolby Digital Surround Sound. It is capable of handling up to 8K video. If you input a video file with 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound for your home theater system, your output video will retain that ultra-quality format.

User reviews praise the app for its ease of use and speed on Apple Silicon, for which it is optimized. One reviewer noted that the app did not carry over subtitles or chapter markers. It also doesn’t have any features for upscaling.

You can view the source code on GitHub. The most recent update was in November 2024. The app has been in development for three years.

For anyone looking for an anonymous messaging system, that requires no account, email or telephone number to set up, Session may be what you are looking for. With clients for macOS, iOS, Windows, Android and Linux, you can communicate with just about anyone through a network of 2000 decentralized servers. If a server goes down, the network stays up, eliminating any one node as a single source of failure.

Session’s encrypted messages are sent through an onion routing network. Onion networks encrypt messages with multiple layers of encryption, then send them through a number of nodes. Each node ‘unwraps’ (decrypts) a layer of encryption, meaning that no single node ever knows both the destination and origin of the message. Session uses onion routing to ensure that a server which receives a message never knows the IP address of the sender.

Account in Session are created and secured with a mnemonic seed which can be used to restore your existing Account ID to a new device. Your display name can be anything you want it to be. Session does not collect any geolocation data, metadata, or any other data about the device or network you are using. On your local device, Session allows you to encrypt your local Session database with a PIN code. With this feature turned on, your messages cannot be accessed without knowing your PIN code. If the police or a thief have physical access to your device, they still can’t see your messages without your PIN.

Voice and video messaging are current beta features in the app. In early 2025, the back end technology for the app is transitioning to upgraded technology, using crypto-based engineering. Although there are no paid features currently, the non-profit foundation behind the app says that it may implement some in the future, using cryptocurrency. They say the primary private messaging will always be free.

See the Session GitHub site.

The threat from bad actors who seek to access and exploit user data increases every year. The list includes for-profit gangs, unscrupulous developers, the world’s largest social media companies and repressive governments. The information they could potentially use includes, but isn’t limited to, financial records, political or social organizing records, medical records, blackmail material, passwords and personal communications. Those who seek to access your data have increasingly sophisticated methods of bypassing weak security.

A small but powerful free and open-source utility, Picocrypt, weighing in at only 3MB provides easy to use encryption that is powerful enough to withstand attacks from government agencies. With Picocrypt’s simple UI, all you have to do is drag and drop your files, enter a password, and hit Encrypt. There is no need to set up a volume, as there is with other tools like Veracrypt.

Installing Picocrypt is simple. Only download Picocrypt from the official site,. Open the container, and drag Picocrypt to your Applications folder. You may need to manually trust the app from a terminal and control-click on the app if macOS prevents you from opening it:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Picocrypt.app

Features

• Uses extra Reed-Solomon parity bytes to protect from file corruption and bit rot
• Built in customizable password generator
• Comments  to store notes, information, and text along with the encrypted file
• Keyfiles, which can be generated and distributed to multiple people if there is joint ownership of information requiring more than one person to authenticate decryption
• Paranoid mode - a double encryption method suitable for government level or whistle-blower secrecy
• File chunking splits large encrypted files into multiple user selectable sized blocks
• Deniability allows encrypted files to appear without identifiable headers so that if they are intercepted, the bad actor in possession of them will have no way to prove what they are. The output volume will indistinguishable from a stream of random bytes, and no one can prove it is a volume without the correct password.

Picocrypt also has Windows and Linux versions, meaning that the recipient of the files does not have to have a Mac to decrypt the files, just the password. Picocrypt is also portable and does not require installation. It can be run from an external drive, such as a USB stick.

Inoreader, the RSS app and service provider, got some new features today with the release of a new browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Edge.

• Save and organize content: Collect web pages and social media posts and tag them as you send them to Read later.
• Annotate while you browse: Mark and annotate texts directly in your browser, then revisit your notes anytime in Inoreader.
• Stay on top of your feeds: Monitor account activity, feeds, tags, and Team channels -- all without switching tabs.
• Streamline article sharing: Share content to Team channels or set up rules for automated content distribution.

Existing Features

Custom Monitoring Feeds

My favorite feature, hands down, are the custom monitoring feeds Inoreader allows me to create. It scours the web every hour to search for articles using my keywords. I have monitoring feeds to help me track my favorite software titles for news and tips/tricks. The wizard that creates these feeds lets me decide whether I want to search entire articles or just titles. I can search the entire Internet or just sources from sites whose main RSS feed I follow. As with all feeds on Inoreader, I can set up a highlighter for my search terms (Obsidian, Raycast, Keyboard Maestro, Micro.blog). I can filter out terms I definitely do not find interesting (Android, Apple Vision Pro, Trump). Finally, I can filter out duplicates and near duplicates so my feed doesn’t get inundated on dates when one of my keywords makes the news, for example when updates to a certain title get released. It is possible to place all these keyword monitoring feeds into a folder and to view the output combined. I can even generate an OPML file with the output to share with others!

Newsletter Subscription Replacement

Inoreader allows me to generate email addresses to use in subscribing to newsletters. That way, I get the benefit of their content without having my mailbox clogged up. Like every other feed, these newsletters can be saved to OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive. I can export them to Pocket or ReadWise, Instapaper, Blogger, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon or a custom location.

Automation

If you highlight text in any RSS article or newsletter, you can use the highlight to trigger an IFTTT applet. You can do the same with any article you mark to read later. In fact, IFTTT has a dozen different triggers for Inoreader and over 2000 services you can connect it to. You can read your feeds in a web browser or in your choice of RSS readers like Reeder or NetNewsWire. I like their web interface so much that on a desktop, I choose to use a stand-alone web app of their site to read my feeds since it has easy access to most of the extra features offered. On my iPhone and iPad, I use their app as opposed to a separate RSS reader. Their iOS and Android apps have an offline mode allowing you to download content to read later, useful for flights and helping you avoid a separate subscription to a read it late service.

Organization and Backup

You can use folders or tags (or both) to organize your feeds. You can set up notifications for different keywords or material from certain sources. In the settings section of the Inoreader you can look at the health of all of your feeds and easily determine if one is down, allowing you to contact the blogger or publisher of the site in question. If you currently have an RSS provider or reader, Inoreader can easily import your feeds and conversely, it can export feeds for you if you want to use them elsewhere. Your feeds get backed up every day, and you can set them to be saved to a cloud folder synced with your computer so you can have ready access to them. I use Dropbox for this.

Other Features

• Built in podcast player
• Turn Google News searches into feeds
• Customize the look with your own CSS if desired
• Get accelerated updates on certain feeds
• Annotate and save articles
• Multi-lingual content
• Sync your YouTube subscriptions
• Filtered Reddit feeds (see Obsidian posts without having to look at pictures of other people's graphs)

Pricing for all the features I mentioned is $7.50 a month, paid annually. You can download Inoreader for iOS and iPadOS on the App Store.

A Python script that will count the words in a folder of markdown files. #Obsidian #ObsidianMD #PKM

I use Obsidian to write a minimum of three blog posts every day as well as technical documents for my job.  Of course, I also compose and edit notes in it too. At the end of 2024, I was curious to see how many words I’d written on each blog during the year. Unfortunately, I could not find a plugin that could do this, but I suspected that Python probably could. After working on it for a while with the help of Google Gemini, I had an easy to run script that would work on any folder in my vault.  If you have any Python experience, you won’t find this difficult at all to use. The only edit you need to make is for the path of the folder you want to evaluate. Just save this in a text editor like BBEdit with a .py extension. Change the permissions on it using chmod and it will be ready to run.

chmod +x pythonScript.py 

NOTE: A kind person on Reddit pointed me toward a plugin that has this functionality if you'd rather go that route. It is called Novel Word Count.

The Script

\#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
def count_words_in_markdown(filepath):
"""Counts the number of words in a markdown file.
Args:
filepath: Path to the markdown file.
Returns:
The number of words in the file.
"""
with open(filepath, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
content = f.read()
\# Simple word counting by splitting on whitespace
words = content.split()
return len(words)
def count_words_in_directory(directory):
"""Counts the total number of words in all markdown files within a directory.
Args:
directory: Path to the directory containing markdown files.
Returns:
The total word count across all markdown files.
"""
total_words = 0
for filename in os.listdir(directory):
if filename.endswith(".md"):
filepath = os.path.join(directory, filename)
total_words += count_words_in_markdown(filepath)
return total_words
if __name__ == "__main__":
directory_to_search = "PUT THE PATH TO A FOLDER HERE"  \# Replace with your directory
total_word_count = count_words_in_directory(directory_to_search)
print(f"Total words in markdown files: {total_word_count}")

These are the different categories and the products nominated by the community for the 2024 Obsidian.md Gems of the Year, an annual tradition on Discord. Have fun investigating the favorite new and existing complements to what, I think, is the best app to come along since the invention of the browser. 

1. Best content
2. Best template
3. Best tool
4. Best existing plugin
5. Best LLM integration
6. Best third-party integration
7. Best new theme
8. Best new plugin

Best content

• 🇦 Arabic Obsidian Crash Course — by Khaled Mohamed
• 🇧 Bag of Tips YouTube — by Bag of Tips
• 🇨 Beginners Guide Series — by Paul Dickson
• 🇩 David Hurtado Obsidian Publish site — by David Hurtado
• 🇪 Form, Function, & Fun! Obsidian Vault Tour — by CyanVoxel
• 🇫 LeanProductivity — by Sascha Kasper
• 🇬 Love Letter to Obsidian — by Andrej Karpathy
• 🇭 Marco Serafini YouTube — by Marco Serafini
• 🇮 Obsidian Observer — by Nuno Campos, TfTHacker, Theo Stowell
• 🇯 Obsidian: The King of Learning Tools — by Odysseas
• 🇰 Reflections on 4 years of Writing with Obsidian — by Junaid Rahim
• 🇱 Sébastien Dubois Blog — by Sébastien Dubois
• 🇲 TTRPG Tutorials — by Josh Plunkett
• 🇳 Zsolt's Visual Personal Knowledge Management — by Zsolt Viczián

Best template

• 🇦 Automators Podcast Vault — by sylumer
• 🇧 Bag of Tips TTRPG Template Vault — by Bag of Tips
• 🇨 ChatGPT Web Clipper — by ljavuras
• 🇩 Clipper Templates — by kepano
• 🇪 Dusk Vault — by DuskWasHere
• 🇫 LifeOS for Obsidian — by quanru
• 🇬 Starter Kit — by Sébastien Dubois
• 🇭 YouTube Web Clipper template — by harr

Best tool

• 🇦 Actions For Obsidian — by Carlo Zottmann
• 🇧 Browser Search Extension — by Jakob Osterberger
• 🇨 Callout Emojis — by rivea0
• 🇩 Funnel Quick Capture — by NoteSight Labs
• 🇪 Git Sync — by ViscousPot
• 🇫 Obsidian Stats — by Moritz Jung
• 🇬 Plugin Stats — by Ganessh Kumar
• 🇭 Quick Capture for Obsidian — by Pradeep Burugu
• 🇮 Timeline reminders — by LeslyeCream

Best existing plugin

• 🇦 Another Quick Switcher — by tadashi-aikawa
• 🇧 Better Export PDF — by l1xnan
• 🇨 Calendarium — by javalent
• 🇩 Export Image — by zhouhua
• 🇪 File Cooker — by ivaneye
• 🇬 Graphs — by DylanHojnoski
• 🇭 Homepage — by mirnovov
• 🇮 Hover Editor — by nothingislost
• 🇰 LaTeX Suite — by artisticat1
• 🇱 List Callouts — by mgmeyers
• 🇲 Local Backup — by ifgris
• 🇳 Multi Properties — by technohiker
• 🇴 Natural Language Syntax Highlighting — by artisticat1
• 🇵 Pomodoro timer plugin — by eatgrass
• 🇶 Spaced Repetition — by st3v3nmw
• 🇷 TagFolder — by vrtmrz
• 🇸 Text Format — by Benature
• 🇹 Webpage HTML Export — by KosmosisDire

Best LLM integration

• 🇦 Cannoli — by DeabLabs
• 🇧 Copilot — by logancyang
• 🇨 File Organizer 2000 — by different-ai
• 🇩 InfraNodus — by noduslabs
• 🇪 Local GPT — by pfrankov
• 🇫 Local LLM Helper — by manimohans
• 🇬 Mesh AI — by chasebank87
• 🇭 Ollama Chat — by brumik
• 🇮 Smart Composer — by glowingjade
• 🇯 Smart Connections — by brianpetro
• 🇰 Text Generator — by nhaouari

Best third-party integration

In this category we’re highlighting the work of individuals and teams creating plugins that rely on other services, including paid services.

• 🇦 Are.na — by javierarce
• 🇧 Enveloppe — by Enveloppe
• 🇨 Harper — by Automattic
• 🇩 Instapaper — by Instapaper
• 🇪 Légifrance — by carnetdethese
• 🇫 Relay — by no-instructions
• 🇬 Typefully — by Sébastien Dubois
• 🇭 Yanki — by kitschpatrol

Best new theme

• 🇦 Cupertino — by aaaaalexis
• 🇧 Fancy A Story — by ElsaTam
• 🇨 Halcyon — by dbarenholz
• 🇩 Lagom — by LeslyeCream
• 🇪 Minimal Edge — by Elhary
• 🇫 Prime — by rivea0
• 🇬 Underwater — by Seniblue

Best new plugin

In this category we’re highlighting the work of individual developers creating standalone plugins.

• 🇦 Advanced Canvas — by Developer-Mike
• 🇧 Auto Embed — by GnoxNahte
• 🇨 Block Link Plus — by Jasper-1024
• 🇩 Chronos Timeline — by clairefro
• 🇪 Continuous Mode — by gasparschott
• 🇫 Dataview Publisher — by udus122
• 🇬 Featured Image — by johansan
• 🇭 Heatmap Tracker — by mokkiebear
• 🇮 Iconic — by gfxholo
• 🇯 Image Converter — by xRyul
• 🇰 Ink — by daledesilva
• 🇱 Lazy Loader — by alangrainger
• 🇲 Lineage — by ycnmhd
• 🇳 Note Toolbar — by chrisgurney
• 🇴 PDF++ — by RyotaUshio
• 🇵 Pixel-banner — by jparkerweb
• 🇶 Quadro — by chrisgrieser
• 🇷 SQLSeal — by h-sphere
• 🇸 Vault Explorer — by decaf-dev
• 🇹 Vertical Tabs — by oxdc

The extensible tracking service, Trakt, for keeping up with your TV and movie watching habits has been around a while. You can use Trakt in a browser, but It has an API that allows app developers to incorporate the Trakt database into their products. Recently, Trakt got a significant new feature with the introduction of scrobbling, the automatic addition of shows watched to your personal database from five of the largest streaming services:

• Netflix
• Max
• Hulu
• Amazon Prime
• AppleTV+

It also added scrobbling from several popular media centers and players, like Plex, Kodi and VLC

The features in the Trakt API and companion apps allow you to track what you’re watching, add to lists, discover, find where to watch (via a partnership with Just Watch), see what’s up next and get recommendations. Trakt has a free tier and a pro tier. I’ve had a pro membership for a decade. It provides a lot of value, and I’ve recommended it to everyone in my family. If you would like a free one-month pro trial, use this link.

Mac Apps

My current choice of apps for Trakt integration is Sequel Entertainment Database, an app that also provides lists and tracking for print and audiobooks as well as games. It is in iOS/iPadOS app that runs on Macs with Apple Silicon. There are several other well regarded apps that run natively on the Mac.

• Television Time
• Rippple for Trakt
• Trakt TV Tracker: FilmNoir on the App Store

iOS Apps

I've used various iOS apps with Trakt over the years, and my favorites are:

• Watcht for Trakt
• Sofa Time
• Trakt Official App

When using a Mac for writing, I’m all in on the notes app Obsidian, a plain text/Markdown editor. With it, I use various plugins to create a personalized workspace that provides me with all the tools I want. I use

• The editing toolbar
• Better word count
• Reading lever indicator
• Language Tool, a freemium grammar checker
• Paste URL into selection

On iOS, however, I prefer to write using Drafts, also a plain text tool, but one designed as a temporary holding spot until the text is moved to its final home. Drafts has an online directory where you can find extensions that add to its capabilities, making it useful with various apps, not just Obsidian. I use it with Things 3, Google, Dropbox, Google Drive, Day One, Gmail and ChatGPT. There are also extensions to format Markdown and for other text manipulation actions.

My problem with Obsidian on iOS is that although the program now opens much quicker than it used to, it is slower than I’d like to sync, even though I am a paid Obsidian sync user. It’s also prone to crashing and restarting if I try to do certain things while it’s syncing. Sometimes, if I’ve started my daily note on my Mac and I if try to open it on my phone before the sync finishes, my existing content gets overwritten or a duplicate file is created. To avoid creating content on the phone with Obsidian. I just use it as reference tool.

Both Obsidian and Drafts are universal apps. Anything you create on one hardware platform eventually becomes available on all platforms, Mac and iOS. Here are my different use cases for Drafts with Obsidian.

Send to Obsidian (link)

This action creates a new note in the inbox of my vault with the contents of the Draft. I only use one vault, but if I used more than one, I could use different versions of this Drafts extension to send notes to different vaults.

Append to Daily Note (link)

If I have information in a Draft that I want to add to my daily note, this extension appends the information to the bottom of the note verbatim. It's best not to run the extension until after opening Obsidian for iOS and letting it sync.

Append to Daily Note With Time and Place (link)

This action adds a time stamp and the GPS coordinates to the text appended to the bottom of my Daily Note. I use this a lot when traveling.

Notes Created from Vivaldi with an Apple Shortcut (link)

The Obsidian web clipper works with Safari but not other browsers. I use a shortcut available through the sharesheet to send web pages as Markdown files to Drafts. Then I can send them on to Obsidian, from my phone if I need to, or I can just wait until I am back at my Mac.

See More Obsidian Posts

Trying to capture high-quality images from a video can be a frustrating and time-consuming ordeal, requiring the use of multiple apps , the limitations of your screenshot utility, inexact dimensions and extra post-production work. Or you could just use SnapMotion from developer Needed Apps.. SnapMotion can load and play any video format compatible with Apple’s QuickTime Player: MPEG-4, HEVC and MPEG-2, MPEG-4, HEVC, H.264, H.263, H.261, Apple Pro Res, DV, Motion JPEG. It can easily handle 4K and 8K videos without bogging down.

To use the app, you can load a video from one of three sources:

• A file on your drive
• A video in your photos library
• A video from a URL, if the site allows it. The promotional material claims that SnapMotion works with YouTube URLs, but in testing, that turned out not to be accurate. Still, You can use an app like Downie to easily download about any video you can access online.

You can scrub through the video until you find the scene you want to capture as a still image, Then you can advance in increments as small as one frame at the time until you find the exact image you want. If our prefer, you can use the batch capture feature to generate thousands of images, which you can then evaluate individually.

SnapMotion captures images in four formats: PNG, JPEG, TIFF and HEIF. You can adjust the DPI up or down from the default of 72. If your source video contains metadata, you can elect to import that along with your images.

You can download a free trial of SnapMotion on the developer’s website.  It is also available for purchase on the Mac App Store for $8.99. Purchasing it from the App Store also provides you with access to the iPad and iPhone version. If you have a Setapp subscription, it is included.

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