AppAddict Newsletter

The late, great Mac app, Dragthing reached end of life in 2019. It was a point and click workflow manager for those who preferred that type of workflow over apps like Alfred and Launchbar. The developer of Dragthing was an Apple employee to worked on the original implementation of the dock in Mac OS X. He created Dragthing as an alternate version of what the dock could have been. It was an immensely popular app among power users and won many awards in its 24 years on the market (1995-2019).

iCollections by developer Grzegorz Staszczyk provides an experience much like Dragthing once did. It provides a a variety of desktop interfaces for various ways to view content and control your Mac. The interface is based on what the app calls collections. These are windows or drawers containing any one of the following elements:

• Disks (including external storage and mounted disk images)
• Access to dock items from the menu bar
• Folders (e.g., Downloads, Documents) - use tabs to see multiple folders in one window
• Drop shelf for temporary file storage
• Photo frame (with slide shows)
• Web view using iOS user agent for any website
• Open processes
• Open Windows
• Trash
• Calendar

Every element has multiple customization options including color, size, position and opacity. You can use custom icons, even for native Mac applications, something you cannot do in Finder. You can combine keyboard shortcuts with point and click functions to summon collections when you need them. To use a folder as a launcher, just add application aliases to it.

iCollections can be downloaded from the developer’s website to take advantage of a free trial. It can also be downloaded from the Mac App Store. The cost is:

• Monthly Subscription$2.99
• Annual Subscription$12.99
• Lifetime License$39.99

I regularly check MacMenuBar.com for new additions. Today i found a nice little app called mtop. It’s a monitor for each CPU core, your GPU and your RAM. It also provides PIDs for running processes. Apps like iStat Menus and Stats are great at doing this, but they take up far too much room in the menu bar for my taste. I just want a single icon I can click on to get the information I want. I don’t need a heads-up display.

There isn’t much to configure in mtop. You can choose one of eight different themes. Clicking a button reveals the running processes, which are hidden by default. The app is available in the Mac App Store for $.99.

Simplenote by Automattic is a free cross-platform plain text / Markdown notes app for macOS, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux. It’s been around for over a decade and I have never known it to go down. Automattic is the company behind Word Press and Day One, so it’s no fly-by-night enterprise. 

One of the primary benefits of using Simplenote is the speed. It syncs behind the scenes and opens quickly, regardless of platform. Each note has a history, and you can view changes you’ve made to it over time. Notes are easy to share on a Mac using the system share sheet. If you don’t have access to a device on which you have Simplenote installed, you can get to your notes in a browser. 

Notes in Simplenote are organized by tags. Use as many as you want. You can also do simple searches of your notes via text strings. Simplenote is compatible with Apple’s new writing tools, which means you have access to dictation, proofreading, rewriting, spelling and grammar correction. Information about each note, including creation date, modification date, character count and word count is available at the click of a button. Like most modern apps, Simplenote has a light and dark mode. You can also control the default text size. Important notes can be pinned to the top of your notes list. 

The Simplenote API is open to developers. There are several other note-taking apps on various platforms that can access your notes database. On such app is nvPY for macOS.

The Mac Finder is fine for casual users, but if your use cases involve a lot of file management to handle photography or videography related tasks, heavy downloading, web publishing or other more advanced tasks, you’d be well served to look for a replacement. Commander One by Electronic Teams, Inc. Is a serviceable option. It has a dual pane interface, with each pane featuring unlimited tabs. There are three view options per pane: details, list and icons.

The Commander One features list is long:

• Easily toggle hidden files
• Customizable fonts and colors
• Bookmark favorite file locations
• Customize any of the numerous hotkeys available for file actions
• Queue file operations
• ZIP support
• Built in file viewer
• Root access to files

Search

• Regex support
• Search file contents
• Built in advanced search plus Spotlight search

Pro Pack

All of the features listed above are part of the free version of Commander One. If you purchase the Pro Pack for $29.95 you get the following:

• FTP Manager
• Access connected MTP, iOS and Android devices
• Connect to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Box, OneDrive, BackBlaze, WebDAV
• Terminal Emulator
• Advanced compression and decompression tools

Other Finder replacement options are Qspace and Pathfinder.

The longer you use a computer, the more access to resources you accumulate. I’m old, so I have more accounts than I know what to do with. When it comes to cloud storage, I have access to Google Drive, One Drive, Box and Dropbox, although I only pay for Google Drive. I once signed up an entire middle school’s faculty to Dropbox with my referral link, so I have a large sized free tier. I got 50GB from Box so long ago that I no longer remember how. OneDrive is provided by my job.

Each of these providers, along with other cloud storage solutions, provide their own software for mounting your storage at login. There’s no way I want to have four separate apps running in the background when I can consolidate them into one app that does the same thing and in some cases provides more utility. Mac users can choose between three types of access. I prefer using a network drive mapper. The app I use is CloudMounter because it is included in Setapp, although it often goes on sale. A similar product, Mountain Duck, is currently on sale for $7 at Bundlehunt.

Here is a list of options for Mac users.

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

In my day job, I provide IT support at a small private university. Because I have a good boss, the computer I use as a daily driver is an M3 iMac. Most of the users I support are using Windows 10 and 11, however. Microsoft doesn’t make a version of server tools for ARM processor-based computers. This means that I am unable to use a VM to run Windows apps like Active Directory Users and Computers or SCCM. On my Mac, I can use browser-based tools like InTune and Entra, but for other apps, I rely on a remote connection to a Windows machine for access to the tools I need.

My solution is the lite version of the app, Royal TSX. This free version lets me use up to 10 connections to remote computers and 10 sets of credentials. I primarily use the RDP plugin, but Royal TSX also supports:

• TeamViewer sessions
• Apple Remote Desktop and VNC
• Terminal sessions
• File transfers
• VMWare connection
• HyperV connections
• Running Power Shell scripts on remote computers

When I have issues using the new Windows app for RDP for unknown Byzantine reasons, Royal TSX comes through and allows me to connect. It's a neat tool to have in my bag. The paid version is $53 and allows unlimited connection and unlimited credentials.

Remote Helper for Mac is the companion for the iOS app, Remote Mouse and Keyboard. When used together, your iOS device can control a Mac, a PC, an Apple TV or an iPad.

The features include:

• Control the cursor on a Mac and serve as a virtual mouse to select, double click or right click any element
• Enter text on a Mac from the iOS keyboard
• Media controls - mute, pause, volume up, volume down, next track, previous track. Works in multiple apps
• View your computer screen on your phone
• Issue system commands from your phone to your Mac - sleep, shut down, restart
• Launch any app on your Mac from your phone
• Use Siri on your phone to send commands to your Mac
• Run custom AppleScripts on your Mac from your phone. An example script is included that opens Netflix in the Chrome browser.

The Mac app is free to download, but it requires the iOS app to actually do anything. The iOS app has a lifetime purchase. The amount differs depending on where you are. Today in the US, it was $10. There is an option to subscribe on a month by month basis for $1.99 with a seven-day free trial.

There's something to be said for apps that do one thing well. Here are a few that I've found lately.

FNable - If you use your function keys much, you may grow tired of having to toggle them with the FN key. Be default, macOS treats function keys as system controls. This little app allows you to toggle the behavior simply be pressing and holding the FN key for three seconds. You definitely want to find this app on sale though. It is regularly priced at a whopping $25 . It is currently available at Bundlehunt for $1.50.

Quill

• Quill is a menu bar notes app similar to Scrap Paperand Scratchpad with one big difference, you can use images in Quill notes. The notes sync across Macs, but there isn’t an iOS app. You can, however, export your Quill notes easily enough if you want to view them on your phone. It is $.99 in the App Store.

Trace - Trace is a minimalist time tracking app. When you manually start a session of, it records the apps you work on and the time you spend in them. You can pause and resume sessions. It reports the amount of time you spend in each app and other facts, like your most used app. It is a free app. For more detailed automatic reports, try Activity Watch, also free.

SpaceSaver - With SpaceSaver, you can save the state of your open applications and windows, and easily restore them later. You can have multiple sessions and switch between them with ease. It doesn’t have the prettiest interface but what it lacks in aesthetics, it makes up for in function and price - free!

These days, it is not uncommon for someone to have hundreds of open tabs in as browser. I usually run about 40-50 myself. I’ve tried several solutions to quickly find the tab I’m looking for without much success. Since installing Browser Deputy, I’ve been pleased with the way it incorporates into my workflow. I can summon the app with a hotkey and quickly find a tab, a bookmark or an item from my browser history, no matter what app I am in.

Browser Deputy works with the following browsers:

• Safari
• Chrome
• Edge
• Brave
• Firefox
• Vivaldi
• Opera
• Arc

Aside from providing a quick search for browsers, Browser Deputy also lets you perform web searches with various built-in engines or custom ones that you add yourself. I use a custom Google search that removes all the AI crud and provides the good old ten blue links that we once took for granted. It was easy to add to the list.

The other useful feature in Browser Deputy is the ability to search menu commands in whatever open app you happen to be in, not just browsers. It doesn’t give you a heads-up display of the commands like KeyClu, but it will activate any command you search for.

Browser Deputy is available for download from the dev’s website. A three machine license is $11.99.

Mac apps have had rudimentary built-in grammar checkers for a while. Grammarly was the first well-know commercial product to elevate the capabilities of that tool genre, becoming extremely popular with students in particular. Lately, LanguageTool has surged in popularity. It is integrated into many well-known writing apps across multiple platforms, including macOS and iOS.

Professionally, I am tasked with composing Confluence (knowledge base) documents for Jira, the ticketing system my job uses. Personally, I maintain three blogs as a non-monetized blogs as a hobby. I write a lot as a result. I have been using the free version of LanguageTool for a couple of months. It does a better job than the native spell checkers I previously used, and it helps with things like missing commas and omitted words. I took advantage of a Black Friday sale to sign up for a year on the Pro Plan. As a result, the app now has a much larger range of tools for me to use.

LanguageTool has a plugin for Safari, Firefox and Chromium browsers. It has a tool specifically built for Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Apple’s Pages and LibreOffice. For email users, it works with Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird and Gmail. It even has a plugin for Obsidian, where I do most of my writing. On a Mac, it is also optimized for uses in other apps like Messages and Notes. There is a native editor app for Mac users.

Language Tools’s capabilities are sizable.

• Grammar
  • Word order
  • Verb tenses
  • Subject/verb agreement
  • Commas and in-depth punctuation

• Style
  • Repetition
  • Over-used words and phrases
  • Wordiness
  • Foreign terms
• Semantics
  • Lack of clarity
  • Word confusion
  • Double negatives
• Format and Typography
  • Consistency for numbers and letters
  • Spacing
  • Time and date formats
• Spelling
  • Misspelled names and acronyms
  • Casing errors
  • Easy to import your Mac's personal dictionary

LanguageTool works not just with English, but with many other languages as well. It provides detailed stats on what it has done to aid you in writing. You can use a limited feature set or turn on what it calls "picky mode" for more frequent suggestions to strengthen your writing. It does not duplicate what macOS and ChatGPT offer in so far as it does not change the tone of your writing, but it will paraphrase sentences for you.

I am pleased so far with the suggestions I receive from LanguageTool. It definitely makes what I write more polished. It is not a cheap tool. Without the Black Friday discount, it is $5.83 a month, or $70 a year. Casual users can get plenty of benefits from the free plan, while students or more serious writers can benefit from deciding to go pro.

Folder Tidy by Tunabelly Software is a tool anyone can use to perform quick sorts on any giant directories of files that seem overwhelming to tackle manually. It has built in sorting rules for 19 different types of files, including folders. These rules can be toggled on or off, but you cannot edit them. In addition, you can make your own very granular rules. The example they give is representative of the power of the app. “Move all files with the extension “DOCX” that contain the word “invoice” and were last modified in the past year to a folder labeled “Invoices.”

What’s remarkable is the speed at which Folder Tidy operates. It uses macOS technology called Grand Central Dispatch to use all available cores to accomplish the tasks you assign it. In my case, it took about a second to sort and move directories with hundreds of different media files to subfolders on a different drive. I had to do some troubleshooting after it failed to move all the files on the first try. It turns out that my Spotlight database needed to be rebuilt, a problem I’ve had before which also affects some search utilities, like Houdah Spot, that rely on it.

Folder Tidy is not a replacement for Hazel. While it does what it sets out to do quickly and well, it is a file sorting utility that doesn’t have the depth of actions that Hazel does. If you already own Hazel, there is no reason to add Folder Tidy. One other important thing to know is that Folder Tidy is a manual app. It doesn’t watch folders and run action on the enclosed items automatically. 

I paid $2.49 for the app on Black Friday. It is ordinarily $9.99.

It’s time for all the AppAddicts out there to load up during the yearly bargain day called Black Friday. The sites listed below have some repetition, but take a quick look through all of them. Some contain software for specialty roles, like devs, creators and designers.

So far this year, I’ve purchased:

• MacWhisper
• FolderTidy
• Quick Capture - Obsidian
• SubManager
• Fileside

Sales

• Rare Deals and Discounts on Software, Apps & SaaS
• Black Friday - Indie Goodies
• Black Friday WordPress Deals 2024 - wpbfdeals
• Awesome-Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday: Awesome deals on Black Friday: Apps, SaaS, Books, Courses, etc.
• Best Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2024 Deals for Developers & Designers
• SaaS Black Friday 2024
• Awesome-Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday-deals: 🟢 2024 Deals Live - Black Friday & Cyber Monday, Christmas & Holidays Deals for Developers, Techies, & Entrepreneurs,
• Black-Friday-Deals: Black Friday Deals for macOS / iOS Software & Books
• Indie App Sales!
• Discover Launch Deals on Indie Products
• DealHunt - Free Curated Deals with Savings up to 80%
• Black Friday Times, unmissable deals on software, services and more.
• Creator Black Friday Deals

I made my first purchase of the 2024 Black Friday season by purchasing the transcription app, MacWhisper by indy developer Jordi Bruin for 40% off of the usual price of €49.99. This app uses OpenAI’s Whisper technology to transcribe all types of audio files with quickness and accuracy into text.

It requires macOS 14 or higher and works best on Apple Silicon, although it is functional on Intel processors. You can use any type of input device, including your Mac’s built-in microphone. MacWhisper can, if you choose, replace the built-in dictation on your computer. Transcription is done on your device, not on a remote computer. The default output is a .whisper file containing the original audio and the transcribed text, however it has numerous export choices:

• SRT and VTT subtitles
• CSV
• DOTE
• DOCX
• PDF
• Markdown
• HTML

The transcription speed is remarkable, happening up to 30X over real time using metal and GPU technology. Transcripts may be easily searched. Filler words (um, ah, etc.) are automatically removed. You can edit the transcripts to correct spelling of names or other words.

With the Pro version of the program, I get batch transcriptions of multiple files. I can transcribe YouTube video and use my OpenAI key to take advantage of Cloud Transcription and ChatGPT integration. I can take advantage of translation services to convert text into other languages. It also adds a menu bar interface for global transcription and the ability to paste text into other apps.

Students, non-profits and journalists always get 50% off the price by contacting the developer. There is a free version of the app that lacks the AI integration of the Pro version. It is available on Gumroad.

Clotski is a 99 cent menu bar app available in the Mac App Store. Its simple menu lets you designate watched folders where you keep images accessed as part of your workflow, for instance screenshots and downloads. You can view thumbnails of the images, the size is customizable and get info on them which includes name, size, dimensions, creation date, tag, caption and modification date. Tags and captions can be added from with Clotski. The information presented can be customized, and other metadata can be added if you wish. You can open the image with your default app or choose from other compatible apps from an “open with” menu. When viewing the list of images in a folder you can choose a list, grid or gallery view, and you can choose the sort order based on date or file size in ascending or descending order.

One feature that is especially helpful is Clotski’s ability to automatically download any images you copy to the clipboard into a folder you designate. You can set your own naming convention, as well as choosing to save them in either jpg or png formats.

For keyboard warriors, Clotski can be summoned with a custom shortcut, and it can be navigated without the use of a mouse. For further organization, Clotski lets you create collections of photos along with tags and folders. Collections can be accessed from a drop-down menu within the program If desired, you can designate an automatic tag to be applied to images you add to newly collected images. You can use the tags just with Clotski, or you can sync them with the Finder.

While working with images in Clotski, you can copy or drag them into documents on which you are working. Clotski does not have any native editing functionality,

There are many, many notes apps available for Mac users, from simple plain text notebooks to complex PKM managers. I thought I was familiar with the main players, but I just discovered an app with which I was unfamiliar, and I am blown away by its features. The app is Notesnook, and it reminds me very much of Evernote before it was enshittified. It’s a privacy lover’s dream app with features that anyone can love:

• Notes importer
• Automatic 2FA
• End to end encryption
• Mac, web and iOS apps
• Web clipper
• Pro plan is 34% of what Evernote costs and $10 for educational users

Notesnook provides real time syncing for free and paid accounts. The free plan offers plain text exporting and the pro plan lets you export notes to other apps as PDF, Markdown or HTML, unlike Evernote which has a proprietary format. It has unlimited storage and offers unlimited notebooks and tags in the pro plan.

Other notable features include:

• Offline access
• Unlimited devices
• Images and attachments
• Wikilinks
• Three different 2FA options
• Shortcut integration
• RTF and Markdown formatting
• Tables
• Callouts
• Reminders
• Encrypted backups
• Widgets
• Shares extensions
• Mobile web clipper

I will continue to use Obsidian for journaling and as an automated life record, but I'm moving my work notes, serial numbers, financial info and other reference material over to Notesnook.

I looked at the list of the top 25 most downloaded apps as compiled by MacUpdater, who I figure are as good a source as any and drew a few conclusions.

1. VLC
2. Pages
3. AppCleaner
4. Numbers
5. Keynote
6. iMovie
7. The Unarchiver
8. GarageBand
9. Android File Transfer
10. Speedtest
11. Amphetamine
12. Google Chrome
13. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
14. Microsoft Teams
15. Transmission
16. HandBrake
17. Firefox
18. Microsoft PowerPoint
19. Microsoft Word
20. Microsoft Excel
21. ImageOptim
22. OneDrive
23. Bartender
24. Magnet
25. IINA

Only five of the apps in the list are paid apps. They are  the big three in Microsoft Office, the menu bar manager, Bartender and the window manager, Magnet.

The vendor with the most apps on the list is surprisingly, Microsoft with five.

For it' market share to be as small as it, Firefox must have a higher proportion of Mac users employing it than PC users.

I would wager that VLC’s popularity is due to its longevity and because of enterprise deployments. I know I have been putting it on images in the educational space for as long as I can remember. IINA seems more popular with more knowledgeable users,

Despite all the predictions made about Bartender’s future after the botched handling of its sale, it is the most downloaded paid app in the ecosystem after Microsoft Office.

I have never been a big user of window management tools, and I had no idea Magnet was as popular as it is. It has 165,000 reviews in the App Store and a 4.9 rating.

I find it interesting that the top 25 apps did not include a single notes app, automation tool or clipboard manager. The only messaging app is Microsoft Teams, and I hesitate to say that is its primary function.

The presence of the six-year-old Android File Transfer app is mind-blowing. I suspect this indicates that the download figures are worldwide and include countries where Androids have huge market share.

The high ranking of App Cleaner is good for two reasons - it demonstrates that an app doesn’t have to be updated constantly to be useful (last update was 2023-07-05). It also shows that lots of people believe in doing more than just dragging unwanted apps to the trash.

Although I use a lot of apps that have a menu bar interface, most of them are hidden by Bartender. An app has to be super useful and be something I use frequently to remain visible at all times. The latest addition by Sindre Sorhus, Supercharge is an instant add. It has a great many uses and has replaced other utilities that have narrower focus. More tools are being added regularly, so if you have this app, make sure to install updates as soon as they are released to get new features. I won’t cover them all, just the ones I use personally.

From the Menu Bar

The menu bar icon presents the following option in a drop-down:

• Hide all windows
• Show Desktop
• Quit All Apps
• Hide My Email (opens this buried item in System Settings)
• Private Relay opens this buried item in System Settings)

Tweaks

• Unminimize windows when app becomes active
• Dim icons of hidden apps in the dock
• Create new text file with Option+N
• Open new files after naming
• Auto-adjust column widths in Finder
• Quit an app when closing its last Window (I don't usually like to mimic Micro$oft behavior, but I like this feature)
• When clicking on an active icon in the dock, hide app
• Add to Finder's context menu
  • Copy path
  • Copy file name
  • Image dimensions
  • Make symlink
  • Move to...
  • Copy to...
  • Open in Terminal (for folders)

The ability to make those modifications in the Finder makes it much more powerful.

Shortcuts

• Toggle desktop widgets
• Open Passwords from menu bar
• Hide all windows
• Quit all apps (except menu bar apps)
• Show desktop

I was using the beta feature to close visible notifications which definitely had a beta feel to it, until I discovered that Better Touch Tool's implementation of this feature closes not just visible notifications, but all existing ones. I'm sure Sindre will get this working similarly in future releases.

Tools

I work on an MBA at home and an iMac for work. For apps that don't have iCloud sync, using the export and import settings tool has been extremely useful and has saved me a ton of time. It's also useful when I want to experiment with how an app is set up, allowing me to revert settings if I don't like what I get after changing things around.

You can get a fully functional copy of the app here. The only limitation is a reminder to buy the app every 12 hours, and no automatic updates. All data and settings carry over if you buy it.

I suggest you just go ahead and buy the app. If there was ever an Instabuy, this is it.

When it comes to opening compressed files in just about any format, the most downloaded utility is The Unarchiver from MacPaw. There’s not much you can throw at it that it can’t handle, including old files from StuffIt and DiskDoubler. It can even extract files from some Windows .exe installers. The problem with The UnArchiver is that it does decompression only. If you want to make your own archives, you need another program. Natively, macOS can create ZIP and DMG files but that’s it.

BetterZip 5 from macitbetter is a much more full-featured app, although it isn’t free. It’s $24.95 for use on up to five Macs for personal users. It is also available on Setapp. Better Zip has some pretty cool superpowers:

• Quicklook extension for viewing files inside archives without opening them
• Edit archived files in an external application, and BetterZip can save the changes back and update your archive.
• Open and extract winmail.dat files.
• Open, extract, and modify ePub files.
• Extract images and sounds from PDFs
• AES-256 Encryption, password manager, password generator
• Finder Integration and share menu
• Filtering - only extract certain files from archives
• Integration with Alfred and Hazel

Keka is a perennial favorite of many Mac users. It has a free version on the developer's websiteand a $5 version on the Mac App Store. Keka has compression and decompression tools. Keka can divide large files into multiple parts that will automatically reassemble after decompression. You gain the ability to use 256-bit encryption. You can also take advantage of a drag and drop interface into the Keka main window, or by simply dropping files onto the Keka icon in the dock.

For those who want scripting and a CLI as well as a GUI, Peazip is probably the best bet. A free app, it also has the widest array of security features.

• Offers two-factor authentication
• Opens 200 types of compressed files in the GUI
• Multiple file management features: convert archives, search in archives, bookmarks, tabbed browsing,
• Portable - can be run from a USB or other external drive
• Open Source
• Cross platform (Linus, macOS Windows)

Some Finder alternatives offer compression and decompression, including:

• Commander One
• PathFinder
• Qspace

Markdown documents are written in plain text and generally saved with a .md file extension. Various apps like Obsidian and Bear use Markdown by default. There is a whole ecosystem of tools around the easy-to-use language where you use various keyboard elements to create styles that can be interpreted by browsers and other apps. Markdown lets you add:

• Bold
• Italic
• Quotes
• Lists (numbered, bullets, and checklists)
• Links (to web pages and images)
• Code blocks
• Headers
• Tables

There are different flavors of Markdown, but the most commonly used one is referred to as GitHub-flavored Markdown. As a blogger, I prefer to write in Markdown to format my posts for the web. The free app, MarkEdit uses 100% pure GitHub Markdown. Out of the box. The interface is pretty bare bones, but you can customize the toolbar to use the various tools on selected text. MarkEdit permits the insertion of multiple carats, so you can highlight disconnected blocks of text. MarkEdit is intended to be a minimalist writing tool. It has a good feature set. There isn't any bloat. There are plenty of other editors that have preview, different flavors of Markdown and more. It's just a matter of taste and what your needs are. 

The latest version incorporates Apple’s writing tools, allowing you to use proofreading and AI rewriting tools to change your text. Although I am not personally a fan of AI-generated content, there probably isn’t any harm in letting it make a business email more professional if need be.

MarkEdit does not contain a viewer to show your text with the formatting enforced. I suggest Brett Terpstra’s app Marked 2 if you’re not going to be looking at your content in a browser.

The Recent Items section of the Apple Menu lists your 10 most recently opened documents. There are some apps that let you increase that number, but not by much. At most, you’ll have a couple of days work to refer back to. The app, Recents, will trace you work back by months in some cases.

Recents breaks your workflow down on a per-app basis and provides the most recently used documents for each one, even if the app itself doesn’t have a recent files menu. For example, I use Rapidmg to open disk images. The program normally opens the disk image, moves the contents to my Applications folder, and then dismounts and closes without any intervention from me. There is no menu. Using Recents, I can see a list of the last 15 DMGs I’ve opened, and reopen them at will.

Recents works with a wide variety of apps and file types. In the admittedly confusing file structure we use at work, I often can’t remember the exact path of saved documents, but I know the app I created it with. Using Recents, I can easily find and open what I am looking for in a centralized location. Some of the apps with which I use Recents are:

• Microsoft Office
• Console
• Preview
• PDF Expert
• VLC
• Obsidian (opens vaults, not documents)
• Motrix

The app has a light and dark mode and can be set to mimic your system preferences. Recents can be access three ways:

• From the dock
• From the menu bar
• Hidden and summoned from a hot key

Recents can be downloaded from the developers website. It is a free app.