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Installing software using the package manager, Homebrew, makes it much easier to update than downloading installation files manually. It isn’t necessarily difficult to find the commands to download apps, but it does require a certain amount of searching around. The free and open-source utility, Applite, provides an App Store like interface for Homebrew, allowing you to browse what is available through a GUI. Anything you download through Applite can also be updated through the same interface.

When you install Applite, it will offer to install Homebrew . If you don’t have it installed already, you’ll want to do that. Otherwise, just choose the option to use your currently installed version, which will be detected.

Every application in the Homebrew Catalog is available through Applite. When you launch an app downloaded with Applite, the built-in Mac security apps, Gatekeeper and Xprotect will examine it to make sure it is safe to run. Most of the apps in the Homebrew catalog are notarized, but not all of them are sandboxed, meaning that some may run with elevated privileges. Be careful when downloading applications that few others have downloaded. Not all apps available through Homebrew are FOSS. Some are trialware of commercial products.

The following categories of apps are available along with info on some of the apps I have tested:

• Browsers like Edge and Vivaldi
• Communication
• Productivity - Raycast, Obsidian,Better Touch Tool, Hazel, Cleanshot X, Unclutter
• Office Tools
• Menu Bar - Stats, BarTender
• Utilities - ImageOptim, Downie, Upscayl, Permute
• Maintenance - AppCleaner. PearCleaner, Onyx, Daisy Disk
• Creative Tools
• Media - IINA
• Developer Tools
• IDE Tools
• Terminals
• Virtualization
• Gaming
• VPN
• Password Managers

New Features in version 1.3.0

- Casks from third-party taps are now available
- Detailed cask info window (token, version, tap, etc.)
- Dedicated App Migration tab (app import/export)
- Deprecated/disabled apps are now highlighted in the UI

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You should use this free and open-source tool to secure a personal copy of Wikipedia and other resource information valuable to you. KIWIX believes that access to knowledge is a fundamental right. That’s why they’re dedicated to providing free and open access to it for everyone, everywhere.

KIWIX enables you to have the whole of Wikipedia (and many other websites like TED talks, Stack Exchange, Gutenberg Project library, WikiHow, Khan Academy, freeCodeCamp, YouTube channels) Data downloaded on a Mac can be transferred to mobile devices.

The source code for the Mac and iOS versions is on GitHub.

You may have seen the recent stories about attacks on Wikipedia. Certain parties have:

• Discouraged people from donating
• Tried to buy it
• Promised to dox and harass editors who have different views than the targeting organization 

Some of these same parties have been responsible for the removal of publicly funded databases from government websites. If you are concerned about censorship or data altered to fit a certain narrative, download KIWIX to avoid issues. It is still currently available on Mac App Store..

The most reliable way to get the Wikipedia data is to use a Mac to download the small peer-to-peer seed file for the large non-indexed ZIM file you want (not the pre-indexed package for Windows) from http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages, then use a peer-to-peer client (such as Folx) to download the actual ZIM data file to your computer. You can then transfer the ZIM file to your iOS device using iTunes/Apple Music File Sharing.

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I have used various location tracking apps over the years. Most of the ones I’ve tried have had issues. Either the company behind them folded or the apps had poor privacy policies or were strictly for iOS and drained my battery faster than I liked. These apps are often subscription-based. Google will gladly track your location for free using your device if you let them, but what sane person wants Google of all companies knowing their every move?

The one app that consistently delivers added features, accuracy, and unsurpassed privacy is Geofency by developer Karl Heinz Herbel. It is a universal app for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac. I use my iPhone as the default for tracking my location and use the Mac version to pull reports and see my data. Geofency is currently at version 9 and has been in the app store for 12 years. Geofency does not do route tracking, so look elsewhere if that’s what you need. Instead, it tracks the amount of time you spend at the locations you visit. I used it for years when I worked in a rural county, traveling between schools. When I needed to complete my expense report, I could pull all my data from Geofency as well as for my time card. If, for some reason, it fails to accurately record a visit (rarely) you can manually edit the data.

It is accurate enough that today I use it to determine which buildings on the campus of the university where I work I have visited during the current reporting period. I am able to add notes to any visit to a particular building for later reference. For visits to commercial locations, Geofency connects to Apple Maps to pull phone, address and website data. I can automatically export visits to any location to any calendar. The app will even generate a CSV time sheet for any time period I specify for any location. I can customize the locations by renaming them or resizing the spatial radius Geofency recognizes, helpful for separate locations near one another.

None of your Geofency data is collected by the developer. It all lives in your iCloud account only.

The iOS app features live activities and widgets. I would gladly pay a higher price for this app I have now used for over a decade, but it is still only $4.99 as a one-time purchase in. the App Store.

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Through the years, I’ve used multiple versions of Adobe Photoshop, Pixelmator add even GIMP for layered image editing and graphic design. The most user-friendly yet powerful app I’ve ever used in that category is Acorn, by the developers at Flying Meat, Inc. For less than $20 you get a Photoshop compatible application, either from the developer’s website or the App Store.The feature set is long and varied, but the interface isn’t overly complicated, and you don’t need to buy an 800-page book to explain the ins and outs of using it. A two-time Apple award winner, it’s a one-time purchase of $19.99, and you get access to extensive online documentation, a user forum and tech support. The current version is a universal binary compatible with macOS 14 and 15, but earlier versions can still be downloaded.

New Features in Latest Version

• AI subject selection
• Live text tool
• Data-driven graphics
• On canvas ruler
• JPEG-XL support
• Look up tables (LUTs)
• Super resolution (upscaling)
• Extensive export support
• Apple shortcut support

Basic Use Cases

• Design logos and custom typography by adding text to paths or shapes.
• Remove backgrounds using Magic Wand and Instant Alpha Eraser.
• Combine images to create collages and layouts.
• Retouch images with Clone, Dodge, and Burn.
• Adjust contrast, highlights, and shadows with Levels and Curves.
• Export professionally with customizable color profiles, file formats, and precise size control.

Extended Feature Set

• Layer capabilities
• Filters, effects and styles
• Basic and custom brushes (including Adobe imports)
• Magic Wand shapes
• Vector support
• Supports multiple file types

If you only need basic features, like image conversion, compression and resizing, there are programs with smaller feature sets to accomplish those tasks. If. However, you want something full-featured with batch processing capabilities (using Automator support), Acorn is a good tool to have.

Limited Purpose Tools

• ImageOptim - Free and Open-Source Utility to Reduce File Sizes
• XnConvert - Free Batch Image Converter and Editor
• ToyViewer - A Preview Replacment
• FlowVision - Image Viewer

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I switched to using Vivaldi late last year after being all in on Microsoft Edge because of work. I am trying to leave as many big tech companies behind as possible, and I grew tired of having AI shoved in my face all day. Vivaldi is a Chromium-based browser designed for the technically proficient, who form the core of its 3.1 million user base.

Through the years I’ve used Netscape, Internet Explorer, Camino, Safari, Chrome and Edge. None of them ever provided the customization options that Vivaldi does. The ability to group tabs and save them as browsing sessions is a real game changer. The iOS version is great too and getting to my bookmarks, tabs and history works well between platforms. Version 7.1 was released recently and these are some of the new features.

Bring Your Tabs Along

If the thought of abandoning the open tabs in your current browser gives you anxiety, Vivaldi now has you covered. It can import them all so you can get right back to doing what you were doing without having to set things up again.

Speed Dials

Vivaldi has a mechanism for setting up link collections called Speed Dials. You can reach your Speed Dials right from the new tab page. I have several, including one with the websites I use for posting to my blog and another for research. The process for adding sites to them has been redesigned and is no easier than ever to manage.

Seamless Tab Sharing

If, like me, you use your browser on multiple devices, four in my case, the ability to send tabs to my phone, iPad or work computer is easier than ever. I can continue to read or research anything without using third-party software or cumbersome workarounds.

New Default Search Engines

Vivaldi doesn’t track you, profile you, or sell your data. It's monetized by defaulting to one of three search engines, although you are free to use anything you want. Vivaldi features Startpage, Ecosia, DuckDuckGo and Qwant. It's built in tracker blocking and the availability of ad blockers routinely give me a score of 99 to 100 on sites that grade privacy.

Weather Widget

There is a new custom weather widget for Vivaldi's new tab page, which it calls a dashboard. The dashboard already has widgets to display your email inbox, top stories from your choice of RSS feeds, your calendar and more.

Dashboard Customization

You can now customize the look of your dashboard with themes ranging from minimalist styles to bold and colorful. The page background is adjustable to fit your style, and you can color your widgets to match the overall them you've chosen for the browser as a whole.

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Announced a year ago on Kickstarter, Tapestry by Iconfactory was released on February 4. Tapestry is an aggregator that creates a combined timeline from a long list of possible sources including :

• RSS feeds
• YouTube channels
• Podcasts
• Mastodon
• Bluesky
• Micro.blog
• Tumblr
• Reddit

Items in your timeline are shown in chronological order. There is no algorithm. Searching within Tapestry searches across all feeds. Likewise, setting a mute filter for terms such as "Elon Musk" will block content from every source. Content from different sources is color coded to make readily apparent which resource your information is coming from. If you install Tapestry on a phone and an iPad, your reading position syncs across devices via iCloud. You can combine sources in any way you want to have your own custom feeds. I am still experimenting, but so far I created the following:

• Personal bloggers
• Hard news
• Tech news
• Combined Mastodon and Bluesky home feeds
• Favorite individual social media feeds, since you can add a feed for a single account holder (e.g. Kottke, AOC, Joan Westenberg)

The settings allow you to choose an icon, a theme and a font for the timeline. You can use the in app browser or your default browser to view content. I recommend doing that so you can view content using reader mode. Reddit links open in the Reddit app. Mastodon links open in my browser, although I can use the share sheet to open them in my preferred app. Tapestry also has bookmarks.

The privacy policy states that all searches take place on your device. The developers do not collect any data.

Iconfactory offers monthly subscriptions for $1.99, yearly for $19.99 and a one time purchase for $79.99. A Mac version is in the works, but is not here yet. There is a free version with limited features. Get it on the App Store

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As much as you may not want to hear it, using an administrator account on your Mac as your daily driver is absolutely not the best practice. It’s bad because it provides full access rights across the system to every application and process running in that account. If malware or a bad actor gains control of the administrator account, they could potentially install unwanted applications, alter system settings, or access or delete sensitive data. Limiting the use of an administrator account helps to mitigate these risks. Unfortunately, most people consider it a huge hassle to use the standard Mac method of temporarily elevating the privileges of a standard account. So they just accept the risk and use an admin account anyway. You don’t have to be like them.

Use the free app, Privileges, a macOS application that lets users perform daily tasks as a standard user while easily requesting administrator rights. Users can set a specific timeframe in the app’s settings to handle tasks like installing or uninstalling applications. To request admin rights, just click the Privileges icon in your Dock or menu bar. Using a standard user account instead of an administrator enhances your Mac’s security and is a best practice. All users, including developers, can benefit from using Privileges. The app is compatible with macOS 11.x - 15.x. It has recently been updated.

Features

• Easy install
• Perfect for day-to-day use
• Turn on admin rights anytime
• Enjoy standard user security
• Command line use supported

New Privileges 2.1 features

• Installer package
• Revoke admin rights at login
• Unified expiration interval for administrator privileges
• Renew expiring administrator privileges
• Run actions on privilege change
• Status item
• Command line tool now also supports Touch ID
• AppleScript support

You can download the Privileges installer on GitHub.

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Luuk over at Mac Menu Bar has been busy as usual, keeping up with the latest releases of new Menu Bar apps for the community. Here are my favorites from the recent additions:

AutoShot - Automatic screenshots in set intervals - This app automatically takes a screenshot of your workspace at intervals you specify and even if you are using multiple monitors. You can choose the file format you want to use for the screenshots and where they are kept in your file structure. You can alleviate concerns about excessive disk usage by setting auto-delete parameters. (Free)

Sprinkles – Customize any website - One of the features that Arc browser users like is the ability to apply custom CSS to websites. With Sprinkles, you can bring that functionality to Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Sprinkles runs a tiny webserver on your machine. When you visit a website, the browser extension asks this server for scripts. The server looks for 4 files in your Sprinkles scripts directory:

1. global.js
2. global.css
3. github.com.js
4. github.com.css

When there's a hit, the extension adds the provided JS and CSS. (Free)

Mackernews - If you frequent Hackernews to see the latest goings-on in the tech world, this tiny app makes it easy to see and connect to the latest hot stories. Just choose the headline from a dropdown menu and instantly load the story. (Free)

AutoRun

• Run Apps. Mac App Store - This simple app can be used to launch apps or run scripts at a specific time or at regular intervals. Some possible use cases:

• Run Applescript to eject backup disk before you wake up so you can just disconnect it
• Launch a file synchronization app once a day to back up folders to cloud drives
• Run scripts to start and stop apps you don't want running simultaneously on two computers
• Automatically launch your task manager, calendar, email and browser every morning just before you wake up (Free)

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If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to share you general opinion and ratings of movies, TV shows, games, books or whatever, Quick Reviews, a new app by Indy developer, blogger, YouTuber and podcaster, Matt Birchler can generate a graphic for you in just a few clicks. 

The free version lets you create unlimited reviews and allows you the leeway to control all the design elements: accent color, font, theme, rating icons, light/dark mode, default review type. 

Quick Reviews also has clipboard detection and will use the graphic you’ve copied to automatically illustrate your review. You can also set it to automatically copy your review text out to your clipboard when saving the finished graphic. 

The paid version, a $9.99 subscription, offers to populate your review metadata, including art from The Movie DB, allowing you to even import a suggested rating if you like. You can also import movie reviews from your Letterboxd account. 

Both versions of the app feature filtering by media type, year and rating. 

The current 1.0 release of Quick Reviews is not yet Mac compatible, but it’s on the developer’s roadmap. As for now, creating a quick graphic to share on social media or on a personal blog is supremely easy and quick. Matt is also the kind of thoughtful developer needed in the Mac community. 

Get Quick View in the iOS App Store.

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I’ve been using Rego to bookmark locations for the last eleven years, using seven different iPhones. I have over 600 places saved in various categories, including:

• Restaurants
• Coffee Shops
• Accommodations
• Parks
• Residences (friends and family)
• Bookstores

Whenever we travel, it's easy to find places where we've enjoyed eating in the past. The same with coffee shops and hotels and rental properties. Adding a new location can be done onsite, from an address or pulled from the metadata from a photograph. Bookmarks contain GPS coordinates, street address where applicable, notes, date added and a stock photo or one or more of your own. You can also use custom pin colors and designate any location as a favorite.

You can also use Rego when hiking or fishing offshore.

Rego provides plenty of navigation options, with internal maps or working with external apps like Google Maps or TomTom. Your bookmark collection stays on your device. If you opt in, you can back up to Dropbox. There is not an option to use any other cloud provider, including iCloud.

You can get a free trial of Rego that allows you to add up to 10 locations. To add more, you can subscribe monthly for $2.99, yearly for $9.99 or opt for a lifetime purchase for $24.99.

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This is the third collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first two collections are posted below. I’ve downloaded and installed each of these on my own laptop. In many cases, I’ve added them to various workflows for my day job and blogging pursuits. 

Previous Collections

A Curated Collection of Free Apps

Another Curated Collection of Free Software

---

Free App List 3

Shareful - A Free App I Use Every Day

Two Free Apps for Mac OS Installation Eas

Recents App for Mac - A Free Intelligent File Launcher

MarkEdit

• A Pure Markdown Editor for Free

Royal TSX for Remote Management

Simplenote

• Free, Rock Solid and Dependable for Over a Decade

SingleFile

• For Safari and Other Mac Browsers

Ente Auth - The Free Authy Replacement for Your Mac and iPhone

Sloth

• Activity Monitor on Steroids

Cronica

• A Free, Privacy Focused  Media Tracker for Mac and iOS

Free Security Apps for Mac

MacTracker

• Can You Call Yourself a Fanboy If You Don’t Have This Installed?

Orange Card - Get Info Easily for Free

Glympse Location Sharing - Free and Secure

Zero Duplicates Free Duplicate File Finder

OpenVibe

• Free Social Thread Aggregator

Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos

Background Music - Per App Volume Control and More

Unsplash Wallpaper App - Free Unlimited Wallpapers at Your Fingertips

FSNotes

• A Free and Open-Source Successor to NValt

Using Google Photos on iOS Makes Leaving Meta Easier

Picocrypt

• Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features

Session

• Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging

DEVONagent Lite - Free Tool to Increase Search Productivity

Integrity

• Free Link Checker

Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard

RsyncUI

• a GUI for the powerful CLI Utility

RsyncUI is the successor to Rsync OS X. It is a graphical user interface for the powerful command line utility, rsync, a file synchronization utility that has its roots in the Linux world. RsyncUI is an Apple native app, 100% written in Swift. All of the actual work is still done by rsync, buy you can skip much of the learning curve involved in using the CLI.

Pure rysnc can sync files between remote and local servers. Rsync has many options that can help you define the connections you make, and allow you to specify files that should be excluded in a transfer. Rsync is great for complex file syncs and for transferring a large number of files. When used with cron, rsync can also make automatic backups.

Features

• Sync to local attached storage
• Sync to computers on the LAN or the Internet
• Passwordless login by SSH key
• Snapshot creation
• Profiles to organize tasks
• Quick tasks for repetitive file operations
• Data restoration from remote servers

How to get RsyncUI

RsyncUI can be installed via Homebrew or download from GitHub:

brew install --cask rsyncui

There are various Internet search tools available for Macs, but if you are a Raycast user, you can search just about any website without having to install an extension if you take the time to set up Quicklinks. Raycast is a Mac automation tool that extends the power of Spotlight and can replace other utilities, like clipboard managers, emoji pickers and window managers. (See use cases) Raycast offers a few preconfigured site searches in its own library, but you can add your own by adapting the search URL and using a dynamic placeholder.

To configure Quicklinks, open Raycast with your usual shortcut and then press ⌘+, to bring up the Raycast preferences window. Click Extensions > Quicklinks, and you’ll be presented with the interface you need. There is also a Raycast command Create Quicklink. You can get detailed instructions here.

Here are the Quicklinks I use

Google w/out AI - [www.google.com/search](https://www.google.com/search?q=){Query}&udm=14
All Music - [www.allmusic.com/search/al...](http://www.allmusic.com/search/all/*){Query}
Amazon - [www.amazon.com/s](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=){SEARCH}&sprefix=
Bluesky - [bsky.app/search](https://bsky.app/search?q=){Query}
DDG - [duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=){Query}
Gmail - [mail.google.com/mail/](https://mail.google.com/mail/)\#search/{query}
Macupdater - [macupdater.net/app_updat...](https://macupdater.net/app_updates/search.html?q=){Query}
HBO/Max - [play.max.com/search/re...](https://play.max.com/search/result?q=l){Query}
Reddit - reddit.com/search?q={Query}
Wayback Machine - [web.archive.org/web/*/](https://web.archive.org/web/*/){query}
[en.wikipedia.org/w/index.p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=){argument name="Article"}
YouTube - [www.youtube.com/results](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=){Query}

If you have online meetings using apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams. Zoom or Google Meet, you can get free noise cancellation via AI as well as meeting transcripts and recordings via Krisp, a business app with a generous free tier. Make sure you clearly understand the privacy policy before doing so.

Noise Cancellation

The AI-powered noise cancellation is bidirectional. It removes any extraneous sounds, background voices and echos. If you elect to use only this feature, none of the data from your calls is recorded on Krisp's cloud servers. Users of the free plan get 60 minutes of cumulative noise cancellation per day. If you purchase a pro ($8 a month)or a business ($15 a month) plan, you get unlimited voice cancellation.

Recording and Transcription

If you choose to let Krisp record your calls onto its cloud servers, you can get unlimited diarized transcription for free and the paid plans also offer audio and video recordings of your meetings. Krisp technology can generate meeting notes complete with action items. The data is presented to you in a way that makes it easy to share with other meeting participants.

My Experience

Krisp encourages people signing up for an account to use their work email by granting a seven-day free trial of the pro plan to those who do. As part of the sign up procedure I had to give it access to either my Outlook calendar or Google calendar. My organization doesn't allow third-party apps to access anything inside our Microsoft 365 tenant, so I opted to connect a Google account. It asked for access to all my contacts, which I did not grant. It asked for access to my calendar events, which I did grant. Furthermore, it asked for access to all calendars to which I have access. I said no to that. After that, my account was created, and I was provided an opportunity to download the software, which comes as a package installer.

Reading the Privacy Policy

Krisp says that the recordings of your meetings are encrypted and stored on its cloud servers, and that it does not use the content for any business purposes. However, it does collect considerable data about your specific computer, tying the machine identifier to your account identity. It makes that data available to third-party vendors and if you want to know what happens then, you have to find out who those vendors are and what their individual privacy policies are. Krisp also

This site uses Google, Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook remarketing services or tags to advertise to previous visitors to Krisp on third-party platforms such as those mentioned. With the help of cookies or tags, these remarketing services allow it to advertise itself to visitors who may have visited them. Thankfully, they provide opt-out links to every one of the services right from the privacy policy page.

The other thing that jumped out at me about their privacy policy was their clear admission that if the cops come for your data, Krisp is going to give it to them.

I can see a use for the app for areas of my life that aren’t sensitive and that I can wall off from my primary Internet presence. Work related calls don’t give me privacy heartburn and volunteer activities that don’t involve any kind of political engagement are OK too, if I feel like going to the trouble of making a separate Google or Microsoft account for them. Otherwise, I’ll find some other solution.

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.