AppAddict Newsletter

On most modern Macs, the later Intel builds and all Apple Silicon models, you can boot into recovery mode, access disk utility and download and install a new operating system. Unless you can’t. Then you have a problem. Or, maybe you are experimenting with Open Core Legacy Patcher to install a later version of macOS on a device that doesn’t officially support it. In that case, you are going to need a copy of an OS, preferably bootable, and some sort of media to copy that OS installation onto. You can do the installation through other methods, like target disk mode or various imaging applications too, but they take some know how. The other thing you can use these files for is when experimenting with virtual machines in something like Virtual Box, UTM or VMWare Fusion.

Mist

To get a copy of the firmware and OS you need, I know of no easier method than using Mist, a free app available on GitHub. With Mist, you can get everything from the latest beta, all the way back to Mac OS X 7.5. You can get Intel or Apple Silicon installers, or the universal installers available for macOS Big Sur and later.

Balena Etcher

If you are planning to use an SD card or a USB drive, things work better when you flash the media than when you try to fiddle with partitions and permissions on your own from the command line. Luckily, there is an app for that. It is Balena Etcher, a free app with built-in safeguards to keep you from erasing the wrong drive. Balena Etcher will also create bootable media for Windows and various Linux builds too.

The social media platform, Bluesky, has been getting a lot of press lately as a mass migration from X has taken place over the past two weeks. Bluesky has added nearly five million new users. For any Mac users wanting more than the default web interface, there are a few tools available.

Deck Blue

To mimic the old Tweetdeck experience, Deck Blue is your best bet. Best run as a progressive web app through any browser that supports the feature, Deck Blue offers a customizable multi-column interface. You can set how often you want the page refreshed, and you can hide certain types of posts. For a minimum of $1 a month, you can have up to four feeds and use post scheduling.

Skeets

Skeets is an iPad app that also runs on Macs with Apple silicon. It has more features than any other Bluesky client. Some features require a subscription, $1.99 a month, $17.99 a year.

Features 
• Hold reading position when refreshing
• Edit posts
• Post notifications ($)
• Thread Unroll ($)
• Bookmarks ($)
• Drafts ($)
• Push Notifications filter ($)
• Trends in Search
• In-App Translations
• VoiceOver-friendly
• iOS Shortcuts support
• Actionable Push Notifications
• Alt-Text Generator (for images with text)
• Hide like/repost/comments numbers
• Async video upload
• Search within user profiles
• Shorten user handles
• Low data mode
• Customize main app color ($)

Sky.app

Sky is a free app available on GitHub. It looks very much like the iOS app, but it does add keyboard shortcuts for those that rely on them.

There are certain apps that really should be incorporated into the operating system. One of those is Shareful by Sindre Sorhus. The share menu on the Mac seems like an afterthought when compared to the comparable menu in iOS. Many developers fail to implement the feature in their apps, and Apple itself leaves it purposefully underpowered for some reason. Thankfully, Shareful exists with three supremely useful functions.

Copy

Copy the shared item to the clipboard and so you can quickly paste it into another app. This is my most frequent use case. I have a number of Apple shortcuts that have text output. I use Shareful to copy that output to use in other places. Without Shareful, I'd have to use the text to create a file, then open the file and copy from there. Another useful option is to use this app to copy a screenshot to the clipboard through the share menu.

Save As

Choose a directory to save the shared item to.

Open In

Open the shared item in any app. You can open the current Safari URL in a different browser. In Safari, click the share button, select "Open In…", and then select a browser. There is a Raycast extension that also does this if you are a Raycast user.

Frequent use cases:

• In Photos, use the “Open In” share service to open one or more photos directly in Photoshop.
• Quickly copy content from an app that doesn't normally support copying.
• In Safari, right-click an image, and use the “Open In” share service to open it directly in another app.

Shareful is available on the Mac App Store. If you do not have access to the App Store, you can download a version from the developer's website, although it is not updated as often.

Here’s a list of free software that I’ve tried and liked since the last time I posted a similar collection

• ClipGrab, a free alternative to Downie 
• Air Battery - A Free App to Monitor Battery Levels 
• Keyboard Cowboy - Free and Open-Source Automation Software 
• Try PDF Gear, It's Good, It's Free 
• Topgrade - Upgrade All the Things 
• Activity Watch - Free No Effort Time Tracker 
• XnConvert - Free Batch Image Converter and Editor 
• Noizio - A Background Sound App for Mac 
• Five Free Single Purpose Apps (Dockey, Hyperkey, Hyperduck, Unclack, Cleanup Buddy)
• iTerm - You Don't Have to Be a Developer to Use It 
• The Time Machine Mechanic 
• Neat Download Manager 
• Quitter - A Free Utility That Works 
• Reminders Menu Bar
• Opening Batches of Apps, Documents, Folders and Web Pages 
• A Folder Plugin for Quicklook 
• Notenik - A Well Designed Plain Text Notes Plus App 
• Sherlock - Find Usernames from 400 Different Social Networks 
• Daily - A Dead Simple Free Task Manager 
• The Zen Browser 
• Licensed - A Nice Single Purpose App for Keeping Track of Your Software 
• Gladys - Free Shelf Utility that Syncs With iOS 
• Marta - A Free Dual Pane File Manager 
• Five Free Single Purpose Apps  (Trash Sweep, Speediness, Justatext, Quick Recorder,KeyCastr)
• Deskpad - A Virtual Monitor for Screen Sharing 
• Kiano - A Unique Image Sorter and Viewer for Apple Photos 
• Duplicati - Free Encrypted Offsite Backup for Your Mac 
• Encrypto - Free File Encryption App 
• Good Old Time Machine Editor - A Useful Free Utility 
• Virtual Buddy - Run Mac and Linux VMs with Ease on Apple Silicon for Free 
• Free Startup Manager with Many Options 
• A Different App for Managing Background Items 
• FASA - An App to Copy an Image and Paste It as a File 
• Task Til Dawn - A Free Mac Automation App 
• Three Free Apps for Text and Writing (Nissus Thesaurus, Megawords, Esse)
• Scheduler for Mac - Free Automation Utility 
• A Day With Vivaldi Browser

There’s been a great deal of buzz recently about an iOS only app called Croissant that can post to X, Mastodon and Bluesky all at once. From all reports, it’s a pretty nice app, but it costs $60. There is a free app, Openvibe, that also works on macOS and adds posting to Threads to its ability list, but it’s owned by some crypto bros and that may give some folks pause. I’ve been using a free service/app for a while on my Mac and iOS devices that doesn’t have those drawbacks, plus it adds a lot more services and has a built-in scheduler for up to 10 posts. 

Additionally, if Mastodon is your jam you can get all kinds of info in your account including:

• Recent follows
• Recent unfollows
• Follower info

The name of the app is Fedica, and it is available on the app store. It also has a web interface. The platforms it connects to are:

• Twitter/X
• Instagram
• YouTube
• TinkTok
• Facebook Pages
• Mastodon
• Bluesky
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Threads

You can post polls and threads on platforms that support them, plus you get unlimited drafts to store posts you may want to make later.

There are some paid options geared more towards business owners than individuals that offer scheduling more than 10 posts and getting more frequent reports, but they are expensive, starting at $29.99 a month. For personal use, the free options are fine for most people.

For many, the consumer landscape today includes subscriptions in lots of areas, for news. TV channels, music services and software. Was life better when we all just paid a single cable bill instead of cord cutting? Was it better when you had to pay an upfront price on any software you wanted to use? I don’t know the answer to that. I remember when it cost nearly $300 to get a copy of Microsoft Office with Outlook Included, which didn’t include anything like cloud storage or a free email account. Cable bills got to be well north of $100 a month. These days, you can use Office in about five minutes for less than $10. If you get a good deal and sign up for a full year, you can often get a premium TV subscription for roughly the same amount per month.

Keeping track of all this is challenging though. An old-fashioned spreadsheet might do the trick, but for a polished experience with a few extra bells and whistles, I use an app from Touchbits, Inc. It’s called (wait for it) Subscriptions, and it cost either $1.99 a year or $7.99 for a lifetime purchase ($14.99 for a family license). It is a universal app, so it works on your phone, iPad and on your Mac.

For me, it ticks all the boxes. It lets me categorize each subscription (entertainment, software etc.). I also have the option of using tags for further categorization. It can handle weekly, monthly and annual subscriptions. There is a place for the URL associated with my account information for each sub. You set a renewal date for when the next bill is due and for what amount. There is a reminders option for those due dates. You can select a payment account if you want to track that. The Subscriptions app saves a price history so you can see what changes vendors make over time. Finally, there is also a notes field.

The app has analytics to help you track spending over time and by category. There are several view and sorting options as well. The data syncs via iCloud across all platforms. You can export your data via a CSV. It has a backup and restore feature, but it is a proprietary database file and there doesn’t look there is a way to import data from anywhere. I’ve been using it for nearly a year, and I’ve recommended to lots of people.

If you’ve been online for a long time, you very well may have accounts on dozens of services, including social media platforms. Despite your best attempts at privacy, there may well be old posts floating around that you wouldn’t want associated with you currently. People change over time, and comments that seemed clever when you were a teenager may seem pretty cringe today. There are services out there that offer to clean all that up for you, but they are expensive and require that you turn your credentials over to a third party. Luckily, there is a universal Mac app that can do total or selective removal of your content from 30+ different apps, websites and services. It’s called Redact Privacy. It removes posts, DMs, photos, videos, likes, and other unique content on various social networks. You can delete by keyword, sentiment, content type, and more.

It has a free tier that will :

• Delete unlimited tweets, retweets, and likes from Twitter/X
• Anonymize unlimited Reddit posts and comments
• Delete up to 30 days of content on Discord & Facebook

To access the other services requires a subscription, but paying for a single month for $7.99 should give you adequate time to clean up your posts. Subscribing lets you take advantage of scheduled deletions if for some reason you need that. The app is available on the Mac App Store.

The paid version offers:

• All social media services fully unlocked
• Full access to the automated scheduler
• Deep-scan your posts with the File Importer
• Advanced social media management tools
• Edit and Deletion modes
• Priority, 1:1 support
• Custom text editing options
• Manage entire servers or communities with "Moderator mode"

Included services include:

• Discord
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Anilist
• Reddit
• Linkedin
• Slack
• Imgur
• Letterboxd
• Deviantart
• Disqus
• Gyazo
• Pinterest
• Skype
• Spotify
• Steam
• Github
• Pixiv

As a person who writes a lot for my job and for fun, I have a need to make sure I’m not being to verbose and to make sure that what I’m composing is appropriate for the audience it’s aimed at. I found a simple tool by indy developer Arthur Smith, Text Count, that makes it easy to get character, word and sentence counts and to get a readability score on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. It analyzes sentence length and word length, plus syllable count to assign a score from 1-100 to the text. The higher the score is, the better. Most business communication should fall in the range from 60-70. A low score indicates that you need to simplify what you’ve written.

Another useful element of Text Count is an estimated reading and speaking time. The app does not require you to paste the text anywhere. It analyzes what you copy to the clipboard. For people like me, who do their writing in a text editor instead of something like Microsoft Word, it’s a handy tool.

Some high-end writing apps like iA Writer have some of these tools built in. Obsidian offers a word and character count out of the box, and you can download a plugin for a readability score.

Text Count is $2.99 at Gumroad.

Snapsrch is a utility that lets you conduct searches on selected text in a convenient popup. Out of the box, it is preconfigured to search Google, Bing, Wiktionary, Google Translate and Wikipedia. Adding other search options is a breeze. I included AllMusic, YouTube, Amazon, Max, DuckDuckGo and Reddit in just a few minutes. I have not included any AI searches in my setup, but they are just as easy to set up.

Using it is as easy as selecting the text and opening Snapsrch with a hotkey. If you don’t have any text selected, and you invoke the hotkey, you can type a query into the popup. You can choose the window size you want for the popup, by selecting user elements for iPhone, iPad, Mac or custom. You can also choose to invoke Snapsrch with a mouse or trackpad gesture. If you are a Popclip user, there is an extension available to add Snapsrch. This allows you to consolidate any search terms you are using into one icon, decluttering the Popclip interface.

Other Snapsrch options allow you to hide custom elements of any search page you create and to have them load to a specific location on the page. Snapsrch has OCR capabilities in several languages, so you can even search for text in images and videos. There is a built-in history of your searches you can toggle on or off. It is helpful when you need to refer back to a previous search.

Snapsrch is available on the Mac App Store for $5.99. You can use the trial version as much as you want. You just get a popup asking you to purchase it every 50 uses.

Deeper

In the spirit of old standbys like Onyx and TinkerTool, Deeper provides a GUI to tweak multiple system settings, including a few I haven't seen before, including:

• Make TextEdit open with a new document instead of the file dialog box
• Turn off the verification of disk images. I've probably opened 10,000 disk images in my life and I don't remember one failing to verify. I've wasted hours!
• Make the "Save As" dialog box open in extended form

Pester

Similar to the paid app, Due, this alarm/timer app will keep reminding you to do something until you kill it. It's full of thoughtful touches, like showing the amount of time left on a timer in the dock icon. For alerts, you can choose any combination of an onscreen message (which also displays the time), a bouncing Pester Dock icon, a spoken version of your message, or to play an alert. When creating alarms you can use abbreviations like 20m for 20 minutes, 11a for 11:00 A.M. or tomorrow, next Saturday etc. The alarms are reusable, which is convenient if you use Pester to remind you to check laundry or take a break at a certain time of day

Übersicht

Widgets have become more useful as more and more developers have added to them to their apps, but there is still a use for widgets not connected to apps to provide information at a glance for all sorts of system functions and external information. This app lets anyone with developer chops use JavaScript + React's JSX to roll their own widgets. The rest of us can choose from a gallery containing widgets like:

• Quotes from the Stoics
• Online Status Checker
• Docker Status
• Hacker News Top Stories

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As a Mac automation fan, I make use of apps most people are familiar with, like Keyboard Maestro, Hazel and Better Touch Tool. Since 2010, however, I have also used a web service to connect a wide variety of websites (including Reddit) and Mac apps in a number of ways. That service is IFTTT (If This Then That) and it offers over 2000 integrations with apps and web services many of then Mac compatible.

Here are some of the ways I use IFTTT with Mac Apps

Create Day One Journal Entries

• Social media posts from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
• Liked YouTube videos
• Saved Pocket articles
• RSS feeds from Mastodon and my blogs
• A geofence around my office to record what time I get to work (requires iPhone)
• TV shows watched via Trakt
• Daily weather report

Inoreader

• Starred articles saved to Pocket
• Create new task in Things 3 to read starred articles

Reddit

• Saved posts copied to Dropbox as text files

Obsidian

-Emails forwarded to IFTTT email address get turned into text files in Dropbox, which then get converted to Markdown and moved to my Obsidian vault with Hazel

Google Sheets

• Save URLs of Pockets articles
• Save TV shows watched via Trakt
• Save URLs of Raindrop.io bookmarks
• Record arrivals and departures from office (Requires iPhone)

Raindrop.io

• Save Raindrop.io bookmarks to Notion

Apple Photos

• Save a copy of iOS screenshots to Google Drive

IFTTT is a subscription service. Billed annually, it is $3.33 a month. Billed monthly, the rate is $3.99.

I decided to be open-minded and spend some time with a new browser for a few days after using Microsoft Edge for the last two years for reasons related to my job. The browser I decided to test is Vivaldi and after a day of using it just like I use my normal daily driver here are a few of the things I like.

Security

I've been concerned that the implementation of Manifest 3 browser extensions in Chromium browsers, preventing them from using the full version of uBlock Origin, would be an issue. After turning on Vivaldi's built in tracker, ad and third party cookie blocking, I added uBlock Origin Lite and tested security at Ad-Block Tester and Toolz Adblock, scoring a 99% effectiveness rate on both of them. Vivaldi has built-in tools to block cookie popups across the board.

Power Consumption

Vivaldi allows you to set custom hibernation times on individual tabs or on stacks, its name for tab groups. You can also set Vivaldi to  open up with lazy loading, where tabs stay in a hibernating state until you need them. I typically operate with two or three windows and 30–45 tabs at all time, so this presents a good opportunity to really reduce battery strain.

Appearance

To avoid distraction, I wanted to use the identical colors I'd used in Edge. Modifying the default theme only took a couple of minutes using a color picker and hex codes.

Tab Management

When you open Vivaldi for the first time, you are asked to choose if you want vertical or horizontal tabs. You can move them later if you decide to. You can also take advantage of split screen tabs, allowing you to view two web pages side by side. My favorite feature out of all the tools is saved sessions. You can save all your open tabs and reopen them later from a button on the left side toolbar. This is a separate feature from the workspaces that Vivaldi lets you create and reopen as needed. You can even go a step further and use a separate profile with a different email address to keep your work and personal browsing from mixing. This lets you use different extensions, passwords and settings at every level.

Built in Mail, Calendar, Notes and Feed Reader

It was easy to set up my primary Gmail account and the Yahoo account I use just for newsletters. Adding a selection of Google Calendars and Apple Calendars was also a breeze. While I prefer to use my subscription to Inoreader for my full-blown RSS needs, it is convenient to stick a few of my favorite sites in the Vivaldi built-in feed reader for quick access.

Side Panel

Vivaldi has an option to any site you want in a panel on the side of the browser, helpful when doing research with Wikipedia or looking up bookmarks on Raindrop.io. You can also view your browser based bookmarks there along with notes, downloads, history, your reading list, a translation service, a list of tabs from across all current Vivaldi sessions on multiple computers, saved sessions, calendars and tasks

One of the most popular features in Raycast, the extensible keyboard launcher, has been its floating notes feature. Using a quick keyboard shortcut, users have been able to summon a window into which they could type or paste information. Hiding the note and bringing it back was easy, but there wasn’t a lot more to it than that. With the recent release of Raycast notes in version 1.8.5, floating notes have been replaced with a new feature.

Raycast notes now support markdown. If you know the syntax, great. If not, the notes window has a toolbar where you can select bold, italic, bullets and so on. It also has “inline code and code blocks, lists that you can indent and reorder, checklists, links and more.”

Raycast users without the pro plan can have up to five notes, while pro members get an unlimited number. There are built-in commands for New Notes and Search Notes. If you use the commands frequently, then, like any other command in Raycast, you can assign a hot key to them.

The action pane (⌘+K)l for the Raycast notes command has several choices:

• New note
• Browser notes
• Copy note deep link
• Create Quick link
• Format
• Disable window auto-resizing
• Export (HTML, Markdown, Plain text)
• Recently deleted notes
• Delete

Quick links allow you to open a note with a single keystroke. The notes window may be moved anywhere on the screen. It will stay on top until dismissed.

If you are into Mac automation, you have probably invested in tools like Keyboard Maestro or Shortery which let you launch apps, run scripts, display messages and open documents using certain triggers. If you are new to the platform or don’t want to make the investment in a paid program right now, there is a simple and easy to use app for you. Scheduler for Mac can do all the tasks outlined above. It can run AppleScript, shell scripts and python scripts. Scripts can be run as root. Here are a few real world examples of how I use scheduling:

• Open my web browser to my job's time clock web page four times a day to clock in and out for the day and for lunch
• Run an AppleScript right before I get up in the morning to eject my backup drive so that all I have to do is unplug it
• Run an AppleScript every night to move items in Things 3 to a new date and time
• Launch a file synchronization app every night to sync my Obsidian vault to Google Drive
• Open and close an app on my work and home machines at alternating times because I don't want it running on them simultaneously
• Launch a set of documents I use all day every day at work five minutes after I log in.

The interface for Scheduler is straightforward and easy to use. You'll have no problem configuring any of the events. You can even group events together to run at the same time. Any event can be run on a schedule or set to the same time on specified days. You can toggle events on and off, for example, if you don't want them to run when you are on vacation. One of the conditions for setting up a script allows it to be run after a specific period of inactivity. You could use this to quit your open apps and log you off in case you forget to. The option to display messages can be used as an alarm clock.

Another powerful feature of Scheduler is the ability to assign hotkeys to events. Using this you can launch apps, open websites and documents and run scripts right from the keyboard. You can even launch them from the Mac menu bar, which is a convenient way to do things like refresh Finder or restart your dock after making changes. You could even update your Homebrew apps that way.

The preferences and option for Scheduler allow you to sync or back up your settings to iCloud. You can also sync events to any iCloud calendar you grant Scheduler access to. Scheduler was released in 1998. The most recent release was last year. It is currently on version 7. It’s freeware but requires you to register it after 30 days of use.

There is a new player in the category of apps that includes Yoink, Dropover and Dropshelf. Dockside, from Hachipoo Apps is a shelf utility that uses the space on either side of your dock (if you position it on the bottom of your monitor). For those of use who position our docks on the left or right sides of the screen, Dockside places a couple of landing places at the bottom of the display, hidden until you need them.

Dockside creates a shelf for your Downloads folder and the default location you have designated for screenshots. In addition, you specify a file location of your choosing for files you drag into Dockside. Once files are placed on a Dockside shelf, there are a variety of Finder actions you can take:

• Open
• Open with
• Share
• Get info
• Show in Finder
• Copy Path name
• Rename
• Copy
• Copy to...
• Move to...
• Move to trash

Additionally, depending on the type of object on the shelf, you can:

• Compress
• Remove image metadata
• Extract text from images
• Optimize image size (if you have Clop installed

Other features include the ability to create a quick note with your default text editor on the shelf and the ability to paste content onto a shelf. Any item placed on a shelf that has Quicklook capability is viewable via that mechanism. Dockside also maintains a recent files history in its interface.

Dockside is an Apple notarized app that can operate offline since it has no external server connection and collects no data on users. There is a two-week free trial and the app can be purchased for $5.99 on the developer’s website.

If you are a writer or just like words, the chances are you find Apple’s built-in Dictionary app a little lacking. There are websites that offer advanced functionality, but you have to be online to use them. There are a few free tools that can help you out.

Nisus Thesaurus

From the developers of Nisus writer, this free thesaurus app, integrates with Apple's services menu to allow use in just about any application where you can enter text. Just highlight the word, "and choose Nisus Thesaurus from the Services menu. When you select a word in Nisus Thesaurus, the synonyms for that word will be shown right next to it in the Word Browser. Go from "sky" to "cumulonimbus" in just a few clicks."

Megawords

For crossword puzzle fans, poets and songwriters, Megawords from developer Frank O'Dwyer is a powerful stand alone app available in the Mac App Store. It's features include:

• rhyme search (works offline)
• wildcard search (crossword solver mode, works offline)
• dictionary lookup of word meanings (multiple dictionaries, online only)
• thesaurus lookup (online only)
• search SOWPODS or TWL or both (Scrabble dictionaries)

Esse

Esse from Ameba Labs offers 61 different text manipulations across eight different categories, similar to Word Service from Devon Technologies or the paid app, Text Workflow. You can do things like:

• All sorts of case changes (ALL CAPS, lowercase, CaMeL, snake_case, etc.)
• Word counts (including unique word counts and text statistics)
• Encoding
• Add/remove/convert line breaks
• Fix/convert quotes
• Extract dates, addresses, dates, emails, phone numbers
• JSON tools
• Line removal options
• Strip non-alpha-numeric characters

There is also an iOS version.

I bought Mail Archiver X by Moth Software at a discount from Bundlehunt a few months back and didn’t have to pay the full $49.95 they charge on their website. My intention was to keep a regularly updated archive of my 19-year-old Gmail account containing 155K messages. I also wanted to retrieve a Yahoo account that I use solely for newsletters.

I knew beforehand that it’s extremely easy to use Google Takeout to download an archive of your email in the universally recognized mbox format because I’ve done it several times. My Gmail archive weighs in at about 8GBs. You don’t get a lot of choices when you request the archive, though. You get it all from the beginning of time. I wanted one to import into Eagle Filer so that I could have offline access to all the receipts, registration information and other things I’d received via email since 2005. Google Takeout did the trick.

With Mail Archiver X you can filter the emails you choose to archive, a feature I wanted. Unfortunately, despite supposedly being able to add files to an archive and cumulatively grow it over time, I was never able to get that function to work. Either the program insisted on downloading an entire archive each time it ran, taking hours, or it only downloaded files since the last time I ran it, but in a new file, so that I could not search my entire account at one time. Their tech support answered my emails, but not with helpful information. The company is not in the US and the person who answered my email did not appear to a native English speaker. At present, support is no longer free. They have a $70 fee.

The other thing about the app I don’t care for is its size. It’s over half a GB. That’s just the program, not the archives it creates. I would never recommend this program to anyone.

One of my favorite parts of using a Mac is making use of all the automation apps, including the built in ones, Automator and Shortcuts. My productivity would be severely hampered without:

• Apps to Enhance Apple Shortcuts
• Clop for image processing
• Hazel for file management
• Keyboard Maestro for all kinds of stuff ( I have 800 macros)
• Better Touch Tool for Magic Trackpad and more

All of those are paid apps though. If you want a free app (donation ware) to explore the possibilities of automation, try downloading Task Til Dawn by developer Oliver Matuschin. It's an app with a GUI, not a command line. You can trigger actions via events on your computer, or you can schedule them. The program will run from a thumb drive if you need to perform the same task on all the computers in a lab or an office. Tasks are saved as files and can be shared among workstations. Samples include:

• Automatically connect network drives at login
• Automatically print all documents placed in a certain folder
• Automatically copy images when a certain external drive (including thumb drives) is connected
• Open or quit applications on a schedule (I use scheduling to launch a program that syncs my Obsidian vault at 3am, one that ejects my backup drive before I wake up so I can just unplug it and to move screenshots and image files from my daily work to a storage location when I am done for the day)
• Turn off automatic Time Machine backups and run them on a schedule
• Empty the trash on a schedule
• Take screenshots at scheduled intervals
• Display a dialog box (useful for public computers to pass info to users)
• Automate the opening of URLs

There are dozens of other tasks, and they can all be strung together to create a practically endless amount of tasks. As a bonus for cross-platform users. Compatible tasks can be shared between Macs and Windows machines with little alteration. The Windows download is also free.

For years, I kept a text editor open on my computer at all times and when I needed a scratchpad, I would switch to it and type or paste whatever I needed. Then Raycast came along with it’s floating notes feature, which is nice. It can be summoned with a hot key. Then I found Scrap Paper, which can also be called with a hotkey, syncs between computers and has an iOS version. You can hide the icon in the menu bar if you just want to use the hotkey. Furthermore, you can have the text window stay on top of all other windows, which is a feature I want. Finally, I saw Scratchpad on r/MacApps and I thought I’d give it a try. It has everything Scrap Paper has, but can also be launched from the dock. It adds

• Automatically creating clickable links from pasted URLS
• Control over font selection
• Text size adjustment
• Line spacing
• Smart quotes
• Smart Dashes
• Translucent background

Because it's text, you get access to the writing tools, spelling and grammar, substitutions, speech and the Mac Services menu. One awesome feature is the ability to use Quicklook on a link, which opens a small window with a live view of the web page, similar to the Little Arc feature in the Arc browser.

Scratchpad offers scripting and shortcuts support. You can enter text onto Scratchpad from any app that can open a URL.

There is a fully functional free trial of the macOS app available 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 on the App Store.

Scratchpad is available in the Mac App Store for $5. It’s by well-known Indy developer Sindre Sorhus.

A free app by a developer who goes by INCHMAN1900 on Gumroad can provide an easy way to manage images if it fits your workflow. His small app, FASA (Forget About Save As), lets you copy images from any source to your clipboard and then paste them as files in the Finder. You can use this procedure to quickly export files from the Photos app, skipping the dialog boxes you normally get. It even works on screenshots that you copy to the clipboard. The programs preferences let you choose between jpg and png for your preferred file type. You can start or stop the app at any time and you can choose programs to exclude from using the service if you have that need.

If you own a copy of Clop, it also has this ability. You can also do it using the Finder replacement, Qspace.

(Note - There are other things in this world called FASA. This is not affiliated with them. The dev and I both know this 😉)