Apps | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Apr 1, 2025 ∞

Syncthing - Free and Open-Source Cross Platform File Sharing

I first heard about the free and open-source file syncing app, Syncthing, when I started using Obsidian and may people were suggesting it as the back end of their DIY vault syncing strategy. I ended up using another method for Obsidian, but larley I have been exploring numerous ways to share files in my home lab setup, which features Macs, iOS devices an Ubuntu Linux box and VMs of all different sorts, including Windows.

The aptly named Syncthing Foundation is behind the app that they describe thusly

Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, whether it is shared with some third party, and how it’s transmitted over the internet.

Syncthing is private and secure.

Private - no central server. Your data is only on your machines
Encrypted - secured using TLS
Authenticated - every device is identified by a strong cryptographic certificate.

Open

Open Protocol - Adheres to a documented specification
Open Source - All code is available in GitHub
Open Development - When bugs happen, they are dealt with and not hidden
Open Discourse - In the Syncthing Forum

Easy to Use

Powerful - Sync unlimited folders with different people or just between your won devices
Portable - Administered through a web browser
Simple - "Syncthing doesn’t need IP addresses or advanced configuration: it just works, over LAN and over the Internet. Every machine is identified by an ID. Give your ID to your friends, share a folder and watch: UPnP will do if you don’t want to port forward or you don’t know how."

My first use case with Synthing is going to be loading downloaded videos from my Mac onto my iPad for use when traveling. I'll let you know how it goes.

Download Syncthing here.

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 31, 2025 ∞

Can You Help Me Find the Photos App I Need?

I'm going to turn the tables today. Instead of giving YOU information on software, I'm going to ask you to give me some recommendations. Specifically, I am looking for a photos app. Since I am eliminating Google and Amazon from my online life, I won't have access to their photo management tools, which, I will admit are pretty good, considering that both companies will mine every bit of data they can from my images in an attempt to extract money from me for their billionaire owners.

Here are the features I'd like to have:

Facial recognition to be able to identify people in photos and to be able to group photos of the same person together
Object search (e.g., dogs, landscapes, babies etc)
Being able to search by dates is a must
Tagging
Smart folders/albums
The ability to use photos in my file system without the need to enter them into a proprietary system like Apple Photos Library
The ability to at least read EXIF data and ideally to be able to (batch) edit it.
A free trial or money back guarantee
A companion iOS or iPadOS app would be awesome.

Potential Apps

So far, these have been suggested to me, but not buy anyone who actually has any experience with them:

If you know of or use a photo viewer or management program with all or most of these features, please use one of the contact methods at the bottom of the page to let me know. I appreciate it! Thanks for reading App addict!

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 30, 2025 ∞

Don't Make Me Learn Something New!

Surplus keyboards

I was directly involved in supporting education in a K-12 environment for a couple of decades and the in higher ed, at the university level, for a few more. My customers were the people who conveyed knowledge and, indirectly, to their students. I listened to plenty of enthusiastic teachers talk about teaching strategies, from the ones who were helping first-graders learn to read all the way through to physicians teaching medical students. Obviously, these instructors understood the importance of learning — for other people, but seldom for themselves, unfortunately.

Since the 90s, when technology started to become ubiquitous in the workplace and computer literacy became necessary in most professional level jobs, there have obviously been many changes. Just the way we store data has evolved from different sized floppy disks, to Zip Drives, writable CD-ROMS, larger hard drives, USB thumb drives to the cloud storage most people use today. Installing software went from typing esoteric commands into a terminal to merely clicking a single button in and app store. Yay for progress!

The problem is that the changes in the technology come too rapidly for many. It seems that there's a certain class of people who wake up one day and just decide they are done learning new things. They are just over it. It's like their brain is full and there is no room for any new information. I've been to countless meetings where I've listened to bosses agonize about how to implement something new while fooling end users into thinking nothing has changed. Bosses get to be bosses numerous times because they are people pleasers, and making people mad goes against the official boss code of conduct. When Microsoft decided to move the Start button from the lower-left side of the screen where it had happily rested since 1995, to the middle of the taskbar, there were millions of IT departments Googling "HOW TO MAKE WINDOWS 11 LOOK LIKE WINDOWS 10."

Doing something as simple as changing the naming scheme for network printers caused numerous professors, supposedly highly educated people, to lose their minds at my former job. They acted like the IT department had a meeting to see what we could do to make their jobs harder. In the early 2000s, Apple moved the power button from the right side of the original iMac to the front of the next generation of educational computers, the eMac. People freaked out about that too.

It's funny. When people go buy a fancy new car or the latest big screen television, they seem to have no problem learning the ins and outs of that tech. Some of that equipment can be pretty complicated, too. Those same people, however, are the same ones who can't seem to remember which password to use in the correct situation to effectively do the job their employer pays them for. Hell, there are more people than you probably want to know about who simply cannot create a password to save their lives following modern conventions. I've wasted hours of my life that I will never get back waiting for people to think of a usable password. Often, I would just have to step in and do it for them after they failed numerous times.

Huge numbers of people never read another book after they finish their formal education. Being entertained becomes the official purpose of life. That's why I get such a crush on anyone I see reading a classic novel or taking a night class at the community college just for the joy of learning a new skill or hobby. I have a long list of things I am interested in learning now that I have leisure time.

Thanks for reading. I'm sorry I missed a couple of days this week. Life gets busy.

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for my tech blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 30, 2025 ∞

Keyboard Centered Apps for Power Users

A global keyboard shortcut is a combination of keys you can press while in any application on your Mac to execute an action belonging to a background process. I typically have a half dozen or more apps running in the background that use glocal keyboard shortcuts. Some of these include:

Keyboard Maestro

Keyboard Maestro is an automation app that allows you to initiate or control just about any repetitive process. Don't let the name fool you though. Keyboard Maestro can execute actions based on two dozen triggers, not just keyboard combinations. Some of the actions I launch with the keyboard from Keyboard Maestro include typing in extra long passwords with a shortcut, launching apps using keyboard combinations, launching a shortcut that queries OpenAI using my API key, activating templates in Drafts, running AppleScripts and more.

My Top 10 Keyboard Maestro Macros

Raycast

Raycast is a keyboard app launcher with over 1000 available plugins, including an emoji picker, window manager, clipboard history manager, notes, passwords and many more. You can assign hotekys to any action. Some of the ones I use most frequently are searching Kagi, generating alt-text for images I post on the Internet, opening my downloads folder, searching social media sites, searching Reddit, searching YouTube, sending clipboard text to Drafts and Obsidian.

My 10 Favorite Raycast Use Cases (and all the apps it replaced) | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Things 3

Things 3 is a task manager with clients for macOS, iOS and iPadOS. It has two built in global keyboard shortcuts: 1) The Quick Entry window lets you enter new to-dos into Things from anywhere without having to switch applications. Use the keyboard shortcut to make the window appear. 2) With Autofill, the Quick Entry window is automatically pre-filled with useful information from the application you are working in. From Mail, for example, it will create a link to the email you're reading. In a browser, it captures the URL of the page you are on.

Things 3, Maybe the Pinnacle in App Design | AppAddict

Dropover

Dropover is the king of shelf apps. Shelves are mini-platforms to hold files while you wait to move them or perform actions on them. Some of the actions you can accomplish from Dropover include sending a file to cloud storage and sharing the link, converting or resizing images, sending a file by Airdrop, in a message or email, attaching a file to a note. You can invoke Dropover when you are in any app, which is very convenient for grabbing an image from a web page or some text from any app. Dropover works well with Apple Shortcuts too, making it easy to move and manipulate files.

Dropover, Best in Class

Supercharge

Supercharge is a an that features a variety of tweaks and shortcuts for a number of tasks. My favorites are quit all apps, hide all apps, close all notifications, open Passwords and toggle desktop widgets on and off.

Using Supercharge | AppAddict

Better Touch Tool

Better Touch Tool is anoter automation app that can do a couple of things that Keyboard Maestro and Raycast can't do, such as use the fn key and trigger actions from text strings. I use simple double taps of modifier keys to activate and deactivate Notification Center and Mission Control.

Better Touch Tool Favorites | AppAddict

Others

Fantastical and BusyCal both allow you to create new appointments and tasks from anywhere on your Mac.
Language Tool is a writing aid with spelling and grammar checking. You can invoke it anywhere you enter text.
Default Folder X has a search tool that can bu sommoned from its menu bar interface at any time.

Making It Easier

Two free apps to get to make life as a keyboard warrior easier are Karabiner Elements for remapping keys and creating macros and KeyClu, which gives you a heads-up display of keyboard shortcuts in any app, allowing you to enter your own for apps that it doesn't detect automatically.

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 28, 2025 ∞

rclone - An Easy to Use and Powerful CLI

There are quite a few apps with GUIs available for Macs that let you connect various cloud services to upload, download and move files. Most of them are costly. Today I needed to move files from Google Drive to a kDrive, a cloud storage company in Switzerland, Instead of using one of the expensive apps, I opted for a free command utility, rclone, and in just a few minutes initiated a complete transfer of the data on my drive.

If you've dealt with cloud storage, including iCloud over the past few versions of macOS, you might agree with me that Apple has made a mess of it. They insist on hiding your files away in ~/Library/Cloud Storage and other non-obvious locations. By default, the files stay in the cloud, making utilities like Hazel ineffective managing them. You just never know when you click on a file if you are going to have to wait to download it or not. The official clients for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box.com us that strategy. Even when you select the option to keep a folder downloaded, you get no notice that the download is complete and, in my experience, I have found that the settins revert from time to time with no notice, forcing me to redownload files.

So, I was really happy today to take the time to set up rclone to move the files. You can get a good overview of rclone's history and capabilities from Wikipedia.. You can use rclone with a long list of cloud services.

You can download and install rclone right On a Mac from the terminal, using the command

sudo -v ; curl [rclone.org/install.s...](https://rclone.org/install.sh) | sudo bash

Documentation

You can read the documentation on rclone at the official GitHub repository.

Here are links on how to set rclone for a few common services:

Full Compatibility List

Alibaba (Aliyun) Object Storage System (OSS)
Amazon Drive (See note)
Amazon S3
Aruba COS [27]
Backblaze B2
Box
C14
Ceph
Citrix ShareFile
Cloudian[28]
Dell-EMC ECS [29]
DigitalOcean Spaces
Dreamhost
Dropbox
Enterprise File Fabric[30]
FTP
Google Cloud Storage
Google Drive
Google Photos
HDFS
HTTP
Hubic
IBM COS S3
Jottacloud
Koofr
Mail.ru Cloud
Memset Memstore
MEGA.io
Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
Microsoft OneDrive
MinIO
NetApp StorageGRID [31]
Nextcloud
OVH
OpenDrive
OpenIO [32]
OpenStack Swift
Oracle Cloud Storage
ownCloud
pCloud
premiumize.me
put.io
QingStor
Rackspace Cloud Files
rsync.net
Scaleway
Scality [33]
Seafile
Selectel [34][35]
SFTP
StackPath
SugarSync
Tardigrade
Tencent COS
Wasabi
WebDAV
Yandex Disk
Zoho Workdrive [30]

GUI Alternatives

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

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Mar 27, 2025 ∞

It Must Be True, I Read It on the Internet

opt-2025-03-27-%1_17

One of the reasons that the United States is in the middle of an existential crisis is that too many damned people believe everything they read on the Internet. For these people, the Internet is not the information super highway. It is a cesspool of lies, misinformation, manipulation by foreign adversaries and scammers out to make a buck. It is beholden to MAGA and the right wing, who grow angry and vengeful when they are fact checked. To keep from being attacked by the government, Meta, the parent company of Facebook fired its fact checkers when Donald Trump was reelected. Elon Musk fired Twitter's fact checkers when he paid 44 billion dollars for the company.

No information source is infallible. Still, intelligent people should be able to separate fact from fiction. In the immortal words of way too may people Do your research.

Credible Information Sources

PolitiFact - Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.

Snopes.com | The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. - Snopes (/ ˈ s n oʊ p s/), formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.

Some other fact-checking resources similar to Politifact and Snopes include:

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is myapp review blog, delivered daily in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 27, 2025 ∞

Cool Tools for Mastodon

When it comes to the new breed of social media, I prefer the federated and independent nature of Mastodon over everything else. I want nothing to do with Threads or anything else tainted by Meta. I like the atmosphere at Bluesky, but we have to face that it is a company founded by a billionaire, funded with venture capital and it's going to be enshittified one day - breaking the heart of millions. Mastodon, on the other hand was founded in Europe and is out of the control of the American fascist movement. Unlike the reality with Blue Sky, you really can have your very own Mastodon server. While it has an undeserved reputation for being difficult for normal people to use, there is only a single extra step to get started and there are many guides and walk throughs o hold your hand throught that step. In the 15 months of being on Mastodon, I have yet to witness the kind of hate filled craziness seen on corporate owned social media every day.

There are almost 100 different apps with Mastodon access available for Apple hardware and a few online, browser based clients as well. Here are a few unique offerings that can compliment or replace your primary Mastodon client.

Newsmast (free)

In a first for the Fediverse, we’re seamlessly integrating content from your home server with Newsmast’s hand-curated, knowledge-sharing Communities, hosted on our customised Mastodon instance, newsmast.social. There’s no scraping or content aggregation - all the community content comes from Newsmast users or via federation, and is moderated by applying the Oliphant Tier 0 blocklist, filters that keep out NSFW, crypto and hate-speech, and our human team.

Automadon ($14.99 year)

Automadon provides a suite of Shortcuts actions for Mastodon with support for multiple accounts. Actions available within Shortcuts include: • Post to Mastodon • Full-text search • Get account details, timelines, and following/follower lists • Interact with posts, including boosting, favoriting, and bookmarking posts • Follow/unfollow, block/unblock, mute/unmute accounts

Toot Later for Mastodon ($4.00)

With TootLater, you can: • Schedule multiple posts with different dates and times • Add multiple Mastodon accounts and switch between them easily • Attach images to your posts and preview them before sending • TootLater uses the official Mastodon API to ensure your account and posts are secure

Video for Ants ($3.99)

Got videos that are too big to upload to Mastodon? Everyone does. What kind of limits are these?! All you have to do is pick your video and then tap a button and video for ants will automatically convert the format, compress the bitrate, and optimize the fps (frame rate) as needed to make them fit. You only have to tap a button. That's it. That's the app.

Threaditor: write for everyone ($9.99)

Draft threads for popular microblogging platforms all in one place
Save unlimited threads to the cloud - always pick up where you left off
Link your accounts to automatically publish, and group accounts to post to multiple places at once
Add images and polls to your posts

Re: Toot ($2.99)

Re: Toot turns Mastodon posts into images that are suitable for quote posts. Images are accompanied by attribution to the original author and an alternative text. Images created by Re: Toot can also be shared to other social networks and messaging services. To create an image from a Mastodon post, just copy the link the post and open Re: Toot or invoke the app through the Share Sheet.

Still Followers for Mastodon (Expensive - just use the free features)

Still Followers is a useful analytics tool to keep you fro getting suckered by the people who game social media by following and unfollowing people. The free version offers several useful tools for the casual user.

AppAddict Picks

My favorite Mastodon client isMona for Mastodon, a one time purchase with more features than any other Mastodon client.
My favorite Mastodon instance is social.lol, which is for members of OMG.LOL and IndieWeb platform with multiple features inlcuding a link in bio page, a blog, photo hosting, an omg.lol email address and much more, all for $20 a year.
My favorite social media tool for analytics, scheduled posts. account discovery, reports and more is Fedica. The free tier is useful. A paid membership is insane. Works with 10 different social media platforms.
If you want to learn more about the Fediverse, how to use it, what it can do - head over to Fedi Tips.

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 26, 2025 ∞

Browser Extensions Are a Secret Weapon

This is a special edition of AppAddict. Tonight, I'm covering one of the best sources of computing functionality that often goes overlooked in the hunt for productivity enhancements and better work flows. There are many browser extensions that replace or enhance apps you use every day. This is my personal aresenal that I use in my daily workflow.

A modern Mac is a miraculous machine. My decidedly middle of the road laptop is an M2 with 16GB od RAM. I bought it in December of 2023 and hope to continue using it for years. The number of programs I have running at login (~40) would give Y2K Lou nightmares. The sheer number of installed applications would freak (628) that guy out. Finally, there are my browser extensions, and I'm only talking about the ones for my daily driver, Vivaldi, not the ones in the other five browsers I have installed. Where once I would have been concerned with somehow slowing down the Internet, today I just want to get the maximum amount of functionality out of my interface with it. I use A LOT of extensions. Let's get to them, shall we?

Aboard

Aboard does a a great many things but the way I use it is simple. It what I click when there is a webpage I want to share with my wife. She gets a notification on her phone when I share something and she can view it in the Aboard app or in a browser at the website. It's how I share shows I want to watch, restaurants I want to check out or news items that are blowing my mind.

Activity Watch

Activity Watch is a free time tracker that tells me how long I've been using my computer, which apps I use and for how long and what websites I visited and for how long. I can assign apps and web pages to categories and make the reports it creates as granular as I want to.

Activity Watch - Free No Effort Time Tracker | AppAddict

Language Tool

I use the paid version of this grammar, paraphraser and spelling tool, but I have used the free version as well and it is definitely a step up from native tools.

Language Tool - Free is Good, Paid is Better | AppAddict

Anylist Recipe Importer

I only activate this when I'm looking for recipes. Anylist importer clears all the cruft away from recipe sites and kust imports the ingredients and directions and leaves out all the SEO crap. It works with the Mac/iOS/Web app called Anylist, which is an app I've used for over a decade for shopping and packing lists and collecting recipes.

AnyList for Recipes, Shopping and More | AppAddict

Archive Today Automator

This is the extension I couldn't live without. Whenever I want to read a paywalled article from the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Verge, Medium, The Wall Street Journal or practically any other site, I just hit this button in my toolbar to obtain immediate access to a version from the Internet Archive. I subscribe to and support several progressive news organizations so I don't feel bad for reading MSM sites for free.

Block Party

Block Party is a paid service that inspects settings on invasive websites and changes things with your consent to offer yoy the most privacy possible. It works with Reddit, Google, YouTube, Strava, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, amd Instagram.

Bluesky Sidebar

Bluesky sidebar loads on web pages from the Bluesky social media platform and gives you extra information on the people you follow, the people who follow you, trending topics and the lists you are subscribed to.

Cloudhiker

Cloudhiker is a freemium service that is the closest thing you'll find on the wen today to the old Stumble Upon website. Use Cloudhiker to suggest and discover new sites in a large number of categories.

Cloudhiker - StumbleUpon for the IndyWeb | Linkage

Fedica

Fedica is a freemium service that allows you to schedule posts on all the major social media sites, you can crosspost to several of them at once. Paid customers get analytics and research tools, pluse reports from certain sites, like Mastodon and Bluesky.

Fedica - Post to Multiple Social Networks at Once, On a Schedule - For Free | AppAddict

Kagi Privacy Pass

Thiis extension is iused to authenticate to the paid Kagi search engine if you want to block all access toy what you are searching for. With this enabled, there is no history of your search activity using Kagi.

Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips | AppAddict

Markdownload

This is another one of my favorite extensons. It copies webpage links as Markdown links for insertion into posts and documents. It cam also copy whole pages as Markdown, although now that usefulness has been supplanted by the Obsidian Web Clipper. Finally is will create a markdown list from all the open tabs in a browser windos. It's great for bloggers and researchers.

MarkDownload - The Browser Extension that Works With #Obsidian | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Mastodon Redirector

No matter what Mastodon instance I land on while browsing and following toots from others, clicking this button opens the page in my home instance, allowing me to like, follow and comment with ease. I find that ut works better for me than Graze, another plugin with similar features.

Obsidian Web Clipper

This free tool uses templates to download web pages as markdown files. Using AI, you can get summaries of the page and automatically assign tags. It will even download the transcript from YouTube videos. I have templates for IMDB, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, YouTube, Medium, Wikiepedia and general web pages.

Privacy Badger

This free extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is not an ad blocker. It works hand in hand with them to detect and block trackers using an algorithm and machine learning. The EFF is working on ways to prevent browser fingerprinting, the strategy used by tech companies to follow you around the web without cookies.

Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation | AppAddict

Raindrop.io

Raindrop is a freemium bookmarking service from which I gety great value. I use it to create webpages of links I want to share, to save canonical copies of stories so that if the are removed from the Internet, I can still access them. I have never used my bookmarks more than I have with Raindrop.

Battle of the Bookmark Managers | AppAddict

Quick Pocket

I am a big believer in automation and in reading the work of smart people at depth. Aside from using Pocket as the excellent read it later service that it is, I also use it's integration with IFTTT and RSS to automate the saving of full text blog entries from Matt Birchler and Jarrod Blundy, two of my favorite tech oriented bloggers. Their articles are routed through Pocket right into Obsidian or Day One for preservation and reference. Pocket is owned by the Mozilla foundation.

Ublock Origin Light

The Original Ublock Origin is still the best as blocker ever made. It is no longer compatible with Chrome, Edge and Vivaldi, although Forefox users can still use it. Using a complete security toolkit that includes a customer DNS server, built in blockers in Vivaldi, Ublock Origin light and Freetube for YouTube, I routinely score 99 or 100 on ad blocking tests.

My Online Security Setup | Linkage

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 25, 2025 ∞

KeyKeeper Checks All the Boxes for Tracking Software Licenses

I've been working on getting all my software licensing information into KeyKeeper, an app by the same team that operates Bundlehunt. I've been buying Mac software since the days of the classic OS. Believe it or not, some apps I purchased as far back as 2004 are still functional, requiring the original license ket when I set up a new system. Shout out to SuperDuper!

I've used various methods to track licensing information: a spreadsheet, Evernote, an email tag, Obsidian, the freeware app, Licensed All of them are functional enough, but when I saw the features in KeyKeeper, available for $4.99 in the current bundle, I decided to try it out.

KeyKeeper is security focused, requiring a password to enter the database. The design follows modern Mac conventions. There are all of the database fields you'd expect for this type of app, but you can add unlimited custom fields and file attachments, useful for screenshots and apps that have downloadable license keys. The fields for URLs are live, so if you need to visit a product website or redownload the app, you can do both right from KeyKeeper. A feature I like is the ability to create your won categories for your apps and make your own assignments. You can also create a favorites list. If you've been tracking your app purchases in a speadsheet, you can import the data into KeyKeeper and save yourself all the manual data entry. Once you have the data in KeyKeeper, you can export it into a spreadsheet as well. You can use Python to convert the exported spreadsheet into Markdown notes for Obsidian, if you think that would be helpful.

A single license for KeyKeeper is good for use on two Macs. The regular price is $11.99 if you miss the Bundlehunt special.

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Mar 24, 2025 ∞

iNet Network Scanner

For anyone with a home lab or who is invested in the Internet of Things, the ability to scan your network is a tool that you want in your management arsenal. Additionally, if you live in an urban environment, being able to monitor the devices on your Wi-Fi network is important if you suspect one of your neighbors might be attempting to access anything they shouldn't.

iNet Network Scanner from BananaGlue GmbH is a particularly useful tool for anyone with a home network that's heavy on Apple devices. It's scanner can correctly identify laptops, desktops, iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs and HomePods. It can also pick up other computers, tablets, thermostats, picture frames and similar devices.

Network Scanner

Displays information for all devices powered on and connected to the network including their IP and MAC addresses.
Customize the names of the devices in your network and assign them custom icons
Set the IP range to be scanned or the interfaces to be scanned
Export the scan results as an Excel (csv) or PDF file
Connect to devices with different protocols from within the scanner (e.g., SMB or SSH)

Bonjour monitor

Display of all running services (Bonjour) in real time (e.g. SMB. SSH, Media Sharing, VNC)
Display of the services running on a specific device
Display of detailed information about a service
Selection of the active Bonjour domain

iNet Network Scanner also features wake on LAN controls to sleep, wake and restart compatible devices. For anyone still using an Apple Airport as a home Wi-Fi device, there are numerous monitoring features.

The app is available in the App Store for $24.99 as a one time purchase with lifetime upgrades.

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Mar 23, 2025 ∞

UTM for Virtualization

I recently converted my Windows laptop to Ubuntu. I don't rely on Windows for anything personally any longer so I didn't need a dedicated machine for that OS. However, as the extended family tech support guy, there are occasions when I need to use Windows 10 and Windows 11 to troubleshoot issues for my relatives who have yet to see the light and buy a Mac. I relied on Oracle's free VirtualBox for a long time to build VMs and I've had licensed copies of Parallels through work off and on through the years. It's a good product, but not worth the price just for occasional use.

My current choice for running Windows in a VM on a Mac is UTM. It's free and allows you to run an Intel based version of Windows on an M series Mac. It's slow and inefficient, not something you want to use every day, but for testing and troubleshooting, it's fine. You can't game with a UTM virtual machine. UTM does not currently support GPU emulation/virtualization on Windows and therefore lacks support for 3D acceleration (e.g. OpenGL and DirectX). If you need a Windows license, you can get one at Stack Socialfor $15.

There is a gallery of prebuilt VMson the UTM site.

Windows

Windows 11
Windows 10
Windows 7
Windows XP

Linux (multiple version of each distro)

Arch
Debian
Fedora
Kali
Ubuntu

My choice for creating and running Mac VMs is Virtual Buddy. You can choose a Mac release (including betas) from a long list ranging from macOS 13.3 all the way to macOS 15.1 RC1. If you have a URL for another IPSW or an IPSW you have already downloaded, you can use them as well.

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Mar 22, 2025 ∞

Koofr - European Based Cloud Storage Provider with a Generous Free Tier

I am in the process of de-Googling. I already moved my email to Fastmail. I changed my default search engine to Kagi. I am moving my photographs to Ente. Today, I took advantage of an ongoing sale at Stack Social to purchase a lifetime deal on 1 TB of cloud storage with the Slovenian company, Koofr For $120. I've been paying a monthly fee for cloud storage for more than 10 years and I'm delighted that is coming to an end. My de-Googling project is based more on my desire to preserve my privacy and protect myself from the US government, but I'm happy to save a few bucks while doing it. For anyone who wants to try out Koofr, they offer a 10GB account for free. If you just want an offshore place to store documents, that is a healthy amount of storage, but not enough if you are looking to have a safe place for photos, music and larger backups. You can also subscribe to Koofr monthly with plans starting at a trifling €.5 a month, going up in increments for an additional 10, 25, 100, and 250 GBs before getting to TB and greater options.

The Mac client for Koofr allows you to set up access to your storage as if it were a network drive. Koofr also sets up a folder in your home directory that is synced with its cloud servers. I like this much better than the default location in the ~/Library/Cloud Storage folder used by Google Drive, Dropbox and Box.com. You can add additional folders to sync with the cloud, something I typically do with my default downloads folder so that I can easily share those files between devices. If you have Dropbox, Google Drive or One Drive accounts, you can mount those providers inside of your Koofr vault, something I'm taking advantage of while I work on moving the files I want to secure over to European based storage, protected by European privacy laws which are much stricter than in the US. Koofr's search function will search the files on each of those services as well as itself. The Koofr app also allows me to set up local file sharing between computers on my home network where the data never goes to a could service, it's just a convenient feature to share data between devices.

I was also able to set up Koofr easily in my iOS file manager, FileBrowserPro, using WebDAV.

There is a Koofr client for iOS, Windows and Linux if you use those platforms.

Even free accounts can use use Koofr Vault for extra strong protection. Open source, client-side, zero-knowledge encrypted storage application by Koofr.

There are even more features than I have covered for collaboration, file recovery, data migration from Meta platforms, an image editor, duplicate file detection, drive space management and more.

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Mar 21, 2025 ∞

Zotero as a Free PDF Library Manager

I recently crowd-sourced ideas for a better way to catalog, annotate and search my collected PDFs, mainly software and hardware user manuals with a few odds and ends thrown in. The top suggestions were:

Zotero - the app I chose
DevonThink - expensive when all I want is PDF searches
Eagle Filer - what I've been using, but I want something that is native to Apple silicon, works on IOS and is lightweight as a way to search PDFs only
Paperless-ngx - Interesting, but requires Docker
Obsidia - not suitable because the plugin required for text searched creates too many support files

Zotero

I chose Zotero, because it's free, lightweight and offers an iOS app using the same data. Zotero can import multiple files at once. It has built in tools for highlighting and making annotations to PDFs. There are numerous plugins available, including:

AutoIndex - Keeps the full-text index updated. Beta release. If you have ZotFile installed, Auto-index will also kick off auto-extraction of notes.
PDF Translate - Provides PDF translation for the built-in PDF reader in Zotero
PDF Preview - Preview Zotero attachments in the library view.
Zutilo - Adds additional editing functions and exposes Zotero functions for keyboard shortcuts

Zotero is designed to to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, something for which I have little use. I can however use its browser import tools and added ability to add epub and HTMS archives to my research library. It is compatible with SingleFile, an open-source project for saving HTML archives of web pages. Zotero allows you to attach notes to PDFs, retrieve their metadata and other tasks. You can organize PDFs in folders and collections. The Zotero website provides extensive information, including instructional screencasts, troubleshooting tips, a list of known issues, and user forums.

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Mar 20, 2025 ∞

Permissions Reset 2 - Free Troubleshooting Tool

One of the first steps in troubleshooting a misbehaving Mac for many years has been to repair the disk permissions, currently a feature of Disk First Aid, accessed through Disk Utility or the terminal if you are savvy. That can be a bit of overkill if you are primarily concerned with a single file, folder or app, though. it's time consuming and affects your entire drive.

If you have files, folders or apps that cannot be opened or files that refuse to have changes saved to them, there is a free tool that can quickly solve the issue if it is permission related. Permissions Reset 2 from Taiwanese developers Ohanaware can reset the owner, group, access permissions, Access Control Lists (ACLS), Extended Attributes (including Quarantine) to default settings, simply by dragging an app, folder or file into Permissions Reset, selecting what you'd like reset, then clicking on "Reset".

The app requires macOS 10.13 or newer and is compatible with Sequoia, although it has not been updated since 2021. . If you are familiar with the binary and reversible nature of disk permissions, this shouldn't give you pause. It isn't Apple Silicon native, so if you don't want to use Rosetta, then this isn't for you. If you get anxiety if your apps aren't updated every 15 minutes, then this probably isn't for you either.

You can download the app from the developer's website.

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Mar 19, 2025 ∞

My Current Online Hangouts

These are the places I go online to interact with other folks. If you are not familiar with any of these places, maybe you can check them out.

My Mastodon Server

I am a big fan on the community at OMG.LOL and its Mastodon server, Social.lol, which requires that you have an OMG.LOL account. There is also a Discord community and a Signal group.

Discord

I am a member of several communities on Discord My favorites are : Obsidian.md, OMG.LOL, MacApps,

AppRaven

AppRaven is a community based around the iOS app of the same name. It's for people who like to discover new Mac and iOS apps,

Forums

I have a tom of forum accounts, mostly for software. The most helpful are Obsidian, Drafts, Keyboard Maestro

Reddit

My favorite communities on Reddit are r/MacApps, r/ObsidianMD and r/MacOS

BearBlog Discover

A great place to get to know bloggers is on BearBlog's Discover Page.

Scribbles

The new posts on the Scribbles platform are on the Explore Page

Micro.Blog

Did you know that you can get an account at Micro.blog for $1 month?

Others

I’m on Bluesky if you want to hook up there. I’m also on Pixelfed. Let’s Connect

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Mar 19, 2025 ∞

Setapp Goodness and Tips

Setapp is an app subscription service ($9.99 a month) owned by the Ukrainian company Macpaw. It has approximately 1 million subscribers, which is a good testament to its usefulness. Here are some of the things I've learned in a year and half of being a customer.

Unfortunately, Macpaw is a frequent target of Russian trolls because of the ongoing war between the two countries. Macpaw also makes the utility suite, CleanMyMac, which some people confuse with an older Mac malware program, MacKeeper. The two are not related. If you read the tech press, you'll see good reviews of Setapp. If you rely on Reddit or anonymous online sources, you are likely to run into those pesky Russians I mentioned.

I get tremendous value from my Setapp subscription. The numbers fluctuate a bit, but I currently have 42 apps from the service installed. More than a dozen of those apps are login items that are always running on my Mac. Obviously, they play a vital part in my workflow.

Anyone can try Setapp and all of its app for free for seven days, however if you use my referral link and code PLUMMER you will get 30 days free instead of seven. Also if you are a student, you are eligible for Setapp at 50% off. And, finally, anyone who pays by the year gets a 10% discount.

One tip I can offer is to get your own API key from Open.AI for use with AI apps like Typing Mind or Elephas. It is much cheaper. In a year of constantly using my API with multiple apps, I've spent $15.

If you have any apps from Setapp that you have already purchased, consider using the Setapp version while you have a subscription since it adds to the money that the developer make. It's just a nice thing to do. Brett Terpstra wrote a script and an automator workflow that will tell you if any of the apps on your computer are also on Setapp.

One last thing - I tried the iOS add-on and didn't get that much from it. I do have the add-on to run the apps on a second machine though. It doesn't add that much and it comes in handy.

Here's a List of the Login Apps I Use

Other Setapp Offerings I Have Reviewed

Full list of apps on Setapp, listed by popularity

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Mar 18, 2025 ∞

Apps for Photo Archiving Workflow

I'm in the process of removing my data from most of the big US based tech companies in favor or smaller, more privacy focused companies. I do not want my files to be subject to US government subpoenas or other invasive security threats from which Google, Amazon, Meta or Microsoft can profit. I've downloaded my photo backups from Amazon and Google, made local backups and set up a self hosted photo server. I will also be using Ente, a data storage provider using E2E open-source software.

When downloading my stored photos, I am dealing with cell phone photos, scanned images, DSLR photos and downloaded Internet images. The files from cell phones and cameras contain EXIF data. The scans and Internet files do not. To set the file creation date to match the EXIF data, I used A Better Finder Attributes. by PublicSpaces.

To rename the files so that they file name matches or contains the date the photo was taken, I am using Transnomino, a free file renaming utility that offers renaming based on factors as simple as text replacement to complex replacements based on regular expressions and text-based file attributes.

For dealing with large amounts of zipped archives, I'm using Better Zip because of it's feature that allows you to save workflows that unarchive the files in a variety of locations. It also deals with archive errors better than other utilities that aren't really designed for queued files operations. Better Zip also provides a Quicklook plugin that allows me to see the contents of archives without having to open them.

To sort the files (there are over 100,000), I'm using Hazel which is easily able to separate the videos from the still images. It then moves the files based on the creation date to a folder named for the month and year the image was captured. If the folder does not exist, it creates it.

To move and copy the huge volume of files I'm dealing with, I am using RsyncUI, a graphical front end for the powerful CLI program, rsync.

To view the local files on my Mac, I am definitely NOT using Apple Photos. Right now I am using the free app, XnViewMP, but I am preparing to set up Musebox a one-time purchase app ($15). with capabilities similar to Lightoom.

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Mar 17, 2025 ∞

Fmail2 for Fastmail

After using Gmail for twenty years, I recently decided to move to a more privacy focused provider I could use with my own domain. I've finally reached the tipping point with surrendering my data to big tech in exchange for free services.

I chose Fastmail as my new provider. Fastmail works with just about any email client available. I don't need or want AI capabilities, nor do I have any complicated workflows for email. I use my account purely for personal communications and as a repository for subscriptions. It doesn't make sense for me to use a paid or subscription app for those basic needs, so I opted for a free Fastmail client, Fmail2. This tiny app (8MB) replicates the excellent Fastmail web client and adds a number of features.

Multiple window support
Default email client
Running in the background
Auto hide
Tabs
Dock item with badge
Swipe support
Secure
Notifications
Status bar menu
Keyboard shortcuts

There were several reasons I chose Fastmail from among other options.

Import of mail, calendar, notes, contacts and filters from Gmail
Label support (folders are also an option)
Robust SPAM filters
50GB of storage - 20 years of Gmail only used 8GB, so I think I'll be fine with 50GB on Fastmail
Unlimited alias addresses
Unlimited masked email addresses
Ongoing import of Gmail
Discount for family plan

Fmail2 is a 100% Swift app and runs natively on apple silicon. The developer is Arie van Boxel, who is also behind the excellent Startup Manager app.

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Mar 16, 2025 ∞

Amazon Exit Toolkit

My wife and I are in the process of detangling ourselves from four of the biggest tech companies: Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Of those four, Amazon is the most firmly entrenched in our lives since the company, and it's owner without a soul, billionaire Jeff Bezos provide various services we use, forcing us to find alternatives in several different areas.

News

We dumped our subscription to the Washington Post during the 2024 election when Bezos, the owner of the newspaper, compelled the editorial department to kill its endorsement of the Harris/Walz ticket. While there are some quality journalists working at the paper, Bezos recently became even more involved with editorial policy, making it more pro-MAGA. We took the money we were spending on the Post and the New York Times and used it to support

eBooks

We've been ebook readers since shortly after the Kindle was released. We no longer use Kindle devices to read on, opting for our iPads these days, but we've purchased over 500 titles for the platform from Amazon. I recently downloaded all those files, removed the DRM and converted the files to epub format. Going forward, we will use the following stores and our technical skills to make our eBook purchases available to us on whatever platform we choose.

Audiobooks

Although you can still download audiobooks purchased from the Amazon owned Audible company, the day may come where you are prevented from doing that. I used a free tool to download and convert another 500+ books using Libation - Audiobook Downloader and Converter. I used the Mac app, Permute, to convert some older audiobooks I had downloaded from an account to which I no longer had access. Going forward, we will use these sources for audiobooks instead of Audible.

Television

While Amazon Prime Video has had many shows we've enjoyed, our primary use of the service has been as a conduit to British television via Britbox and Acorn TV. Luckily for us, both of those services have app for the AppleTV, the streaming device we use.

Photographs

We have nearly a terabyte of photos and videos uploaded to Amazon's servers and they don;t make it easy to download them, limiting individual downloads to 200 images at the time. Just to get our photos from the single year of 2014 required 96 separate downloads. Never again. Once I finish getting all the files onto my drive, I will be using an end-to-end encrypted service with servers in Europe to store my photos in the cloud. It also has automatic uploads of iPhone photos, just like Amazon and Google, another place we are leaving.

Ente - Private cloud storage for your photos, videos and more

Shopping

We've found that we can get better deals on products these days by shopping around vs. just buying from Amazon. A couple of examples are the companies Wonder Woman uses for her sports nutrition products and her running shoes.

Mar 16, 2025 ∞

Sensei - Do You Need It?

When it comes to Mac utilities, there are things that are helpful to have, but that are not absolutely required. Many of the "nice to have" features can be gained through installing various free, well regarded applications. For people who don't want the hassle of assembling a toolkit piece by piece, there are apps like Sensei by Cindori Software, for optimization and information.

Sensei Features vs. Free Alternatives

Hardware monitoring of CPU, GPU, RAM, temps, storage and battery. A free alternative is Stats
Cleaning of old caches, logs, big downloads and leftover installation files. A free alternative is Onyx
Uninstalling apps. If you just throw apps into the trash, which was once the accepted way to perform uninstallations, you can potentially leave behind GBs of files in ~/Library subfolders. Intelligent uninstallers locate and remove those files. Free alternatives are AppCleaner and Pear Cleaner
Monitor hard drive health, Drive failures can sometimes be predicted, giving you time to back your data and replace your drive. A free alternative is Disk Drill.
Battery Health. Batteries degrade over time and depending on how long you keep a laptop, may need to be replaced. Utilities like Sensei can tell you how much of your battery's orininal capacity is still viable. A free alternative is Coconut Battery.
Drive benchmarking - measuring the speed of your hard drive isn't necessarily helpful for commercial software, but some special use cases require higher speeds. A free alternative is Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
Startup analyzer - you may have more apps running in the background or at startup than your realize. I recently found five Microsoft remnants that didn't get uninstalled when I got rid of Microsoft 365. A fee alternative is Startup Manager.

Sensei is a subscription app that costs $29 a year for a license that covers three Macs. A similar product, CleanMyMac, by MacPaw, is included in Setapp.

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