Apps

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.

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 15, 2025 ∞

SiteSucker for Mac - Affordable and Powerful

Today I downloaded and tested an app that's been on my radar for a while, SiteSucker for Mac by developer Rick Cranisky.. You can give this app a top level URL, specify how many layers deep you want to go and it will download an entire web site, complete with supporting files like images and style sheets. It has regex filters for anything you want to exclude. After I ran it the first time, I read the error log and excluded the site that was causing issues and it ran much better after that. SiteSucker has been under continuous development since the birth of Mac OX in 2001.

The version available in the App Store is $4.99. It does not downloaded embedded videos. To get that feature you need to download the pro version of the app from the developer's website. Be prepared to an extra $1 for the pro version. The developer states :

"SiteSucker Pro is an enhanced version of SiteSucker that can download embedded videos, including embedded YouTube, Vimeo, WordPress, and Wistia videos. SiteSucker Pro can also download sites from the Tor network. You can try SiteSucker Pro for up to 14 days before you buy it. During that period, the application is fully functional except that you can download no more than 100 files at a time."

When I ran SiteSuckker against one of my blogs, it created a copy of the website on my hard drive that was indistinguishable from the site hosted by my provider. The internal links were pointed to the local files downloaded, while the external links still pointed to the Internet. I had a couple of external links that generated downloads of huge XML files, in one case 375MBs of them. There are reports from some users that they've filled up all the available hard drive space by changing the default settings and not monitoring the download. Don't do that!

You can create default settings or save the settings for different websites as individual files you can open if you wish to re-download a copy of a site.

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 14, 2025 ∞

CharmBar - Easy Dock Customization

Like many Mac users, I enjoy customizing the look of my operating system. I particularly like the look of older, vintage icons from Mac history, having spent a lot of memorable and enjoyable times on older machines. There are several apps that let you make changes to program icons, Replacicon is a well known example, but Apple made it hard to alter systems icons, Don't like the Finder face? Tough. Apple wants you to have it.

Enter CharmBar, a delightful little app from kepler.cafe, makers of DockDoor, another well thought out app that gives you Window previews when you hover the cursor over icons on the dock. Using Charmbar, you can alter or replace dock icons.with any emoji, jpg or png file. Its simple interface lets you create your own library of files. When you pick an application icon to add your own touches to, you select one or more of the images you've added to your library and overlay the original icon. You can completely cover it up or just add whimsical flourishes.

Your changes show up in real time. If you grow tired of the extra elements, they'll go away when you close the program, which runs from the menu bar.

Charmbar is a one-time purchase of $5 on Gumroad. One license code is good for installing the app on up to three Macs. There are no subscriptions and no invasive elements to suck away your data. The developer is active on Reddit, and doesn't appear to mind interacting with the community.

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 14, 2025 ∞

Retirement So Far

Dawn

As the end of my second week of retired life draws to an end, I am reminded that nothing is routine. Weather irregularities and disruptions caused by maintenance issues at the university have had Wonder Woman working from home, which is nice because I like hanging out with her even when she is busy. It's kept me from firmly entrenching myself in a routine, however. When I told her that she was messing with my flow, she didn't appreciate it. All I meant is that it is challenging to establish a routine when the pattern of the days varies so much. Sheesh!

I've continued to work on my home office. It got relocated from our unused dining room to the living area where the two of us hang out so that I can work on my projects without being in a different part of the house. I rounded up all the external hard drives I had floating around, a total of eleven. When added together, they give me 17 TB of extra storage added to the four TB of internal storage in my computers. A lot of that will be unused space for a while. Some of it is being used as backup locations. I set up a Plex server on my Linux computer with movies, TV shows, music, and photos.

Another project is disconnecting from all the big tech companies apart from Apple to the extent possible. We are leaving Gmail and using Fastmail. I have all my important accounts using the new email already. I spend about an hour a day moving some other 240 accounts using my Google credentials each day. I will have that finished by the middle of April. I managed to download and remove the DRM from 500 Kindle ebooks and 500 Audible audiobooks. We are trying to decide on new vendors for each of those media types. We are dropping Amazon Prime next month, so I am in the process of downloading nearly a TB of backed up photos from there. I uninstalled all Microsoft products from my computers, but those sneaky bastards left several processes behind that I had to remove via the Terminal to finally disconnect.

I set up a weekly lunch data with my father. He's the primary caregiver for my step-mother who has advanced Alzheimer's. He needs a break once in a while, and I am happy to spend time with him. We've never been especially close, but he is fun to spend time with. He's a talented storyteller and good at making conversation.

I've assumed sole responsibility for the grocery shopping so that our weekends aren't partially given over to that chore. Wonder Woman wanted me to start making some of her favorite vegetables more frequently, so I've been loading up on asparagus, zucchini, fresh green beans and the like. She never turns down a cuppa either, so we've been having many mugs of the top-shelf Irish tea I love so much.

My sleep patterns are shot all to hell. We go to bed early because Wonder Woman likes to run before work. I am usually awake for good between 2:00 and 3:00 AM, when I get up to start writing. Of course, I get sleepy later on, indulging in a nap while sitting on the couch. I'd like to consolidate that sleep to a continuous period during the night but so far it's not working out.

We've had a couple of weekend getaways. One was to Raleigh for my birthday where we had a good time visiting our favorite restaurants and shops. Then we went down to the South Carolina low country for a race. Next weekend is the first camping trip of 2025 with five of the grandkids. Next month we are going back to Southwest Virginia for the first time since Hurricane Helene. My kiddos have been on the road too or are getting ready to. My daughter and family went to Costa Rica for a family vacation. She's been sending me daily pictures and keeping me updated. My son is preparing for a trip next week to Frankfurt and Berlin for business. His passion is art and I hope he gets a chance to see some good museums between meetings.

As you can see, I have not been bored or looking for things to do. My dream of long spells of uninterrupted time to write has yet to come to fruition, but it will get here soon enough.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 13, 2025 ∞

Giving Criticism

Feedback Dandwich

On my software review blog, AppAddict, I focus on apps I like and that I think will be helpful to other Mac users. The only time I write negative reviews is when I don't like a company's business practices or when my take on an app is different than that of the majority. I give apps a fair test and I'm generally willing to give a developer the benefit of the doubt. I've gotten good feedback from a number of them, including a few I've kind of idolized over the years. The day will come, though, when the author of one of the apps of which I was critical is going to hit me up with a WTF? I'll be glad to listen and if I got something wrong, I'll correct my mistake.I won't just change my take on it because someone asks me to. Lame.

I don't think many people are good at giving constructive criticism or negative feedback. Have you ever had a boss that would email the entire department when trying to correct one person's behavior because they were just to chickenshit to talk to them one on one? I endured that for years with more than one boss. Another indicator of poor people skills is when a boss waits until your annual performance review to criticize you, instead of being a coach or a mentor. Managers get paid to manage, but too many of them don't seem ti like that part of the job.

Giving criticism isn't being mean. Sometimes withholding it is. It's a skill that can be learned. Here are some resources.

How To Give Constructive Criticism: 6 Helpful Tips - Personal Excellence - Includes the infamous feedback sandwich method

Do You Know How To Write A Good Bad Review? | by Liz King | Medium - By now we all know where to look for online reviews — on Yelp, Google, or Facebook. But do we know how to write them, and do we understand how they can impact a small business?

Are You Being Too Critical in Your Relationship? | Psychology Today - Because we aren't taught how to navigate differences in our relationships, we tend to do it badly. However, as adults, we can learn to navigate differences in a healthy way, fostering more safety and connection in our relationships.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 13, 2025 ∞

New File Finding App, Cling, Is Not Everything

I recently saw a new Mac file finding app, Cling, announced on Macupdate and Thriftmac. The description of the app said that it brings fuzzy search to a utility with a GUI. Searches with partial or misspelled file names are promised to work. The developer's website states that the app is designed to be similar in function to the legendary Windows file finding utility, Everything, which is indeed, one of the best file finding apps I have ever used. I've installed it for many users who needed to search network drives containing thousands of files.

I read the documentation on the website which went into detail about the amount of CPU power consumed and the memory needed to run Cling. Logically, since it does not use the Spotlight indez like some other search tools, it n needed time after starting the first time to create its own index. The website said that it takes about five minutes. I gave it a couple of hours. I ran my first seach using the word Obsidian as my search term. I've written several articles and taken a lot of notes about the app by that name. I wanted to see what Cling would return. To my surprise and dismay, it returned a list of folders with Obsidian in the path name. I tried several other searches and discovered that including a file extension helped it locate files to some extent. The results Windows only shows 30 results by default, which you can adjust up to 100, but there is no way to have it show you all the files it finds that match what you are searching for.

To compare the results, I used Find any File, another Mac file-finding utility that builds its own indez. A search for Obsidian returned 4,734 hits, all of which it displayed for me to sort and search through. I did not have to try different file extensions, nor did my results contain unrelated folders that had Obsidian in the path name. I was much happier with the results.

Other Mac search utilities that worked better for me are:

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 12, 2025 ∞

In Search of the Perfect Quotes App

I have collected quotes for years, using various apps, Obsidian Notes, spreadsheets and Google Docs. I am still in search of the elusive perfect, feature packed app. Here's what I would like the app to be able to do.

Features I Want

Import from a spreadsheet containing the quote, author, source, tag(s), date collected
iCloud or other reliable syncing mechanism
Export individual quotes in a format suitable for social media
Universal (Mac and iOS)
Automatic import of author pictures and biographies from Wikipedia or other source
Share sheet in and out
Searchable by tag or author
A nice to have, but not absolutely required feature would be importing Kindle highlights

Apps That Have Some of These Features

Quotemarks - Quote Notebook - This comes close, but it doesn't sync through the cloud and doesn't have a way to share anything but text to social media.
Thoughts - Inspiration Manager - iOS only. Does not display a list of authors. Tag list is not in alphabetical order.
Quotes - Organize and Recall - Mac only. Can't import anything other than a Kindle clippings file.
Quotebook by Lickability - The OG quotes app dating back to 2011. It was removed from the App Store in 2016, but has remained usable. The deprecated version has good syncing via iCloud, automatic import of author pictures and biographies, import and export through CSV. There is no Mac version, however and it's sure to break one day since it is quintessential abandonware.
Quotz - a nice iOS app of quality quotes, but you can't add your own. It does have good sharing features though
BrainyQuote - Another nice quote data base with good sharing features, but with no way to add your own content
TextShot - Works on Mac and iOS. Allows you to create your own quotes with title, author and source, but only saves image files of the quotes, no tagging, no searching.
Quotify - No way to import existing quote collection except through one at a time manual entry. Have to use work around for tagging. Doesn't display a list of authors or tags. Has nice sharing features. The individual import feature is also well thought out.

Quote Sources

If you are interested, I have a repository on GitHub with Markdown notes from 500+ authors and public figures with one or more quotes from each of them. Browse the notes or download a ZIP of the whole thing. They are formatted for Obsidian, if that's your jam.

Goodreads also has an extensive quote library.

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 11, 2025 ∞

Swinsian Music App - The Answer to Feature Bloat

Swinsian is an app for playing music that ticks every box in what a Mac based music player for local libraries sgould be. I can think of no other app that exemplifies bloat like Apple's Music app, a product desgned not for ease of use, but for maximization of revenue. Someone in Cupertino decided that none of us who had massive, carefully tagged collections of music files collected over the years deserved an app to make thge best use of our tunes. They decided we' were just going to stream and that we were going to be happy doing it.

Swinsian took a backup of my iTunes (yes, iTunes) library from 2017, with 32K songs from 2.3K albums and imported the information in a matter of minutes, complete with play counts, ratings and playlists. The customizable interface is reminiscent of a time when iTunes just worked. Now that the information is imported, Swinsian will monitor the folder where I keep my music and automatically add any other files I place there.

You can download and use all of the features of Swinsian without limitations for 30 days, after which it requires a license costing $25. It's available at the developer's website.

Features

Customize

There are multiple ways to view tracks: art grid, column browser and track inspector, all of which can be hidden if you are into a minimal interface.

Organize

Tag multiple tracks at once with ease. Use regular expressions to find and replace tags, ensuring your music stays perfectly tagged. The Duplicate Finder comes in handy, helping you find and remove duplicate tracks with flexible criteria, keeping your library organized and clutter-free.

Control

Control playback with global shortcuts and the mini window. The customizable desktop art widget adds a nice touch to the interface.

Other Nice Touches

Folder watching
Album art fetching
Playback Notifications
Last.fm scrobbling
Separate playlist windows
Find and replace tag editing, with regex support
Smart playlists
Library stats
Playback over AirPlay
Automatic Podcast downloading
Applescript control

Audiophile Information

10 or 31 band Graphic Equalizer
Supports Flac, MP3, AAC, ALAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WAV, Opus, AC3, AIFF, MusePack, DSF, and APE.
Gapless playback
Automatic changing of device sample rate
Support for cue files and embedded cue information

Other Reviews

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 10, 2025 ∞

Communication Evolution

Vivaldi - 2025-03-10 at 20

For years when I was growing up, my Mom's husband refused to get a telephone put in our house. What was strange was that he was a journalist. He spent so much time at the newspaper office that they never needed to call him at home. The rest of us just did without talking to our grandparents or friends except in person. I'm not sure how my mother managed to arrange visits with the family, but she figured it out.

One set of grandparents were on a party line. One long ring meant the call was for them. Two short rings meant it was for the neighbors. If you wanted call someone in the same town, you only had to dial five numbers. Theirs was the first phone number I ever learned and more than 50 years later, I still remember it.

I moved to my uncle's farm when I was a freshman in high school. He and my aunt lived in a 100-year-old farmhouse that thankfully had a telephone, but just one. It had about 50 feet (ca. 15 m) of phone wire tethering it to the wall, so it was semi-portable if you cared to string the wire all through the house to get someplace where you could talk in private.

I wasn't dying to get a cell phone when they first became popular. The whole process of typing out texts on a keypad seemed utterly ridiculous and only business executives and politicians had Blackberrys. Besides, I wanted an actual portable computer, so I spent my money on a Palm Pilot at first. I eventually had to get a cell phone for work. My youngest daughter got a job at Subway, just so she could buy a cell phone, buy somehow I got stuck with the bill. She started dating a GI whose home state, and cell phone number were both Florida based. It didn't matter that he was right down the road at Ft. Bragg. Every time she called him, and she called him A LOT, it was a long-distance charge. She also couldn't stay within her limit of text messages and I got a few surprises there too.

I wish I had the nerd cred to claim ownership of a first gen iPhone, but I didn't make the move until 2009. One of my co-workers was at the Apple Store on Day One though, and he laid down the dough for that squat, under-powered little world changer. There wasn't even an app store. You just went to websites that acted like apps. Steve Jobs said they were just as good.

Once I got an iPhone, I became one of those new phone every year people for the next decade. I made a few release day drives to the nearest Apple Store, a 75-mile one-way drive from home. Luckily, I've never broken a display despite dropping the damn things hundreds of times. I've even driven off with my phone on the hood of my car and didn't break it by slinging it onto the road. I have washed an iPhone in the washing machine. I was sad about that. I also left my phone and wallet at a store when out on a long bike ride once and didn't get either of them back.

I kept the iPhone 11 for four years. I only upgraded because Obsidian wouldn't work correctly on a phone that old. Of course, these days everyone has a phone. My parents both have iPhones and only call me about them occasionally. All but the youngest of the grandkids have phones and I absolutely love texting them. If Wonder Woman and I do anything fun without them, I let them know. I don't go in a candy store without sending "Wish you were here!!" One of our kids, the youngest is a rebellious sort occasionally goes over to the dark side and rocks an Android from time to time. My sister, who has multiple degrees, good politics, a kind heart and a giant brain, has never owned a single Apple product in her life, a character flaw if there ver was one. My Republican brother is also Not An Apple Person. Everyone else is, though.

I like to look at my usage stats from time to time. My goal each month is to have less than five minutes of actual voice use. I don't care how much data I burn through or how many messages I send and receive, I just don't want to talk on the phone. This isn't the 80s.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 10, 2025 ∞

If You Need to Bake a Cake - Get Mela Recipe Manager

I've got cake on the brain today, for some reason...

I've extensively tested four different recipe management apps, all available in the App Store:

All of them are quality apps and they are not mirror images of each other. Anylist, for example has helpful features unrelated to groceries or cooking. It, along with Crouton, is a subscription app. Paprika is a one time purchase of $29.99. Mela, my pick for recipes, is only $9.99. The developer, Silvio Rizzi, is also responsible for the popular RSS app Reeder Classic and the chronological timeline app, Reeder. He's a talented developer but has a reputation for being difficult to get a response from. I don't have personal experience in that area. His apps work fine for me and I've never had to contact him.

Mela Features

In app browser with preview - If you've looked for recipes online, you know they can be buried in SEO slop and lots of stories about how Aunt Nancy used to bake this cake. Mela helps avoid that by automatically extracting most recipes from wordy websites.
Feeds - If you have favorite cooking blogs, you can subscribe to them from within Mela and read the recipes in the viewer.
Cook Mode - Displays the recipe in a large, easy to read font and can load multiple recipes for the same meal
Timers - In app timers to use when preparing meals
Scanner - Scan and OCR recipes from cookbooks and magazines
Apple Integration - Meal planning is calendar based and can be viewed and shared on devices whether Mela is installed on them or not. Grocery lists are managed in reminders and can also be shared on non-Mela devices.
Printing - You can print Mela recipes
Organizing - Create categories for your saved recipes based on your won criteria

The iOS/iPadOS version of Mela is an extra purchase, but it is only $4.99

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 9, 2025 ∞

Time Based App Launchers

Every night my Obsidian Vault is synchronized to a folder on Dropbox. I use an app called Sync Folders Pro, in which you can schedule tasks. The only problem is that in order for the task to run, the app must already be launched. There's no way I can remember to launch it when I'm done using my computer for the day, so I had to find a way to have it launched for me prior to the time the task is supposed to run.

I chose Keyboard Maestro to do it for me, since Keyboard Maestro can also quit the app after the task completes. I use KBM for a lot of things, so it wasn't like I had to spend extra money just to get that feature. There are other, less expensive and simpler apps that can do the same thing.

Task Til Dawn - A Free Mac Automation App - Also automates some file management tasks, printing and browser based tasks
Alarm Clock Pro - An insanely useful app for all sorts of things, app launching is just a single feature
Shortery - The Missing Mac Automator - Unlike iOS, you can't trigger shortcuts based on conditions. Shortery takes care of that by running shortcuts when triggered by time of day, wi-fi connections, calendar events and a dozen other conditions
Scheduler for Mac - Free Automation Utility - this app can launch scripts as well as appsto accomplish all sorts of tasks
Running Cron Jobs on Your Local Mac - If you are a CLI pro, you don't need a third party tool to automate events. You can use crontabto run scripts that do all sorts of things for you on a time based schedule
LaunchControl: The launchd GUI - This is another pretty technical app, one that l provides all the information you need to create or debug a launchd(8) service through an easy to understand GUI.
How to schedule workflows on Mac - You can use the Automator app built into your Mac to create launchers for apps, documents and URLS and then activate those through a calendar alert. One of the available alerts built into the Apple calendar is the ability to open a file. If you just want to open an app, you don't even need to use Automator, just tell Calendar to open the app at time relative to the calendar event your created,

Some other time based tasks I use include:

An Applescript to eject my backup drive in the morning before I wake up so all I have to do is unplug it. ChatGPT can write Applescripts pretty well
An Applescript that moves tasks in Things 3 to a different data and time every night
A shortcut that imports imports screenshots that meet certain conditions into a designated photo album every night
Open and close an app on my two Macs at alternating times because I don't want it running on them simultaneously
Before I retired, I automated the launching of the web page for my job's time clock systm so that I could clock in and out for the day and my lunch break

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 8, 2025 ∞

Newsletter Management

Vivaldi - 2025-03-08 at 19

Modern email clients typically have robust filtering options. If you get email you don't want, and you can't be bothered to unsubscribe, you can filter it right into your trash, spam or into a folder that you never look at.
Gmail - How to filter email
Fastmail - How to set up rules
Apple - Filter emails on a Mac

Many other services let you create aliases so that you can easily determine if any spam you get is coming from an address you used at a certain website. Because management is easy and because I like having useful information come to me instead of searching for it, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. I even pay for a couple of them.

There are some easy to use tools out there for dealing with newsletters. Inoreader, my RSS provider, gives subscribers 20 different email addresses to use to subscribe to newsletters with. You can use the same address for different newsletters, so you aren't limited to just 20 subscriptions. Instead of reading the newsletters in your email app, you can read them in an RSS app or the Inoreader website.

It's common for people with established email accounts to feel overwhelmed by the amount of email they receive. The Unroll.me app can analyze your inbox and help unsubscribe you from newsletters you no longer want. It can also consolidate what you do want to receive into regular digest, combining many emails into just one. It's a free service to boot.

Here are some worthy newsletters to subscribe to:

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 a daily app review, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 8, 2025 ∞

Using Joplin as a Reference Tool

Joplin is a free and open-source notes app. It's available for Macs, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. You can pay for Joplin E2E encrypted synchronization on its servers which are located in France for those looking to avoid US based cloud computing companies who are cooperating with the government. You can also use DIY synchronization on other cloud accounts, like Dropbox or iCloud.

My use case for Joplin is single purpose. After using Evernote from 2009-2023, I exported my data into ENEX files and closed my account due to its exorbitant pricing. I wanted a way to access that information without dealing with Evernote or its owner, Bending Spoons.

My preferred notes app is Obsidian, which is a plain text app that uses markdown. Many of my notes in Evernote were complex HTML emails that didn't translate well into Markdown. The material isn't anything I'll be editing but I want a way to use it for reference when I need it. Joplin did a good job of importing the notes in a readable format. It brought over all my tags. Organizing the information is easy inside Joplin. I elected to use Dropbox for syncing. It took a long time to sync 9K files even though the total file size is just over 1 GB.

I don't plan to add new notes to Joplin, but there is a web clipper available for those who can use that feature. There is also a plugin available that lets Joplin retrieve emails, something easily accomplished in Evernote but that requires considerable workarounds in Obsidian. Joplin doesn't have the same robust extension environment that Obsidian has, but there are several add-ons available.

Joplin is an electron app, so if the prospect of using an app of that nature is against your religion, move on along. I don't mind using electron apps, so it works for my purposes.

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 7, 2025 ∞

My Favorite iOS Time Killers

When you have a lot of time to kill and nothing but your phone, what apps do you turn to as time killers?

My wife is running a 10-hour race this weekend. As usual, I'll be there as her crew, filling her water bottles, handing her food and bandaging blisters in short little bursts of time every hour. The rest of the time, I'll be left with just my phone as entertainment. Unfortunately for me, I don't game. Confessions of a Non-Gamer

I'm also not one to watch movies on a phone. After a few YouTube videos, I start to get restless. I'm a reader with attention span issues. I'm prepared to do without Internet, although hopefully I'll have connectivity. These will be my go to apps.

Pocket: Stay Informed - Pocket is where I save all the articles I want to read, but don't have time for. I also have a couple of RSS feeds that go straight to Pocket. I can add to it on my phone or my Mac. It's also integrated into Inoreader, my feed reader. You can download your saved articles for offline access.

Amazon Kindle - The cool thing about Kindle books is how little space they take up. I have hundreds of books saved on my phone.

NextDraft - I've been reading Dave Pell's daily links blog for over a decade. He suggests and comments on about a dozen stories a day and has a real knack for digging up fascinating content. He's as good at as anyone, even Kottke.

Medium: Read & Write Stories - Since its inception, I've read most Medium stories on Archive.ph. Then one of my cousins started a Medium blog and I got a subscription. It's been nice. Removing the friction and having the ability to subscribe to blogs has exposed me to a lot of good content.

Amerpie's Custom Tech Feed on Reddit - I will confess to being addicted to Reddit like no other place on the Internet. If you hang out in the wrong places there, it can be a real downer, but it also has some helpful and fun communities too. This is my collection of 37 tech related subreddits and where I hang out the most.

I don't think I'll die of boredom.

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 6, 2025 ∞

Local Send - Easy to Set Up and Easy to Use

I am in the early stages of setting up a home network environment consisting of three Macs, a Windows 11 Thinkpad, an Ubuntu 24 Thinkpad, two iPads, an Android tablet and two iPhones. The quickest and easiest way to move files between all these devices has proven to be the free and open-source app, Local Send. As long as all of the devices are on the same wireless network and not logged into a VPN, all I have to do is make sure the app is running on each one to send files.

The settings on the Mac app are straightforward. You can send files, folders, text messages or whatever you have on your clipboard to other devices. The program assigns each device random names (e.g., Shiny Cherry), but you can call them whatever makes sense to you. For receiving files you can toggle between three settings: off, on for any connection and on for favorites, with favorites being other devices you've designated as being in that category.

You have control over the color and light/dark theme of Local Send. You can choose to close the window and have the program accessed from the menu bar. You can set several options for saving files: automatically save, require approval, require a PIN. You can also designate a single folder as the destination for received files and all incoming data will go there.

For security, you can whitelist and blacklist network interfaces. All of them are whitelisted by default. If you need to change the default port, you can do that as well as change the default discovery timeout. Encryption is on by default but it can be turned off. Local send does not require that your network be connected to the Internet. The program collects no data from you to send to the developer.

You can inspect the code and read the documentation on GitHub. Mac Users can get the app from the App Store. It is also available through Homebrew.

brew install --cask localsend

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 5, 2025 ∞

Cog - Free and Open-Source Local Only Music Player

Cog is a free and open-source music player that can read and display metadata from dozens of formats, including AAC, MP3, ALAC, FLAC, Ogg, and WMA. It features playlists, ratings and a mini player. No data from the app is sent to the Internet. Your listening habits don't become data for some privacy sucking mega-corporation.

In the spirit of detaching from big tech as much as possible, I looked for a full-featured music player for my collection of songs and albums in various formats. I needed something robust enough to handle over 30K files without choking. Since the songs in my music folder all have the correct metadata already, I didn't need the ability to edit it. The initial import took some time, but it is a process that doesn't have to be repeated.

Cog reads files where they exist on your disk. It's perfectly able to use music files already in your iTunes library, if you have one, or it can read from other locations, including external drives.

Cog is a versatile audio player with global hotkeys, and desktop notifications. You can shuffle both albums and tracks, repeat single songs, albums, or even whole playlists. It can play music from the internet, including livestreams and hosted files. It even supports Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) using FFmpeg. It can also get live metadata updates from continuous streaming servers, like Shoutcast, Icecast, Ogg Vorbis comments, and timed ID3v2 packets, if the streamer uses them. Furthermore, it can even show you a cue sheet, which is like a list of songs in the order they’ll play. It can also show you album artwork for each song, both inside the cue sheet and outside. It can store album artwork in different formats, like JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, HEIC, or AVIF. It also has a graphic equalizer and a spectrum visualization in the toolbar or a separate window. And if you have a sound device that supports spatial audio, it can use that too. It also has multiple MIDI synthesizers, including the system synthesizer (which works with SoundFonts or the system GS bank) or BASSMIDI (which needs SoundFonts). It supports a number of audio formats, including some that you might not have heard of before, including obscure game and console formats

Cog is available on the developer's websiteand in the Mac App Store. If you are running an older version of macOS, you can download versions that work with them too.

Thanks to @dhry@mastodon.social for the tip on this app.

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 4, 2025 ∞

My App Wishlist

I spend a fair amount of time looking for apps to test and review. While, I seem to concentrate heavily on apps for macOS, I am also fascinated by the solutions developers come up with to get tasks done on the iPhone and iPad. I keep running lists of candidates for AppAddict and for my personal use. I'm sharing this today and hoping to hear back from folks who have opinions on the apps on this list or suggestions for alternatives. Let me know, pro or con, what you think about these.

Usage Device Monitor - Usage is a tool to monitor your device's activity, data usage, connection speed, and more.
Annotable Annotation & Markup - Annotable is the most full-featured all-in-one image annotation tool.
Infuse • Video Player - gnite your video content with Infuse -- the beautiful way to watch almost any video format on your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac, and Vision.
Keep It Mobile - Keep It for iPad and iPhone is a powerful notebook and document organizer that can be used on its own or in conjunction with Keep It for Mac, available separately.
Avast Security & Privacy - Protect your device from online threats and intruders, keep your email accounts safe from scams, browse safely on public Wi-Fi, and stay in control of your online accounts.
Elgato Stream Deck Mobile - Stream Deck Mobile is a full-fledged recreation of our iconic Stream Deck keypad. Now with an all-new design, more freedom to customize, and powerful features exclusive to iPhone and iPad.
Timery for Toggl - Enhance your Toggl time-tracking experience with Timery! Start your most-used timers with one click. Edit your recent time entries easily.
Broadcasts - Broadcasts 3 introduces a beautiful new Mini Player, revamped Search experience, and a new Artwork Chooser to help style your library.
GizmoPack - Bring your shortcuts to the next level with GizmoPack!
one sec screen time + focus - Fight the social media algorithms and win back control over your social media usage & your subconsciousness!
Redirect Web for Safari - Control your browsing with Redirect Web. Set custom redirect rules to navigate your favorite sites automatically.
AirScrobble Last.fm Scrobbler - Welcome to AirScrobble--the ultimate way to scrobble everything from real life and your device directly to your Last.fm profile! Whether you're grooving to vinyl, discovering tunes on the radio, or catching jams on social media, AirScrobble makes tracking and scrobbling a breeze.
Up Ahead Countdown Widgets - Up Ahead is a playful, beautiful way to keep track of everything you're looking forward to. Create events in seconds, and build yourself an eclectic timeline full of birthdays, weddings, holidays, vacations, game releases, sporting events, or anything coming up that brings you joy.
OASIS AI - Create perfect writing in any format just by talking. AI transcribes your natural speech, then rewrites it as a professional email, blog post, college essay, LinkedIn post, text message, outline, TikTok video script, pop song & more.
AI Journal & Diary - Reflectr - Transform your journaling experience with Reflectr, your AI powered private journal, designed to help you understand and navigate your thoughts more effectively
Automadon - Automadon provides a suite of Shortcuts actions for Mastodon with support for multiple accounts. Actions available within Shortcuts include:
HashPhotos - HashPhotos is the ultimate alternative to the Photos app.HashPhotos is the essential photo app for your iPhone/iPad, designed to revolutionize the way you manage, edit, and bring your memories to life.
BookBuddy My Library Manager - BookBuddy is a powerful book management app that gives you access to your entire book catalog, anywhere. Using BookBuddy is fun and easy, allowing you to quickly find any book in your library, share your favorite books, and keep track of borrowed and lent books.
Roadtrippers - Trip Planner - Discover the open road and the great outdoors with ease. Roadtrippers, the \#1 road trip planning app in the USA and Canada
Photomator – Photo Editor - Photomator is a photo editing powerhouse, offering incredible tools for enhancing, retouching, and managing your photos. It includes an extensive collection of cutting-edge color adjustments, automatic selections powered by AI, powerful batch editing features,
This Easy Photo Labels - Tell the whole story by adding pointers, labels, descriptions, and commentary to your photos.
Noir - Dark Mode for Safari - Noir is a Safari extension that automatically adds a dark mode to every website you visit.
Nintype - Transform your iPhone or iPad into a highly productive device where you can actually type relatively quickly with it - so writing emails, reports and articles are much nicer, because you can type faster on the iPad/iPhone than most people can on a desktop keyboard!
Stickier Mobile - Old-school sticky notes with a few new tricks.
Camera M - Pro Manual Camera - Camera M is a professional and modern camera designed to do one thing exceptionally well -- to help you capture beautiful photos in the highest possible quality with powerful and precise manual camera controls akin to a DSLR.
Calendar 366 Events & Tasks - Appointments and to-dos, meetings and deadlines, birthdays and dates - make the most of your time with Calendar 366! Anything a calendar can do... Calendar 366 can do better - and all of its functions can be adjusted easily and intuitively
Kino - Pro Video Camera - Make great video easy! Kino lets you just press record and create cinematic video with color presets created by expert filmmakers--no edit required. Plus, with "AutoMotion," the app automatically creates that smooth "film look" you see at the movies. Shoot great video with no film school required.
‎Mela - Recipe Manager - Mela is a simple, elegant and modern recipe manager that syncs with iCloud.
‎Just a Simple Image Converter - Experience the ultimate image transformation tool with our versatile Image Converter app. Seamlessly convert a wide range of image formats, including JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF, PDF, WebP, BMP and HEIC all in one convenient application.
‎Habit Tracker - Checker - Checker is an app that can help you make new habits stick and be more consistent with any goal you're working towards. It provides an easy way to check in on the actions you're tracking and then displays your progress in a calendar grid, making it easy to see patterns and potential areas for improvement.
‎SnipNotes Notebook & Clipboard - SnipNotes transforms your Mac into a hub of creativity and efficiency, seamlessly syncing with your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Jot down inspirations directly from the menu bar and enrich your notes with images and diverse formatting options. Effortlessly pull in data from the web and other apps with a simple drag or let SnipNotes safeguard your clipboard content for later recall.
‎Cheetah Note - Cheetah Note is a simple yet powerful note app.
‎Bookmark Management - Trace - Trace: Capture Screenshots, Bookmark & Organize. Trace revolutionizes the way you capture screenshots, bookmark content, and organize your digital discoveries. Seamlessly integrated with your favorite apps like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and more, Trace empowers you.

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 3, 2025 ∞

Having Fun with Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Not long ago, an Internet friend and I discovered a way to find out what the apps were that we installed on our first iPhones. For both of us, it was an app to access Wikipedia. One of the world's most popular websites, it's come a long way since it's inception. While there was a time when teachers discouraged students from using it, today Wikipedia is seen as a valuable resource full of links to its sources. It's such an excellent source of unvarnished truth in a world increasinglu controlled by maniacal oligarchs, that it's under attack by them. They seek to destroy what they cannot control.

There are several tools and websites that make Wikipedia rabbit holes fun to go down.

Weeklypedia- join a list to receive a weekly email with the top twenty Wikipedia articles and top five Wikipedia discussions from this weekk, available in English and more languages.

WikiTok - This website combines Wikipedia and TikTok to fight doomscrolling. WikiTok users can swipe through an endless stream of Wikipedia article stubs, discovering random facts and interesting information along the way.

I Made a Graph of Wikipedia... This Is What I Found - YouTube - A deep dive into the network of Wikipedia and some of the the most interesting, bizarre, and unique articles on the website.

Obsidian Web Clipper Templates - For any obsidian fans, this collection of templates for the web clipper includes on that allows you to import complete articles with media straight into your vault.

Use KIWIX to Access Wikipedia and Other Resources Offline AppAddict - You can download Wikipedia, along with all of the pictures and videos!

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 3, 2025 ∞

Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips

Kago Logo

For those not familiar with it, Kagi is a subscription based, no-ads, privacy-focused search engine that provides an extreme level of customization. Unlike DuckDuckGo, which relies on Bing for most of its results, Kagi has its own scraper and while it does make API calls to other search engines, it is not totally reliant on them. Understandably, not everyone needs or wants to pay for privacy, but for people in vulnerable communities or who are politically active in ways that aren't supporting their nation's current government, it is a valuable resource.

Privacy Pass

Kagi recently released Privacy Pass, " a privacy feature that allows you to use Kagi Search without revealing your identity. When enabled, it lets you perform searches anonymously while still verifying that you're a valid Kagi subscriber. Think of it as a digital token system - similar to getting tokens at an arcade, where once you have them, you can use the services without showing your ID each time." To use Privacy Pass, you need to install a browser extension that enables it.

Kagi Search Extension

Kagi also has a search extension that automates setting it as your default browser and also provides for continuing a search session is a private browsing window.

Using Kagi with Safari

Since Apple limits the selection of custom search engines in Safari, due no doubt to the $18 billion that Google pays them for the right to be Safari's default search engine. There is a good work around though, Xsearch for Safari lets you instantly switch between multiple custom search engines from the Safari address bat. It works in macOS, iOS and iPadOS.

Kagi Features

Kagi has zero ads and zero trackers. It's so secure that what you search for can be totally separated from your identity. You can customize your results easily. If, like any sane and rational person, you don't want to see any stories from the popular news channel that was fines $700 million for lying on the air last year in your search results, you can block the site from ever appearing. If you realize just how many answers to life's questions can be found on Reddit, you can tell Kagi to prioritize the site. In fact, you can customize up to 1,000 sites, either by blocking them or by promoting results from them.

I created a list of sites that are over-represented in search results because of search engine optimization,. It's not that their content is good. It's that the sites are engineered through content farming and keyword usage to appear high in search results. You can copy and paste the list right into Kagi's settings and never have the sites pollute your searches again. Because of problems with the mainstream media in the US, I also created a list of alternative news sources that I told Kagi to prioritize.

You can make your own custom search environment. Kagi calls that a Lens. Kagi Lenses allow you to customize your searches by specifying which websites (and other parameters) you see in your results. They provide a few Lenses to get you started, such as one to search only online discussions and forums.

Have more questions about Kagi? Get all the answers here.

✉️ Reply by email