Apps
I’m a little late this week, but here’s my /now page with a funny-ass book, a bloody TV show, lot’s of blogging goodness, links and app reviews plus a gift idea for your favorite #ultrarunning enthusiast.
My Backup Strategy
📝 Everyone eventually suffers a data loss, either from a hardware failure, a rouge application, user error or some mystery cause. The only effective solution is a good backup strategy. It’s up to you how much energy and time you want to put into it. The way you use your computer will dictate what kind of tools you want to use.
Everyone who uses a Mac should have a Time Machine backup drive. My primary home computer is a laptop, so I don’t leave the external Time Machine connected all the time, but i do connect it every night. This gives me a restore point for every day on the calendar if I need to recover some missing files, as well as a way to restore my entire computer in case of drive failure.
Once a month I use the drive cloning app, SuperDuper to make a bootable backup of my entire hard drive. I keep that in my car when I am not using it in case something catastrophic happens to the house.
I also take full advantage of cloud storage accounts. All of my photos are copied to iCloud Photos, Google Photos and Amazon Photos. My documents folder is synced with iCloud and while there is a difference between backup and syncing, it does provide a second copy of what’s currently on my hard drive.
One of my most valuable (to me) sets of documents are my blog archives. I have multiple backups of them, including a synced copy on Google Drive, a copy on Obsidian Sync and a copy on GitHub.
Aside from my personal laptop, I also use a Mac at work. I use Google Drive and One Drive to sync files between the two devices, primarily my downloads folder to save myself the hassle of having to download things on both machines.
Avoid Mackup If Running Sonoma or Later
Today on App Addict - Avoid Mackup If Running Sonoma or Later - A couple of weeks ago I saw a post on r/MacApps for a utility that purported to back up your preferences for a large number of apps, including perennial favorites Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Bartender, Text Expander and others. The name of the utility is Mackup and it is available on… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/avoi… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
Rambox - A Browser for Apps
Today on App Addict - Rambox - A Browser for Apps - I took advantage of an offer at AppSumo this week to get a lifetime license to Rambox Pro for $5 (discontinued). It’s normally $5.83 a month, although the free version has most of the paid features minus extension support and syncing between devices. Rambox is a specialized Chromium browser designed… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/ramb… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
11 Plugins for QuickLook
Today on App Addict - 11 Plugins for QuickLook - One of my favorite features of macOS is QuickLook, activated by pressing the spacebar when you have a file highlighted in the Finder, it enables you to view the contents of a file without having to open an application. The problem is that there are many file types that don’t… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/11-p… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
A Few GUI Tools for the Homebrew Curious
Today on App Addict - A Few GUI Tools for the Homebrew Curious - If you’d like to explore some of what’s available in macOS through Homebrew, the command line package manager but you are a little intimidated by the terminal, you are in luck. There are some apps with graphical user interfaces to help you see what’s available, what you have installed and… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/a-fe… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
The Most Underrated Native Mac Utility
Today on App Addict - The Most Underrated Native Mac Utility - The native Mac tools are great but most of them can be replaced with third-party apps that add extra features. Even the geeky apps like Terminal and Activity Monitor have apps like iTerm and Smotrite to serve as alternatives. There is one app though that I think is perfect the… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/the-… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
ImageOptim - Free and Open-Source Utility to Reduce File Sizes
Today on App Addict - ImageOptim - Free and Open-Source Utility to Reduce File Sizes - ImageOptim is a tiny utility that every Mac user should have in their toolkit. It integrates a half dozen image optimization tools behind the scenes to quickly and efficiently provide an optimum file size without quality loss, including MozJPEG, pngquant, Pngcrush, 7zip, SVGO and Google Zopfli. As part of the… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/imag… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
Mind Node for Mind Maps
Today on App Addict - Mind Node for Mind Maps - I’ve used the Mac and iPadOS versions of Mind Node mind mapping software for about 10 years. I checked my documents folder and found mind maps for deploying different versions of Mac OS X server when that was a thing, plus deployment plans for new laptop models, tech support documents… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/mind… #Universal Apps #Blaugust2024
24 Hour Wallpaper from Jetson Creative
Today on App Addict - 24 Hour Wallpaper from Jetson Creative - I don’t see my desktop during my working moments, but when I lock my computer, I have a different wallpaper displayed on each of my monitors. I also have a Keyboard Maestro macro that runs when I unlock my computer and hides all open apps for privacy reasons in case… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/24-h… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
Start from Innovative Bytes
Today on App Addict - Start from Innovative Bytes - Start by Innovative Bytes is an app launcher with extra features that make it different enough from FolderPeek and XMenu to be worth checking out. Like the other two apps, it offers a way to access your favorite apps, folders, files and URLs from the menu bar. It also lets… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/star… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
Almighty - Tweaking and Utility Collection
Today on App Addict - Almighty - Tweaking and Utility Collection - Almighty, a collection of tweaks and utilities bundled into one app is by Khoa Pham, the same developer behind the popular low-priced clipboard manager PastePal. There are 50 different settings and utilities in the app, and you can enable and disable at will. They can be launched from the menu… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/almi… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
FlowVision - Image Viewer
Today on App Addict - FlowVision - Image Viewer - After seeing the developer of FlowVison, a free image viewer for macOS, post about his new app on Reddit, I downloaded it and have been using it for the past week. The app has a Finder style interface similar to what you see when you enable icon view and enlarge… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/2024… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
Folder Peek FTW
Today on App Addict - Folder Peek FTW - Folder Peek by heroic Indy Developer Sindre Sorhus is the GOAT of menu bar access apps. I liked XMenu from Devon Technologies, but Folder Peek has more features and is just as rock solid in performance. Folder Peek lets you put folders full of whatever you want on your menu… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/fold… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
App Tamer from St. Claire Software
Today on App Addict - App Tamer from St. Claire Software - St. Claire software makes an app that can help control heat and fan noise, extend your battery time and increase the amount of CPU power available for you frontmost application. App Tamer comes preconfigured to automatically reduce the CPU and battery usage of Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, Spotlight, Time Machine,… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/app-… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
BatchMod - Classic Utility, Abandoned But Still Partly Functional
Today on App Addict - BatchMod - Classic Utility, Abandoned But Still Partly Functional - Back in the days when Apple still made hardware servers and an operating system to go with them (at $1K a copy) we used to have to deal with hundreds of user home directories in my line of work as a K-12 system admin. Most users files got deleted at… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/batc… #Blaugust2024
SilentKnight - Free Security Checks for Your Mac
Today on App Addict - SilentKnight - Free Security Checks for Your Mac - SilentKnight from The Eclectic Light Company is a free utility to check the security settings of your Mac. it will let you know of any uninstalled security upadtea you may be missing and offer to download and install them from you. It’s often better to run these updates from Software… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/sile… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
Paletro - Add a Command Palette to Any App
Today on App Addict - Paletro - Add a Command Palette to Any App - Paletro, by appmakes.io, is a $6.99 utility that gives you a command palette in any app. Large, multifunction apps with many commands like VScode, Sublime Text or Obsidian can have dozens of menu commands and good luck to the intrepid user who tries to remember them all. That’s why those… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/pale… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
Quick Note Taking – Type
Today on App Addict - Quick Note Taking – Type - Type is a menu bar app designed with one purpose in mind, to capture time-stamped notes in plain text or Markdown format quickly and to get out of your way. It’s fast and more versatile than using the fn+Q Apple Quick Note feature which doesn’t time stamp and is available… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/quic… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
Meteorologist - Free and Open-Source Menu Bar Weather
Today on App Addict - Meteorologist - Free and Open-Source Menu Bar Weather - Keeping track of current weather conditions and forecasts is a breeze (no pun intended) with the free and powerful menu bar app. Meteorologist, a free and open-source utility available on Sourceforge. I’ve user Meteorologist for years and have been impressed by a steady stream of updates.
To save on… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/mete… #Mac Apps #Blaugust2024
