This Week's Sponsor:

Winterfest 2024

The Festival of Artisanal Software


Posts in Sponsored Posts

Kolide: Endpoint Security for Teams That Slack - Try Kolide for Free Today! [Sponsor]

At Kolide, we believe the supposedly Average Person is the key to unlocking a new class of security detection, compliance, and threat remediation. So do the hundreds of organizations that send important security notifications to employees from Kolide’s Slack app.  

Collectively, we know that organizations can dramatically lower the actual risks they will likely face with a structured, message-based approach. More importantly, they’ll be able to engage end-users to fix nuanced problems that can’t be automated.

Try Kolide for 14 days free; no credit card required.

Honest.Security is one part guide and another-part manifesto that defines a user-first approach to security and IT compliance. It’s not just Kolide’s north star but also an aspirational roadmap. It’s our positive contribution to counterbalance the worrying upward trend of human-hostile cyber security, device management, and workplace surveillance philosophies that we’ve seen reach a fever pitch as organizations adapt to the long-term term prospects of remote work.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Kolide: Endpoint Security Powered by People; Try for Free! [Sponsor]

Kolide is a SaaS app that sends employees important, timely, and relevant security recommendations concerning their Mac, Windows, and Linux devices, right inside Slack.

Kolide is perfect for organizations that want to move beyond a traditional lock-down model and move to one where employees are educated about security and device management while fixing nuanced problems. We call this approach Honest Security.

For example, Kolide can:

  1. Instruct developers to set passphrases on the unencrypted SSH keys littered throughout their devices.
  2. Find plain-text two-factor backup codes and teach end-users how to store them securely.
  3. Convince employees to uninstall evil (yet allowed) browser extensions that sell their browser history to marketing companies

You can try Kolide on an unlimited number of devices with all its features for free and without a credit card for 14 days.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.


MenuBar Stats: Advanced System Monitoring [Sponsor]

MenuBar Stats is a suite of 9 menu bar modules for monitoring your Mac that has been developed over the course of 9 years of listening carefully to customer feedback. The app tracks your Mac’s:

  • Battery
  • Bluetooth devices
  • CPU
  • GPU
  • Storage
  • Memory
  • Network connection
  • And, with a helper app, your Mac’s temperature and fan speed

The app, which is highly customizable, provides essential details, with even more extensive information just a click away. Modules can be combined into a single window, displayed as individual windows, and anchored to always be visible. The stats monitored are available as a collection of more than 10 widgets and accessible through MenuBar Stats’ Shortcuts actions. The app has been extensively tested on and tuned for Apple’s latest M1-based Macs and includes a tool to clean your Mac’s memory too.

MenuBar Stats goes beyond monitoring and reporting with the ability to set up notifications to alert you of the details that matter most to you. Whether that’s when your battery reaches a certain level or when there’s a process that is monopolizing your CPU, MenBar Stats can alert you, so you’ll know the moment your Mac needs your attention.

Acting on those notifications couldn’t be simpler. MenuBar Stats can take you to a long list of Mac system utilities from your menu bar or using global keyboard shortcuts that you define. There’s also backup and restore functionality, so you can recreate your carefully-crafted setup anywhere.

It’s easy to see why MenuBar Stats has an average rating of 4.5 stars worldwide. Download MenuBar Stats today to see for yourself why so many people rely on it to monitor their Macs.

Our thanks to MenuBar Stats for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Collections: A Powerful Database with iCloud Sync [Sponsor]

Collections Database is the premier personal database app for organizing anything and everything on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

The app features more than 20 field types, linkable sub-databases, reusable lists, and a robust customization system. It’s a powerful and flexible solution that makes Collections easy to get started with for beginners, while meeting the needs of advanced users too.

Collections provides essential templates to get started, including Expenses, Contacts, Subscriptions, Books and more. However, you’re always free to start from scratch by building your own custom templates.

A long, complete list of field types is available for your databases too. The set includes everything you’d expect from a modern database app, including Text, Number, Date, Picture - even Barcode fields. Collections can also import spreadsheets from other apps, using its powerful CSV import functionality. Collections also offers quick filters, sorting, password protection, smart text-based search, and more.

Collections is free to try, but by upgrading to the Pro version via In-App Purchase, you’ll gain access to an unlimited number of database entries and files, plus advanced filters. The Pro version also includes a unique visual formula editor the makes building complex formulas intuitive and easy.

The app is a universal purchase, so your purchase will be available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. At the same time, though, Collections has been carefully optimized to each Apple platform for the best experience on every platform.

Collections is regularly updated to take advantage of the latest Apple technologies and is privacy-minded. Your data isn’t collected or sent anywhere else.

To learn more, and download Collections Database visit the App Store today.

Our thanks to Collections Database for sponsoring MacStores this week.


Textastic: Code Editor and SFTP Client for iPad and iPhone [Sponsor]

Textastic is the most comprehensive and versatile text and code editor available for iPad and iPhone.

This starts with syntax highlighting support for more than 80 programming and markup languages: Textastic handles highlighting for C, C++, Swift, Objective-C, Rust, Go, Java, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, Lua, Markdown, LaTeX, YAML, JSON, and many more. If your favorite language is not yet included in the extensive list, you can add your own syntax definitions and themes compatible with Sublime Text and TextMate.

With clients for SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, Dropbox, and Google Drive, as well as the integrated SSH terminal, however, Textastic goes well beyond the functionality of a traditional text editor. Since Textastic supports tabs, you can have multiple files and SSH terminals open at the same time, and, on iPad, in multiple windows side by side.

Whether you want to create web pages and check them with the built-in web preview, edit configuration files on your server, or perform code reviews, Textastic is the perfect tool for your mobile workflow.

Customizable keyboard shortcuts, wide-ranging configuration options, support for Git repositories using the Git client Working Copy, and robust find and replace, turn this app into the most powerful code editor for iPad you’ll find.

The long list of features also includes support for iCloud Drive, the Files app, drag and drop, trackpad and mouse, printing, Split View, multiwindowing, and a whole lot more.

The app is, of course, regularly updated and maintained as well. With the recently released version 9.8, for example, Textastic got the ability to search the contents of files in a folder and its subfolders for text or regular expressions, allowing you to stay on top of large projects and quickly find what you’re looking for.

And if you ever get stuck, the in-depth manual, which describes every part of the app in detail and is illustrated with nearly 150 screenshots, will help you out.

To learn more about Textastic and what it can do for your iPad and iPhone code editing needs, visit textasticapp.com, and download a copy today.

Our thanks to Textastic for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Take Your Business Out Of The Dark With Daylite [Sponsor]

For small businesses, it can be difficult to stay on top of clients, leads, and projects that are evolving every day. Here’s how Daylite can help supercharge your team to shine brighter, handle more clients, close more deals, and execute more projects. Designed for Mac, iPhone, and iPad exclusively.

Daylite empowers small businesses by improving team efficiency and making collaboration easy—everything is organized, searchable, and accessible (even offline). You can easily access information and segment data tailored to your specific client’s history. You can manage and share everyone’s schedules, project status, and next steps. 

Seamless Apple Integration

Daylite is the only Mac CRM and productivity app that integrates with Apple devices and most of the built-in Apple apps and features, like direct Apple Mail integration. You and your team can capture all email communication in one place and create opportunities, appointments, and tasks right from your Apple Mail. 

Linking 

Its linking capability is what makes Daylite shine. You can link emails, notes, tasks, projects, appointments, and other records to existing contacts in Daylite. This enables teams to quickly and clearly view an organization’s structure and access the information they need in a unique way. 

CRM + Project Management

Daylite’s productivity-focused design helps you and your team get more done throughout the full customer lifecycle. From meeting prospects and winning business to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through to following up on referrals and repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite. 

If you live by the Mac, you’ll love Daylite. Start your free 30-day Daylite trial today!

Our thanks to Daylite for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Prizmo: Pro Scanner App with OCR, Pencil Annotation, PDF & DOCX Export [Sponsor]

Prizmo is a fully-featured scanner app for iOS and Mac that lets you capture documents and receipts, turning them into professional PDFs that you can share, archive, annotate, fill out as forms, or sign with the Apple Pencil or your finger. The app is perfect for scanning business cards to add people to your contacts too.

The capture workflow on iOS has been streamlined in Prizmo’s latest release as a tap-free multi-page scanning process with the ability to review pages as you scan. Text recognition starts immediately in the background, and the PDF is auto-uploaded into your shared folder immediately without any user action.

Prizmo also offers some of the deepest editing tools available in any scanning app, such as page curvature flattening, edge repair, background cleanup, user-editable OCR layout, and much more. Prizmo edits are non-destructive, meaning you can reverse any operation at any time without the need of rescanning, so even your Apple Pencil annotations from a week ago can be edited at any time.

Among Prizmo’s output formats, PDF gets many customizable options, including image compression level and a JBIG2 encoder for extremely lightweight black and white scans of just 40KB per page, useful for archiving large amounts of data. It also comes with image and text exports and can create fully-formatted DOCX documents that you can edit further in Apple Pages or Microsoft Word.

Prizmo offers not one but three OCR engines to handle the variety of languages and document styles too. And its most advanced one, Cloud OCR, is about to get an important update in the coming weeks with new, breakthrough capabilities.

Prizmo is localized in many languages, and it offers specific accessibility features for blind and vision-impaired users, including VoiceOver support and a dedicated text reader.

Through Sunday, March 6th, Prizmo’s Premium Pack, which is a one-time payment, is 30% off on the App Store, so be sure to download it today for just $/€13.99. Prizmo for Mac is on sale, too, for 33% off ($/€39.99) on the Mac App Store.

Our thanks to Prizmo by Creaceed for sponsoring MacStories this week.


UpNote: A Clean and Powerful Note-Taking App Across Platforms [Sponsor]

UpNote packs extraordinary power into a clean, delightful design that makes it a pleasure to take notes. Crafted to make focused note-taking effortless wherever you are, UpNote combines its beautiful, streamlined interface with powerful tools that use the latest technologies on every platform to deliver a superior experience.

The app works on iOS, Android, the Mac, and Windows, making it an excellent solution for anyone who needs access to their notes across multiple platforms thanks to the app’s fast, reliable sync. Plus, UpNote works however you want and wherever you are with themes, dark mode, a wide font selection, focus and typewriter modes, and the ability to work online and off.

Notes can be organized into notebooks and sub-notebooks too. Hashtags, note pinning, and bookmarking add even more ways to quickly access your notes. It’s a structure that’s supplemented by powerful search and sorting to make navigating even the largest collections of notes simple.

UpNote has all of your note-taking needs covered. Rich text formatting like tables, code blocks, attachments, images, bi-directional links, to-do lists, and more. Of course, the app supports Markdown syntax as well.

To handle your research needs, UpNote has a web clipper extension, so you can quickly save links and content as you browse the web. There’s even a great solution for longer notes: a table of contents feature that makes navigating long notes a breeze. The app can also be locked, which makes it perfect for journaling.

Switching to UpNote is easy, with powerful import functionality that can handle Evernote, Markdown, and other formats. The app handles backups automatically and includes a version history too. And, when you need to use your notes elsewhere, you can export them as Markdown text, HTML, or PDFs.

Now is the perfect time to try UpNote. The app includes subscription and lifetime upgrade options, and for a limited time, MacStories readers can purchase UpNote’s lifetime premium upgrade for 30% off. This is an amazing deal, so be sure to check it out today.

Our thanks to UpNote for sponsoring MacStories this week.


TextSniper: Capture Any Uncopyable Text [Sponsor]

If you’ve ever been frustrated by text you come across that you can’t copy, you need TextSniper, the premier Mac utility for copying the uncopyable.

Whether you’re working with photos, screenshots, apps, videos, or materials from webinars or online meetings that include uncopyable text, TextSniper has you covered. The app is the fastest and easiest way to extract that text no matter where you come across it.

TextSniper runs in the background and can be summoned with a single keystroke, so you can select the area of your display from which you want to extract text. A friendly thumbs-up lets you know that the text has been copied and placed on your Mac’s clipboard, ready for pasting elsewhere. You can use an iPhone or iPad to capture text directly to your Mac too.

The app is fast, accurate, includes customizable keyboard shortcuts, and works with multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Chinese. TexSniper also works with QR codes and barcodes, simplifying the process of accessing URLs, text, and numbers embedded in them. It can even read onscreen text aloud, a big plus for people who are visually impaired, have dyslexia, or prefer listening to reading.

Of course, TextSniper is privacy-focused too. The app doesn’t collect, store, or share any user data. Text recognition happens locally on your Mac and doesn’t require an Internet connection.

If you work with text – and who doesn’t really? – you owe it to yourself to download TextSniper today. The app requires macOS Catalina or later and is fully compatible with Apple silicon Macs.

Also, for a limited time, MacStories readers can purchase TextSniper for 25% off by using the code MACSTORIES at checkout. So, take advantage of this great deal today and start copying the uncopyable with TextSniper.

Our thanks to TextSniper for sponsoring MacStories this week.