A new professional app for the iPad launched last week. It’s called Muse, and it turns your iPad into a tool for thought.

Muse gives you a spatial canvas for your research notes, sketches, screenshots, PDFs, and bookmarks. File managers and note-taking apps put your content into sorted lists and grids. By contrast, Muse is inspired by your desk: personal, creative, even a little messy.

You can pull in documents and clippings from iCloud or Dropbox, your iCloud photo library, or drag-and-drop from other apps. Use your Pencil to draw on, around, or in between everything, discovering and making connections between ideas as you go. And the zooming interface allows you to nest all your content to create a beautiful, explorable knowledge garden.

Muse is $99.99 per year, but you can try it for free with up to 100 cards. It’s a terrific way to dig in and understand how Muse can help you organize your projects.

Download Muse from the App Store today. Because deep thinking doesn’t happen in front of a computer.

Our thanks to Muse for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Textastic is the most complete and versatile code editor available for your iPad and iPhone. The app’s versatility starts with its extensive support of syntax highlighting for more than 80 programming and markup languages. Textastic handles highlighting for HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, C, C++, Swift, Objective-C, Java, LaTeX, Python, Ruby, Perl, Lua, and dozens more.

Textastic is also a full-featured Markdown text editor that includes a built-in web server and Safari support for previewing your work. The app is compatible with Sublime Text and TextMate syntax definitions too.

Textastic goes well beyond the features of a classic text editor, though. You can manage remote file transfers with FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Dropbox, and Google Drive and there’s a terrific, full-featured SSH terminal built right into the app. Because Textastic supports tabs, you can even have multiple files and SSH terminals open simultaneously.

With robust search and replace that supports regular expressions, keyboard shortcuts that are customizable, and support for Git repositories using Working Copy, it’s the most powerful code editor you’ll find anywhere with a long list of features, including support for the Files app, drag and drop, printing, iCloud Drive, Split View, multiwindowing, context menus, and a whole lot more.

The app is regularly updated and maintained too. With the release of version 9.3 in June, Textastic gained new keyboard shortcuts for code comments, a setting for automatically inserting a matching closing character for parentheses, square brackets, and curly brackets, code awareness that allows for automatic indentation based on syntax context, an adjustable line height setting, and a setting for displaying the selected line indicator in a document’s gutter. Dark mode has been improved too, allowing users to select a separate code editor theme and keyboard appearance and preview Markdown using a dark color scheme.

To learn more about Textastic and what it can do for your code editing needs on the iPhone and iPad, visit textasticapp.com, to download a copy today. You’re going to love it.

Our thanks to Textastic for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Sidequest is a brand new extension exclusively for Slack that enables you to create helpdesks and personal task inboxes that teams love, 100% inside Slack. With Sidequest, you get the perfect combination of the dependability of a helpdesk system, the effortlessness of a task management app, and the convenience of Slack, all in one terrific, integrated package.

When it comes to helpdesks and request tracking tools, we all seem to share the same love-hate relationship. For many teams, helpdesks are the only way to process a large volume of requests efficiently and reliably, but at the same time, they can feel incredibly impersonal, old-fashioned, and inaccessible, especially when used for internal purposes, such as an IT service desk.

Sidequest makes you love your helpdesk again, by combining the reliability of traditional ticketing systems and the ease of use of modern task managers inside Slack. It allows your workspace members to create tasks in public or private support channels as well as for each other in personal task inboxes. As soon as a ticket has been created, Sidequest becomes the single point of truth, so your team always has a shared understanding of the task at hand, its history, and its status. That way, everyone is on the same page, and nothing slips between the cracks.

Better yet, there is no need to install new software or to set up accounts, as Sidequest lives 100% inside Slack. And because Sidequest is made in Germany, your data and your users are fully protected by GDPR, which is one of the world’s strictest data protection laws.

Start your new helpdesk today with a 30-day free trial of Sidequest by visiting getsidequest.app/macstories. Then, use promo code MACSTORIES for 50% off the first six months. Love your helpdesk again, with Sidequest for Slack.

Our thanks to Sidequest for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Tinderbox is a powerful Mac app that stores and organizes your notes, plans, and ideas, bringing order and insight to the vast amounts of information collected when you’re working on a big project. Whether that’s writing a book, creating course materials, planning a wedding, or just managing your day-to-day life, Tinderbox helps impose structure on your data to keep you organized and productive.

The app, which packs unparalleled power for analyzing, visualizing, and understanding your notes, is beloved by researchers, writers, investigators, product managers, and teachers. That’s because Tinderbox acts as a personal content assistant giving you the tools you need to discover connections and relationships between your notes that you might otherwise miss.

It’s easy to get started by dragging out lines connecting your notes or use Tinderbox’s wiki-like Ziplinks to link notes and ideas together. Best of all, Tinderbox adapts to the way you work. You can use mind maps with shapes, colors, and links to surface connections, or one of many other tools like outlines, word clouds, timelines, and dashboards. Each is a powerful way to gain new perspectives on your ideas, while adding as little or as much structure as you’d like.

Tinderbox also has agents and rules, and employs powerful AI tools to automatically identify names and places, look up addresses, and even suggest links. Of course the app integrates neatly with other apps too. Connect the app to Apple’s Notes app, and notes you enter on your iOS devices or Mac can be automatically categorized in Tinderbox. Of course, the app works with apps like DEVONthink, Scrivener, Bookends, and others, plus there’s a vibrant community.

So download Tinderbox today to try it for free, and when you’re ready to purchase use this link to save more than $50 on the best way to visualize, analyze, and share your ideas.

Our thanks to Tinderbox for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Airmail Pro is the Apple Design Award-winning email client for the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, and the Mac that combines elegant design and support for the latest Apple technologies with rich, customizable features that tame your inbox with a single subscription for all your devices.

Everyone’s email workflow is a little different. With Airmail’s extensive customizations, unique actions, and deep integration with the latest Apple technologies as well as other apps and services, the app works for you instead of against you.

The app can handle every major email service and standard. It’s smart, unified inbox provides unparalleled message management with features like inbox filters, message snoozing, and scheduled message sending. There’s also a privacy mode that processes all the data locally on your device, blocks tracking pixels, and prevents images from loading automatically. On the iPad, Airmail Pro shines with Split View support, drag and drop, keyboard shortcuts, an iPad-optimized layout, trackpad support, two-finger multiple item selection, and dark mode.

Airmail Pro, which was launched earlier this year, adds terrific new and updated features for Pro subscribers like a brand-new design, improved search, new themes like Cherry Tree and Leaf, and custom actions. There’s also support for interactive notifications so you can delete, archive, or reply to messages from inside a notification, bulk message management with swipe actions, lots of sorting and filtering options, message templates, a new calendar preview, search suggestions, and custom actions from the trackpad.

Take control of your email across all of Apple’s platforms today by downloading Airmail for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch now.

Airmail Pro is free to try without multiple account support and with other limitations. If you’re an Airmail Pro subscriber on iOS or bought Airmail 3 after January 1, 2019, the full, unlocked versions of Airmail are available for no extra charge. Other users can use earlier versions of the app by going to Preferences → General → Airmail Legacy.

Our thanks to Airmail Pro for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Calory is the calorie counter and tracker that makes it simple to record and monitor the calories you consume for healthier living. Too many calorie-tracking apps overwhelm you with data and are hard to use. Calory is different. The app’s elegant interface is designed to make quick work of logging food items and makes checking your progress easy.

The app is available on the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac, which ensures you’ll always have a device nearby to help you stay on track. On each platform, one of Calory’s hallmarks is its straightforward, glanceable design. There is no distracting, extraneous information, just refined visual cues to make tracking your progress easy and a big plus button for quickly logging calories and meals. For more detail, you can view your data in a journal view, which provides a snapshot of each day tracked.

Calory’s clutter-free interface lets you monitor your calories daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly to spot trends. Tracking other statistics like carbs, proteins, fat, sodium, and more is available too. You can track water intake and your weight, and the app works with Apple Health, which privately stores the data you log.

To make entering meal data even easier, Calory lets you save custom plates, so you can quickly log your most common meals, and scan barcodes. There’s even a recipe database to help inspire you to try new, healthy meals. Of course, there is also Shortcuts integration, which allows you to log items and track your progress using Siri and your own custom shortcuts.

Download Calory today to start tracking what you eat or visit calory.app to learn more about the easiest, most elegant way to count your calories.

Our thanks to Calory for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Weather might be the dreaded theme no conversation should reach, but how the tables turn when you start reciting temperature, wind speed, precipitation, the UV index, cloud cover, pressure, and humidity from the top of your head. You’re updated on all that and much else, live with ​Overdrop –​ a beautiful weather app for iPhone, powered by leading forecast providers.

Launch O​verdrop, and key information is elegantly displayed on an animated illustrated landscape that matches what you see out the window (save, perhaps, the noisy dog and grocery store that should offer disinfectant but doesn’t). A daily overview includes an exhaustive collection of live metrics – including the aforementioned – and a weather graph with temperature, wind speed, and precipitation, helps you stay one 24-hour step ahead.

The advanced quad-layer radar map with a time-travel bar predicts weather changes four days in advance, and if even that isn’t enough, plan up to a week in advance with a detailed 7-day weather forecast.

Turn on notifications, and alerts for severe weather can be delivered to Notification Centre. A sizeable set of themes – some dark – lets you customise icons, colours, and illustrations. And on iOS 14, ​Overdrop will offer beautiful, data-rich Home Screen widgets for ever quicker use.

So break the ice with a chat about the weather.

Our thanks to Overdrop for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Magic Lasso Adblock is an efficient and high-performance ad blocker for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

It allows you to experience a cleaner, faster web – without ads. As a native Safari content-blocking extension, Magic Lasso blocks intrusive ads, pop-ups, and trackers when browsing the web.

Magic Lasso Adblock provides a 2.0x speed increase on common websites, improves your privacy and security by removing ad trackers, and works with Safari across all Apple devices. It’s as if Apple itself had designed an ad blocker.

And unlike some other ad blockers, Magic Lasso Adblock respects your privacy, doesn’t accept payment from advertisers, and is 100% supported by its community of over 150,000 users.

Version 2.0 delivers a host of new features, including:

• Community Allowlists: Once enabled, ad blocking is disabled on sites that have been frequently allowed by Magic Lasso users. Through anonymous crowd-sourcing of allowlists, ads are only allowed on sites the community deem worthy

• Battery Boost: Additional ad blocking rules target and block JavaScript which uses significant CPU energy, ensuring pages are responsive while improving browser battery life

• New look and feel: The new three-pane interface provides a quick overview of current status, easy access to see recent rules updates, and a simple way to view and configure allowed sites

Download the app for free today from the Magic Lasso website, the App Store, and the Mac App Store.

Our thanks to Magic Lasso Adblock for sponsoring MacStories this week.

It’s far too easy to get sidetracked and waste time on your iPhone. With Offscreen, you’ll understand exactly how you are spending time, regain control of it, and learn how to focus on what’s most important to you.

OffScreen is a beautifully-designed app for the iPhone and iPad that humanizes the way it reports statistics of your device usage. Not only does the app track screen time, but you can set goals, track your progress, and gain insights into your use patterns with built-in, understandable details like Pickups, Checking Every, Walking Life, Stationary Life, Last Pickup, First Pickup, Best Break and Sleep Time. It’s a holistic overview of your time that gives you the tools you need to form better habits.

OffScreen also helps you focus on your work. The app supports Pomodoro timers, countdowns, and cumulative time counters. Once you start a timer and put your phone down, OffScreen will remind you to get back to work with a notification, if you pick it up. Of course, if there are apps you need for your work, you can whitelist just those apps. OffScreen has terrific white noise options to help you concentrate on your tasks too.

To keep you on track and assist you with spotting long-term trends, OffScreen provides reports too. You’ll find detailed historical information beautifully displayed using charts generated for certain days, weeks, months, or years. You can also navigate your data from a calendar view to quickly jump to a particular day, and statistics are sharable.

Download OffScreen today on the App Store to take control of your iPhone use and focus on real life.

Our thanks to OffScreen for sponsoring MacStories this week.