This Week's Sponsor:

PowerPhotos

The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac


Posts in Sponsored Posts

UpHabit: The Personal CRM That Helps Make Building and Maintaining Strong Relationships Part of Your Daily Routine [Sponsor]

UpHabit makes building and maintaining strong relationships with the people who matter to you the most part of your daily routine.

We all lead busy, active lives. Pulled in several directions at once and with an ever-growing list of personal and business contacts, it’s easy to fall out of touch with people. UpHabit solves the problem with a powerful set of tools that help you maintain strong, healthy relationships.

With UpHabit, you can take control of creating stronger personal or business relationships with features like:

  • The ability to set reminders to keep in touch with people
  • A place to take notes so you can pick up where you left off the next time you talk to someone
  • Reminder snoozing, so getting in touch with contacts doesn’t fall through the cracks when you’re busy 
  • Tagging to help organize your contacts

It’s incredibly easy to get started and begin enjoying the benefits of stronger relationships immediately with UpHabit.

UpHabit is continually updated with new functionality drawn from feedback from its growing community of users with features like message templates, two-way contact syncing, and more coming soon.

Of course, privacy is of paramount importance to UpHabit too. The app doesn’t have ads, and your contact data isn’t shared with third parties.

Make connecting with your most important contacts part of your daily routine. Download UpHabit now to try it for free, and for a limited time, you can get 25% off when you sign up for UpHabit.

Our thanks to UpHabit for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Timemator 2: Automatic Time-Tracking Based On Your Rules and Activities [Sponsor]

One of the biggest hurdles to consistently tracking your time is starting and stopping timers. It’s too easy to forget to do, leaving you with gaps in your tracking or timers left running overnight. What if you could free yourself from the burden of timers by automating the process? You can do precisely that with Timemator 2.

By letting Timemator track the apps you use, the files you open, and the web sites you visit on your Mac, you’ll never lose a billable minute because you forgot to start a timer. Nor will you fret about stopping a timer when you’re finished because Timemator shows you exactly when you stopped using an app, allowing you to focus on what’s most important: your work.

Time never slips through the cracks with Timemator because it approaches the problem of tracking three ways. First, Timemator automatically creates an activity timeline as you work on your Mac. Just go over your activities at the end of the day and assign them to projects and tasks. Second, you can set up Timemator rules to automatically record time to a project or task when you open a particular app or file. Third, there’s a manual timer available for those one-off tasks and times that it’s just easier to click start. It’s a three-pronged approach that’s proven useful to a wide variety of professionals, including contractors, freelancers, and small teams.

Timemator is a native Mac app that’s been thoughtfully designed to look as beautiful as it is functional. The app is also continually updated with the latest macOS technologies. Next up on Timemator’s roadmap is iCloud sync, an iOS app, integration with third-party tools like Jira and Asana, and team features.

Timemator is free to try for 30 days, and for a limited time, readers of MacStories can buy the app for 30% off by using the coupon code TM-MACSTORIES at checkout. Don’t wait until the new year to get serious about time tracking. Start today by downloading Timemator 2, so you can stop thinking about timers and focus on your tasks.

Our thanks to Timemator 2 for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Kolide: User Focused Security For Teams That Slack [Sponsor]

Kolide is a new Slack app that messages employees when their Mac, Windows, or Linux device is not compliant with security best-practices or policy.

With this app, Kolide will notify users or groups when a device is out of compliance along with clear instructions about what is wrong, and step by step instructions to remediate the issue themselves. They can even confirm in real-time that they resolved the problem with an interactive button inside the Slack message!

Unlike most endpoint security solutions, Kolide was designed with user privacy in mind. Your users will know what data is collected about their device, who can see that data, and can even view the full source code of the agent that is run on the device.

Kolide is already used by hundreds of fast growing companies who want to level-up their device security without locking down their devices. Try Kolide’s new product for free for 30 days for your entire fleet by visiting kolide.com.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.


SignEasy: The Easiest Way to Sign and Send Documents for Signature [Sponsor]

SignEasy tears down one of the most stubborn barriers to conducting business, especially for those with distributed workforces and remote and field-based teams. For too long, workflows that required signatures have involved printing, scanning, and sending documents by snail mail. With SignEasy, that runaround is a thing of the past: now, you can work seamlessly no matter where you are, maximizing your productivity.

The flexibility SignEasy provides for users is transformative. Whether you’re at a meeting or working from home, you can sign documents and send them off for signature either on desktop or using their handy mobile app. In fact, the app has become so valuable for businesses big and small that SignEasy recently became part of Apple’s mobility partner program. This partnership gives SignEasy access to the latest iOS and iPadOS features and design trends, ensuring that users always have the most cutting-edge features at their fingertips. It also allows SignEasy to collaborate with other Apple mobility partners, creating groundbreaking partnerships and integrations with the best tools on the market.

Most recently, SignEasy took a page out of Apple’s book to inspire its feature updates for the iOS and iPadOS 13 launch, including dark mode, multi-window viewing on the iPad, and Dynamic Type. There’s even an in-app scanner so you can pull documents from the physical world into your digital workflows. SignEasy is also compatible with all of the major cloud service providers, including Google’s G-Suite, Office 365, Dropbox, Box, and email apps.

SignEasy is the easiest way to sign and send documents for signature, and for a limited time, it has a special deal for MacStories readers.

Sign up today and receive a 50% discount on a SignEasy subscription. It’s never been more cost-effective to simplify your work.

Our thanks to SignEasy for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Pixelmator Pro: Professional Image Editing Tools That Anyone Can Use [Sponsor]

Pixelmator Pro proves that powerful Mac image editors don’t need to be complex. The app, which is the successor to the original Pixelmator, is designed for ultimate ease of use. It’s the ‘image editor for the rest of us’ who want a native Mac app that’s instantly familiar.

The app introduced a refined, single-window design that puts the focus on your work instead of your tools. Pixelmator Pro features a completely nondestructive editing workflow that allows you to experiment, unleashing your creativity with the confidence that you can always revert any changes you make.

Pixelmator Pro has full RAW image support and advanced photo editing tools for careful fine tuning. The app also includes extensive machine learning-based tools that can automatically enhance your photos. There’s even a Photos app extension that lets you use Pixelmator Pro inside the Photos app and save your edits nondestructively.

The app isn’t just for photographers though. Illustrators will love Pixelmator Pro for its vector tools and SVG file support, and digital painters will appreciate the app’s powerful painting engine and extensive set of dual-texture brushes.

Best of all, Pixelmator Pro’s features are lightning fast because they’ve been built from the ground up using Apple’s latest technologies like Metal 2, which powers the app’s editing engine. Pixelmator Pro is ready for the upcoming Mac Pro too with full support for multiple GPUs.

To learn more, visit Pixelmator Pro’s website where you’ll find even more details along with terrific tutorials. Then, download the app’s free trial to start editing your images like a pro.

Our thanks to Pixelmator Pro for sponsoring MacStories this week.


UpHabit: The Personal CRM That Makes Connecting with the People You Care about Part of Your Daily Routine [Sponsor]

UpHabit makes building and maintaining strong relationships with the people who matter to you the most part of your daily routine.

We all lead busy, active lives. Pulled in several directions at once and with an ever-growing list of personal and business contacts, it’s easy to fall out of touch with people. UpHabit solves the problem with a powerful set of tools that brings order to the chaos, making sure that no one slips through the cracks.

With UpHabit, you can take control of creating stronger personal or business relationships with features like:

  • The ability to set reminders to keep in touch with people
  • Reminder snoozing, so getting in touch with contacts doesn’t fall through the cracks when you’re busy
  • A place to take notes so you can pick up where you left off the next time you talk to someone
  • Tagging to help organize your contacts

It’s incredibly easy to get started and begin enjoying the benefits of stronger relationships immediately with UpHabit.

UpHabit is continually updated with new features drawn from feedback from its growing community of users with message templates, two-way contact syncing, and more coming soon.

Of course, privacy is of paramount importance to UpHabit too. The app doesn’t have ads, and your contacts data isn’t shared with third parties.

Make connecting with your most important contacts part of your daily routine. Download UpHabit now to try it for free, and for a limited time, you can get 60% off when you sign up for any of UpHabit’s subscription plans.

Our thanks to UpHabit for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Remote Control for Mac: Turn Your Mac into a Home Media Center [Sponsor]

Remote Control for Mac is a powerful app for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch that works with a helper app on your Mac to free you from your desk, so you can enjoy your Mac anywhere on your network. Whether you’re running a Mac as a media center, want to launch apps remotely, or control your Mac’s system settings while doing something else, Remote Control for Mac can handle it all.

A Mac makes a fantastic media center. However, balancing a mouse or trackpad and a keyboard from the couch or in bed isn’t ideal, which is where Remote Control for Mac comes in. With it, you can control the apps on your Mac from your iOS devices or with the brand new Apple Watch app, which offers keypads, mouse interactions, and system commands. It’s an incredibly flexible combination that opens up amazing new options.

On top of that, the app’s AirPlay controls are a fantastic way to send the screen of your Mac or it’s audio to your Apple TV. You can also control the apps on your Mac with Remote Control for Mac and even use system commands to put your Mac to sleep, turn its display on and off, and even restart it. There is Shortcuts integration too. Add the app’s actions to Siri, so you can run them by voice or as part of a custom shortcut. They’re perfect for combining with HomeKit accessory actions in a smart home environment.

Remote Control for Mac has a special giveaway just for MacStories readers. The first 50 readers who visit this link will get a free copy of the app.

Take control of your Mac today. Download Remote Control for Mac from the App Store now.

Our thanks to Remote Control for Mac for supporting MacStories this week.


Agenda: Date-Focused Note Taking [Sponsor]

Agenda is the award-winning note-taking app for iOS, iPadOS, and the Mac with a focus on dates. Our lives are full of notes and dates, and it only makes sense to bring order to the chaos by integrating the two. Agenda, the winner of an Apple Design Award, does precisely that, ensuring that your notes are always at your fingertips when and where you need them most.

By tightly integrating your calendar and notes, Agenda becomes something more than either can offer on their own. By tying those notes you’ve been taking in advance of your next meeting to the event on your calendar, they are right there when you need them. You can use Agenda to track your team’s progress as you work on hitting milestones for a big project too. The app is also terrific for keeping a daily journal or simply expanding your to-do list with relevant reference material and notes to help keep you on track.

You can create and edit events without ever leaving Agenda too. Rather than competing with your calendar, Agenda complements it, working perfectly together.

Agenda is continually updated with the latest features for every platform. For instance, with the release of iPadOS 13, you can now use the Apple Pencil to handwrite notes or add sketches to your notes. Of course, Agenda also supports dark mode on every platform, Shortcuts, and is tightly integrated with Apple’s new Reminders app. You can even scan documents to create PDF attachments to notes on iOS and iPadOS.

Agenda is free to download and use forever. Premium features are available with an In-App Purchase that unlocks all current premium features and new ones introduced over the following 12 months.

To learn more, visit Agenda’s website, or just download Agenda now for free on the Mac App Store and on iOS and iPadOS.

Our thanks to Agenda for sponsoring MacStories this week.


TickTick: Your Lightweight All-In-One Task Manager [Sponsor]

TickTick is an all-in-one task management tool with a focus on simplicity. The app is available for more than ten platforms, including iOS, Mac, and Apple Watch.

Time is at the heart of TickTick. The app includes everything from a Pomodoro timer and habit tracker, to calendar views. It’s a to-do list, planner, reminder, as well as a calendar, which eliminates switching between apps, saving you time and effort.

At the same time though, TickTick is lightweight. The app’s workflows are carefully designed and optimized. For example, you can start by adding tasks and setting reminders. Later, you could use the Pomodoro timer to help you stay focused as you work on those same tasks, or you could punch in daily to develop a task into a habit. TickTick puts you in full control letting you choose to show or hide each of these features in the Tab Bar so you always have exactly what you need, no more, no less.

Another essential part of the app is TickTick’s simple clean-cut design. From List to Subtask, each interface is clean and tidy. Unlike to-do apps that are littered with checkboxes, TickTick makes managing tasks a breeze that feels as natural as note-taking.

All-in-one is not only about features, but also the seamless sync across multiple platforms, including iOS, Mac and Apple Watch. TickTick’s R&D team develops each and every application to fit its many platforms. There are even web and Windows versions of the app, which users love. Getting things done on every platform you work on has never been so easy.

TickTick free version for iOS (Apple Watch included) and Mac is perfect for daily use and includes Siri, Shortcuts, and URL scheme support. Premium features, like Custom Smart Lists, Reminders for Sub-tasks, and adding up to 299 lists, 999 tasks per list, and 199 sub-tasks per task, are available for just $2.99 monthly or $27.99 annually.

Visit the TickTick website today to learn more.

Our thanks to TickTick for sponsoring MacStories this week.