This Week's Sponsor:

Fello AI

All-In-One AI Chat Client for macOS

Unwrap the Ultimate App Collection with Setapp Gift Card [Sponsor]

If you’re a MacStories reader, you probably know about Setapp. It’s a simple, effective way to discover the best apps for every task, no matter what you do. Setapp is also an amazing value. I bet you also have someone in your life who could benefit from Setapp but hasn’t tried it yet, which makes it the perfect gift this holiday season.

A Setapp gift card is the perfect way to help your loved ones get more out of their Mac and iOS devices by helping them:

  • Save time
  • Complete tasks
  • Find the perfect solution to every digital challenge

Best of all, your Setapp gift won’t gather dust or sit in a forgotten corner of a closet. With a dedicated team that has curated a diverse collection of over 240 of the best apps available, your gift will get used and become a daily reminder of your assistance and generosity.

And right now, Setapp is spotlighting a special collection of apps: The Jolly Sleighing Toolkit includes Spark Mail, Luminar Neo, Diarly, Busy Call, and other great apps that will help users track holiday to-dos, connect with others, and spruce up their photos.

So, head on over to Setapp right now to gift your loved ones the relief of checked-off tasks and more with a Setapp gift card.

Our thanks to Setapp for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: The Best TV Shows and Movies of 2023

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This week on MacStories Unwind,  Federico and I share our favorite TV shows and movies of 2023 and discuss the return of Europe to Threads.

  • Television Time – Your Ultimate Companion for tracking your favorite shows, and discovering new ones.
  • Kolide – It ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps. It’s Device Trust for Okta. Watch the demo today!

Threads Returns to Europe

Federico’s TV Picks:

John’s TV Picks:

John’s Movie Picks:

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The Case for Clipboard Managers→

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors, is right about clipboard managers for macOS: if you never used one, you really should – and there are plenty of options to choose from.

The magic moment of using a clipboard manager comes when you realize you need to access something that’s not the One True Item on the clipboard. If you’re using the standard Mac clipboard and you copy something priceless and then, a minute later, copy something useless—welp, too bad, the priceless thing is gone, and it’s never coming back. A good clipboard manager lets you use a keyboard shortcut or a menu item to view your previous clipboards, choose the item you want to fish out and bring it back.

And that’s my pitch for why macOS should have its own clipboard manager: Because it adds undo to the clipboard via a discoverable mechanism like a keyboard shortcut and an item in the Edit menu right next to Cut, Copy, and Paste. For me, it’s become part of my Mac muscle memory: command-backslash brings up a long list of clipboard history, from which I can retrieve what I want.

It gets better. Once you know that copying something to your clipboard doesn’t destroy what’s there, your use of the clipboard can become far more extensive. You lose the fear of wiping out something important, replaced with confidence that you can grab something in case you want it later and stash it away in the clipboard history.

I agree with Jason on the idea that Apple should build a native clipboard management solution: it’s odd that they never did (especially after shipping Universal Clipboard…in iOS 10) and that they’re leaving something as sensitive as clipboard data fully in the hands of third-party developers without at least a default option for most users and a modernized framework to store the clipboard’s contents.

The lack of Mac-like clipboard management is one of the things I miss most from macOS when I work on my iPad. To give you an example: as I was putting together this post on Threads tonight with some tips I discovered, I realized I had to go back and double-check something else in the Threads app, so I copied my post (Threads doesn’t support saving as draft yet) and closed the composer UI. A few minutes later, I had already forgotten that my “draft” was stored in the clipboard, so I copied something else, and with no way to get my original text back from the iPadOS clipboard, I had to rewrite the post from scratch. That wouldn’t have happened if I was using macOS (or if Threads supported post drafts, but that’s a different story).

The clipboard management situation is even gloomier on iPadOS and iOS since, unlike the Mac, third-party apps can’t run with background privileges to monitor changes to your clipboard. Again, I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t want to make a modern API for this with all the necessary privacy controls for users. Because of these limitations, over the years I’ve seen the market for third-party iOS and iPadOS clipboard managers dry up. Remember Pastebot for iOS? Copied? Clips?

To my knowledge, it seems like the two solid (and reputable) options left are Paste (which John reviewed this year) and PastePal, both of which I’m trying again. But those apps can’t do anything about the fact that clipboard managers for iOS and iPadOS can’t be as powerful as their Mac counterparts.

If Apple ever builds their own clipboard manager, I hope it’s a multi-platform feature with an API other apps can plug into.

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“Reliving My Memories in Apple Vision Pro Almost Brought Me to Tears”→

Apple arranged a third round of press previews for the Vision Pro earlier this week, this time with a focus on experiencing spatial videos captured by journalists on iOS 17.2. I particularly liked Raymond Wong’s story, who got emotional while reliving a memory with the Vision Pro:

In one spatial video, my mom and I were having dim sum at a restaurant and I was explaining to her what the Apple Vision Pro is and what it does. It was recorded last weekend so the memory was fresh in my mind. Rewatching the video inside of the Vision Pro, it was as if we were transported back to the restaurant, sitting across from each other over a table of dishes. I kept tilting my head a lot, almost in disbelief at how surreal it was to see my mom talking, laughing, and eating in spatial video. My mom was who got me interested in technology and I don’t think I would have a career writing about new consumer tech if not for her interest in it. To me, these convos are very precious to me, so to see them replayed with a sense of presence really tugged at my heartstrings. At one point, I fought back a few tiny tears if only because there were three Apple reps sitting next to me. Self-aware of EyeSight and the possibility that they might be able to see my tears, I asked if they could see my eyes on the Vision Pro’s outside display. I was told they couldn’t. Pre-release software, you know? I obviously couldn’t confirm that myself as the person wearing Vision Pro.

At a certain distance and window size, spatial videos can look life-sized. But even when I “pushed” the video window farther away (enabled by looking at the bar at the bottom of the window and then pulling it closer toward me), seeing my mom in 3D made me emotional. I even laid back on the sofa and placed the virtual video on the ceiling.

When I tried the Vision Pro in June, I almost got emotional “being” in someone else’s memory with the stock footage Apple had prepared for us. I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like to relive your own memories with the depth and sense of presence that Vision Pro enables. I know I’ll be capturing a lot of spatial videos with friends and family during the holidays.

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Adding Colorful, Animated Flare to the Holiday Season with Hue’s Festavia Lights

Source: Philips Hue.

Source: Philips Hue.

A couple of weekends ago, after we put up our Christmas tree, I broke out Hue’s Festavia lights, which the company recently sent me to test. Ever since we moved in late 2022, we’ve had a generic string of big-bulb white lights hanging around the perimeter of the second-floor balcony that I controlled with the help of an outdoor smart plug. The setup provided a little extra light and atmosphere whenever we sat outside in the evening, which I enjoyed. However, I was also curious to see how I could take the setup further and add some holiday cheer with a set of the Festavia lights. So, instead of putting the lights on our tree, I replaced our existing balcony lights with the Hue lights.

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The MacStories Team Is on Threads (Again)

With Threads’ launch in Europe today, we thought it would be a good time to reintroduce readers to the MacStories Threads account as well as those of the MacStories team.

It’s been quite a year for social media. Almost exactly one year ago today, we announced that MacStories had established its own dedicated Mastodon server for MacStories, AppStories, and Club MacStories. That move has been successful beyond our wildest imaginations. MacStories’ core audience is on Mastodon, which has made it the perfect place to interact with readers and listeners.

However, not everyone is on Mastodon. That’s why we created MacStories Instagram and Threads accounts earlier this year. Federico and I have been on Instagram for years and joined Threads immediately, although it wasn’t long before Meta prevented Federico and other users in the EU from accessing Threads.

Today, Meta has reopened Threads to Europe, which means Federico, Silvia, and Niléane are back on the service along with Alex, Jonathan, and me. So, today, we thought we’d reintroduce the MacStories Threads account to everyone and link the team’s Threads accounts below to make it easy to follow whomever you’d like.

You can expect to hear about the latest stories published by the team on MacStories.net, what’s going on with Club MacStories, and updates on AppStories, MacStories Unwind, and upcoming new projects if you follow MacStories. To follow individual team members, you can use the links below:

We know that Threads isn’t for everyone, and the same is true of Mastodon, which is why we’re on both. So, wherever you’re hanging out these days, feel free to say hello. We love hearing from the MacStories community and are excited to have the full team together on Threads again.

The AirPods Pro MagSafe Charging Case with USB-C Can Now Be Purchased Separately→

The MagSafe charging case for second-generation AirPods Pro that comes with a USB-C connector is now available as a separate purchase. When the updated headphones were introduced in September, many users expected the charging case would be available separately, but it wasn’t. That came as a bit of a surprise because when Qi charging was first introduced in the AirPods line, the case was offered as a separate purchase immediately. But with today’s listing on Apple’s online store, if all you want to do is swap your old Lightning case for the USB-C model, you can.

The new case is available to order on the Apple Store for $99, although deliveries in my area aren’t expected until after Christmas, and there aren’t any available for pickup in my local Charlotte, NC retail store.

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Automation Academy: Introducing ThingsBox, an All-In-One Shortcuts Capture System for the Things Inbox→

ThingsBox.

ThingsBox.

One of the perks of a Club MacStories+ and Club Premier membership are special columns that Federico and I publish periodically. In today’s Automation Academy, Federico shares ThingsBox, a shortcuts capture system that can handle multiple media types on every Apple device, sending the results to the Things inbox.

As Federico explains, ThingsBox originated from a suggestion I made on AppStories recently, which he took and ran with to add functionality tailored to each type of media he saves, creating:

a versatile system for quickly capturing text, Safari webpages, URLs, App Store apps, and even images and save them as new items in the Things inbox. ThingsBox runs on every Apple platform and can be used from a widget, the share sheet, or manually inside the Shortcuts app; it is optimized for the Apple Watch, where it defaults to dictation input; on the Mac, ThingsBox integrates with AppleScript to see what the frontmost window is and capture its data accordingly.

Sharing different types of input with ThingsBox…

Sharing different types of input with ThingsBox…

…and the resulting tasks in the inbox.

…and the resulting tasks in the inbox.

Automation Academy is one of the many perks of a Club MacStories+ and Club Premier membership and an excellent way to learn advanced Shortcuts techniques that are explained in the context of solutions to everyday problems.

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Apple’s Journal App: Journaling for All?

I’ve been keeping a journal in Day One since at least 2015, and I’ve got to say, the practice has become very engrained in my otherwise chaotic daily routine. Whenever I get asked about journaling, I always say that it’s a habit that can take any form you like. It can take place in a paper journal, in an app as written entries, as voice notes, or even as captioned photos in a photo diary. The reason I stuck with Day One over the years is because the app is incredibly flexible. It kept up with me during periods of my life when it was harder to write down my daily thoughts, and easier to type a couple of bullet points every day instead. I believe the best journaling tools are those that can adapt to you, not the other way around. But still, when Apple announced they were building their own Journal app, built right into iOS 17, I was excited by the prospect of switching things up in this little habit of mine.

This week, Apple released the Journal app as part of iOS 17.2. As expected, the app is unfortunately only available on the iPhone. Nevertheless, Apple’s first entry in this category is very interesting, to say the least, as it revolves almost entirely around a system of smart journaling suggestions and prompts. I’ve been using it alongside Day One for a couple of weeks now, to both get an idea of what Apple’s approach to journaling is like, and to see how it intends to bring journaling to a wider audience.

Let’s jump in.

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