Posts tagged with "macOS"

Sofa 4.0: A Customizable Downtime Tracker Without Compromises

I’ve written about media-tracking apps a lot in the past, and they tend to fall into one of two categories: there are ‘generalist apps’ that cover multiple types of media, and there are ‘specialist apps’ that go much deeper into one particular kind. The benefit of the former is having a one-stop destination for all your media tracking, while the latter usually goes further, focusing on the unique characteristics of one media type. There are advantages to each approach, but they’re serving two different kinds of users, so it’s not that surprising that apps don’t try to do both.

That’s why I was intrigued when I heard about Sofa 4.0 and its custom Categories and Ingredients features, which launch today. Sofa has always been one of my favorite apps for tracking multiple types of media, but as soon as I saw custom Categories and Ingredients, I knew the app had the potential to transcend the media tracker category by letting users have a greater say in how it’s used. That’s exactly what its developer, Shawn Hickman, has done, and the results are fantastic.

Read more

Single-Space Challenge: Trying to Manage My macOS Windows All in One Virtual Desktop

A couple of weeks ago, in a members-only special episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, John Siracusa went in-depth on his window management techniques on the Mac. This was absolutely fascinating to me. I strongly recommend checking the episode out if you can. One of the many reasons it captivated me is the fact that John Siracusa uses macOS in only a single space (the system’s name for virtual desktops) and lays out windows in a very specific way to take advantage of his entire display.

This is completely opposite of the way I’ve been managing and arranging windows on my Mac for the past ten years. To work on my Mac, I always heavily rely on having at least three spaces and switching between them on the fly depending on the task at hand. Moreover, I rarely keep more than two or three windows open at a time in each space.

However, since I’m always up for an experiment and shaking things up, I thought I would try going back to a single space on my Mac for a full week. I approached this by drawing inspiration from John Siracusa’s window management techniques and digging up an old Mac utility that helped me with the transition. I’ve learned a lot from this challenge; even more surprisingly, it has sparked in me a newfound interest in Stage Manager on the Mac.

Let me tell you how it went.

Read more

Apple Frames 3.2 Brings iPhone 15 Pro Frames, Files Picker, and Adjustable Spacing

Apple Frames 3.2.

Apple Frames 3.2.

Today, I’m releasing version 3.2 of Apple Frames, my shortcut to put screenshots taken on Apple devices into physical device templates. If you want to skip ahead, you can download Apple Frames 3.2 at the end of this story or find it in the MacStories Shortcuts Archive.

Version 3.2 is a major update that introduces brand new frames for the iPhone 15 Pro line, improves the reliability of framing screenshots from devices with the Dynamic Island, and, perhaps most importantly, extends the Frames API with new configuration options to give you even more control over framed images.

Let’s dive in.

Read more

Club MacStories Sample: BetterTouchTool Tips, Vision Pro Shortcuts, a Task Manager Review, and the Effect of AI on the Internet

We often describe Club MacStories as more of the MacStories you know and love reading on this website. That’s an apt shorthand for the Club, but when you’re being asked to sign up and pay for something, it still helps to see what you’re buying. That’s why every now and then, we like to share samples of some of what the Club has to offer every week.

So today, we’ve made Issue 408 of MacStories Weekly from a couple of Saturdays ago available to everyone. Just use this link, and you’ll get the whole issue. You can also use the links in the excerpts below to read particular articles.

Everybody in the Club gets MacStories Weekly and our monthly newsletter called the Monthly Log, but there’s a lot more to the Club than just email newsletters. All members also get MacStories Unwind+, an ad-free version of the podcast that we publish a day early for Club members. All Club members also have access to a growing collection of downloadable perks like wallpapers and eBooks.

Club MacStories+ members get all of those perks along with exclusive columns that are published outside our newsletters, access to our Discord community, discounts on dozens of iOS, iPadOS, and Mac apps, and advanced search, filtering, and custom RSS feed creation of Club content. Club Premier builds on the first two tiers by adding AppStories+, the extended, ad-free version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered a day early, as well as full-text search of AppStories show notes, making it the all-access pass for everything we do at MacStories.

To learn more and sign up, you can use the buttons below:

Join Club MacStories:

Join Club MacStories+:

Join Club Premier:

Issue 408 of MacStories Weekly, which you can access here, starts with two excellent tips from Niléane on how to use BetterTouchTool to remap the Mac’s yellow and green ‘stoplight’ buttons. Like a lot of tips and workflows we share, Niléane’s was inspired by a similar technique Federico employed a couple of weeks before:

Two weeks ago, in Issue 406 of MacStories Weekly, Federico shared a tip for BetterTouchTool that resonated with me. Just like him, I am used to minimizing my windows instead of hiding them, which can be annoying since minimized windows no longer come up when you Command (⌘) + Tab to their app’s icon…

…after poking around in BetterTouchTool for a few minutes, I realized that the app allows you to change what the red, yellow, and green window buttons do. As a result, I was able to make it so that the yellow button will actually hide a window instead of minimizing it to the Dock.

Read more

Three Tips to Combine BetterTouchTool and Raycast for Simpler Keyboard Shortcuts

Raycast is one of my favorite Mac utilities of all time. When I recommend Raycast to someone, I usually like to say that it’s a Swiss Army knife for your Mac. It is an app launcher, a shortcut launcher, a clipboard manager, an emoji picker, and more, all in one single app.

I am also a huge fan of BetterTouchTool on my Mac to fill those interaction gaps that I feel are missing in macOS. I previously wrote on MacStories about how I use BetterTouchTool to manage my windows with the Magic Trackpad and keyboard shortcuts.

Lately, I’ve been exploring the idea of using Raycast and BetterTouchTool together. I found that I can combine the two to create some really simple keyboard shortcuts that would otherwise be impossible to make because they leverage Apple’s special keys on the Magic Keyboard.

I have selected three of these simple keyboard shortcuts to share with you today. Let’s check them out.

Read more

Mona 6 Moves from High Visual Customization to Advanced Automation

Mona, the Mastodon client for iOS, iPadOS, and Mac from Junyu Kuang, is out today with a significant version 6 update. Mona is my choice for using Mastodon primarily due to what John referred to in his review as its ‘epic level of customization.’ Everything from how the taskbar at the bottom of the screen looks to how posts are displayed is fully customizable. Even the main app view on iOS can be vertically split in two.

But Mona is not just about looks; it’s also a solid tool for navigating Mastodon. Things like the ability to privately set colors or notes to other users, timeline syncing across your devices using iCloud, and full support for VoiceOver make it a strong choice for a wide variety of people.

Which brings us to this new update. In the year and change since the mass Twitter exodus, Mastodon has matured a lot as a platform, introducing new features that users can take advantage of while filling some of the gaps impeding the platform from growing. Version 6 of Mona includes those new features while advancing its power user functionality with powerful new Shortcuts actions, including one that takes advantage of the Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro.

Let’s dive in.

Read more

Looks Like Rain: Visualizing the Weather on a Color-Coded Timeline

I’m always excited when a new weather app is released, especially when it’s a weather app that looks different from most of its counterparts. Looks Like Rain by Thinkbits is beautifully designed, and it certainly looks different, to say the least. The layout of the app is clean, the elements are well-spaced, and the color palette has clearly been composed with care. Most importantly, though, I’m absolutely loving its unique approach to visualizing the weather forecast on a color-coded timeline.

I’ve been using this brand-new weather app for the past few weeks on the iPhone, the iPad, and the Mac, and it has already earned a permanent place in the rotation of my favorite weather apps.

Let’s check it out.

Read more

ScreenFloat 2.0: Floating Reference Screenshots and Management from the Mac’s Menu Bar

ScreenFloat 2.0.

ScreenFloat 2.0.

ScreenFloat 2.0 is a Mac-only screenshot utility from Matthias Gansrigler of Eternal Storms Software. As Gansrigler explains, the app is like Picture-in-Picture for screenshots, allowing you to float screenshots or screen recordings above other windows to use as reference material on your Mac. That’s a great explanation of one of the core use cases for ScreenFloat 2.0, but the update opens up exciting new possibilities that go even further, which I think anyone who works with screenshots will like a lot.

Read more

The Continuity Camera and ‘Unlock With Apple Watch’ Conspiracy

Continuity Camera is amazing. Since it was introduced in macOS Ventura, I’ve been using the feature almost daily. Continuity Camera is a native feature on macOS that lets you use an iPhone as your webcam. For it to work, you can either connect the iPhone to your Mac using a cable, or use it wirelessly if both devices are signed in with the same Apple ID. It’s quite impressive that, despite having to rely so often on video calls for work, I still don’t own a webcam today. Instead, the camera I use at my desk is an old iPhone SE (2nd generation), which was my partner’s main iPhone until they upgraded last year.

Over the past few months, however, the number of video calls I have needed to take on a daily basis has become critical. As an activist, part of my work now also involves conducting online training sessions with sometimes up to a hundred participants at a time. I just couldn’t afford to join one of those sessions and not have my camera working. Continuity Camera became a feature that I need to work reliably. Sadly, it doesn’t. Half of the time, apps like Zoom and Discord on macOS could not see the iPhone SE in the list of available cameras. This meant I had to fetch a Lightning cable to manually connect the iPhone. If I was unlucky that day, and that didn’t work, I would have to completely reboot the Mac. If I was really unlucky that day, and even that didn’t work, I would end up joining the call without a camera. Despite meeting all the requirements listed by Apple Support, this problem just kept happening on random occasions.

I had to find a fix for this bug, or at least a way to work around it.

Read more