The 2020 Artisanal Software Festival is a fantastic collection of carefully-crafted apps for writing, research, thinking, and more at terrific prices. As in past years, software artisans from around the globe come together to offer fair discounts direct to you from the workshop door.

The 18 apps and book span a wide spectrum that will assist you with everyday knowledge work. There are apps to plan your next big project, conduct research, organize your research, edit images, manage email, write, and more:

• Tinderbox – Visualize and organize ideas and plans
• Scrivener for macOS – Your complete writing studio
• Panorama X – Collect, organize, and understand your data
• Mellel – A real word processor
• DEVONthink 3 – Manage documents the smart way
• BBEdit 13 – Power tool for text
• TextExpander – Recall your best words. Instantly, repeatedly
• Bookends – The reference manager you’ve been looking for
• PDFpen – Powerful PDF editing
• HoudahGeo – Photo geotagging
• Nisus Writer Pro – The powerful word processor for the Mac
• Tembo – Friendly file search assistant
• DEVONagent Pro – Your smart (re)search assistant
• Aeon Timeline 2 – The timeline tool for creative thinking
• ImageFramer – Add creative borders and frame to photos
• Trickster – Your recently used files, at your fingertips
• Yojimbo – Your effortless, reliable information organizer for macOS
• The Tinderbox Way – Definitive eBook on artisanal software

No gimmicks, no bundles, no gotchas – just saving of hundreds of dollars on these fine tools for a limited time. Visit the WinterFest website now for links to amazing deals each of these fantastic apps and to learn more or use the coupon code WINTERFEST2020 at checkout.

Our thanks to WinterFest 2020 for its support of MacStories this week.

HealthView is a beautifully-designed iPhone and Apple Watch app that brings the health data those devices collect together in a highly-customizable, unified dashboard.

The iPhone and Apple Watch are capable of collecting lots of health data but making sense of it all and accessing it can be frustrating. Instead of poking around in the many sections of the Health app, give HealthView a try. The app provides a clean, concise view into your health data on both the iPhone and Apple Watch.

As good as HealthView looks, though, the app’s utility runs much deeper. HealthView is highly customizable, allowing you to tailor its dashboard to your specific needs and interests. You can set goals and track your progress, making it easier than ever to reach those goals. You can also view daily, weekly, monthly, and annual totals for metrics like steps, hydration, workout minutes, distance, mindful minutes, weight, heart rate, and a lot more.

If you want more detail, just tap into a category to focus on a single metric that reports all your stats alongside graphs that display the data over time. HealthView also offers a wealth of beautiful widgets, so you can get your most important stats from a quick glance at your iPhone’s Home Screen. No matter the your goals, HealthView can be customized to suit your needs.

So, download HealthView today to see why so many users rely on it for tracking their health and fitness.

Our thanks to HealthView for supporting MacStories this week.

Agenda has had a great year. In May, Agenda 10 added note templates, a powerful sharing extension, and translations in 11 new languages. Just a few months later, Agenda 11 introduced Widgets and Scribble (handwriting recognition), as well as support for the new Apple Silicon Macs.

And the team at Agenda is not resting yet. They are currently working on one of the most requested features in the Agenda Community: Tables. Agenda 12 will allow you to embed tables directly into your notes, and take them with you on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Tables are already being beta tested by the Agenda faithful and will be available in January 2021. Best of all, you will be able to use Agenda’s new tables for free.

If you aren’t familiar with Agenda, it’s a note-taking app with a twist — it focuses heavily on dates. You organize your notes into projects, sorted into a timeline. You can link notes to calendar events and reminders in Apple’s apps.

The tight integration of notes and dates is what makes it a unique note-taking experience. For example, by tying notes you’ve been taking in advance of a meeting to the event in your calendar, the notes are right there when you need them.

It sounds like a great idea, but we all know a great app is more than an idea. Agenda won an Apple Design Award in 2018 and was named MacStories’ Best New App the same year. It’s been featured countless times in Apple’s App Stores and is an Editors’ Choice. It’s not just a great idea — it’s a very polished app.

Agenda is free to download from the Mac App Store and iOS App Store.

Our thanks to Agenda for its support of MacStories this week.

Halide Mark II is the brand new camera app from the makers of Spectre, Apple’s iPhone App of the Year for 2019.

Halide is the sort of elegant, intuitive app casual photographers appreciate that also offers the sophisticated, advanced features that expert photographers demand. The app was created by three friends who share a passion for photography and believe that apps should be exceptionally well built and designed, simple to use, and free of any nonsense.

The makers of Halide understand that advanced features don’t have to come at the expense of usability. Halide’s beautiful interface relies on gestures that make using the app fast and efficient. All of the manual controls that pro users expect are available when you want them but are neatly tucked away out of sight when you don’t. It’s a carefully-crafted balance that sets Halide apart from other camera apps.

Halide supports the latest iPhone technologies like Apple’s new ProRAW format on the iPhone 12 Pro and live XDR (Extended Dynamic Range) exposure tools, ensuring that you’re always on the forefront of what’s new with iPhone photography. The Halide team also provides what you need to take advantage of those features by offering an easy 10-day set of photography lessons right inside the app to help you get the most out of it.

There are no ads, tracking, or anything else you don’t want in Halide – just an obsessive focus on helping you take the best possible photos every time. Halide offers a 7-day free trial for subscribers, or, if you prefer, you can take advantage of its one-time purchase option.

Either way, download Halide Mark II today to get ready for ProRAW and make the most of your iPhone’s camera.

Our thanks to Halide Mark II for its support of MacStories this week.

Most cloud storage solutions require you to pay every month but pCloud doesn’t, and for a limited time you can enjoy 75% off with Black Friday savings. Say goodbye to paying over and over for the same storage with pCloud, which offers secure cloud storage plans for a one-time payment – no monthly or annual bills.

Buying cloud storage shouldn’t be any different from buying a new external drive for your Mac. However, most cloud storage providers charge monthly and annual subscription fees. The cost of cloud storage subscriptions piles up quickly, eclipsing the cost of comparable external storage. Instead of paying for the same storage many times over, check out pCloud, the simple, paid-up-front cloud storage solution that offers premium features at a remarkable price.

pCloud’s industry-first lifetime plan provides effective, premium cloud storage for your photos, videos, music, documents, and more. Request files from others with a link, or share your files with a link that can be password protected, eliminating large file attachments to email messages. pCloud supports file versioning, and you can automatically upload the photos you take on your iPhone for safekeeping too. It’s a comprehensive, user-focused solution that sets itself apart from competitors with its simple pricing structure and rich feature set.

pCloud offers apps on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, so your files are always available no matter what device you have with you. Check out why users at some of the biggest companies around the world are using pCloud to share files and collaborate securely by visiting their website today, and sign up for a lifetime of storage. Plus, for a limited time (48h), you can enjoy 75% OFF Black Friday savings.

Our thanks to pCloud for sponsoring MacStories this week.

When you want to convert a photo, video, or audio file from one format to another, it’s far too easy to get bogged down in settings, unable to make heads or tails of technical jargon. Permute saves you from that trouble by taking care of the details and converting files incredibly fast.

To start a file conversion, drag a file into Permute’s main window or onto its dock icon, click Start, and you’re all set. Permute is faster than ever too. The app supports an incredibly long list of file formats and has hardware acceleration for MP4 and HEVC files. The app also has presets for a long list of Apple hardware so you can match your results to the devices you use. You can even modify images and videos, adjusting their size and rotating and flipping them.

But that’s not all. Permute 3 can also:

• Convert individual files or groups of files
• Stitch multiple images, videos, or audio files together 
• Create DVDs
• Convert uncommon file formats like WebP and SVG
• Schedule conversions for later
• Add converted files to iTunes

Permute has a special limited-time deal just for MacStories readers. If you use this link, you can purchase Permute for 20% off. There’s a free trial available too if you want to try the app first.

Visit Permute’s website today to learn more and take advantage of the special 20%-off deal before it expires.

Our thanks to Permute for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Downie for Mac simplifies the process of downloading videos from YouTube and over one thousand other sites. Just drag a URL from your browser into Downie or onto its dock icon from sites like YouTube, Youku, Bilibili, and Vimeo to immediately download a video. You can even copy text containing video URLs and paste it into Downie to start a download.

Downie is efficient and organized. Instead of downloading now, queue downloads for later. It’s a great way to process dozens of videos while you sleep and aren’t using your Internet connection for something else. Downloads can be organized automatically into folders too based on source and playlist, saving you the hassle of organizing them yourself.

When you use Downie, you also know you’re getting the best version of a video that’s available. For example, unlike many other download apps, Downie can download the 4K version of a video from YouTube if one is available. It’s that sort of attention to detail, combined with attentive support, frequent updates, and localization that makes Downie a great choice for video downloads.

Downie 4 was just released with a redesigned UI and great new features that make the app better than ever. Now, you can control Downie from the menu bar and hide the dock icon if you’d like. Downie is also up to six times faster than before, saving you a lot of time when downloading and processing large numbers of videos. Metadata is written to a JSON file now too, making it easy to process later.

For a limited time, Downie has a special 25% discount just for MacStories readers. All you need to do is use this link to purchase the app. You can use the coupon code D1B766ED at checkout to get the discount too.

Expand your video collection the easy way today, with Downie.

Our thanks to Downie for sponsoring MacStories this week.

GoodTask is a powerful, customizable task manager for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac that’s built on top of Apple’s Reminders app and integrates with your calendars. It’s a solid foundation that GoodTask extends with fast, reliable syncing, Siri and Shortcuts support, and many other features.

The hallmark of GoodTask is customization, which extends throughout the app’s feature set. With the latest update on the iPhone and iPad, GoodTask added widgets allowing users to place task lists, calendars, and favorites on their Home Screens. Among other things, the List widget lets you pick the list displayed, the size, whether a calendar is shown, and the density of information shown. There’s also a Favorites widget allows you to do things, like create template tasks for more quickly entering recurring reminders.

Of course, the look of the widgets is highly customizable, too, just like the app. You can pick a style and color all your own that works with your other widgets. You can also theme the app and pick from a long list of icons to suit your tastes.

GoodTask includes powerful filters for creating Smart Lists that let you create a list of a subset of your tasks based on a wide assortment of conditions. The app has innovative Quick Actions too. By defining a grid of information to add to tasks with a single tap from the Quick Actions view, you can save time by eliminating the need to repeatedly type common information.

Take charge of task management today by visiting GoodTask’s website or YouTube channel to learn more about its Mac, iOS, and Watch apps and discover the power of the premier task manager based on Apple’s Reminders app.

Our thanks to GoodTask for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Shake eliminates the headaches and hassles of processing bug reports in your mobile app. Tracking down bugs and fixing them is critical to your app’s success, but too often, identifying and resolving them is an inefficient mess. With Shake, you can streamline the process and get better data, allowing you to resolve more issues quickly and effectively.

Just add Shake’s API to your app, and your users can submit a comprehensive bug report in seconds simply by shaking their device. Shake eliminates incomplete, vague bug reports so often submitted over email, social media, and word of mouth. With Shake, your users not only can communicate problems with screenshots but with screen recordings and markup tools, all presented inside your app.

Bug reports are supplemented with a ton of useful data automatically that’s delivered instantly to a beautifully designed web dashboard that lets your team chat about the reported bugs, assign priorities, and tag them. Shake also integrates seamlessly with the other tools you already use, like Jira, Slack, Azure, and Trello. Developers can customize Shake to suit their particular needs delivering any variable value they want from users’ devices too. It’s a powerful set of tools that will help you debug issues in your apps 50 times faster than before.

Shake is free to try without any time limitations on its standard features, and you can upgrade to a premium plan any time to add more attachments and tags per bug report, unlimited viewing and searching of bugs, and full activity history. Try Shake today to learn how fast, efficient bug reporting and tracking can accelerate your app development process.

Our thanks to Shake for sponsoring MacStories this week.