Here are a few things that caught my attention in week 35: week.esamecar.net/35
Teaser: iOS and macOS stuff
#weeknotes
Here are a few things that caught my attention in week 35: week.esamecar.net/35
Teaser: iOS and macOS stuff
#weeknotes
There is a kagi help document for Alfred and another one for Search Templates in Launchbar I used as a reference. It’s really easy to set up:
Menu bar / Index / Show IndexWeb / My Search Templates 1 -> add a new one&q=%son my system it’s in German, but you’ll figure it out ↩︎
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
So, the Indie Dev Sales for #macOS and #iOS apps is currently running. Here is what I
What apps are your favourites?
Sunday, January 29, 2023
I still felt sickly, so I refrained from cycling. Hope that I get the curve then next week.
πββοΈ
PS: I’ve also posted my thoughts on the first, second and third weeks.
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
I am quite sure, that I did not add my security contact on 01.01.1970.
Screen Time for children is completely broken. And the feature to receive requests via Messages.app renders the app useless on macOS.
My smart folder with the rule to only show unread emails shows a couple of read emails.
After a reboot my System decided to present an empty list of apps granted Accessibility access. Normally there are about 20 applications listed. I then immediately received countless warnings from various apps (Hookmark, CleanShot X, Typinator, etc.) that they would no longer work. Only after another restart the list was back, all apps were ticked, so they should have access - but they did not. I had to switch all the switches off and on again manually.
After each restart Ventura tells me again that background objects have been added - EVERY TIME.
These mentioned AirPods, that are “moving with me” are my own! π€¦ββοΈ
It would be too easy if I could just approve the request. (Instead it loads forever).
This is for sure not how a context click in shortcuts should behave.
This time it was my iPad that I had to reboot, because scrolling up to unlock it did not work.
Why is the text in the field shortened, there is so much free space.
Okay, this is a bummer. I have just discovered that none of my Apple iCloud email aliases are working. Now the question: why and since when? I’d rather not know how many emails I’ve missed because of this. π€― At least, I think, I’ve resolved the issue: Under icloud.com / Mail / Settings / Accounts Iβve disabled the Alias addresses, filled in Fullname and Label, renabled the Account alias and now itβs working again.
Of course, it would be nice if Apple Mail would also show me my emails.
Ah, not only does the lock screen not want to show widgets all the time, the (Files.app) widget on the home screen can also be empty.
Why not give us even more sorting options for subscriptions? Would be very easy to implement as they do nothing.
There might be missing something, isn’t it? π€
Deletion of an entry from the search entry does not clear the deleted item from the list.
Going back from the detail screen of a subscription and swiping up or down does not scroll the subscriptions in the list but the modal view.
Not able to go back to the springboard. Swiping upwards is refused.
So, I wanted to install an App via brew. It told me that I don’t have Xcode CLI tools installed and asked me to do so. I already had but, yeah, anyhow, I did it via the given shell command … A few minutes later macOS tells me that there a two updates available.
WTF? Why two versions? And why an update anyways, I just downloaded them directly from Apple?
The Apple Shortcuts App constantly gets out of sync between my MacBook and my iPhone. Thanks!
Why does adding reminders via Siri work without any problems under iOS and exactly the same request via Siri under macOS leads to absolutely pointless queries and error messages (at least when set to GER)? WTF?
Sunday, January 15, 2023
After all, this is the second time this year that I’ve managed to write down a bit what has been keeping me busy during the week. π₯³
πββοΈ
Saturday, January 14, 2023
Sure, shortly after I’ve published the short list of non-work related macOS apps I really like it came to my mind, that I forgot the most important ones. But hey, I never claimed it was an exhaustive list π So, I’ll just continue and list randomly some more apps, I enjoy using:
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Here is a short list of apps I use a lot under macOS privately (so not only work related) or I have recently discovered and think I’ll stick with them.
Bunch: Bunch describes itself as “a macOS utility that uses plain text scripts called βBunchesβ to automate context switching. It sits in your menu […]. Bunches can open apps, specific files, web pages, and more. For the Power Users, It also allows advanced scripting, system commands, and integration via a URL handler”. It’s free to download, developed by Brett Terpstra. I switched from Workspaces by Apptorium, which has a much more sophisticated visual concept. I also like the app very much and is also available via Setapp.
Typinator: “Enter words, sentences, or even entire paragraphs by typing just a few characters. Save time for the really important things in life." If I use a Mac without Typinator installed, I can hardly operate it. Therefore, it is one of the first programmes I add. (The second one is 1Password, but if I would start from scratch I would try to use the new build in password manager of macOS / iOS.) Many use Textexpander, but I feel more comfortable without a subscription model.
Raycast: “Raycast is a blazingly fast, totally extendable launcher. It lets you complete tasks, calculate, share common links, and much more." Before I discovered Raycast, I’ve used Launchbar for over 15 years. It was one of these apps I would have taken with me to an lonely island. Other apps like Alfred did not stick with me. I still like Launchbar a lot but enjoy the I am currently enjoying the immense expandability and dynamic development of Raycast. Right now Raycast made even my beloved window manager Moom obsolete.
Craft: “Create documents, make impact." I really enjoyed using Craft for some time. But actually I think, I should not use another note silo and try to achieve what I want with Apple Notes. Nevertheless, the app is very comprehensive, cross platform and easy to begin with. If you have a Setapp subscription, you should definitely check it out. (At this point, of course, Obsidian and Notion must also be mentioned, but neither of which I use in a private context so far.)
Anybox: “Manage bookmarks like a pro. A perfect replacement for your browserβs bookmark manager." I have never been able to make friends with Safari’s bookmark management and used to use various services, including del.icio.us. Then I migrated to pinboard.in, and in the meantime I only used it sporadically. Pins, a very good iOS / macOS pinboard client by Anh Do, motivated me again to use pinboard more extensively. But recently my use declined rapidly again - I don’t know exactly why. I didn’t like well-known alternatives like raindrop.io and then Anybox came along. It’s available for macOS and iOS and more or less saves everthing but I use it solely as a bookmark manager. I’m actually very happy with it, although I’m curious to see whether the developer of pins can motivate me to switch again with his new app Interlink. (I hardly know why I save my bookmarks in the first place. Most of the time I look them up again using a search engine anyway.)
CleanShot X: “Capture your Macβs screen like a pro." Before I stumbled across CleanShot X, I used the native screenshot function of macOS, which is also quite extensive. In addition I used OwlOCR. A utility that allows you to capture areas of the screen and then copy the text contained therein directly to the clipboard. (Textsniper is also often recommended, but I liked the pricing and the support of OwlOCR much better. BTW Textsniper is on Setapp.) I use this function daily and frequently. I would not want to do without it any more. In the meantime, on the latest version of macOS it is possible to extract text with board tools, at least in photos and I think also in other apps, but I have become so used to cmd+shift+2 (my assigned shortcut) that I no longer want to do without it. What does all this have to do with CleanShot? This function is also implemented and so much more. Also available via Setapp.
Rocket: “Mind-blowing emoji on your Mac." I really enjoy using this emoji picker. Tried using the one from Recast but went back to Rocket.
Quitall: “Before you Force Quit, QuitAll. A fresh start without a restart." If it wasn’t included in my Setapp subscription I probably would not have bought it. I know it’s a bad habit under macOS to quit apps but sometimes I have so many of them open, that I prefer a fresh start. That’s were Quintal comes into play.
Hookmark: “Search Less. Focus more." If you haven’t heart of Hookmark yet, go and check it out. It’s really awesome and I wish something like this was build directly into macOS. You can more or less interlink everything. Also available via Setapp.
And of course there are some productivity apps I mainly use for work Dash, DevonThink, Default Folder X, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel and ChronoSync. Maybe I’ll write a little more about them later.
Oh, I would have forgotten about CCC: “CCC does everything you wish Time Machine did (and more!)" Buy it, use it! (Or SuperDuper! I don’t care π)
Update: even more apps …
Sunday, January 8, 2023
I was motivated by muhh’s blog entry to write down what was on my mind in the first week of January. I’m not sure yet if this will become something more regular, but I wanted to start putting something online more often anyway - more on that below.
I’ve had the last two weeks off. The weather was bad, I had a cold π€§ and therefore a lot of cycling wasn’t an option either (at least that’s what I told myself). So, I used the time to hang out at the computer a little more than usally. There was a lot of exciting things to discover there. Somehow Elon started this with the downfall of twitter, which he initiated. I had only been there reading for years anyway, and then after the takeover I decided to download my data, delete the clients on my end devices and no longer use the account.
As an alternative, I was of course interested in Mastodon and clicked an account on the standard instance mastodon.social. Thanks to tools like movetodon and fedifinder my timeline has also filled up pretty quickly, and I actually “met” pretty quickly some real people with whom you could exchange ideas in a friendly manner. All in all a very positive experience.
One great thing about the fediverse is the extreme dynamics of the tools and clients that are currently being built around it. It feels like back in the early days of Twitter where, for example, a single programmer, Loren Brichter, with Tweetie could turn the whole twitter landscape upside down. (BTW he only has an inactive account on Mastodon π’)
I tried countless clients over a few days. Among others (unsorted)
The official app is okay, but IMHO not great; toot! I liked the range of functions very much, but you also have to cope with the strange design somehow. Because I follow some accounts that post a lot, and since the timeline on Mastodon is not orchestrated by any algorithms, posts from other people are in danger of being lost. Thats why a good list function is very important to me personally. There, Mammoth also makes a very good impression, but in the end I was lucky and was able to test Ivory via Testflight. The app by Paul Haddad and Mark Jardine has an button design that is a bit too playful for my taste, but otherwise it is extremely stable and really great at everything it does. The recently added list features are awesome, as they allow certain accounts to be hidden from the home view. So, atm I stick to Ivory and am looking forward to even better builds.
Then, sometime last week, I came across a post from @otaviocc@social.lol on omg.lol. And then, coincidentally, I signed up for the service with thousands of other people (who must have read a post on Hacker News and not otaviocc’s post π). On omg.lol you ultimately get a “funny” address on the web that contains a wide variety of small services. A single page website (to use as a business card), a statuslog, an omg.lol-email address (forwarder), different DNS services, pastebin, PURL service, a weblog (beta), etc. And while I was at it anyways, I also have my Mastodon account moved from mastodon.social to social.lol. Luckily that went really smoothly. It was a lot of fun getting involved, configuring everything and thinking about what it’s even good for π€¦ββοΈ.
In the meantime, I continued to work with the AnkerMake M5, which also arrived after a very long wait at the beginning of December. All in all I’m very happy with the 3D printer, but still don’t really know what got into me back in early 2022 when I backed it on Kickstarter. But that is definitely going too far at this point and maybe I’ll go into more detail elsewhere.
Well, micro.blog is kind of a universe in itself too. In addition to choosing a theme, there is of course the client question. I got some for iOS (the official app, Gluon for Micro.blog and MacOS (MarsEdit 5, which I use via Setapp) looked at various editors (iA Writer, Drafts and Runestone. In addition, there are useful tools as Mimi Uploader (iOS) to upload images and Epilogue for Micro.blog to track books, but I’m just starting out here, there are just too many apps and I have to see which ones “click” for me.
There are of course all sorts of little helpers for publishing interesting links and posts on Mastodon or blog entries. Among others Linky and Re: Toot by Simon B. StΓΈvring (who, by the way, is also responsible for Runestone) I would like to mention at this point.
As if all that wasn’t enough, at the beginning of last week, after a 1.5 year wait, I received my long-awaited playdate game console. (In the meantime I had actually already forgotten that I had even ordered it and I was all the happier that it suddenly arrived.) It’s a lot of fun to deal with the little yellow box and I wanted to jot down some impressions I got. I rented a domain with Wordpress installed last year already and tried a few things with micro.blog but didn’t really publish anything on either platform. This year I wanted to change that and thus started with a post about the playdate.
All in all, it was an exciting time in terms of IT. Now all of a sudden I somehow have three blogs and will soon have to concentrate on one of them and see when everyday work starts again tomorrow, whether I still have the time and, above all, the desire to continue writing down my thoughts, or these escapades were again one of my “manic” excursions into something new and I would lose interest again the day after tomorrow - which would be a pity.
So, maybe cu next week πββοΈ
PS: initally, I wanted to talk a little bit about the music and podcasts I’ve listened to, too but this post is already way too long.
Update 22.01.2023: It seems like he is not actively developing it right now. ↩︎
Thursday, December 22, 2022
One app that I’ve been using a lot for a while now is Anybox. Both the Mac app and the iOS app are very functional and the developer is friendly. It has completely replaced pinboard.in as my bookmark manager, although there is also a very nice iOS / macOS third party companion app called Pins, which is currently no longer being developed as rapidly as it was in the beginning, but is still great.