**App Roundup: An Exploration of Productivity Tools**

As productivity tools continue to evolve and improve, we're seeing a plethora of options emerge that cater to different needs and workflows. In this article, we'll take a closer look at some of the most popular tools on the market, including Bear, Apple Notes, Notion, Obsidian, and Craft.

**Bear: A One-Stop Solution for Note-Taking**

For writer and podcaster William, Bear is his go-to tool for note-taking. He uses it for quick notes, as well as for writing articles, with its ability to export to HTML making it ideal for publishing on Apple Insider. William appreciates the simplicity of Bear, finding that it's perfect for long-form writing and shorter notes alike. One of the standout features of Bear is its search function, which searches all his notes across various devices. This seamless integration has made Bear a crucial part of his workflow.

**Apple Notes: A Shared Solution for Collaboration**

While Bear takes care of William's personal note-taking needs, Apple Notes is where he turns to when it comes to collaborative work. Specifically, he uses its shared notes feature to prepare for the podcast with co-hosts and editors. The fact that he can easily copy these notes into Bear has made this a seamless workflow for him. Apple Notes may not be as versatile as some other tools, but its simplicity makes it an attractive option for those who just need to share information.

**Notion: A Power Tool for Research and Collaboration**

William has been experimenting with Notion, finding that it's become a useful tool for research and collaborative work. He appreciates features like backlinks and embedded videos, which have proven invaluable in his projects. However, he also notes that there are aspects of Notion that don't quite resonate with him, leading him to explore other options.

**Obsidian: A Flexible Alternative with Third-Party Plugins**

For those who have ventured into the world of Obsidian, it's clear that this tool is gaining popularity. Its flexibility and open nature have made it an attractive option for those looking for a customizable solution. William has been considering Obsidian but hasn't yet committed to using it. However, he acknowledges its potential as a powerful tool with features like third-party plugins.

**Craft: An Alternative to Notion**

For those who prefer Craft over Notion, this utility is an excellent alternative. With Craft, users can create a note-taking system that's tailored to their needs, without the need for a web-based application. This flexibility has made Craft a popular choice among productivity enthusiasts.

**The Periphery of Obsidian: A Tool Worth Exploring**

Recently, CPG Grey, a guest on our podcast Cortex, shared his experience with Obsidian, switching from Notion to this new tool. He highlighted its "killer features" and the benefits it's brought to his workflow. While William hasn't yet delved into Obsidian himself, he acknowledges the potential it holds.

**The Joy of Fiddling with Tools**

For many productivity enthusiasts, the best part about these tools is the ability to experiment and fiddle with them. This can lead to a reorganization of workflows or even entirely new systems. William's experience is not unique; we've all been there – playing around with tools until it clicks into place.

**Getting Support: Share Your Favorite Tools**

If you have a favorite tool that wasn't mentioned here, please share it with us! We'd love to hear about your experiences and find out what makes these tools tick. You can tweet at William or [insert Twitter handle] and we'll feature some of the best responses in our next episode.

**Supporting the Show**

As always, supporting this show is crucial for its continued success. If you've enjoyed this article, consider leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. We'd also love it if you could support us with a monthly subscription to keep Ad-Free and uninterrupted listening. You can do so through Patreon.com/inssider or Apple Podcasts.

**Bonus Episodes: Coming Soon**

With the success of our regular episodes, we're excited to announce that we'll be producing some special bonus content for our paid subscribers. These standalone episodes will delve deeper into specific topics and offer exclusive insights. Stay tuned for more information on these upcoming episodes!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host Steven Roz and today we're going to do a massive Roundup of our favorite Mac OS apps and utilities especially with these new Macbook Pros out plus TI was acquired by Life 360 and some other talk about password management and such this episode is brought to you by bespoke post Comet backup Zach do and quip smart toothbrushes you'll hear about those in moment and joining me from across the pond is my favorite Ted lasso fan William Gallagher how's it going William uh you threw me there it's going um very slowly actually and very still as I hold on to my internet connection first basically I've got my new Macbook Pro my old Mac Mini has decided fine you don't care I'm not working anymore that's how it's going at the moment that's what's going on I was wondering yeah William is getting the internet through a tin can and string connected to some cell tower across London or I don't even know something like that yeah that's what BT calls their Advanced system the the string and can yeah you got to pay extra for that I'm pretty sure clearly you said your new Macbook Pro and I thought I saw somewhere that you got it so I new Macbook Pro is in hand it's on my desk next to me it's not fully set up yet it's weird that you should say about apps and things because I was compiling a list anyway as I was going through what must I move on to or must I have and I end up with about 15 or so Skype wasn't one of them yet but now it will be I mean you can try FaceTime audio I still find I don't know Skype just is a little more reliable and less delay I don't know that's I still find that you're the only person in the world who has ever said that really since the development since Skype was bought by Microsoft I have never heard a human being say that I don't know I feel like FaceTime audio especially if I do it on my iPhone there's like a a a weird delay when I'm trying to talk to somebody I don't know all right you don't find that no quite the opposite I found there are times when I haven't realized the call was FaceTime audio I go back into the phone to try calling somebody who just called me thought they're not there they're off in FaceTime so yeah it's worked very well for me okay well may maybe we could try it again in the near future but we have a show to do I want to do a bunch of Mac OS apps and utilities a couple quick news bites before we get to all that big news is tile the location tracking keychain tab bags they've been around for a long time they were actually acquired by Life 360 earlier this week Life 360 if you didn't know at least here in the US is a kind of family location tracking family management app that you can pay for and so they have purchased tile with the hopes of kind of extending their device location tracking and they've also acquired another company recently called jobit it's a company that markets cellular enabled GPS tracking devices with help designed to attract children elderly and pets so Life 360 could be in a position to compete with the find my network that we all use in love I mean I use the find my stuff have you ever used any tile products William I've never actually seen a tile product in real life I mean yeah okay they look very nice in the photographs but no have I missed out do you think I mean it's not from some deliberate aversion to tile I just never thought about any of this and until air tags came out tried them found them incredibly useful but no I I don't think you have I think now with air yeah I I don't think you're missing anything with tile I used tile way back in the day and then stopped and once air tag came out I've gone full in on air tag I was wondering William have you had any recent experiences with air tag that it helped you find something or locate something yes I I actually managed to use air tags and find my to find an air tag cuz you know you got to buy those little um what what do call them they're not like holders or lanyards you've got to put something in I have two of them on my key ring and the idea is one's for my keys one's for luggage whenever I use it but most of the time it's on the keys but I got a cheaper holder for that one and that one fell out and I had to search the house to find oh my the air tag for it but it worked well that's one way to do it I have used a couple times to actually find the location of something but more recently I've actually used the one attached to my keys this was actually just yesterday as we record that I couldn't find my keys we were over someone else's house and I couldn't find them and so used the little uh find my app to make the air tag make a sound and it was loud enough to actually locate my keys which had fallen on the floor next to a couch I don't know if I would have found it uh anywhere near as fast without that air tag making a sound so yeah I'm down with the air tag I've been putting them on everything I was expecting you to say that it The Sound had vibrated the bowl that were in or something but that's another story actually sorry speaking of sounds didn't you say on the special Apple Insider podcast that you're going to put a sound at the end of every shortcut on your Mac did you do that really no no no not every shortcut but we were talking about Matthew cassanelli and I which if you missed it special interview Matthew cassanelli came back on the show to talk about shortcuts on macow specifically and there is an action where you can have a sound play at the end of every shortcut or anytime in between a shortcut and we were talking about having a text expander replacement meaning you know text expander makes a little pop or whatever sound once a snippet expands and so it'd be nice to kind of have that audio confirmation that a shortcut has run and the text expanded or pasted so I haven't done it yet but it's nice that it's there now a couple of updates to the Apple self-repair program we talked about it on the last Friday episode of the Apple Insider show but a couple more details first of all it came out that a third party is probably going to be handling part sales so if you go to buy parts for your Apple devices to self-repair through this program that's launching next year sales will probably be handled by a third party and also it appears that you'll need to provide a device information or at least device serial number when ordering parts and there's a lot of still questions about this like if parts will be available to purchase without a specific device serial code because for someone who maybe repairs multiple devices or would like to stockpile some parts for different devices it seems like this program might not allow it because you actually need a specific device ID or serial number or whatever in order to order the specific parts so more details will be coming out I'm sure as that program nears but what what did you have any thoughts on that I wasn't very surprised that it was a third party cuz it feels like apple does enough really but that one business of having to prove each device it can't be some way Apple wanting you to buy uh all the tools for example new for every device you want to repair it feels like it's not worked out entirely yet uh which makes you wonder was it was the announcement rushed it might be they might have been trying to get ahead of that you know right to repair stuff again it's not even out like in beta yet so we'll have to wait till next year for all the details to come out now I wanted to talk for a moment about password management and I I broke this out from the apps and utilities thing cuz this is kind of cross devices with password management I was listening to the ATP podcast with you know Marco arment and them and Marco arment like myself kind of straddled the fence with both the iCloud keychain password management and one password I use both all the time and a lot of times that can be a little complicated especially on the Mac now with the new one password extension both come up and there's just a lot of Windows yeah but I like that my password is being saved in multiple places so my first question to you William is I thought you had used one password or still use it do you use both or have you gone one or the other exclusively I'm exactly the same as you I use them both and when you try to log into somewhere and Safari and one password going no no use my version uh it can't even today actually cuz I was doing a lot of installs it was a pain but it's a relief to know with Safari you have to be on the site for the password to be volunteered or go into preferences and you have to search for it with one password it feels like you can bug anything in there site licenses software things anything so one password feels like the better overall package but the convenience of safari going oh yeah yeah yeah that's Theos what you want that is so good I am for the moment using both yes I'm putting up with the odd yeah confusion my next question then to is this cuz using both one of the things I do with many of my account logins is two Factor authentication which is that six-digit randomized code code I do that in one password and it's been working really well but since iCloud keychain has added that functionality in iOS 15 and Mac OS monter I wanted to have those there as well but what I have found is this weird behavior of when I set up those two Factor authentication codes in both places I actually get a different six-digit number in iCloud keychain and for some reason it is not correct I can't log in with the iCloud keychain six-digit number and um I didn't scan the QR code I used the you know long secret code that whatever the account gives you to you know put in for that two-factor line so it generates the six digits but I put the same long two-factor URL or code in both one passor and I and iCloud keychain and for some reason it gives me two different numbers have you experienced that or looked into that at all uh actually yesterday I was offered a six-digit code I think it was the iCloud version and I couldn't seem to successfully enter anywhere it looked like I was doing I just decided I was really tired and it was me but it feels like I've got the same thing then which means it's not going to get any better is that you didn't send me a random six-digit number for no reason yesterday no I did not okay but you're going to I can tell yeah well anyway I'm just wondering what others have experienced so listeners out there if you're using iCloud keychain with two Factor authentication codes and maybe if you also use one password I'm curious your experience is there consistency between those are you able to use both for the two factor and they work both hand inand I'd be really curious because one password syncs incredibly well with those two Factor authentication codes I mean I can be on my iPhone my iPad my Mac you know a secondary iPad like my iPad mini and one password Works flawlessly on all those devices and so makes me a little skittish about iCloud keychain and two Factor support I do really like one password I've always really liked it so yeah can I just add yes please sort me out anybody thank you all right one other followup last week we talked about Apple's current state of software stability and addressed John prost's video about saying that Apple's software currently sucks that was the title of his video you can listen to last week's episode for the full discussion on that but one listener actually reached out on Twitter his name is holer fiio I believe looks like he's from South America and he's actually visually impaired and he had some things to say about accessibility and when it comes to you know really using accessibility features and relying on accessibility features for either visually impaired or hearing impaired he said a lot of times those bugs don't get fixed very quickly and with new features such as Focus modes accessibility has not been as quick to uh keep up with those features and voice over doesn't work very well with Focus modes and things like that there's actually a website Apple VIs . so apple.com and it actually lists all the updates and current bugs and issues that exist for accessibility features on Apple devices and so a resource there for those who really depend on accessibility features and I thought that was an interesting point that's not something that I depend on personally and so it can definitely be at least unobserved or overlooked by uh those of us who don't use those features super in-depth and often but I appreciate that feedback and yeah be curious anyone else out there listeners who might use accessibility features in depth for just really need to be able to use the device because of accessibility be curious your experience when it comes to bugs and stability and maybe even comparing it to other platforms William I didn't know if you had any thoughts about the state of Apple software oh yeah well I followed that thread you had I was terribly disappointed cuz you always think that Apple is very good this is one particular area Apple's great in so when they fall down on it that's disappointing but like you I don't need the accessibility stuff except for the odd little you know trickery with keyboard Maestro or shortcuts or something so I'd missed all of these problems where I was disappointed I remember when I saw John PR's title video it's easy to just read the title of his videos than bother watching them um I don't I didn't immediately agree but I hear the odd example I know the discussion you had yeah there are things that aren't great and it feels as if things are not as good as they were but then I I remember I wrote a six-page memo about would have been word six for dos I think it was and sent it to Microsoft and the pr people told me that they actually cried in the meeting as they read all the bugs I'd found and they didn't fix any of them so I didn't know whether to be yeah the software is always been a bit buggy maybe there's just more of us now using more of it and finding more things I'm trying to be optimistic and pessimistic at the same time aren't I right being on the tight rope it's all right yeah uh I'm not switching to Android because of these problems I can tell you that though so no no no no all right last piece before we get to the Big Mac OS app and extension and utility Roundup I have a question for you William what mouse do you use when you use a Mac I use no mouse at all I don't like mises I love trackpads so I have the Apple Magic trackpad and I just I I think I did actually get the Mac with the Mouse um a few Macs ago so I tried it but I now I'm a a track bad guy and I I I understand the Precision that say a graphic artists will need but I find I'm pretty precise with a track bad as well so no no misis I think you're an MX Master something yeah you're a real strong Pro mouse user is that you funny you should say that William because I have been a Magic Mouse user from the jump I've never used anything but magic mice Apple's first party magic M Mees mouses yes and I've tried the magic Trackpad I like it I found especially when I edit video and use it for an extended period of time I get weird like hand strain on the magic Trackpad cuz I I kind of hold my hand hovering above it constantly with all my fingers in this like claw for a hand for some reason so the magic Trackpad it doesn't work for me cuz of the hand strain but I've been Magic Mouse all you know for years because I like the double finger swiping and gestures and all that kind of stuff but I've recently been watching a number of videos I saw a Peter McKinnon video he's a guy on YouTube who does a lot of film making and you know creative stuff like that very big YouTube channel but he was talking about his desk setup you know he's got his Pro display xdr he got one of the new Macbook Pros all that kind of stuff and he talked about the Logitech mxm 3 and I've heard many people talk about this mouse before and so I'll will Reserve judgment for the moment but I did get one I have the mxm right here in my hand I'll even click it so you can hear it see that click that's the mouse click right there ah can't be that it's very very clicky there's I think you know there's two different scroll Wheels there's a side scroll and a top scroll and there's lots of buttons that you can program to do lots of different things and you can can you know pair it with three different Bluetooth devices including an iPad this works with an iPad so and it has a USB charging cable on the front and it can be plugged in while you use it imagine that a for a mouse uh I'm not I'm not going to rise to the way your voice went up over the charging point on the front I have no problem with the charging Point underneath well cuz your magic Trackpad is fine it's just the magic mises you got to flip it over like a turtle on its back I seriously I don't I don't have a problem with that with the with the underneath the charging thing yeah so like there 3 months or something it goes uh a bit low so you plug it in go get a coffee come back unplug it carry on then at the end of the night you leave it plug it in overnight it's done it's just Dreadful how inconvenient that is you don't have to charge it often enough like I don't Char I don't charge it nightly or daily you know I just don't I don't think to plug in my mouse every night I don't want another daily charged device and it lasts a long time the magic mouse battery will last a month or two pretty long long enough where you don't think to charge it until it's almost dead and you only realize it's dead once you start using it so then you run into the issue of I can't use this thing and charge it at the same time in my current docking situation here my desk if I don't have the Magic Mouse I was kind of up a creek you know I guess I could flip open my laptop but it's usually in clamshell mode and so I'd be using a trackpad on the far right side of my desk no no no no no hang on hang on a minute there my Mac will come up with a quite a scolding message saying your trackpad is getting very low William you should really plug it in but that's you know several days before it's going to go wrong you don't get any warnings at all it's just toys with you I get a warning but the warning is such where if I'm starting my computer up for the day if I'm going to record in 2 hours you know 2 hours from now it might be dead and so I I can't you know just run the the risk take the gamble that it will stay alive through an hour podcast recording Plus some so I feel like I have to charge it right away so I don't know I mean listen this first world problem whatever but all that to say I have the MX Master 3 right here in my hand I'm going to try to customize every button to do something maybe I can even run a shortcut by clicking one of these buttons I don't even know I'm going to try it all and uh I will report back but uh I'm curious listeners out there if we have any MX Master 3 users out there if you're on the magic me uh train or if there's some other magic not well I meant to say like magical Mouse product but that that's like apple so any other incredible mouse that I don't know of yet I would love to hear from you all what do you use for your mousing or your meing I don't know how to say it anymore or track padding be with me Jo join me join me I I'm gonna get carpal tunnel if I if I do the track pad I tried it for a long time can't do it I actually genuinely I found it the other way around when I gripped the Magic Mouse I found my hands was getting very tight on it I I like this the more relaxed open Palm swipe thing so it's funny how the same thing affects people in completely opposite ways but good that we have the option I also find this MX Master it's much higher than the Magic Mouse cuz it's supposed to be ergonomic but it's like a full double to 2 and 1 half times the height of the Magic Mouse and I've have several times went to like slide my hand over to grab something and just knock the MX Master off the desk because I'm used to the lowprofile Magic Mouse and this MX master is like I don't know a skyscraper next to it so we'll see we'll see how long it lasts this episode is brought to you by bespoke post this fall as you get back into the swing of things bespoke post is here with a new seasonal lineup of musthave box of awesome collections bespoke post partners with small businesses and emerging Brands to bring you the most unique Goods every month I've gotten a few box of awesome boxes and I love all of them one of my favorite boxes came with a travel day bag was a beautiful canvas bag with leather straps and it feels rustic and classic all at the same time and I just love everything that comes in these boxes of awesome so no matter what you're into box of awesome has you covered from Autumn craft beers to Cozy threads and camping gear Essentials box of awesome has collections for every part of your life some of their new collections includes the desktop flame miniature thing to put like on a table or coffee table plus again some of that camping gear like the knives and cooking tools very chic to get started take the quiz at box ofawesome.com and your answers will will help them pick the right box of awesome for you they release new boxes every month across a ton of different categories and it's free to sign up you can skip a month or cancel any time and each box only costs $45 but has over $70 worth of gear inside plus with each box of awesome you're supporting small businesses and that's what matters 90% of everything that comes in your box of awesome is from small upand cominging Brands so get 20% off your first monthly box when you sign up at box ofawesome.com and enter the code Apple Insider at checkout that's box ofawesome.com promo code Apple Insider all one word for 20% off your first box and that link will be in show notes as well our thanks to box of Awesome from bespoke post for sponsoring this episode and our friends at Comet backup listen in case you didn't know backing up your data is very important I've had hard drives in the past fail me with pictures and sensitive documents and video files and losing data it's just a terrible sinking feeling you do not want to be in that position especially when you have your main computer your main Mac or PC and you for sure don't want to lose any of that data so whether you get hit with ransomware it's a hardware failure or just human error data loss can be a business ending event so what measures do you have in place to guard against disaster now you might have some files backed up on a hard drive in your office but stuff happens to those external hard drives as well and backups are your final stand when a threat penetrates your layers of defense well Comet backup is a fast flexible backup option 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which many of you do or the weekend it's Black Friday maybe you got a new Mac recently a new Macbook Pro or just looking to see what apps might be for sale you know there's Black Friday deals going on all over the place obviously stay tuned to Apple insider.com because we have deal posts going up constantly all the time Black Friday deals stuff on Amazon you can get a pair of airpods pro for $170 on Amazon what in the world like cheaper than the new airpods 3 the world just doesn't make sense will and when it's a Black Friday season nothing nothing makes sense what makes sense to me is that I keep finding deals for things I've already bought like don't yeah that's that is the unfortunate part now do you call it Black Friday over there in London do you have some fancy name for it like the Q or poppers uh Black Friday is actually really new in the UK but um it is called by that now it can't be more than four or five years at the absolute most before it was even heard of but now we have it just like you and the same sales at pretty much the same time so yes we are being Americanized in that way and how dare we get money off holiday periods gosh America what are you doing to us can you do it some more so I'm going to break this down into Apps and then utilities kind of separating them into those two categories because apps are like things you use on screen with for extended periods of time utilities can be in the background you activate it with a keyboard shortcut maybe it's in menu bar it lives up there so I thought it' be a good distinction there between those two but maybe we could go back and forth a little bit William I'll name three of my current favorite and really useful apps and then maybe you can name a few and then we'll go back and forth and we'll see how it goes yes here's my first three number one if you ever have reason to download a YouTube video honestly video content across any website you know maybe it's Vimeo maybe it's Facebook maybe it's video in a tweet this app can handle pretty much all of it and download the video file directly as an mp4 or if you just want the audio it can download the audio only as well you can add a bunch of them to your queue and it's been so solid since I've been using it for the past year or so but this app is called dowy d o w n i e it's from Charlie Monroe and I highly highly recommend it you know there's different ways to download YouTube videos and other video content from like social media platforms a lot of those can be janky or updates are difficult you can do it through home brew and terminal and you can do it through that way but I have found dowy to just be incredible it's available via set app if you subscribe to that or you can just purchase it individually it's 20 bucks for an individual license and again if you do anything like that often or like to pull video content from websites even if it's like news websites maybe you do something where you need to pull news clips from just different websites again highly recommend Downey D niie and of course links to everything we talk about will be in the show notes if you'd like to find it there so Downey definitely two thumbs up secondly for package tracking or Parcel tracking as they say in the UK isn't that what you call what do you call a package William is it a parcel Troublesome that's what we call it uh bothersome waiting yeah but parcel more often than anything else yes right parel or pack no you're right packages oh my God you're influencing us on our language as well now oh yep just influencing it all well because this is a UK term maybe that's why I never searched for it but a delivery app called parel p a r c l I've typically used the deliveries app for a long long time I really like the deliveries app I still may continue to use it but parcel I heard it recommended on another show and I've been trying that out it's crossplatform you can use it on your iPhone iPad and your Mac it's something like $5 a year to unlock all the features and it can do things like integrate with your Amazon account and automatically pull in Amazon orders just by itself automatically you don't even have to add them individually once you log into your Amazon account gives you notifications you can track it on the maps all that parcel it's great for tracking packages Parcels or deliveries whatever you'd like to call it and on secondly I would also recommend deliveries because I've been using that for a long time and pretty happy with it and my third recommendation for right now is an app for the mac and I believe this is on other platforms as well but I use it on the Mac mainly is an app called pastel this is by developer Steven troton Smith and pastel is a app to manage colors color boards brand colors and if you work in graphic design or web design I use it specifically for some websites that I make you can create pallets of color and save it in that pastel app you can even this is the cool part you can take a screenshot or any image pull the image into the pastel app and it will automatically detect the colors from that image and import them and then you can copy the hex code the RGB codes and you can just right click and copy any of those options for whatever color you have in the app and paste that wherever so if you're dealing with web design that's very helpful graphic design and you want the exact hex code really really useful and you can create custom palletes you can have folders and collections so if you work with color at all whether it's branding graphic design or web development I highly recommend pastel by Steven troton Smith it's very cool all right William why to give me a few of your favorite Mac apps that or current MAC apps that you've been using this is so me basically I suggest you go off and get a a cup of coffee a meal maybe a a decent lunch because I have so many apps you oh you're looking at me you only want a few okay uh let me start with this one cuz I'm I've kind of ref fallen in love with it default folder X X and it is X by the way I can't it when people talk about Logic Pro X and they mean 10 this is default folder x a reason I fell back in love with it is I didn't move it onto my new Macbook Pro at first and instantly found how much I missed it it converts every open and save dialogue box in every app to give you quick route to favorite folders favorite files and a much faster way of kind of navigating through your entire uh Mac folder uh structure for it uh it's just that sounds so little I'm giving how much I use it but it's in every open and save dialog box it's also in every finder window there's a menu bar option for it so I can fly there there's lots of jobs where I need a file from this folder and I have to end it up in that folder and this just makes it a snap to go back and forth between each of them so default folder X um I loved it before I love it again now uh have you heard of that one maybe a long time ago but I'm looking at it right now and I'm I'm very curious about trying this so it looks very cool oh well in that case now's now is the time to come back okay can I have two from the same company is that oh absolutely please yeah Omni outliner Omni outliner and omn focus uh omn focus is the easiest to explain because it's like it's bionic to-do app I mean more than a to-do app it always feels to me like it's a a can do app so yeah it will list the things I've said I must get done today but also you know you're waiting for a train you're waiting to do something you across all your jobs all your work you can just say show me all the phone calls I've got to make I've got 10 minutes what phone calls can I make and you can start knocking them off it presents you with things you can do as well as must and I think it it's incredibly powerful and maybe too powerful for many people it's like uh things and omn focus you really needed to do app if you're going to use them but when you do need it omn Focus rules my life and then Omni outline is the one I'm I'm honestly surprised I tried Omni outliner because I liked Omni Focus so much I want to see what else the company did I loathe outlining uh I'm a writer who who rather just write see what happens throw things away if it doesn't work I'm not into planning uh books and things like that occasionally contractually you have to and it's very useful for that but Omni outliner really super perb at um ideas it lets you Chuck down a couple of thoughts and then slowly expand them massage them move them around expand out and the example I got is somebody asked me if I would do a day's uh writing conference for them so obviously I said yes um and then they immediately came back and asked what I would do for the entire day I had 20 minutes to knock up an entire day's schedule for this writing conference and I did because of omni outliner you know I will say I used omn focus in the past and it is ex it is extremely powerful and for some people it is you know definitely try it because for major project management really granular control of your tasks it's really excellent I have it's just I get so involved in like the wanting to detail out every part of my task list in OmniFocus that I end up just doing OmniFocus all day so I I try to use a a simpler project management task app but Omni focus is incredible and the Omni group all their products are again incredible so we'll link to all of that I just like the people at Omni as well it's it's great when it's like when you interview an artist you really like and you find out they're they're nice people which quite often doesn't happen it's a similar thing with OM they great software great people really good company so yes people are awesome as well speaking of to- do apps I will say one of my favorite task managers project management apps and the one I use for my to-dos is things by cultured code I love the design of things it's crossplatform I use it on all my devices and it gives me enough control over projects and tags they actually now have marked down support inside the notes section of any individual task so it is really uh it's powerful but it's also beautifully designed and that helps me manage my things my things to do uh altogether so I love things three across all platforms I still actually use reminders as well for other things because asking Siri just to remind me of something quickly at a certain time or date or later today it's just super convenient and so I still kind of use reminders for little things here and there but things is my main task and project management application speaking of tasks if you ever have to do graphic design work or whether it's light or heavy you know you have the whole Adobe Creative Suite but I kind of moved away from that a while ago cuz I didn't want to pay for the subscription so I use pixel Mater Pro everywhere pixel Mater is an incredible app you've probably heard about it before but if not if you're looking for an app where you can do some photo editing graphic design create some graphic assets pixel Mater Pro is just an incredible tool again it's available on Mac iPad and even iPhone and it's I don't know it's just incredible I don't know what else to say about it pixel Mater Pro highly recommend that I've also transitioned a lot of my news reading to RSS feeds so rather than going to a bunch of different websites I pull in the RSS feeds kind of back in the day if you were a Google Reader user or you used some of those RSS reading apps you know way back when I encourage you to try take it back up again I've been using reader re e d r for my RSS feed management and reader is crossplatform you can have reader on your iPhone iPad and Mac it's got great read it later features it syncs all your feeds and folders your unread and I have some shortcuts that I've built with reader where I can pull some clean links whatever article I'm reading with the share button and put it in a note to keep for later and so reader great way to manage RSS feeds and read some news there I also do like YouTube channels and some podcasts in the reader app just to quickly see if there's a new episode cuz that RSS feed is always going to be the fastest way to see that kind of stuff and finally for the Mac if you do anything with audio I've mentioned these apps before but I'll mention them again rogba makes Incredible apps for the Mac when it comes to Audio Mac audio.com is the website it I use audio hijack multiple times every week to record shows multiple channels recording guests audio hijack is super powerful but if you just want a simple recording software for you know personal individual use you just want that local backup recording or maybe do some you know screen grabs or things like that they also make an app called Paso p i e zoo and it's like Quicktime and that it's a simple recording app but I find Paso to be more reliable more stable and just little inside baseball Andrew O'Hara when we record homekit Insider he's been struggling with quick time on his Mac row believe it or not like it's just not recording a single file for it keeps stopping so if you want just a solid recording experience with a simpl to use app I highly recommend pazo from rogba and their website is Mac audio.com and before we get to utilities William any other apps that you would like to recommend for the Mac well yeah but apart from pazo I use all of those that you just mentioned I thought I was name all of those that you mentioned so thanks all right what's left um some really specific oh no no no oh no this is kind of a utility you leave that one for a minute don't ask me about hook in a moment um I Fantastical calendar app yes I write scripts so final draft 12 is good Final Cut Pro is is a dream oh I highly recommend that yes now everything else I've got is utilities so yeah uh but oh and that's does keyboard M show account as utility or an app because you can spend your life building keyboard Maestro macros it's a utility but there you go I've snuck ahead you have inadvertently transitioned us to the utilities yes you've a look at that what a segue yes this episode is brought to you by our friends at Zach do has this ever happened to you when you need to see a doctor you probably need to see one pretty quickly if there's an issue and you find one online and it looks good you call you're on hold you try to make your appointment and you don't find out until you get there that they don't take your insurance that's such a frustrating experience plus it's a frustrating experience just trying to make an appointment at a physical doctor's office well that's why Zach do can help you can download the free yes it's a free app Zach do zooc do the zacho app is the easiest way to find a great doctor and instantly book an appointment when you search in that app you can search for local doctors who take your insurance and you can even read verified patient reviews book an appointment in 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going to include some Safari extensions as well because they're kind of utilities and so uh let's go four for four on this I'll do four and you can name some of yours okay when it comes to utilities now that I have the new Macbook Pro with a notch the menu bar icons become a little unwieldly I've actually found that at certain points certain menu bar icons that I needed to access like the shortcuts icon would disappear under the notch because I have too many icons up there pastebot one password fantastic Cal I also have things like Hazel and Elgato control center text expander and a couple other ones that I've added my focus mode icon and so I have found that it is not tenable to have that many menu bar icons with a notch because they just get hidden underneath so I have gone back to using bartender which is an incredible Mac utility where you can customize where your menu bar icons are located the order which ones appear kind of above the fold and if they expand when you just put your mouse in the menu bar so especially if one of the new Macbook Pros with that Notch bartender is probably a key utility that you need to try out secondly I recently heard on a podcast with Mike Hurley from relay FM rocket rocket is a Mac utility that makes it easy to type emojis now if you've used emojis on Mac like if you're using the messages app or even in an email some times getting to the Emoji Keyboard or finding an emoji can be a little bit of a chore and so rocket is this little utility that runs in the background and I can type colon and whatever word I can do like colon thumbs up or colon ey roll or something and it will search all the Emojis right there in line as I type in any app across Macos and I can quickly insert emojis faster than I ever could before and I know all those touch bar fans out out there might have experienced something like this because you could access emojis there but this is like Emoji search with instant insertion using the rocket utility and that's r c ke of course link to that will be in the show notes as well but if you use a lot of emojis or just like to be able to type them quickly rock it highly recommend also with the notch on the Mac I've been rocking just the regular menu bar I'll just look at the notch when I have it up there and it doesn't bother me too much but if you want to get rid of the notch or at least hide it by making the menu bar black I recommend topnotch Top Notch topnotch it's actually a completely free app and it's a developer that makes other applications that are really useful and those are paid apps but topnotch is totally free and it lets you hide the notch either by making the menu bar black or kind of placing the entire screen below the the Notch and so I highly recommend if you want to do something to hide it so topnotch and fourthly and then I'll to William and this is an extension for Safari called super agent super agent is an extension that works on the Mac but also on iPad and iPhone it actually automatically accepts and dismisses those cookie banners that you see all over the internet where it says do you want to accept cookies or reject them you can actually put some custom preferences in the super agent app and they will automatically accept or reject those and so you never have to see them again it's not even like they pop up a little bit and go away you just never see a cookie Banner again as you browse the internet and that is actually a nice experience so super agent as an extension for Safari William hit me with some of your favorite utilities well I do have a question about rocket is there a setting in there that can make it slower and harder to get emoji or preferably impossible is that is that a feature they could I don't know I'd have to look to look at the preferences uh why do you do you not like using emoji otherwise I do think actually you you've been peeking at my list cuz I was going to say bartender as well I I've always liked bartender I don't the notch justes not I mean in the day's use the notch makes no difference to me at all maybe I'll change my mind after two days but I just don't notice it's there but bartender is so useful even on I have a very wide monitor on my Mac and I still use bartender cuz it's just kind of Handy y up in the corner a couple of things so but uh ones of mine that you haven't picked well you've mentioned once like you mentioned Hazel earlier and I consider that a utility that's gorgeous keyboard Maestro I've mentioned all right uh let's go obscure how about do you ever use pop clip have you come across that I've heard but I haven't used it what does it do again well you know the way when you're on your iPhone your iPad and you highlight where you tap on it a little black bar appears with copy and paste and couple of things like that it does that for the Mac but as well as the same kind of iOS copy and things you can add other things to it so so uh I can highlight a paragraph This will pop up automatically and I can click a button on it to send it off to omn focus my Todo app or to Google Translate for example and things like that so it's just a little it's one of those things where you forget how much you're using it until you're trying to show somebody uh how to do something on a Mac and it isn't working because you haven't got pop interesting okay check that out I mentioned hook are you already a hook fan in fact was it you who told me about hook in the first place I do not know what Hook is I don't know what that is oh excellent excellent Hook is this gorgeous gorgeous little utility where it hooks things together so for example three times a year I edit a magazine uh for a company and when I do that it's a young writer's magazine so there might be 60 Young Writers sending stuff in to it so I have 60 documents to track and then whether I've rejected them or not whether I've replied to them or not cover design stuff what the state of the file is and there's a particular editor I have to work with a B producer really the client who will send me instructions at certain times in different emails with hook I am one keystroke away from looking up any one of those emails immediately or going from the magazine to the folder where the rejected uh things are or the accepted ones uh you can link stuff together in my accounts for example I have an account spreadsheet and I've hooked every one of my online bank accounts so rather than going off to one password or to Safari and finding it I'm in the spreadsheet I need to know a figure C keystroke and I'm in my bank account uh looking at whatever it is anything you can link together anything you use often hook can hold them in one place and it's desperately good those are wonderful I have not heard of hook or the pop clip so I'm I'm going to check those out all right so a few more utilities I like to use a picture and picture extension in Safari because sometimes the built-in picture and picture does not always work it doesn't force it you know some websites restrict that access or just doesn't want you to do it so I use a safari extension called over picture and over picture you can put a keyboard shortcut I actually just have the letter P for picture and picture and whatever video is playing in Safari no matter where it's playing from or what website it's from I just hit the letter P and it immediately goes into picture and picture mode on my Mac and it hovers over whatever other windows are on my different desktops and I love it so over picture another one that does a similar function is pip aier like picture and picture ifier and I'll put links to those as well I always recommend if you have a Mac you need a clipboard manager app William uses keyboard Maestro which has a built-in clipboard manager but if you're looking for a standalone option I recommend pastebot pastebot is a incredible app it's super lightweight I love the developer they also make tweetbot if you're if you use that or familiar with that app so pastebot great clipboard manager and this is kind of a utility but it's also kind of a piece of hardware and I know William is familiar with this too stream deck stream deck is a physical physical button thing that sits on your desk and you can get multiple models but then it also has the utility where you program what those different buttons do and now that shortcuts are on the Mac Matthew cassanelli talked about this in our interview earlier this week you can actually trigger shortcuts from stream deck buttons and you can also program a bunch of different things on stream deck buttons and have multiple pages of buttons you can open apps turn on Elgato lights if you have some of their key lights and they connect to the Wi-Fi network you can program it for a bunch of stuff so stream deck it's kind of a utility also a piece of Hardware but I highly recommend you still using your stream deck William yeah very much so and I am an idiot it never occurred to me that I could use shortcuts the second you said that I realized there's one one's going on there the moment we've shut up I'm adding a button for a particular shortcut of course you can use it for that excellent thank you very much yes yes you're you're very welcome I I highly recommend a couple more and then a question for you add blockers you know a lot of people use different kind of content blockers some people don't like using them to each his own if you're going to use one I've been trying a bunch of different ones I've tried C block and one blocker and Magic lasso I've tried a bunch of them currently I'm trying out ad block plus it's ABP and I'll put a link to that extension in the show notes but I found it working pretty well right now you can Whit list websites and so they won't block anything when you go to one of those whitelisted websites and that's my current one and lastly for me is more of a question I think you've mentioned this one in the past but Alfred as a replacement for spotlight Alfred is like that little search bar that can pop up and do many different things you can also apparently run shortcuts directly from Alfred now as well with this like plugin from GitHub yeah Matthew cassanelli talked about that as well but are you still using Alfred and do you still love it I used it about 4 minutes ago when I realized that part of my internet connection problems today might be a particular app going wrong so I did the keyboard shortcut the same one for spotlight but it makes it brings up Alfred and I typed kill and started the name of the application it showed me the name show me what percentage CPU it was using and W up hit return and it was gone yeah I use it constantly um I will I've got to do a lot of I use W from alpha quite a lot so I will tap the Alfred Bar type the word Wolfram enter whatever my obscure math question is or science question and it will then fling it off to wol from alpha uh that thing you said about riding shortcuts yep I do that I didn't use the GI GitHub one I didn't know about that there's a website called um pacle it's like Jackal but with P instead of a j that collects a lot of these things like the kill one I just Ed and it has a shortcut running one so yep the moment I heard about that that went in too uh Alpha One I don't tend to use so um you mentioned that I use uh keyboard maistro as clipboard manager and I do obviously because I've told you about it at boring length I'm sorry but I also use the one in Alfred uh because it's just so handy to see with keyboard M it's great at handling past clipboard M doing things with them keyboard Master will show you the last 30 things you did or anything like that and it's very useful for it occasionally I've also used it as a kind of shelf if there's a file or a series of folders I use a lot then you can actually kind of it's like pin them to Alfred so that as soon as you do the keyboard shortcut you don't have to look for anything they're all there in a little Row for you it's just Alfred is this endless mine of new functions uh there's too many to possibly absorb at once but then you get one and it becomes why doesn't everything do this why isn't this on every MC so yeah Alfred and the power pack that you need U Alfred's free for an astonishing generous number of things but they have a power pack option of like $20 or something which gives you oodles more and honestly I would pay them that money just out of gratitude for the free stuff that good so yeah was that could you read between the lines there that I'm quite keen on alfha could you pick up on that I hear it I hear it so we had some listeners actually tweet at me some utility and app recommendations so I want to go through those real quick and then I'll have one final question for you William about notes and what applications you using for notes right now but our listeners Wes from Apple Insider Apple Insider staff and co-host of this podcast every other week he said sidecar it's a built-in utility with Mac OS but it lets you use your iPad as a secondary display sidecar is excellent Works super well so great recommendation there then Lucas pistol he recommended a few different apps and utilities one is clean my Mac X which was actually a sponsor of this podcast for several times clean my macx is great especially for like scanning your Mac cleaning up files all that kind of stuff IAT menus which I've heard many podcasters talk about it lets you see detailed information about your CPU Ram GPU battery gives you all that kind of stuff you can put stats in the menu bar I have not used it personally yet I feel like that's a lot of information that I don't know might stress me out if I see it all the time so I haven't tried IEP menus just yet but that is a very popular utility and also magnet I had not heard of this utility before but magnet is a application for the Mac that lets you customize certain workspace layouts for your desktop and it can snap Windows to half the screen a quarter of the screen splitting it vertically and horizontally and you can you know save different workspace settings so magnet looks like a great app so thanks for those recommendations lucose and then sand Deep Roy he recommended something that I had forgot about I had used these in the past but if you ever need to keep your Mac awake not go to screen saver not go to sleep for whatever reason but you don't do that all the time so you don't want to change your system preferences there are apps that will keep your Mac awake and active until you turn it off or you can set it for a certain timer those two of those apps that do that function is called caffeine you can download caffeine for Mac it's actually a free application you can start it at login you can activate it for a few hours 2 hours 30 minutes you know it might be useful if you're uploading files and you want to make sure your Mac doesn't go to sleep in the middle of the upload you can say you know keep my back awake for the next 2 hours so it finishes this thing and also another app this one's in the app store if you prefer that amphetamine is an app you can get there that keeps your Mac awake and not going to sleep so good recommendations there from our listeners did you have any final utilities that you wanted to sneak in uh we didn't talk about Tex expander we've mentioned it in the past though yes Tex of course of course Tex expander I still use it pretty much every day highly recommend it's such an odd thing with utilities uh on there you stumble across them and then they become part of your normal working life and you forget about them and so people ask you things and you don't remember what you got any of them and yet the moment you go to someone else's Mac that seems lacking without these things you've come to rely on I God bless the developers of utilities they're doing amazing things for us they do amazing work for sure and so to round out this whole app and utility segment just wanted to ask you William when it comes to notes taking notes on your Mac or you know writing not long form writing cuz I know you have like Pro apps for that but if you you know writing I don't know maybe an article for Apple Insider or just taking notes where do you write all that stuff what apps do you use for that about a month ago if he'd said to me I would have said I was kind of not heading towards becoming an Apple notes fan now I'm an Apple notes fan specifically because of quick note and specifically because of quick note on the iPad the it's better on the iPad than the Mac for some reason the ability to just swipe up from a corner drop something down Chuck it away and get on with what you're doing I absolutely love but that is for really small pieces of notes or when you're building up a long list of things when you compiling research if I I write articles for Apple inside in drafts five on the Mac and on iPad uh for it it's very I don't want to call it simple in an insulting way it's a very strong text editor but its biggest strength for me is it just gets out of the way you think of something you open draft you start writing immediately there's no file new no choosing template like that just get on with it and then when you've written you can decide what to do with it you can leave it there you can copy and paste it out or from within drafts you can press a button and send it to your blog send it to a CMS email it to somebody and I find I'm not using those functions enough but it's great when you do what about you so I use bear for almost everything I use bear for quick notes and for just like sometimes notes where I have to remember some few things notes for podcast I eventually take our notes from Apple notes that we share to do this podcast I'll bring those into bear to actually write the article for Apple Insider and then fill out all the HTML in beay so I really like beay for pretty much everything I use it on my phone my iPad and I I like having kind of one app to do long form writing and shorter notes and just because then when I want to search for something it searches all my notes you know from everything I've written so I like kind of that one system for everything and the only thing I use Apple notes for are these shared notes as we prepare for this podcast and because I copy those every week into bear everything everything is in be so I like bear for a lot of things I have been using notion for a couple things I use notion for a couple collaborative features some research that I've done I like Notions backlinks the ability to embed videos and such so I've been liking notion a little bit but I've been hearing more and more about obsidian William do you have any experience or thoughts about obsidian only the same as you I've just been looking at notion there are things I don't like there are things I do and I'm kind of pursuing it more and yet every time I ask a question about notion for somebody people saying well there obsidian you know so I've yet to download it and try it but I it seems to be it's the app of the moment it sounds it is and there's Alternatives like craft that you can get on all your devices and craft is like a notion alternative a lot of people prefer that but obsidian seems to be like a more open and flexible platform which it looks not as nicely designed because it is so utilitarian and you can do like third- party plugins but it also just keeps all your notes as marked down files in a folder and that's one of the things I like about a nonproprietary database you know even bare there's not like some folder I can go look at all my notes I can export them all as text files or markdown files and you can export your entire database but obsidian actually keeps your entire notes database as those plain markdown files in a folder and then you can just always copy and paste that folder or do whatever and cgp gray on the recent episode of Cortex said he has switched to obsidian for notetaking and script writing because it has some killer features and so it's in the periphery I've looked at it but I have not dedicated a lot of time to getting to learn it but I don't know I'd be curious if our listeners out there have tried obsidian or I don't know if there's just lovers out there of obsidian I know there's a whole notion Nation I think that's the uh the short term for it people that love notion but will any other final thoughts you could spend your life playing with all of these things could you at some point you have to get on with work unfortunately I know I know I like fussing around with it and I like upending my entire notes and writing structure just because because it's fun and then it's a it's a terrible idea but yeah I like doing it anyways exactly so well that was a massive Roundup of apps and utilities listeners if we forgot something let us know tweet at William and myself our Twitter handles are in the show notes would love to know if you're using some incredible utility that we don't know about or didn't list and then we'll do maybe a follow-up next time we'd love to hear from you there also it would greatly help out the show if you gave it a fstar rating and review in apple podcast even if that's not where you listen to the podcast just hop over to that app give it five stars in a review we'd greatly appreciate that and you can also support the show with $5 a month to get an AdFree uninterrupted experience and you can do that on patreon.com inssider or write an apple podcast for $5 a month you get the adree version the whole feed just changes over to ad free stuff and actually planning to do some Standalone bonus episodes specifically for our paid subscribers and so those will be coming soon don't forget to check out homekit Insider that's our podcast about smart home and homekit devices Andrew O'Hara and myself host that comes out every Monday and keep your eyes peeled for deals on appleinsider.com as we head into the holiday season thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next timewelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host Steven Roz and today we're going to do a massive Roundup of our favorite Mac OS apps and utilities especially with these new Macbook Pros out plus TI was acquired by Life 360 and some other talk about password management and such this episode is brought to you by bespoke post Comet backup Zach do and quip smart toothbrushes you'll hear about those in moment and joining me from across the pond is my favorite Ted lasso fan William Gallagher how's it going William uh you threw me there it's going um very slowly actually and very still as I hold on to my internet connection first basically I've got my new Macbook Pro my old Mac Mini has decided fine you don't care I'm not working anymore that's how it's going at the moment that's what's going on I was wondering yeah William is getting the internet through a tin can and string connected to some cell tower across London or I don't even know something like that yeah that's what BT calls their Advanced system the the string and can yeah you got to pay extra for that I'm pretty sure clearly you said your new Macbook Pro and I thought I saw somewhere that you got it so I new Macbook Pro is in hand it's on my desk next to me it's not fully set up yet it's weird that you should say about apps and things because I was compiling a list anyway as I was going through what must I move on to or must I have and I end up with about 15 or so Skype wasn't one of them yet but now it will be I mean you can try FaceTime audio I still find I don't know Skype just is a little more reliable and less delay I don't know that's I still find that you're the only person in the world who has ever said that really since the development since Skype was bought by Microsoft I have never heard a human being say that I don't know I feel like FaceTime audio especially if I do it on my iPhone there's like a a a weird delay when I'm trying to talk to somebody I don't know all right you don't find that no quite the opposite I found there are times when I haven't realized the call was FaceTime audio I go back into the phone to try calling somebody who just called me thought they're not there they're off in FaceTime so yeah it's worked very well for me okay well may maybe we could try it again in the near future but we have a show to do I want to do a bunch of Mac OS apps and utilities a couple quick news bites before we get to all that big news is tile the location tracking keychain tab bags they've been around for a long time they were actually acquired by Life 360 earlier this week Life 360 if you didn't know at least here in the US is a kind of family location tracking family management app that you can pay for and so they have purchased tile with the hopes of kind of extending their device location tracking and they've also acquired another company recently called jobit it's a company that markets cellular enabled GPS tracking devices with help designed to attract children elderly and pets so Life 360 could be in a position to compete with the find my network that we all use in love I mean I use the find my stuff have you ever used any tile products William I've never actually seen a tile product in real life I mean yeah okay they look very nice in the photographs but no have I missed out do you think I mean it's not from some deliberate aversion to tile I just never thought about any of this and until air tags came out tried them found them incredibly useful but no I I don't think you have I think now with air yeah I I don't think you're missing anything with tile I used tile way back in the day and then stopped and once air tag came out I've gone full in on air tag I was wondering William have you had any recent experiences with air tag that it helped you find something or locate something yes I I actually managed to use air tags and find my to find an air tag cuz you know you got to buy those little um what what do call them they're not like holders or lanyards you've got to put something in I have two of them on my key ring and the idea is one's for my keys one's for luggage whenever I use it but most of the time it's on the keys but I got a cheaper holder for that one and that one fell out and I had to search the house to find oh my the air tag for it but it worked well that's one way to do it I have used a couple times to actually find the location of something but more recently I've actually used the one attached to my keys this was actually just yesterday as we record that I couldn't find my keys we were over someone else's house and I couldn't find them and so used the little uh find my app to make the air tag make a sound and it was loud enough to actually locate my keys which had fallen on the floor next to a couch I don't know if I would have found it uh anywhere near as fast without that air tag making a sound so yeah I'm down with the air tag I've been putting them on everything I was expecting you to say that it The Sound had vibrated the bowl that were in or something but that's another story actually sorry speaking of sounds didn't you say on the special Apple Insider podcast that you're going to put a sound at the end of every shortcut on your Mac did you do that really no no no not every shortcut but we were talking about Matthew cassanelli and I which if you missed it special interview Matthew cassanelli came back on the show to talk about shortcuts on macow specifically and there is an action where you can have a sound play at the end of every shortcut or anytime in between a shortcut and we were talking about having a text expander replacement meaning you know text expander makes a little pop or whatever sound once a snippet expands and so it'd be nice to kind of have that audio confirmation that a shortcut has run and the text expanded or pasted so I haven't done it yet but it's nice that it's there now a couple of updates to the Apple self-repair program we talked about it on the last Friday episode of the Apple Insider show but a couple more details first of all it came out that a third party is probably going to be handling part sales so if you go to buy parts for your Apple devices to self-repair through this program that's launching next year sales will probably be handled by a third party and also it appears that you'll need to provide a device information or at least device serial number when ordering parts and there's a lot of still questions about this like if parts will be available to purchase without a specific device serial code because for someone who maybe repairs multiple devices or would like to stockpile some parts for different devices it seems like this program might not allow it because you actually need a specific device ID or serial number or whatever in order to order the specific parts so more details will be coming out I'm sure as that program nears but what what did you have any thoughts on that I wasn't very surprised that it was a third party cuz it feels like apple does enough really but that one business of having to prove each device it can't be some way Apple wanting you to buy uh all the tools for example new for every device you want to repair it feels like it's not worked out entirely yet uh which makes you wonder was it was the announcement rushed it might be they might have been trying to get ahead of that you know right to repair stuff again it's not even out like in beta yet so we'll have to wait till next year for all the details to come out now I wanted to talk for a moment about password management and I I broke this out from the apps and utilities thing cuz this is kind of cross devices with password management I was listening to the ATP podcast with you know Marco arment and them and Marco arment like myself kind of straddled the fence with both the iCloud keychain password management and one password I use both all the time and a lot of times that can be a little complicated especially on the Mac now with the new one password extension both come up and there's just a lot of Windows yeah but I like that my password is being saved in multiple places so my first question to you William is I thought you had used one password or still use it do you use both or have you gone one or the other exclusively I'm exactly the same as you I use them both and when you try to log into somewhere and Safari and one password going no no use my version uh it can't even today actually cuz I was doing a lot of installs it was a pain but it's a relief to know with Safari you have to be on the site for the password to be volunteered or go into preferences and you have to search for it with one password it feels like you can bug anything in there site licenses software things anything so one password feels like the better overall package but the convenience of safari going oh yeah yeah yeah that's Theos what you want that is so good I am for the moment using both yes I'm putting up with the odd yeah confusion my next question then to is this cuz using both one of the things I do with many of my account logins is two Factor authentication which is that six-digit randomized code code I do that in one password and it's been working really well but since iCloud keychain has added that functionality in iOS 15 and Mac OS monter I wanted to have those there as well but what I have found is this weird behavior of when I set up those two Factor authentication codes in both places I actually get a different six-digit number in iCloud keychain and for some reason it is not correct I can't log in with the iCloud keychain six-digit number and um I didn't scan the QR code I used the you know long secret code that whatever the account gives you to you know put in for that two-factor line so it generates the six digits but I put the same long two-factor URL or code in both one passor and I and iCloud keychain and for some reason it gives me two different numbers have you experienced that or looked into that at all uh actually yesterday I was offered a six-digit code I think it was the iCloud version and I couldn't seem to successfully enter anywhere it looked like I was doing I just decided I was really tired and it was me but it feels like I've got the same thing then which means it's not going to get any better is that you didn't send me a random six-digit number for no reason yesterday no I did not okay but you're going to I can tell yeah well anyway I'm just wondering what others have experienced so listeners out there if you're using iCloud keychain with two Factor authentication codes and maybe if you also use one password I'm curious your experience is there consistency between those are you able to use both for the two factor and they work both hand inand I'd be really curious because one password syncs incredibly well with those two Factor authentication codes I mean I can be on my iPhone my iPad my Mac you know a secondary iPad like my iPad mini and one password Works flawlessly on all those devices and so makes me a little skittish about iCloud keychain and two Factor support I do really like one password I've always really liked it so yeah can I just add yes please sort me out anybody thank you all right one other followup last week we talked about Apple's current state of software stability and addressed John prost's video about saying that Apple's software currently sucks that was the title of his video you can listen to last week's episode for the full discussion on that but one listener actually reached out on Twitter his name is holer fiio I believe looks like he's from South America and he's actually visually impaired and he had some things to say about accessibility and when it comes to you know really using accessibility features and relying on accessibility features for either visually impaired or hearing impaired he said a lot of times those bugs don't get fixed very quickly and with new features such as Focus modes accessibility has not been as quick to uh keep up with those features and voice over doesn't work very well with Focus modes and things like that there's actually a website Apple VIs . so apple.com and it actually lists all the updates and current bugs and issues that exist for accessibility features on Apple devices and so a resource there for those who really depend on accessibility features and I thought that was an interesting point that's not something that I depend on personally and so it can definitely be at least unobserved or overlooked by uh those of us who don't use those features super in-depth and often but I appreciate that feedback and yeah be curious anyone else out there listeners who might use accessibility features in depth for just really need to be able to use the device because of accessibility be curious your experience when it comes to bugs and stability and maybe even comparing it to other platforms William I didn't know if you had any thoughts about the state of Apple software oh yeah well I followed that thread you had I was terribly disappointed cuz you always think that Apple is very good this is one particular area Apple's great in so when they fall down on it that's disappointing but like you I don't need the accessibility stuff except for the odd little you know trickery with keyboard Maestro or shortcuts or something so I'd missed all of these problems where I was disappointed I remember when I saw John PR's title video it's easy to just read the title of his videos than bother watching them um I don't I didn't immediately agree but I hear the odd example I know the discussion you had yeah there are things that aren't great and it feels as if things are not as good as they were but then I I remember I wrote a six-page memo about would have been word six for dos I think it was and sent it to Microsoft and the pr people told me that they actually cried in the meeting as they read all the bugs I'd found and they didn't fix any of them so I didn't know whether to be yeah the software is always been a bit buggy maybe there's just more of us now using more of it and finding more things I'm trying to be optimistic and pessimistic at the same time aren't I right being on the tight rope it's all right yeah uh I'm not switching to Android because of these problems I can tell you that though so no no no no all right last piece before we get to the Big Mac OS app and extension and utility Roundup I have a question for you William what mouse do you use when you use a Mac I use no mouse at all I don't like mises I love trackpads so I have the Apple Magic trackpad and I just I I think I did actually get the Mac with the Mouse um a few Macs ago so I tried it but I now I'm a a track bad guy and I I I understand the Precision that say a graphic artists will need but I find I'm pretty precise with a track bad as well so no no misis I think you're an MX Master something yeah you're a real strong Pro mouse user is that you funny you should say that William because I have been a Magic Mouse user from the jump I've never used anything but magic mice Apple's first party magic M Mees mouses yes and I've tried the magic Trackpad I like it I found especially when I edit video and use it for an extended period of time I get weird like hand strain on the magic Trackpad cuz I I kind of hold my hand hovering above it constantly with all my fingers in this like claw for a hand for some reason so the magic Trackpad it doesn't work for me cuz of the hand strain but I've been Magic Mouse all you know for years because I like the double finger swiping and gestures and all that kind of stuff but I've recently been watching a number of videos I saw a Peter McKinnon video he's a guy on YouTube who does a lot of film making and you know creative stuff like that very big YouTube channel but he was talking about his desk setup you know he's got his Pro display xdr he got one of the new Macbook Pros all that kind of stuff and he talked about the Logitech mxm 3 and I've heard many people talk about this mouse before and so I'll will Reserve judgment for the moment but I did get one I have the mxm right here in my hand I'll even click it so you can hear it see that click that's the mouse click right there ah can't be that it's very very clicky there's I think you know there's two different scroll Wheels there's a side scroll and a top scroll and there's lots of buttons that you can program to do lots of different things and you can can you know pair it with three different Bluetooth devices including an iPad this works with an iPad so and it has a USB charging cable on the front and it can be plugged in while you use it imagine that a for a mouse uh I'm not I'm not going to rise to the way your voice went up over the charging point on the front I have no problem with the charging Point underneath well cuz your magic Trackpad is fine it's just the magic mises you got to flip it over like a turtle on its back I seriously I don't I don't have a problem with that with the with the underneath the charging thing yeah so like there 3 months or something it goes uh a bit low so you plug it in go get a coffee come back unplug it carry on then at the end of the night you leave it plug it in overnight it's done it's just Dreadful how inconvenient that is you don't have to charge it often enough like I don't Char I don't charge it nightly or daily you know I just don't I don't think to plug in my mouse every night I don't want another daily charged device and it lasts a long time the magic mouse battery will last a month or two pretty long long enough where you don't think to charge it until it's almost dead and you only realize it's dead once you start using it so then you run into the issue of I can't use this thing and charge it at the same time in my current docking situation here my desk if I don't have the Magic Mouse I was kind of up a creek you know I guess I could flip open my laptop but it's usually in clamshell mode and so I'd be using a trackpad on the far right side of my desk no no no no no hang on hang on a minute there my Mac will come up with a quite a scolding message saying your trackpad is getting very low William you should really plug it in but that's you know several days before it's going to go wrong you don't get any warnings at all it's just toys with you I get a warning but the warning is such where if I'm starting my computer up for the day if I'm going to record in 2 hours you know 2 hours from now it might be dead and so I I can't you know just run the the risk take the gamble that it will stay alive through an hour podcast recording Plus some so I feel like I have to charge it right away so I don't know I mean listen this first world problem whatever but all that to say I have the MX Master 3 right here in my hand I'm going to try to customize every button to do something maybe I can even run a shortcut by clicking one of these buttons I don't even know I'm going to try it all and uh I will report back but uh I'm curious listeners out there if we have any MX Master 3 users out there if you're on the magic me uh train or if there's some other magic not well I meant to say like magical Mouse product but that that's like apple so any other incredible mouse that I don't know of yet I would love to hear from you all what do you use for your mousing or your meing I don't know how to say it anymore or track padding be with me Jo join me join me I I'm gonna get carpal tunnel if I if I do the track pad I tried it for a long time can't do it I actually genuinely I found it the other way around when I gripped the Magic Mouse I found my hands was getting very tight on it I I like this the more relaxed open Palm swipe thing so it's funny how the same thing affects people in completely opposite ways but good that we have the option I also find this MX Master it's much higher than the Magic Mouse cuz it's supposed to be ergonomic but it's like a full double to 2 and 1 half times the height of the Magic Mouse and I've have several times went to like slide my hand over to grab something and just knock the MX Master off the desk because I'm used to the lowprofile Magic Mouse and this MX master is like I don't know a skyscraper next to it so we'll see we'll see how long it lasts this episode is brought to you by bespoke post this fall as you get back into the swing of things bespoke post is here with a new seasonal lineup of musthave box of awesome collections bespoke post partners with small businesses and emerging Brands to bring you the most unique Goods every month I've gotten a few box of awesome boxes and I love all of them one of my favorite boxes came with a travel day bag was a beautiful canvas bag with leather straps and it feels rustic and classic all at the same time and I just love everything that comes in these boxes of awesome so no matter what you're into box of awesome has you covered 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one word for 20% off your first box and that link will be in show notes as well our thanks to box of Awesome from bespoke post for sponsoring this episode and our friends at Comet backup listen in case you didn't know backing up your data is very important I've had hard drives in the past fail me with pictures and sensitive documents and video files and losing data it's just a terrible sinking feeling you do not want to be in that position especially when you have your main computer your main Mac or PC and you for sure don't want to lose any of that data so whether you get hit with ransomware it's a hardware failure or just human error data loss can be a business ending event so what measures do you have in place to guard against disaster now you might have some files backed up on a hard drive in your office but stuff happens to those external hard drives as well and backups are your final stand when a threat penetrates your layers of defense well Comet backup is a fast flexible backup 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comes out which many of you do or the weekend it's Black Friday maybe you got a new Mac recently a new Macbook Pro or just looking to see what apps might be for sale you know there's Black Friday deals going on all over the place obviously stay tuned to Apple insider.com because we have deal posts going up constantly all the time Black Friday deals stuff on Amazon you can get a pair of airpods pro for $170 on Amazon what in the world like cheaper than the new airpods 3 the world just doesn't make sense will and when it's a Black Friday season nothing nothing makes sense what makes sense to me is that I keep finding deals for things I've already bought like don't yeah that's that is the unfortunate part now do you call it Black Friday over there in London do you have some fancy name for it like the Q or poppers uh Black Friday is actually really new in the UK but um it is called by that now it can't be more than four or five years at the absolute most before it was even heard of but now we have it just like you and the same sales at pretty much the same time so yes we are being Americanized in that way and how dare we get money off holiday periods gosh America what are you doing to us can you do it some more so I'm going to break this down into Apps and then utilities kind of separating them into those two categories because apps are like things you use on screen with for extended periods of time utilities can be in the background you activate it with a keyboard shortcut maybe it's in menu bar it lives up there so I thought it' be a good distinction there between those two but maybe we could go back and forth a little bit William I'll name three of my current favorite and really useful apps and then maybe you can name a few and then we'll go back and forth and we'll see how it goes yes here's my first three number one if you ever have reason to download a YouTube video honestly video content across any website you know maybe it's Vimeo maybe it's Facebook maybe it's video in a tweet this app can handle pretty much all of it and download the video file directly as an mp4 or if you just want the audio it can download the audio only as well you can add a bunch of them to your queue and it's been so solid since I've been using it for the past year or so but this app is called dowy d o w n i e it's from Charlie Monroe and I highly highly recommend it you know there's different ways to download YouTube videos and other video content from like social media platforms a lot of those can be janky or updates are difficult you can do it through home brew and terminal and you can do it through that way but I have found dowy to just be incredible it's available via set app if you subscribe to that or you can just purchase it individually it's 20 bucks for an individual license and again if you do anything like that often or like to pull video content from websites even if it's like news websites maybe you do something where you need to pull news clips from just different websites again highly recommend Downey D niie and of course links to everything we talk about will be in the show notes if you'd like to find it there so Downey definitely two thumbs up secondly for package tracking or Parcel tracking as they say in the UK isn't that what you call what do you call a package William is it a parcel Troublesome that's what we call it uh bothersome waiting yeah but parcel more often than anything else yes right parel or pack no you're right packages oh my God you're influencing us on our language as well now oh yep just influencing it all well because this is a UK term maybe that's why I never searched for it but a delivery app called parel p a r c l I've typically used the deliveries app for a long long time I really like the deliveries app I still may continue to use it but parcel I heard it recommended on another show and I've been trying that out it's crossplatform you can use it on your iPhone iPad and your Mac it's something like $5 a year to unlock all the features and it can do things like integrate with your Amazon account and automatically pull in Amazon orders just by itself automatically you don't even have to add them individually once you log into your Amazon account gives you notifications you can track it on the maps all that parcel it's great for tracking packages Parcels or deliveries whatever you'd like to call it and on secondly I would also recommend deliveries because I've been using that for a long time and pretty happy with it and my third recommendation for right now is an app for the mac and I believe this is on other platforms as well but I use it on the Mac mainly is an app called pastel this is by developer Steven troton Smith and pastel is a app to manage colors color boards brand colors and if you work in graphic design or web design I use it specifically for some websites that I make you can create pallets of color and save it in that pastel app you can even this is the cool part you can take a screenshot or any image pull the image into the pastel app and it will automatically detect the colors from that image and import them and then you can copy the hex code the RGB codes and you can just right click and copy any of those options for whatever color you have in the app and paste that wherever so if you're dealing with web design that's very helpful graphic design and you want the exact hex code really really useful and you can create custom palletes you can have folders and collections so if you work with color at all whether it's branding graphic design or web development I highly recommend pastel by Steven troton Smith it's very cool all right William why to give me a few of your favorite Mac apps that or current MAC apps that you've been using this is so me basically I suggest you go off and get a a cup of coffee a meal maybe a a decent lunch because I have so many apps you oh you're looking at me you only want a few okay uh let me start with this one cuz I'm I've kind of ref fallen in love with it default folder X X and it is X by the way I can't it when people talk about Logic Pro X and they mean 10 this is default folder x a reason I fell back in love with it is I didn't move it onto my new Macbook Pro at first and instantly found how much I missed it it converts every open and save dialogue box in every app to give you quick route to favorite folders favorite files and a much faster way of kind of navigating through your entire uh Mac folder uh structure for it uh it's just that sounds so little I'm giving how much I use it but it's in every open and save dialog box it's also in every finder window there's a menu bar option for it so I can fly there there's lots of jobs where I need a file from this folder and I have to end it up in that folder and this just makes it a snap to go back and forth between each of them so default folder X um I loved it before I love it again now uh have you heard of that one maybe a long time ago but I'm looking at it right now and I'm I'm very curious about trying this so it looks very cool oh well in that case now's now is the time to come back okay can I have two from the same company is that oh absolutely please yeah Omni outliner Omni outliner and omn focus uh omn focus is the easiest to explain because it's like it's bionic to-do app I mean more than a to-do app it always feels to me like it's a a can do app so yeah it will list the things I've said I must get done today but also you know you're waiting for a train you're waiting to do something you across all your jobs all your work you can just say show me all the phone calls I've got to make I've got 10 minutes what phone calls can I make and you can start knocking them off it presents you with things you can do as well as must and I think it it's incredibly powerful and maybe too powerful for many people it's like uh things and omn focus you really needed to do app if you're going to use them but when you do need it omn Focus rules my life and then Omni outline is the one I'm I'm honestly surprised I tried Omni outliner because I liked Omni Focus so much I want to see what else the company did I loathe outlining uh I'm a writer who who rather just write see what happens throw things away if it doesn't work I'm not into planning uh books and things like that occasionally contractually you have to and it's very useful for that but Omni outliner really super perb at um ideas it lets you Chuck down a couple of thoughts and then slowly expand them massage them move them around expand out and the example I got is somebody asked me if I would do a day's uh writing conference for them so obviously I said yes um and then they immediately came back and asked what I would do for the entire day I had 20 minutes to knock up an entire day's schedule for this writing conference and I did because of omni outliner you know I will say I used omn focus in the past and it is ex it is extremely powerful and for some people it is you know definitely try it because for major project management really granular control of your tasks it's really excellent I have it's just I get so involved in like the wanting to detail out every part of my task list in OmniFocus that I end up just doing OmniFocus all day so I I try to use a a simpler project management task app but Omni focus is incredible and the Omni group all their products are again incredible so we'll link to all of that I just like the people at Omni as well it's it's great when it's like when you interview an artist you really like and you find out they're they're nice people which quite often doesn't happen it's a similar thing with OM they great software great people really good company so yes people are awesome as well speaking of to- do apps I will say one of my favorite task managers project management apps and the one I use for my to-dos is things by cultured code I love the design of things it's crossplatform I use it on all my devices and it gives me enough control over projects and tags they actually now have marked down support inside the notes section of any individual task so it is really uh it's powerful but it's also beautifully designed and that helps me manage my things my things to do uh altogether so I love things three across all platforms I still actually use reminders as well for other things because asking Siri just to remind me of something quickly at a certain time or date or later today it's just super convenient and so I still kind of use reminders for little things here and there but things is my main task and project management application speaking of tasks if you ever have to do graphic design work or whether it's light or heavy you know you have the whole Adobe Creative Suite but I kind of moved away from that a while ago cuz I didn't want to pay for the subscription so I use pixel Mater Pro everywhere pixel Mater is an incredible app you've probably heard about it before but if not if you're looking for an app where you can do some photo editing graphic design create some graphic assets pixel Mater Pro is just an incredible tool again it's available on Mac iPad and even iPhone and it's I don't know it's just incredible I don't know what else to say about it pixel Mater Pro highly recommend that I've also transitioned a lot of my news reading to RSS feeds so rather than going to a bunch of different websites I pull in the RSS feeds kind of back in the day if you were a Google Reader user or you used some of those RSS reading apps you know way back when I encourage you to try take it back up again I've been using reader re e d r for my RSS feed management and reader is crossplatform you can have reader on your iPhone iPad and Mac it's got great read it later features it syncs all your feeds and folders your unread and I have some shortcuts that I've built with reader where I can pull some clean links whatever article I'm reading with the share button and put it in a note to keep for later and so reader great way to manage RSS feeds and read some news there I also do like YouTube channels and some podcasts in the reader app just to quickly see if there's a new episode cuz that RSS feed is always going to be the fastest way to see that kind of stuff and finally for the Mac if you do anything with audio I've mentioned these apps before but I'll mention them again rogba makes Incredible apps for the Mac when it comes to Audio Mac audio.com is the website it I use audio hijack multiple times every week to record shows multiple channels recording guests audio hijack is super powerful but if you just want a simple recording software for you know personal individual use you just want that local backup recording or maybe do some you know screen grabs or things like that they also make an app called Paso p i e zoo and it's like Quicktime and that it's a simple recording app but I find Paso to be more reliable more stable and just little inside baseball Andrew O'Hara when we record homekit Insider he's been struggling with quick time on his Mac row believe it or not like it's just not recording a single file for it keeps stopping so if you want just a solid recording experience with a simpl to use app I highly recommend pazo from rogba and their website is Mac audio.com and before we get to utilities William any other apps that you would like to recommend for the Mac well yeah but apart from pazo I use all of those that you just mentioned I thought I was name all of those that you mentioned so thanks all right what's left um some really specific oh no no no oh no this is kind of a utility you leave that one for a minute don't ask me about hook in a moment um I Fantastical calendar app yes I write scripts so final draft 12 is good Final Cut Pro is is a dream oh I highly recommend that yes now everything else I've got is utilities so yeah uh but oh and that's does keyboard M show account as utility or an app because you can spend your life building keyboard Maestro macros it's a utility but there you go I've snuck ahead you have inadvertently transitioned us to the utilities yes you've a look at that what a segue yes this episode is brought to you by our friends at Zach do has this ever happened to you when you need to see a doctor you probably need to see one pretty quickly if there's an issue and you find one online and it looks good you call you're on hold you try to make your appointment and you don't find out until you get there that they don't take your insurance that's such a frustrating experience plus it's a frustrating experience just trying to make an appointment at a physical doctor's office well that's why Zach do can help you can download the free yes it's a free app Zach do zooc do the zacho app is the easiest way to find a great doctor and instantly book an appointment when you search in that app you can search for local doctors who take your insurance and you can even read verified patient reviews book an appointment in 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and quip makes it Easy by delivering all the Oral Care Essentials you need to care for your mouth listen if there's one thing I know I want to keep up with throughout my life it's my teeth it's never fun to go to the dentist but if you can be confident about the work you've been doing at home brushing well and flossing then going to the dentist doesn't have to be such a stressful experience and that's where a quip electric toothbrush comes in there's over 7 million mouths out there using the quip electric toothbrush it has timed Sonic vibrations with 30second pulses to guide you through a dentist recommended 2-minute clean because you want to be brushing your teeth for at least 2 minutes it's lightweight Sleek design there's a multi-use travel cover that actually doubles as a mirror for Less clutter when you're traveling and then you can even track and improve your brushing using the free quip app beyond the brush quip has everything you need to build a complete routine they have two ways to floss which is the floss string that expands to clean or reusable floss pick Pi that replaces over 180 disposable picks with every refill I got to be honest I'm big on flossing so you want to try those I'd also recommend I have kids and getting an electronic toothbrush like this not only is it fun to use for kids but it can really signal to them that 2 minutes is up they've brushed their teeth for the right amount of time and quip makes electric toothbrushes sized just for kids and their toothbrushes are Bluetooth and they can connect to that app on your phone and you can see all the stats of how you're doing and how your kids are doing brushing their teeth so go to get quip.com slapple Insider right now and you'll get your first refill for free that's the first refill for free at getquip getquip.com slapple Insider that's spelled gq.com apppp Insider quip is the goodhabits company our thanks to quip for sponsoring this episode so utilities got a bunch of these as well I'm going to include some Safari extensions as well because they're kind of utilities and so uh let's go four for four on this I'll do four and you can name some of yours okay when it comes to utilities now that I have the new Macbook Pro with a notch the menu bar icons become a little unwieldly I've actually found that at certain points certain menu bar icons that I needed to access like the shortcuts icon would disappear under the notch because I have too many icons up there pastebot one password fantastic Cal I also have things like Hazel and Elgato control center text expander and a couple other ones that I've added my focus mode icon and so I have found that it is not tenable to have that many menu bar icons with a notch because they just get hidden underneath so I have gone back to using bartender which is an incredible Mac utility where you can customize where your menu bar icons are located the order which ones appear kind of above the fold and if they expand when you just put your mouse in the menu bar so especially if one of the new Macbook Pros with that Notch bartender is probably a key utility that you need to try out secondly I recently heard on a podcast with Mike Hurley from relay FM rocket rocket is a Mac utility that makes it easy to type emojis now if you've used emojis on Mac like if you're using the messages app or even in an email some times getting to the Emoji Keyboard or finding an emoji can be a little bit of a chore and so rocket is this little utility that runs in the background and I can type colon and whatever word I can do like colon thumbs up or colon ey roll or something and it will search all the Emojis right there in line as I type in any app across Macos and I can quickly insert emojis faster than I ever could before and I know all those touch bar fans out out there might have experienced something like this because you could access emojis there but this is like Emoji search with instant insertion using the rocket utility and that's r c ke of course link to that will be in the show notes as well but if you use a lot of emojis or just like to be able to type them quickly rock it highly recommend also with the notch on the Mac I've been rocking just the regular menu bar I'll just look at the notch when I have it up there and it doesn't bother me too much but if you want to get rid of the notch or at least hide it by making the menu bar black I recommend topnotch Top Notch topnotch it's actually a completely free app and it's a developer that makes other applications that are really useful and those are paid apps but topnotch is totally free and it lets you hide the notch either by making the menu bar black or kind of placing the entire screen below the the Notch and so I highly recommend if you want to do something to hide it so topnotch and fourthly and then I'll to William and this is an extension for Safari called super agent super agent is an extension that works on the Mac but also on iPad and iPhone it actually automatically accepts and dismisses those cookie banners that you see all over the internet where it says do you want to accept cookies or reject them you can actually put some custom preferences in the super agent app and they will automatically accept or reject those and so you never have to see them again it's not even like they pop up a little bit and go away you just never see a cookie Banner again as you browse the internet and that is actually a nice experience so super agent as an extension for Safari William hit me with some of your favorite utilities well I do have a question about rocket is there a setting in there that can make it slower and harder to get emoji or preferably impossible is that is that a feature they could I don't know I'd have to look to look at the preferences uh why do you do you not like using emoji otherwise I do think actually you you've been peeking at my list cuz I was going to say bartender as well I I've always liked bartender I don't the notch justes not I mean in the day's use the notch makes no difference to me at all maybe I'll change my mind after two days but I just don't notice it's there but bartender is so useful even on I have a very wide monitor on my Mac and I still use bartender cuz it's just kind of Handy y up in the corner a couple of things so but uh ones of mine that you haven't picked well you've mentioned once like you mentioned Hazel earlier and I consider that a utility that's gorgeous keyboard Maestro I've mentioned all right uh let's go obscure how about do you ever use pop clip have you come across that I've heard but I haven't used it what does it do again well you know the way when you're on your iPhone your iPad and you highlight where you tap on it a little black bar appears with copy and paste and couple of things like that it does that for the Mac but as well as the same kind of iOS copy and things you can add other things to it so so uh I can highlight a paragraph This will pop up automatically and I can click a button on it to send it off to omn focus my Todo app or to Google Translate for example and things like that so it's just a little it's one of those things where you forget how much you're using it until you're trying to show somebody uh how to do something on a Mac and it isn't working because you haven't got pop interesting okay check that out I mentioned hook are you already a hook fan in fact was it you who told me about hook in the first place I do not know what Hook is I don't know what that is oh excellent excellent Hook is this gorgeous gorgeous little utility where it hooks things together so for example three times a year I edit a magazine uh for a company and when I do that it's a young writer's magazine so there might be 60 Young Writers sending stuff in to it so I have 60 documents to track and then whether I've rejected them or not whether I've replied to them or not cover design stuff what the state of the file is and there's a particular editor I have to work with a B producer really the client who will send me instructions at certain times in different emails with hook I am one keystroke away from looking up any one of those emails immediately or going from the magazine to the folder where the rejected uh things are or the accepted ones uh you can link stuff together in my accounts for example I have an account spreadsheet and I've hooked every one of my online bank accounts so rather than going off to one password or to Safari and finding it I'm in the spreadsheet I need to know a figure C keystroke and I'm in my bank account uh looking at whatever it is anything you can link together anything you use often hook can hold them in one place and it's desperately good those are wonderful I have not heard of hook or the pop clip so I'm I'm going to check those out all right so a few more utilities I like to use a picture and picture extension in Safari because sometimes the built-in picture and picture does not always work it doesn't force it you know some websites restrict that access or just doesn't want you to do it so I use a safari extension called over picture and over picture you can put a keyboard shortcut I actually just have the letter P for picture and picture and whatever video is playing in Safari no matter where it's playing from or what website it's from I just hit the letter P and it immediately goes into picture and picture mode on my Mac and it hovers over whatever other windows are on my different desktops and I love it so over picture another one that does a similar function is pip aier like picture and picture ifier and I'll put links to those as well I always recommend if you have a Mac you need a clipboard manager app William uses keyboard Maestro which has a built-in clipboard manager but if you're looking for a standalone option I recommend pastebot pastebot is a incredible app it's super lightweight I love the developer they also make tweetbot if you're if you use that or familiar with that app so pastebot great clipboard manager and this is kind of a utility but it's also kind of a piece of hardware and I know William is familiar with this too stream deck stream deck is a physical physical button thing that sits on your desk and you can get multiple models but then it also has the utility where you program what those different buttons do and now that shortcuts are on the Mac Matthew cassanelli talked about this in our interview earlier this week you can actually trigger shortcuts from stream deck buttons and you can also program a bunch of different things on stream deck buttons and have multiple pages of buttons you can open apps turn on Elgato lights if you have some of their key lights and they connect to the Wi-Fi network you can program it for a bunch of stuff so stream deck it's kind of a utility also a piece of Hardware but I highly recommend you still using your stream deck William yeah very much so and I am an idiot it never occurred to me that I could use shortcuts the second you said that I realized there's one one's going on there the moment we've shut up I'm adding a button for a particular shortcut of course you can use it for that excellent thank you very much yes yes you're you're very welcome I I highly recommend a couple more and then a question for you add blockers you know a lot of people use different kind of content blockers some people don't like using them to each his own if you're going to use one I've been trying a bunch of different ones I've tried C block and one blocker and Magic lasso I've tried a bunch of them currently I'm trying out ad block plus it's ABP and I'll put a link to that extension in the show notes but I found it working pretty well right now you can Whit list websites and so they won't block anything when you go to one of those whitelisted websites and that's my current one and lastly for me is more of a question I think you've mentioned this one in the past but Alfred as a replacement for spotlight Alfred is like that little search bar that can pop up and do many different things you can also apparently run shortcuts directly from Alfred now as well with this like plugin from GitHub yeah Matthew cassanelli talked about that as well but are you still using Alfred and do you still love it I used it about 4 minutes ago when I realized that part of my internet connection problems today might be a particular app going wrong so I did the keyboard shortcut the same one for spotlight but it makes it brings up Alfred and I typed kill and started the name of the application it showed me the name show me what percentage CPU it was using and W up hit return and it was gone yeah I use it constantly um I will I've got to do a lot of I use W from alpha quite a lot so I will tap the Alfred Bar type the word Wolfram enter whatever my obscure math question is or science question and it will then fling it off to wol from alpha uh that thing you said about riding shortcuts yep I do that I didn't use the GI GitHub one I didn't know about that there's a website called um pacle it's like Jackal but with P instead of a j that collects a lot of these things like the kill one I just Ed and it has a shortcut running one so yep the moment I heard about that that went in too uh Alpha One I don't tend to use so um you mentioned that I use uh keyboard maistro as clipboard manager and I do obviously because I've told you about it at boring length I'm sorry but I also use the one in Alfred uh because it's just so handy to see with keyboard M it's great at handling past clipboard M doing things with them keyboard Master will show you the last 30 things you did or anything like that and it's very useful for it occasionally I've also used it as a kind of shelf if there's a file or a series of folders I use a lot then you can actually kind of it's like pin them to Alfred so that as soon as you do the keyboard shortcut you don't have to look for anything they're all there in a little Row for you it's just Alfred is this endless mine of new functions uh there's too many to possibly absorb at once but then you get one and it becomes why doesn't everything do this why isn't this on every MC so yeah Alfred and the power pack that you need U Alfred's free for an astonishing generous number of things but they have a power pack option of like $20 or something which gives you oodles more and honestly I would pay them that money just out of gratitude for the free stuff that good so yeah was that could you read between the lines there that I'm quite keen on alfha could you pick up on that I hear it I hear it so we had some listeners actually tweet at me some utility and app recommendations so I want to go through those real quick and then I'll have one final question for you William about notes and what applications you using for notes right now but our listeners Wes from Apple Insider Apple Insider staff and co-host of this podcast every other week he said sidecar it's a built-in utility with Mac OS but it lets you use your iPad as a secondary display sidecar is excellent Works super well so great recommendation there then Lucas pistol he recommended a few different apps and utilities one is clean my Mac X which was actually a sponsor of this podcast for several times clean my macx is great especially for like scanning your Mac cleaning up files all that kind of stuff IAT menus which I've heard many podcasters talk about it lets you see detailed information about your CPU Ram GPU battery gives you all that kind of stuff you can put stats in the menu bar I have not used it personally yet I feel like that's a lot of information that I don't know might stress me out if I see it all the time so I haven't tried IEP menus just yet but that is a very popular utility and also magnet I had not heard of this utility before but magnet is a application for the Mac that lets you customize certain workspace layouts for your desktop and it can snap Windows to half the screen a quarter of the screen splitting it vertically and horizontally and you can you know save different workspace settings so magnet looks like a great app so thanks for those recommendations lucose and then sand Deep Roy he recommended something that I had forgot about I had used these in the past but if you ever need to keep your Mac awake not go to screen saver not go to sleep for whatever reason but you don't do that all the time so you don't want to change your system preferences there are apps that will keep your Mac awake and active until you turn it off or you can set it for a certain timer those two of those apps that do that function is called caffeine you can download caffeine for Mac it's actually a free application you can start it at login you can activate it for a few hours 2 hours 30 minutes you know it might be useful if you're uploading files and you want to make sure your Mac doesn't go to sleep in the middle of the upload you can say you know keep my back awake for the next 2 hours so it finishes this thing and also another app this one's in the app store if you prefer that amphetamine is an app you can get there that keeps your Mac awake and not going to sleep so good recommendations there from our listeners did you have any final utilities that you wanted to sneak in uh we didn't talk about Tex expander we've mentioned it in the past though yes Tex of course of course Tex expander I still use it pretty much every day highly recommend it's such an odd thing with utilities uh on there you stumble across them and then they become part of your normal working life and you forget about them and so people ask you things and you don't remember what you got any of them and yet the moment you go to someone else's Mac that seems lacking without these things you've come to rely on I God bless the developers of utilities they're doing amazing things for us they do amazing work for sure and so to round out this whole app and utility segment just wanted to ask you William when it comes to notes taking notes on your Mac or you know writing not long form writing cuz I know you have like Pro apps for that but if you you know writing I don't know maybe an article for Apple Insider or just taking notes where do you write all that stuff what apps do you use for that about a month ago if he'd said to me I would have said I was kind of not heading towards becoming an Apple notes fan now I'm an Apple notes fan specifically because of quick note and specifically because of quick note on the iPad the it's better on the iPad than the Mac for some reason the ability to just swipe up from a corner drop something down Chuck it away and get on with what you're doing I absolutely love but that is for really small pieces of notes or when you're building up a long list of things when you compiling research if I I write articles for Apple inside in drafts five on the Mac and on iPad uh for it it's very I don't want to call it simple in an insulting way it's a very strong text editor but its biggest strength for me is it just gets out of the way you think of something you open draft you start writing immediately there's no file new no choosing template like that just get on with it and then when you've written you can decide what to do with it you can leave it there you can copy and paste it out or from within drafts you can press a button and send it to your blog send it to a CMS email it to somebody and I find I'm not using those functions enough but it's great when you do what about you so I use bear for almost everything I use bear for quick notes and for just like sometimes notes where I have to remember some few things notes for podcast I eventually take our notes from Apple notes that we share to do this podcast I'll bring those into bear to actually write the article for Apple Insider and then fill out all the HTML in beay so I really like beay for pretty much everything I use it on my phone my iPad and I I like having kind of one app to do long form writing and shorter notes and just because then when I want to search for something it searches all my notes you know from everything I've written so I like kind of that one system for everything and the only thing I use Apple notes for are these shared notes as we prepare for this podcast and because I copy those every week into bear everything everything is in be so I like bear for a lot of things I have been using notion for a couple things I use notion for a couple collaborative features some research that I've done I like Notions backlinks the ability to embed videos and such so I've been liking notion a little bit but I've been hearing more and more about obsidian William do you have any experience or thoughts about obsidian only the same as you I've just been looking at notion there are things I don't like there are things I do and I'm kind of pursuing it more and yet every time I ask a question about notion for somebody people saying well there obsidian you know so I've yet to download it and try it but I it seems to be it's the app of the moment it sounds it is and there's Alternatives like craft that you can get on all your devices and craft is like a notion alternative a lot of people prefer that but obsidian seems to be like a more open and flexible platform which it looks not as nicely designed because it is so utilitarian and you can do like third- party plugins but it also just keeps all your notes as marked down files in a folder and that's one of the things I like about a nonproprietary database you know even bare there's not like some folder I can go look at all my notes I can export them all as text files or markdown files and you can export your entire database but obsidian actually keeps your entire notes database as those plain markdown files in a folder and then you can just always copy and paste that folder or do whatever and cgp gray on the recent episode of Cortex said he has switched to obsidian for notetaking and script writing because it has some killer features and so it's in the periphery I've looked at it but I have not dedicated a lot of time to getting to learn it but I don't know I'd be curious if our listeners out there have tried obsidian or I don't know if there's just lovers out there of obsidian I know there's a whole notion Nation I think that's the uh the short term for it people that love notion but will any other final thoughts you could spend your life playing with all of these things could you at some point you have to get on with work unfortunately I know I know I like fussing around with it and I like upending my entire notes and writing structure just because because it's fun and then it's a it's a terrible idea but yeah I like doing it anyways exactly so well that was a massive Roundup of apps and utilities listeners if we forgot something let us know tweet at William and myself our Twitter handles are in the show notes would love to know if you're using some incredible utility that we don't know about or didn't list and then we'll do maybe a follow-up next time we'd love to hear from you there also it would greatly help out the show if you gave it a fstar rating and review in apple podcast even if that's not where you listen to the podcast just hop over to that app give it five stars in a review we'd greatly appreciate that and you can also support the show with $5 a month to get an AdFree uninterrupted experience and you can do that on patreon.com inssider or write an apple podcast for $5 a month you get the adree version the whole feed just changes over to ad free stuff and actually planning to do some Standalone bonus episodes specifically for our paid subscribers and so those will be coming soon don't forget to check out homekit Insider that's our podcast about smart home and homekit devices Andrew O'Hara and myself host that comes out every Monday and keep your eyes peeled for deals on appleinsider.com as we head into the holiday season thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next time\n"