Tags

BBEdit has been around for over 25 years and is well known as being a rock-solid plain text editor for Mac - but it can do much more than that! Whether it's previewing Markdown or HTML documents, or creating them from frameworks or inserting reusable sections, BBEdit makes working with text easy.

In this episode, Rosemary walks you through the core features of BBEdit 13, showing you a combination of both free and paid features available in the application.

As a Mac user, there will invariably be tasks you perform on your files and folders that are repetitive in nature. Wouldn't it be nice to have some way to automate those actions so you can focus on more important work?

Hazel is a popular utility that can monitor folders and files, and then take action based on rules you set up.

In this week's Foundation screencast Todd introduces you to the latest version of Hazel. He goes from installation and setup to the anatomy of a rule, as well as the various settings Hazel gives you. Todd then walks you through building a task made up of several pieces that work together to create a more complex and efficient workflow.

Zenkit is a web-based project management tool that also provides native applications for macOS and iOS.

In this episode, the second of our two-part series, Lee builds on the foundations laid in Part 1 and shows you how to deploy Zenkit in a team environment. Integration with third-party web services is also covered, as well as using Zenkit efficiently on iOS.

This week, Allison brings you two unrelated topics: useful keyboard shortcuts to speed up text editing, and a hidden gem in your Applications folder, and that is Image Capture.

Writing on a computer is much faster than doing it by hand. Editing text, however, can quickly become tedious because you often have to stop the flow of typing to reach for a mouse or trackpad. In this first segment, Allison shows you her favorite keyboard shortcuts to help you get rid of that friction when editing text, and also when navigating a web page or a PDF.

in the second half of the tutorial, you're introduced to a macOS utility called Image Capture. You learn how to import photos from your iOS devices and how to triage large files to free up storage if you don't use iCloud Photos. Allison also shows you how to make contact sheets of your images, and even how to make little web pages with selected photos.

We've covered Drafts for iOS in the past, and it is now available on macOS!

Drafts is where text starts and is intended to be the first app you think of when wanting to input text. Just open Drafts and start writing. Once in Drafts, you can decide where to send your text using the Share sheet or copy and paste. With Drafts Pro, you can sync your drafts using iCloud, so use Drafts on the iPhone or iPad and your text will be waiting for you when you sit at your Mac.

Drafts for iOS has an extensive library of Actions that allow you to integrate with a huge number of apps and perform seemingly limitless multi-step tasks. Actions have yet to be implemented on the Mac version, but it's still a hugely powerful application as it stands.

In this tutorial, Don takes you through the basics of using Drafts on macOS, and gives you a quick refresher on the latest iOS version.

We all struggle with distractions when we're working on our devices and trying to get stuff done.

This week, Lee shows you how you can avoid these distractions on macOS by using an application called Focus. This clever utility can block websites and applications for a given period of time so you can get yourself in the zone and work more efficiently.

Zenkit is a web-based project management tool that also provides native applications for macOS and iOS.

In this episode, the first of a two-part series, Lee shows you how Zenkit handles project management using Workspaces and Collections. You learn how to create and modify collections using various field types depending on your needs, configure useful views for your data, as well as filtering and searching through your workspaces and collections.

TextSoap is a fantastic application that allows you to transform and manipulate text in many different ways. If you find you're constantly editing or fixing the same badly formatted text over and over again, TextSoap can save you hours.

Pre-loaded with many different pre-defined text cleaners, you can access the power of TextSoap through clipboard integration, a menu bar app, macOS services or even AppleScript.

TextSoap also allows you to create your own custom cleaners, with virtually unlimited flexibility.

In this tutorial, Don takes you through using the many different facets of TextSoap 8

Good news: you don't have to wait until the release of iOS 13 and macOS Catalina to get access to features like Subtasks and Smart Lists in Apple's Reminders app. GoodTask gives you these features right now, plus a whole lot more including Start Dates, Quick Actions, and automatic snoozing, just to name a few.

GoodTask is a powerful task manager that uses your Reminders database for Mac and iOS. In this episode, Mike dives into how this app handles Subtasks and Smart Lists, and introduces you to the different view options that are available. You also learn how to build you own Smart Lists using custom filters, and much more.

Do you ever get tired of loading a full-blown spreadsheet application just to do a few simple calculations?

Soulver 3 is a small, highly effective and powerful mathematical notepad. It's perfect for working out simple (and some not-so-simple) calculations, conversions, and much more. Even better, you don't need to load Soulver each time you need to use it, you can take advantage of it via macOS System Service, a Command Line Interface (CLI), through Alfred, or even via Automator.

In this tutorial, Don takes you through the basic steps of using Soulver 3 and demonstrates the external integration with other apps and services.

Notability for iOS allows you to combine handwriting, sketching, photos and typing in a single note to bring your projects to life. Use a wide range of note-taking and sketching tools to capture every detail. You can even add and annotate PDFs in Notability. It's the perfect place to create and organize work, school, and life's information!

In this episode, Richard takes you from start to finish with this versatile application. After going through the downloading and installing process, he looks at the various tools and options available, how to organise your notes in subjects, and shows you how to export your work.

In this tip video, Lee introduces us to an open source application he has been used to modify the output of keys on his macOS keyboard for some years: Karabiner Elements.

You learn how Karabiner Elements makes entering a series of modifier keys a lot more practical, and how this will open the door to assigning special keyboard shortcuts. Lee also demonstrates some handy real-world use cases for this technique using Keyboard Maestro and macOS keyboard shortcuts

Have you ever wished you could do more with the built-in Apple Mail app on your Mac? Well with MailSuite, you can. MailSuite combines four powerful email tools in a single Apple Mail plugin, giving you the power and flexibility you need to crank through mountains of email effortlessly and still keep it all neatly organized.

This week, Mike explains how to take your email game to the next level using the different tools included in MailSuite. You'll learn how to apply rules to emails using keystrokes, apply tags and keywords to messages, set up custom perspectives when working on a big project, and how to set up signatures that you can use across email accounts.

With the advent of Ulysses 15, some great new features have been added to this very capable writing tool.

In this tip video, Don takes us through the important additions to Ulysses 15 on macOS.

Invariably, working on the Mac involves a multitude of different apps, different information sources, and different file formats. We often struggle to keep all these elements together in one form or another by grouping them into folders or assigning tags. But invariably, it's difficult to manage and it becomes a burden or, we might end up abandoning it altogether. This is where Hook comes in.

Hook is a unique application that solves the problem in an elegant and simple-to-use fashion. Use Hook to "link" documents, images, videos, web pages, and more, using simple keystrokes or drag and drop. Your files can reside anywhere on your system and Hook makes it very simple to switch between them, keep everything accessible.

It's a revelation!

TextExpander 6 from Smile includes some incredibly powerful tools to increase your productivity when typing on your Mac. In this Foundation tutorial, Allison starts out slowly introducing simple text expansion snippets to bring the beginners up to speed. Then she quickly accelerates and moves into advanced topics such as nesting snippets, doing math on dates, and fill-in snippets.

You learn how to subscribe to other people's shared snippet groups as well as sharing your own. Each step of the tutorial builds on previous knowledge in a way that brings everyone up to speed for maximum productivity. TextExpander is likely to provide you with the highest productivity boost of any app you can install on your Mac.

Sending large attachments via email can be troublesome and invariably requires third-party services or applications. However, with Mail Drop and Apple Mail, the complexities are swept away and it's never been easier to send large files. Even better, it's built into macOS and iOS.

With a generous limit of 5GB per email, you can send huge files to any recipient. Files transferred via Mail Drop are available to download for 30 days, and you can transfer up to 1TB of data in that 30-day period, without impacting on your iCloud storage.

In this tip video, Don takes you through configuring and using Mail Drop on macOS, iOS, and iCloud.com.

In this screencast, Lee walks through an alternative to the native Finder application on macOS: Path Finder 8 from Cocoatech.

Using this powerful and feature-rich application, you learn how to be more efficient when navigating and organising files using features such as Dual Browser and Tab Sets. Lee also covers other built-in tools, like Convert Image, Batch Renaming, FolderSync and the very flexible Find feature.

Even though you can save articles in your Safari Reading List, sometimes it's just not possible to read them based on your situation. However, if you can't read them, why not listen to them?

In this tip video, Don demonstrates how to use the built-in Speak Screen feature in iOS 12 to read your articles back to you with the least friction.

He also takes a look at how you can apply the same techniques to have the articles in the ScreenCastsOnline Monthly magazine read back to you!

We all know just how useful the macOS menu bar is for displaying information that we wish to see at a glance. As well as individual apps having their own menu bar icons, it's also possible to use third-party applications such as iStat menus to add additional useful icons.

BitBar is an open-source application that allows you to create scripts or plugins to display information in your menu bar. There is a whole library of plugins available to download and install, all for free.

In this week's tip, Don demonstrates how to install BitBar and configure a couple of plugins.