The keyboard is the most powerful tool we have when using our Macs, which is why I’ve curated what might seem like an overwhelming combination of keyboard utilities that I use daily. Each of these tools enhances my productivity in unique ways, so whether you’re looking to streaml … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 5 1-year subscriptions ($96 value each) for Obsidian Sync. Obisidan is an amazing tool that’s free to use, but if you want to sync and share your vaults, settings, and more, you’ll want to upgrade with Obsidian Sync. This giveaway is for a … | Continue reading
The iStat Menus giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Bhaskar Bhat Leighton Price Robert Shaw Johan Romin Yinan Chen You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 5 licenses ($11.99 value each) for iStat Menus. iStat Menus puts a bevy of system monitoring widgets right in your menu bar. Weather, CPU and GPU usage, Memory usage, date and time, network activity/bandwidth, battery and power, and disk us … | Continue reading
The SoundSource giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Tim Stevens Joe Wright Stuart Liddell You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorry, b … | Continue reading
I had let the original TeeSpring stores I had set up languish, and TeeSpring changed a bunch of stuff that made all of my listings invalid. So I’ve relaunched the storefronts with the original designs, plus some new ones. The Lab has some new logo designs, plus the “classic” ones … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 3 licenses ($39 value each) for SoundSource. SoundSource lets you define audio inputs and outputs on a per-app basis, plus apply effects to different channels. It puts control of all of your system audio devices in your menu bar, just a cli … | Continue reading
Last night I had a dream that someone had asked if they could write SearchLink plugins in Python. The answer was no, but it got me thinking. To be clear, no one has asked for this, but I did some Saturday morning coding anyway. You can now write a script in any language, and as l … | Continue reading
As many of these updates seem to, this one started with a bug report from my friend Jay Miller, which caused me to run the test suite on SearchLink and discover a few things had broken since I last looked at it. So you get an update. Aside from fixing bugs that had cropped up, I … | Continue reading
The TextBuddy giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Patrick Ahles Philip Davis Peter Versteegen Jim Krenz René de Heer Stephen Lowry David Nieporent Mijalche Santa Lari Kovanen Hans verschooten You should have received an email with … | Continue reading
Ok, so you may or may not have heard of my Howzit project, so I’ll begin by recapping. “Howzit” is a contraction of “how does it” that allows you to query any project with commands like howzit build or howzit deploy and get documentation, as well as automatically execute the nece … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 10 licenses ($35 value each) for TextBuddy. For anybody who deals with text, whether you’re composing, coding, or just emailing, TextBuddy is an indispensible tool that makes transforming and working with text a breeze. It’s fully extensibl … | Continue reading
The PopClip giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: G Kolstad Andrew Buckingham Alan McCoy Curtis Spendlove Peter Morgan-Tansley You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn … | Continue reading
I published a script yesterday for creating a “bundle file” of all binaries (executables) on your system that rely on Rubygems to install. These aren’t covered by Homebrew’s bundle command and I wanted easy system restore via my dotfiles setup. But… because it deals specifically … | Continue reading
I’ve always liked Homebrew’s bundle command. You can save a snapshot of everything you’ve installed with Homebrew, and then reinstall the snapshot on a new system. I also like Ruby’s Bundler, which lets you save all of the gems needed by an application and then install them easil … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 5 licenses ($24 value each) for PopClip. You know how when you select text on iOS, you get a little popup with operations like copy and paste? What if you could have that on your Mac? And if the menu options that show were customizable and … | Continue reading
The Backblaze giveaway has ended, and I have a winner to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Diana Saldaña You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorry, but Backblaze is still wor … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, a 1-year subscription ($99.99 value) for Backblaze. I use a 3-tier backup system: local clones, Time Machine, and Backblaze for cloud backup. Backblaze is the easiest, most affordable way to get an offsite backup of all your data, with vers … | Continue reading
The TableFlip giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Andy “gtdandy” Cerier Cecil Habermacher Werner Küper You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t … | Continue reading
There’s a new version of Marked 2 out (available on all channels) that adds some important fixes and a couple of new features. Streaming Preview First off, I fixed the Streaming Preview for everybody. Every time I fixed it to work with The Archive, I broke it for Drafts, and so o … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 3 licenses ($9.99 value each) for TableFlip. TableFlip makes Markdown tables from structured data like CSVs, allowing you to use a spreadsheet-like interface to edit tables, and providing plain text for your document. It seamlessly provides … | Continue reading
The Dropzone giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Jim Simpson Tedd Landgraf You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorry, but Dropzone is … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 3 licenses ($35 value each) for Dropzone. Dropzone gives you a panel in your menu bar that can run all kinds of scripts and automations, from uploading files to an FTP or S3 server to optimizing images or filing documents. From the develope … | Continue reading
The Marked giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Chris Denesha Guillaume Kuster Jeff Holtzman Kevin Slaven Johan Romin You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 5 licenses ($13.99 value each) for Marked. Marked is a Markdown previewer (of my own design) that offers a live preview of Markdown while you edit in any text editor. It comes with a range of styles and you can add more from the gallery or … | Continue reading
The OmniOutliner giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: June Bash Jonathan Dechko Cai Wingfield Richard Guay Robert Williger You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t … | Continue reading
I received a request a while back, shortly after my post about Marked 2 and Obsidian, asking me to support Obsidian callouts. I don’t remember who made the request, but it got lodged in the back of my head. I had an hour today to knock out a solution. Rather than trying to incorp … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 5 Standard licenses ($39.98 value each) for OmniOutliner. If you think well in outlines, OmniOutliner is the premier tool for doing just that. And it blends seamlessly with other Omni products like OmniGraffle and OmniFocus. This giveaway c … | Continue reading
The Screens giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Werner Küper Peter Underhill Robert Shaw You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorry, bu … | Continue reading
I know it’s been less than a week since v1, but I made some major changes to md-lipsum that warrant a version 2. Basically, I incorporated all of the API options from Loripsum.net, meaning you can now specify how many paragraphs and what elements are included. You can still get a … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 3 1-year subscriptions ($24.99 value each) for Screens. If you need a remote desktop, whether to control your own servers and remote Macs (or Linux, Windows, or even Raspberry Pis) or to do remote support for customers, friends, and family, … | Continue reading
The Keyboard Maestro giveaway has ended, and I have a winner to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Jonno Cohen jonno@jonnocohen.com You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorr … | Continue reading
Today I’m releasing an initial version of my latest tool, CurlyQ. It’s a work in progress, though should be immediately useful to those who need it. I need your input on where it goes next, what’s missing, and what you’d like to do with it that it can’t handle yet. Join me in the … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, a license ($36 value) for Keyboard Maestro. Keyboard Maestro is an insanely powerful app for automation on your Mac that no power user should be without. It can automate literally everything. Power users will love it, but everyday users can … | Continue reading
The App Tamer giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Delaine Taylor Kevin Cline You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorry, but App Ta … | Continue reading
I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, 2 licenses ($14.95 value each) for App Tamer. Got unruly applications? App Tamer helps you take control of your CPU by controlling how much access your apps have to it. Throttle apps that take up too much CPU, speeding up the apps you’re us … | Continue reading
Another silly little rabbit hole I’ve gone down… The Lyrics plugin for SearchLink can now embed the JavaScript version of lyrics from Genius.com, complete with annotations. The query is !lyricjs SEARCH STRING. Running !lyricjs Blood in the Cut K.flay will output this: Read K.Fla … | Continue reading
The Curio giveaway has ended, and I have a winner to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Alan Mahon You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorry, but Curio is still worth check … | Continue reading
I hope you’ve had nice holidays! I’ve updated my Bitlyize service to work with v4 of the Bit.ly API. It parses the input for all URLs and replaces them with shortened links connected to your account. Not only can this make long links more readable, it gives you some analytics on … | Continue reading
It’s unseasonably warm for Christmas here in Minnesota. It’s 50° out. To mark the weird occasion, I created a quick plugin for SearchLink that lets you run a search like: !current 55987 And get: Weather for Winona, Minnesota on 2023-12-25 at 12:53 PM: 51.8 and Light rain The pl … | Continue reading
Merry Christmas! I’m excited to offer the next giveaway, a Pro license ($119 value) for Curio. Curio is the perfect app for managing your brainstorms, your research, your projects, and your digital life. A Curio “space” is a blank canvas on which you can add notes, web pages, pdf … | Continue reading
I do most of my automation and string manipulation scripting using Ruby. I know it’s not the most popular language these days, but it’s the one I know the best (thanks to my days of hacking on TextMate bundles) and it’s usually the fastest way for me to solve a problem. I have re … | Continue reading
The Kaleidoscope giveaway has ended, and I have a winner to announce! The winners! Congratulations to Ken Bavier! You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorry, but Kaleidoscope is still … | Continue reading
Ok, this one will probably wrap up this little run of key binding tricks. It’s been fun, though, and I’d love to answer any questions I can in the forum. If you’ve ever examined my master DefaultKeyBinding.dict (or even looked at the readme), you’ll see that I make use of a lot o … | Continue reading
I guess it’s keybinding week this week. I’ve talked about the kill ring and repeat binding, but I’ve been digging in and revamping my own DefaultKeyBinding.dict file, so I keep wanting to share some of the cooler things it can do because I know the file in the project is pretty m … | Continue reading
Thanks to HoudahSpot for sponsoring BrettTerpstra.com this week! I’ve been using it for years and swear by it as a way to find files that Spotlight can’t, quickly and easily. HoudahSpot is a powerful tool for finding and ma … | Continue reading
Another trick for readers interested in honing their keyboard-fu on macOS. In Vim, most operations have can have a count specified in the keystrokes for the command, e.g. 3dd to delete 3 lines. You can do similar in any Cocoa text field (all Apple apps, plus most native apps). Yo … | Continue reading
So you may have seen my KeyBindings project before. It’s an insanely large collection of keybinding tricks that work in any macOS text field. Well, any native cocoa field. You won’t have much luck in Electron or other non-native text editors. But for most uses, including in Safar … | Continue reading