uses

macOS

• Barbee — After the odd acquisition of Bartender, Barbee has become my favourite Mac menu bar utility. I'm now testing Bartender 6 again, after some odd behaviours from Barbee. Bartender seems to have stopped the shenanigans, and has regained some trust. Not sure what I'll end up with yet.

• Jottacloud — Backup & cloud storage based in Norway

• Karabiner Elements — MacBook NO kb layout for someone who mostly writes English is a no-go. Karabiner to the rescue.

• Obsidian — My blog starts in Obsidian, my memory lives there

• PopClip — One of the apps I use constantly. Multi tool for text.

• Shottr — Fantastic screenshot tool. Hooked it up to a modified Hyperkey and use it All. The. Time. to OCR bits of text or screenshot images.

• Supercharge — A lovely little multi-tool of an app.

• Typinator— I sometimes think Keyboard Maestro could just do the text expansion for me, then I discover something that keeps me coming back. I'm testing the subcription with iOS app for a year, but I'm not sure it's worth it for me.

• Bitwarden — Password manager. 1Password was a stalwart for years, but it gradually got worse and became quite annoying at times. Then they hiked the subscription and mentioned AI, so we jumped ship. Self-hosted vaultwarden for now, if we don’t like it we’ll fall back to managed Bitwarden (.eu natch). I moved my mom over to Bitwarden.eu, and she has taken to it like a duck to water.

• Calibre — Repository of the bulk of my library. While I do still have some physical books, due to many moves I mostly have ebooks now.

• Clop — Optimises images, videos, PDFs. Very handy.

• Hazel — Keeps my Mac tidy.

• HEIC Converter — Another Sindre Sorhus app.

• Keyboard Maestro — Amazing automation software.

• LanguageTool —This helps me get closer to the correct amount of commas. Self-hosted. No AI. And I don’t take its style advice. (For better or worse.)

• MacWhisper Pro — Been really great for adding subtitles. I started with the free version.

• NetNewsWire — My feed reader. When Google Reader was shut down 😭, I bought a lifetime Feedly account, but haven’t used it since switching to NetNewsWire in 2024.

Browser Extensions

• Custom Video Speed for YouTube — When I do watch video, it’s usually too slow for me. This fixes that, right quick.

• Streetpass — Helps me find people who interest me on Mastodon.

• Wipr 2 — A fantastic ad, popup, tracker, and cookie warnings blocker.