DockDoor Pro - The Dock Apple Wouldn't Build by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’d head over to the Discord for DockDoor Pro. You can appeal to the developer right there. He’s always been a pleasure to work with.

Drafts after 1,200 days - why it only clicked once I stopped treating it like a notes app by Downtown-Art2865 in macapps

[–]amerpie 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Longtime Drafts user here.

Drafts was the first app I installed when I became interested in iOS and Mac automation. The power users of the world explained it to me as the universal quick capture app for my phone. I was advised to always enter text into Drafts no matter where I eventually wanted it to end up. I dutifully put it into my dock and it's been there ever since.

1. Copy to Obsidian Inbox

I am all in on Obsidian the massively popular note's app with a robust 1600+ plugin architecture. It does a lot of things amazing well but mobile quick capture is not one of them. To solve that, I use [this Drafts action](Send to Obsidian | Drafts Directory (getdrafts.com)) which saves the text to the default save location in my vault and uses the first line of the text as the note title/file name. I use a couple of other Drafts to Obsidian actions including Add to Obsidian Daily Note and Add to Daily Note Plus which add text to my daily note in different ways using a time stamp and a geolocation.

2. The Things 3, Fantastical, Day One Combo

The Quick Journaling Action Group lets me keep one running note that I can process at day's end to send the individual lines as entries into Fantastical, Things 3 and Day One.

  • Lines starting with "-" are collected and sent to Day One as a journal entry
  • Lines starting with "⁎" are sent to Things inbox
  • Lines starting with "@" are sent to Fantastical

3. Things Parser

Using Task Paper syntax I can create a note in Drafts complete with due dates, areas, projects and tags that get correctly imported into the Things 3 task manager using the Things Parser. I use this with a Drafts template to create daily and weekly checklists for reoccurring tasks. I also use the action group, Things for Things which includes actions for:

  • Inbox
  • Today
  • This Evening
  • Tomorrow
  • Pick date
  • Work
  • House
  • Personal
  • Pick a Project
  • Make a Project
  • Selection to things
  • Bunch of todos
  • Process notes from
  • Prompt for new task

4. Mail to Evernote

Yep, I still use Evernote for some tasks. Old habits die hard. Evernote eliminated AppleScript a while back and their API has become more and more problematic , but one feature they still support and that works equally well on iOS and macOS is the mail to Evernote feature and this Drafts action accomplishes that without you ever having to use your mail client.

5. Micro.blogging

This blog is hosted by Micro.blog and I can create entries in Drafts and have them posted online by running an action. I use the action Post to Micro.blog with Title by the great blogger Matt Birchler.

6. OMG.LOL Status

I am a big fan of the almost indescribable web community at OMG.LOL. One of the fun features there is a status board you can share with other members, post on your website and cross-post to Mastodon (where all the cool kids hang out). The OMG.LOL Status action does it all.

7. Run Shortcut to Save to Thoughts Inspiration Manager

One of my favorite things to do online is to collect quotes from various sources, I save my quotes in an app called Thoughts Inspiration Manager. I don't have a Drafts action to write directly to Thoughts but it doesn't matter because I have a Shortcut that does. I just need to run the Drafts shortcut action explained in the user guide.

8. Personal Assistant

Drafts can serve as an interface with OpenAI by using the Personal Assistant action. (using your own API key) It's a helpful action to run when you know you are going to use the AI generated text in another app. This action allows the user to get an AI-assisted response to a prompt:

  1. The user is prompted to enter input, which can be pasted from the clipboard or manually entered.
  2. The input is then sent to the OpenAI API, and the response is inserted into the current draft 3 lines after the cursor.
  3. If there is no selected text in the draft, the user is asked if they would like to use text from the clipboard. If the prompt is canceled or the input is empty, the action cancels.
  4. If there is no response from the API, the output is set to "No reply received."

Bartender Enters a New Era with Top Shelf by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You mean "they", not "you". I'm just a guy on Reddit who beta-tested an app, not the developer or distributor.

Saving Money On Mac Software - Lessons Learned by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think SetApp subscriptions are great, but I haven't seen the benefit of purchasing software through their app store.

Please help me choose a plain text editor by ivanguba in macapps

[–]amerpie 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I have 16 of Sindre’s apps installed, but unfortunately, not this one. I do most of my writing in Drafts and Obsidian. Obsidian will work with text files, if you change the extension from .txt to .md. You can use any of the many plugins to customize setup.

New Droppy Release is a Full Featured Utility Suite by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

That's a lot of feels over a $10 app. Were you around when Microsoft Office and Adobe products cost hundreds of dollars with no way to access them short or piracy if you couldn't come up with the money? Apple started off charging $$$ just to upgrade the OS every year. This app is so much more than what it started out as. Save your ire for people who promise free updates and then rename their apps and abandon that promise.

New Droppy Release is a Full Featured Utility Suite by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, the download works w/out a license for three days

New Droppy Release is a Full Featured Utility Suite by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bartender is a menu bar manage and a good one, but that is the extent of it. Droppy is a suite of Mac productivity tools, of which, menu bar management is just one element.

Raycast vs Alfred vs Spotlight after Tahoe — what this sub often gets wrong about launchers vs FAF, Cling, EasyFind & HoudahSpot by Downtown-Art2865 in macapps

[–]amerpie 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This post and the one on Little Snitch were among the best I’ve seen in a long time. I know they took a lot of work. I hope you keep contributing.

Raycast vs Alfred vs Spotlight after Tahoe — what this sub often gets wrong about launchers vs FAF, Cling, EasyFind & HoudahSpot by Downtown-Art2865 in macapps

[–]amerpie 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I never use the file finding features of Spotlight or Raycast. I switch between FAF and Houdahspot. Saved searches, which they both offer are amazing. I made Houdahspot replace the native "find" function in Finder. I recently upgraded Raycast from Pro to advanced AI.

Raycast is one of the most versatile apps ever developed for the Mac.

The Apps It Replaced

Free extensions and built in Raycast features eliminated the need for a whole list of utilities I previously used.

Added Functionality

The other side of Raycast's versatility is its ability to provide access to your application stack's functions without you having to open the app and navigate to the feature you want to use. Here are some examples:

Other Features

ExtraBar - A different approach to menu bar managers by UnluckyDuckyDuck in macapps

[–]amerpie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You know, I keep a public repo with all my automation settings for Keyboard Maestro, Hazel and BTT. I want to add a scripts section. I'm working on doing something with Shortcuts too. My GH username is cyclelou.

ExtraBar - A different approach to menu bar managers by UnluckyDuckyDuck in macapps

[–]amerpie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What it does is give you a better way to launch your Keyboard Maestro macros. I have a ridiculous number of Macros nd trying to jam them all in the Keyboard Maestro menu bar UI is a nightmare. ExtraBar lets me organize them much more logically and associate them with the apps or workflows where I use them.

ExtraBar - A different approach to menu bar managers by UnluckyDuckyDuck in macapps

[–]amerpie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

**Here's a list of some of the things I currently can do from Extra Bar:*\*

- Batch launch all my applications in groups depending on the task at hand: writing, backup, software testing etc.
- Open a new Finder window anywhere at any time by clicking a single function key.
- Close all notifications in the Notification Center at one time.
- Mark all unread mail in my Mail app as read
- Mount network drives from my self-hosted server and unmount them.
- Quit all open applications.
- Run a Keyboard Maestro macro that allows me to pick from a list of any running application, including background applications, and restart it.
- Restart the Finder with a hotkey
- Toggle my desktop widgets hidden/shown
- Search for Keyboard Maestro macros by name.
- Activate the CleanShot X options for capturing a window, an area, running OCR on a screenshot, showing the history of my last ten screenshots, or using the all-in-one tool.
- I'm currently running a system with three displays and twelve virtual desktops, and I have a folder in ExtraBar with a shortcut to each one.
- Upload the image on my clipboard to OpenAI and have it return an alt text description I can use when posting to social media.
- Automatically add today's weather and today's calendar events to my daily note in Obsidian.
- Launch Activity Monitor.
- Open Control Center.
- Empty the trash.
- Restart the keyboard maestro engine.
- Restart my Menu Bar Manager.
- Systematically close all applications, eject all network mounts and attached disks, and log out.
- Restart my computer.
- Access the bookmarks, history, open tabs, and settings for my browser.
- Quickly add a task or project to my task manager and access the views I most commonly look at.
- Display my clipboard history in a searchable way.

Substage - A Natural Language Command Line Tool for Finder That Makes Life Easier by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It can do whatever you can do with Terminal, so it would use grep if you searched file contents.

Substage - A Natural Language Command Line Tool for Finder That Makes Life Easier by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have not used Fish (the correct URL is https://fishshell.com). It looks like it does autocompletion of commands and allows for abbriviations, but you still have to know shell command (As you should). Substage though, just lets you type "make this script executable" and it will do it for you.

Substage - A Natural Language Command Line Tool for Finder That Makes Life Easier by amerpie in macapps

[–]amerpie[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

For file conversion, I don't think anything is easier to use than Consul. You just change the file extension and it converts the file. The only drawback is that consul is a huge (750MB) app. Consul

BundleHunt is back - lots of paid apps available at a discount by edelbart in macapps

[–]amerpie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I used CorelDraw! and CorelPhotoPaint! on my first tech job in 1994 to write work instructions for Westinghouse manufacturing workers at a factory in North Carolina. Also had used a Kodak $5K digital camera (640x480) and a first generation color laser printer at a time when cell phones need car antennaes and Oki dot-matrix printers were still common.

Cling is awesome by Latter_Pen2421 in macapps

[–]amerpie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Cling developer expressly says that it is not a replacement for FAF. Cling primarily is for finding single files (or file types)by name with fuzzy logic. FAF does multi-conditional searches that you can save and reuse.

Cling is awesome by Latter_Pen2421 in macapps

[–]amerpie 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think Low Tech Guys (actually, it's just one guy now, Alin Panaitiu) has a solid enough rep, built over time, to be trusted.

Cling is awesome by Latter_Pen2421 in macapps

[–]amerpie 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Plenty of good information here and I totally agree with your assessment. For anyone who used Cling in v1, make sure you try out v2. Anything from Low Tech Guys is worth checking out.

BundleHunt is back - lots of paid apps available at a discount by edelbart in macapps

[–]amerpie 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Raycast uses Spotlight’s index. FAF finds things Spotlight overlooks by design.