Every now and then I stumble across a life changing app that completely changes the way I interact with my computer. Quicksilver. Devonthink Pro. Jumpcut. Keyboard Maestro. 1Password. Dropbox. Hazel. These are Apps that I cannot do without! In my 20 years of being a mac user there has been a handful of such apps that are mandatory to install on any new computer that I use. I’ve just discovered a new app to add to the collection – Unclutter…
Continue reading ⟩I discovered this little application a while ago called ‘namechanger’. It allows you to automatically change the name of a large number of files in one go. It has lots of options. You can add something to the start of filenames or to the end. You can do search and replace of filenames. You can remove characters, add in a date or add in a sequence of numbers. It’s very handy. You can download it from here: https://mrrsoftware.com/namechanger/
Summary: This great little app (costs $2.99) allows you to right-click in any folder and make a new document.
Windows users will be used to the ability to right-click anywhere and make a new file. Unfortunately you cannot do this on a Mac. For many years I have had a quicksilver shortcut which allows me to do this, but ‘New File Menu’ is a new app that is a lot simpler and has more options. After you install it whenever you right-click your mouse it adds an extra option to the contextual menu that allows you to create a new file. As you can see in the example above I have two choices available “text file” and “pages document” but you can choose how many documents you want available in the menu.
To customise the menu you need to run the application. The you just select the files that you’d like to have in the menu. I only have 4 selected – A text file, Pages, Word and rtf. This keeps the menu nice and small.
Click here to go to the App Store and download the New File Menu App.
Quicksilver is one of my favourite apps for accessing documents quickly and doing all sorts of tasks. I use it almost every time I want to open a new app, open a document or find a folder. I also use Devonthink to store all my files. I am converting over to a paperless office. (Hopefully I will write an article about this someday!) If you are a Quicksilver and Devonthink user here’s how to add your Devonthink database to your Quicksilver catalogue so that all the PDF files in Devonthink can be accessible to Quicksilver.
If you watch TV on your Macbook or iMac here’s a great tip. I’m not sure what happens in the rest of the world, but in Australia when you stream TV on demand from stations like channel 10 or SBS you get between 30 seconds and 2 minutes of ads every 10 minutes or so. The same happens if you watch TV on demand via Apple TV.
But you can avoid those ads! If you watch TV on demand using the Chrome browser in OS X with the ‘Ad Block’ plug-in enabled, all the ads disappear! It completely skips all the ads and just plays the content. Continue reading ⟩
Tab Launcher is a great little app that sits on the side or top of your screen. It’s like a manilla folder where you can put commonly used files. It makes accessing them much quicker. The great thing is you don’t have to actually move the files into tab launcher. Your files stay exactly where they are but this is an easy way to access them.
I have been keeping an eye on three iOS apps that Google have been playing with over the last few years, and they have all come to age at the same time. I’m not sure if the timing is coincidence or some kind of subversive move by Google but Google have nailed these three wonderful iOS apps all in the last few months: Calendar, Inbox, and Google Play.
When you login OS X asks you for a password. This is a great security feature, especially if you have a laptop and you are taking it places. If you have a computer at home or in your study and you are the only one that has physical access to your computer you may want to have OS X automatically log you in. Here is how to turn on the automatic login on OS X.
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