2025-12-21 02:04:43
In a recent thread on the effectiveness of available macOS app updaters, several people lamented that the FOSS command line tool Topgrade requires too much user intervention to be run with cron or launchd. In its default state, it can repeatedly prompt for the admin password, and in the event of an error with one of your services, it throws Quit or Retry queries that are showstoppers for unattended usage.
Topgrade checks all of your Homebrew and Mac App Store apps for updates, and if there are any available, it installs them. It also checks for updates for a long list of command line tools including Python, Node, Bun, and others. Now that it is possible to convert your existing apps to Homebrew-upgradable apps, you can conceivably handle the majority of your updates with a single free tool, which is important since MacUpdater will cease to function in less than two weeks.
After spending some time buried in the Topgrade documentation and doing some experimenting, I'm happy to share that it is possible to get it to work without password prompts or interruptions caused by service failures. Once you set it up, you can use cron, Keyboard Maestro, Shortcuts, or some other automation tool to run Topgrade on a schedule and keep your stack up to date with very little friction.
Note: This is safe to do if your Mac is a single-user device that you own. Don't do it on enterprise machines, and don't do it if you have others in your house who aren't trusted admins using your Mac.
You can edit the Topgrade config file with nano or with a real IDE. Don't use Text Edit. The path is usually at the root of your home folder at
~/.config/topgrade.toml
Near the top of the file is a [misc] section. You need to enter these lines in that section and save the file: assume_yes = true no_retry = true cleanup = true
Once you've completed those steps, you can run topgrade --dry-run to test things out. If you don't encounter any issues, you're ready to use a suitable automation tool to schedule your upgrades in the future.
Note: If Topgrade updates services you don't really use or that you prefer to update separately, you can disable them. In my case, I don't use Bun, and I prefer to update my Docker containers myself. To disable a service, add another line under the same [misc] section where you entered the other information, and use this format for the services you want to turn off: disable = ["containers", "bun"]
2025-12-20 04:20:42
I love it when I find an app that solves a problem I didn't know I had. I am always reluctant to get rid of any Apple hardware that still has any life left in it. Sometimes finding a practical use for an aging iPad or Intel Mac can be challenging. But now that I've discovered what I think is the best in its class app for displaying digital photography, I think Aura Photo Frames are great gadgets, but they are expensive and have limitations. Macs and iPads generally have better displays. They have network connectivity built in, and using one of them with the right software gives you a huge variety of photo sources. You can even use the app on an Apple TV to do things you can't do natively with the built-in app.
When I have company coming over, I make slide shows featuring my guests and set them to play. Anyone who needs a display for a trade show or presentation can use this app a lot more easily than setting up a rotating PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. I also like to make slideshows of trips I go on to keep the memories alive after I return home.
I use Digital Photo Frame and Slideshow, a universal app that works on the last six versions of macOS (Catalina-Sequoia) and iOS/iPadOS (iOS12-iOS26). The app has over 1K App Store reviews and a 4.8 rating. It's been featured by Apple in "Apps We Love." You can read plenty of testimonials and get support at the developer's website.. I contacted him while working on this review. Based on my interaction and his reputation among users, you should have no problem getting help should you need it or getting a response if you have a feature request. I asked about adding support for WebDAV cloud services and he let me know he's working on adding that support (and for other services available through the Files app). Digital Photo Frame is updated frequently.
Digital Photo Frame and Slideshow includes timers to start and stop slideshows automatically. The Apple Photos slideshow feature lacks audio continuity and detailed timing controls.
If you've used the app in the past and moved on to other options, you should take a look at some of the recent developments. Version 6 introduced:
There's a lifetime purchase option and a subscription option. You can try out the app on all your compatible devices for as little as $2.99 for a month. A yearly subscription is currently $29.99, although, according to AppRaven, there have been sales for as low as $12.99 a year. If you just want to buy the app outright, knowing that you should be able to use it for years to come on multiple devices, it's $69.99.
If you have hardware that's so old you can't run a compatible version of a Mac operating system on it, try Digikam, a FOSS photo management app. I use it on two 2009 iMacs. One runs Debian and the other Xubuntu, but you can run older versions of Digikam on vintage Mac operating systems.
2025-12-18 17:17:50
I updated my /now page - what I’m reading, what I’m watching. what I wrote, what I bought, what I found on the Internet and who I’m making fun of on Mastodon.
2025-12-18 10:14:34
Most experienced users know that you can copy the URL from a paywalled story from The New York Times, Washington Post, or other paywalled sites and paste it into Archive.today to read the article. There are browser extensions that will automate that in various browsers if you click on them in the toolbar. But you can remove even that bit of friction if you are a Safari user by installing Redirect Web. Take some time to set that up, and anytime you click on a paywalled article from a frequently visited site, it will open, ready to read at the Internet Archive. If you are not a Safari user, look in the browser extensions available for whatever you use for something similar.
Apple decided that your login items should launch in alphabetical order, and it doesn't let you change that. It also doesn't let you introduce pauses between apps launching. There is not a native way to do that. The only thing you can do is hold down the shift key when logging in to cancel all your login items, launch agents tied to login, and any apps set to resume at login. With the free app, Startup Manager Pro, you get all the control back. You choose the order in which your apps start. You can introduce pauses if you want to. You can even cancel your login items without holding down the shift key. Finally, you can have different sets of login items for different workflows if you so desire.
I am almost totally de-Googled these days. I don't use it for search, email, cloud storage, or to create documents. But I have to confess, I still get some value out of YouTube. I can do it without sacrificing my privacy, though. I use FreeTube, which scrapes YouTube content through a variety of methods. It can be a fluid landscape because Google really wants info on you, and they want you to watch ads unless you pay for YouTube Premium. In short, FreeTube isn't always going to work flawlessly, but for the most part, you'll be OK.
It never ceases to aggravate me that the Q and the W are right beside each other on the keyboard. I used to quit my browser all the time when I was just trying to close a tab. Then I discovered a sweet little AppleScript that I can tie to ⌘+Q with BetterTouchTool ($14), which gives me a confirmation popup, "Do you really want to quit this app?" Then, super-dev, Sindre Sorhus, introduced the same feature in Supercharge, his $18 multi-function must-have menu bar utility.
There are multiple ways to do this. I currently use another Sindre Sorhus app, Scratchpad, ($8) because it has a bunch of other useful features. I can also vouch for Scrap Paper ($4.99), which I used for a long time, and there's also the free version of Drafts that offers this functionality. While you're at it, you should also get a syncing clipboard app. I can recommend PastePal, a $14.99 one-time purchase. If you also have a PC in the mix and you want to sync your PC clipboard with your phone clipboard, check out Clipboard Fusion. If you have a SetApp subscription, there is also Paste, but at $29.99 a year in the App Store, I just can't justify it.
2025-12-17 10:51:46
Drafts, an app by Agile Tortoise (AKA Greg Pierce), remarkably won App of the Year for 2025 at Mac Stories, a full thirteen years after its release. Three years ago, Drafts was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the same crew. I think it's a real testament to the developer's commitment to continued development and support. The currently at version 49, with new features added regularly. Originally solely for iOS, today Drafts is a Universal App with multiple use cases on mobile and desktop/laptops. It's been in the dock of my iPhone for 11 years and on my Mac since its release. It's just about the only place I enter text on that platform because its huge automation catalog enables me to send what I type to other apps with ease.
Drafts has a robust and long-lived community with a lot of smart people generously helping newcomers on the regular. Every single time I have ever had a question about Drafts, either Greg himself or one of the other community regulars has given me the answer.
In the past, I've also used it with OmniFocus, Bear, ToDoist, TickTick, Gmail, Google Docs, OneNote, Spark email, DevonThink, IAwriter, Notion, Roam Research, Evernote, Twitter, and Facebook.
There are hundreds of free workflows available in the Drafts actions directory for a long, long list of situations and apps.
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. The appropriate parts of one draft get sent to three separate apps with one command.
Things Parser
Using TaskPaper 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 recurring tasks. I also use the action group, Things for Things, which includes actions for:
Copy to Obsidian Inbox
I am all in on Obsidian, the massively popular notes app with a robust 2000+ plugin architecture. It does a lot of things amazingly well, but mobile quick capture is not one of them. To solve that, I use this Drafts action 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.
Yes, Drafts Pro is a subscription app, and if you want to create custom actions, you are going to have to pony up 1.99M/19.99Y. I would sell plasma to pay for Drafts if I had to. Drafts is also a text-only app. There are no images or file embeds available. You don't have to be a tech writer or a blogger to use it, though. In my former life in IT support, I used it all the time for email, closing tickets, and documentation. You can do an amazing amount of work with Drafts, but you aren't going to master it in a day. There is a learning curve, but in my experience, it's always been fun to see what new things I can do with the app.
2025-12-15 22:30:13
Hazel is an automation utility that uses user-defined rules to automatically perform file operations on user-defined folders. It uses a variety of metadata to move, copy, compress, decompress, open, delete, rename, and sort files and folders automatically.
The primary drawback of using Hazel for some people is the price. A license is $42, and upgrades are typically about half of that. For what it does, I find that well worth it, but it's understandably steep for some folks.
