2026-03-27 18:35:55
"Somebody to Love" by Queen
Share a track by your favorite vocalist of all-time.
I don't think anybody else has ever had the chops Freddie Mercury had. His is THE VOICE.
2026-03-27 09:46:14
Every Mac user eventually ends up with a pile of files that need converting. Screenshots that are too large for the web. HEIC photos from iPhones that need to become JPEGs. Audio recordings saved at ridiculous bitrates. Video files that need to be optimized for sharing.
You can solve all of that with command-line tools like ffmpeg or with a handful of separate utilities.
Or you can just use Picmal.
Picmal is a single macOS utility that handles image, audio, and video conversion and compression. Once installed, it integrates directly into the Dock, Finder, menu bar, Services, and Shortcuts, so it behaves more like a built-in system tool than a typical standalone app.
It works immediately with sensible defaults, but if you want to tweak codecs, formats, or compression levels, the controls are there.
I’ve set up one of my screenshot apps specifically for images I plan to post on the web. It saves those screenshots into a folder that Picmal watches.
When a file lands there, Picmal automatically:
That automation alone has been useful for blogging and documentation.
If you regularly deal with HEIC photos from iPhones or iPads, Picmal can also watch a folder and convert them automatically.
Picmal also handles image resizing and color space conversion (sRGB, ProPhoto RGB, Display P3, and others). If you’re preparing files for printing, you can adjust DPI as well.
Batch processing works well. I had a collection of spoken-word recordings from events I’d attended, and many of them had been saved at extremely high bitrates that made sense for music but not for speech.
Picmal converted and compressed the entire batch without complaint. The resulting files sounded the same for spoken content while taking up far less disk space.
Video conversion uses simple presets:
Pick the preset that matches the destination and you’re done. If you need more control, the Custom option exposes additional settings.
Clipboard optimization lets Picmal compress images you copy to the clipboard. Copy a screenshot, a web image, or a file in Finder and Picmal quietly optimizes it in the background.
A small overlay appears so you can immediately replace the original clipboard contents with the compressed version.
If you enable the option, Picmal can automatically copy the optimized image back to your clipboard. One practical advantage: images processed this way can be pasted into Finder as files, which isn’t something macOS normally allows with clipboard images.
A nice touch: if the image is already efficiently compressed, Picmal detects that and skips the process instead of recompressing it.
If you already use media tools on macOS, you might be wondering where Picmal fits.
ImageOptim
Great for compressing images, especially for web publishing. Picmal overlaps here but adds format conversion, automation via watched folders, and clipboard workflows.
Permute
Permute focuses mostly on media conversion with a clean UI. Picmal covers similar ground but adds automation features and deeper Finder integration.
ffmpeg / command-line tools
Still the most flexible option for scripting and complex workflows. Picmal obviously can’t match that level of control, but for everyday tasks it removes a lot of friction.
In practice, Picmal feels less like a replacement for those tools and more like a convenient layer on top of common conversion tasks.
At $15.99 per seat with lifetime updates, Picmal is reasonably priced for what it does. There’s also a 15-day no-questions-asked refund.
All processing happens locally on your Mac (macOS 14 or newer), and the developer states that no data is collected. If you want to dig deeper, the developer provides comprehensive documentation on the website.
2026-03-26 17:40:15
"Jessica" by The Allman Brothers Band
What's your favorite instrumental song?
Jessica by the Allman Brothers Band is my fave, although a few more stand out in my memory, like Misirlou and Wipeout from the surf rock era, Tubular Bells from the early 70s and Chariots of Fire in the 80s.
2026-03-26 04:22:29
I spend a lot of time trying to remove small bits of friction from my Mac workflow. macOS is a great system, but out of the box it still leaves a lot of obvious automation opportunities on the table.
I spend a lot of time trying to remove small bits of friction from my Mac workflow. macOS is a great system, but out of the box it still leaves a lot of obvious automation opportunities on the table.
Most of the improvements I rely on come from stitching together tools like AppleScript, Keyboard Maestro, Shortcuts, and a few power-user utilities I discovered at r/MacApps.
None of this is complicated once it’s set up. The goal is just to eliminate little interruptions that happen dozens of times a day.
Most of these are tiny things, but they add up surprisingly fast
Sample Script
tell application "Finder"activateend telltell application "System Events"keystroke "g" using {command down, shift down}end tell
None of these are huge changes individually, but together they remove a lot of small interruptions during the day.
Curious what small automations or workflow tricks other people here are using.
2026-03-26 02:01:04
"Carry On" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Share a song with some of your favorite vocal harmonies.
Last year I would have picked a Simon & Garfunkel tune, but I'm mad at Paul Simon (ask me why). I don't think I could ever be angry at Neil Young or David Crosby, so I'm going with Carry On. The chorus harmony stack is one of their most powerful. It really shows how Neil Young's higher, thinner voice really changed the blend.
2026-03-24 23:40:46
I’ve become quite fond of Consul, a relatively new file conversion utility that’s both simple to use and easy to automate. The concept is almost absurdly straightforward: change the file extension to the format you want and the conversion just happens.
You might think you’ll never really need to convert files from one format to another. In practice, that assumption tends to collapse sooner or later. A few situations I’ve run into over the years:
There are plenty of ways to convert files. Most of them involve some level of friction:
What makes Consul such a pleasure is the complete absence of friction. It runs quietly in the background, and when you need to convert something, it just happens the moment you rename the file. For most conversions, the default settings are fine, but in the settings, you can control exactly how each conversion is handled including the output quality and codec, or whether to strip metadata.
For Mac automation nerds, Consul can be set to watch folders and perform conversions when a certain file type lands there. You can use Consul with Hazel or another automation tool like Crank to route the converted file elsewhere, import it into Photos or upload it to an FTP server.
Consul currently supports 1,391 conversions across 76 file formats, covering images, audio, video, documents, e-books, email, configuration files, spreadsheets, and archives.
The developer’s site suggests more formats are planned. I’d particularly like to see support for Apple iWork files and OpenOffice spreadsheets and presentations. My pie-in-the-sky request would be a PDF → EPUB conversion that performs better than what Calibre currently produces.
Pricing is refreshingly simple. A single license is $14, and a three-seat license is $19, both including a year of updates.
The privacy policy is exactly what you want to see: no data collection. Email support is available, and the developer is active on Reddit and notably friendly when people have questions.
