AppAddict

Apps For Travelers

When I travel, my phone ceases to be an entertainment and diversion device and turns into a real tool. Whether I'm staying in town or on an outdoor adventure, I rely on my phone for directions and information about things to do and places to go. Here are a few of the apps I find helpful. History PointerHistory Pointer uses your current location to show you locations on the National Historic Register. I was amazed to see how many places in my own hometown were listed. You get maps, Wikipedia excerpts and an augmented reality tour. ($4.99) Gas BuddyLast weekend,...

April 25th, 2025 iOS Apps

Get Plain Text - Adds a Feature the Mac Lacks

People who work with text a lot are familiar with the Mac shortcut to paste the clipboard as plain text - Command + Shift + Option + V. This shortcut works in many native Mac applications like Pages, Mail, and Safari. When you copy content from a source and use this shortcut to paste, it automatically strips away any formatting. While the shortcut is highly versatile, it only works sometimes. Applications like Microsoft Word or third-party software may not support it natively. You can learn application-specific methods of pasting as plain text. Word has a way to do it. So...

April 24th, 2025 Mac Apps

Quick App Launcher - Pro, A Well Thought Alternative

There are various ways to launch apps on a Mac. The most obvious and the one used most by new Mac users is clicking icons in the dock. Apple also has Launchpad another built-in launcher. More advanced users sometimes move on to keyboard-driven methods, starting with Spotlight and advanced launchers like Raycast or Alfred, although some don't want the added system overhead or extra features. Some like the convenience of a menubar launcher like Xmenu or Folder Peek. Lately, there has also been a growing popularity among so-called pie menu launchers like Pieoneer. Another choice now available from developer Baser...

April 22nd, 2025 Mac Apps

Free App List Number 4

This is the fourth collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first three collections are posted below. I've downloaded and installed each of these on my Mac. I've added many of these apps to my workflows for getting stuff done. Previous Collections• A Curated Collection of Free Apps • Another Curated Collection of Free Software • AppAddict Free App List Number 3 Free App List Number 4• Permissions Reset 2 - Free Troubleshooting Tool • Zotero as a Free PDF Library Manager • UTM for Virtualization • rclone - An Easy to Use and Powerful CLI •...

April 21st, 2025 Mac Apps

Opener Feels Like iOS

Opener is so integrated into the way I use my phone that I forget it's an app and not built into iOS. When you're browsing the web in your iOS browser and you come across a link you want to open, usually you have to copy and paste the address to get it into the app you want. Using Opener, you can go straight to the app from your browser or any app that allows sharing a URL. If, like me, you use an iOS browser other than Safari, Opener lets you send links to the browser of your choice....

April 19th, 2025 iOS Apps

MyApplications - An App for App Lovers

For the avid app collector there are a few tools available to help catalog and curate the assortment of programs that accumulate over time. You can use Apple's built in system report to get comprehensive information but it's rather dense and not illustrated. You can use an app like Apparency, but then you are limited to a single app at the time. MyApplications, available in the app store for 99 cents, serves as both a database and a launcher for your computer. The MyApplications general interface includes a count of the number of apps you have installed, 414 in my...

April 18th, 2025 Mac Apps

Pareto Security - Quick and Easy

I recently noticed an app on Setapp that I'd never tried, Pareto Security, so I investigated it. It's a basic application that checks the settings on your Mac and quickly shows you where you aren't following the best recommended practices from security experts. It has links to tutorials for every setting along with an explanation of why that setting is recommended. Although it is geared towards less technically advanced users, anyone can benefit from a quick scan. Experienced Mac users are going to familiar with these best practices and will probably have legitimate reasons for any deviation from the suggested...

April 17th, 2025 Mac Apps

SmartBackup - Free, Fast and Foolproof

While I have long used Time Machine as my primary backup for my Macs, it does have some drawbacks. If you go looking for a missing file, it's a hit-and-miss operation to find the last known good copy of a document, image or folder. You basically have to work your backwards through your snapshots until the file appears. You also have to know the exact path of what you're looking for unless you are willing to restore in bulk. The type of backup I need isn't a whole disk backup. I'm fine with Time Machine for that, plus I have...

April 16th, 2025 Mac Apps

Change the Location of Notifications With PingPlace

One of my favorite tech writers, Justin Pot, who publishes a lot over at Lifehacker, reviewed a new to me app today called PingPlace. If something happens on a Mac, someone is going to figure out a way to tweak it. This free app moves the pop-up location for notifications from the upper-right corner's default, to just about anywhere else on your primary display that you'd like to see them appear" • Top Left • Top Middle • Top Right • Bottom Left • Bottom Middle • Bottom Right Reasons For moving the default location include the size of your...

April 15th, 2025 Mac Apps

Safari Extensions Worth Paying For and A Couple of Worthy Freebies

One of my current strategies to minimize the ability of tech companies, starting with Google, to use browser fingerprinting to extract information from my browsing habits involves rotating among a half dozen browsers on my Mac. Because I have long used Chromium-based browsers and the extension ecosystem associated with them, I've had to find some alternatives for Safari, which I am using as part of my rotation. Unlike most Chrome and Firefox extensions, many Safari add-ons incur a cost, usually small. These are the ones I opted to buy. I'm sure some of the long-time Safari users out there have...

April 14th, 2025 Universal Apps

Some App Finding Resources for You

It truly seems like there is an unending river of new Mac apps to check out. I once worried that I would not be able to find enough apps to continue writing about them daily. These days I wonder how I will ever find the time to download, test and review all the interesting software I discover. When it comes to discovery, I rely on tips from readers first and foremost. If an app is good enough for someone to take the time to tell me about it, it must be special. I also have a full complement of sites...

April 13th, 2025 Mac Apps

PhotoSync to take Control Over Your Images

For anyone who wants to eliminate as much friction as possible in creating backups of their iPhone photos outside of iCloud, most people have long turned to apps from big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Dropbox. They all have apps that will gladly upload your photos on to their servers, where you can be assured they will extract every bit of data about you that they legally (hopefully) help themselves to. Using the paid iOS app, PhotoSync, you get the ability to wirelessly and automatically send copies of your photos to the file system of your computer, a long...

April 12th, 2025 Universal Apps

Digikam is Replacing Apple Photos, Google Photos and Amazon Photos For Me

Apple Photos is fine for backing up the pictures I take with my iPhone, but its proprietary database that keeps users from accessing their files except through the software is for the birds. A corrupt photos library can cut you off from all your memories. I long used Google Photos and Amazon Photos as secondary backups of not only my iPhone photos, but also scans and the pictures I take with my DSLR. Since I decided to stop doing business with big tech to the extent possible (except Apple), I downloaded my collections from both companies, consolidated them, removed the...

April 11th, 2025 Mac Apps

Stop the Madness Pro Extension for Safari, Chrome and Firefox

To preserve more of my privacy, I am now using different browsers on a rotating basis. This helps to cut down on fingerprinting to an extent. I am used to customizing my browsers extensively so it's been an ongoing project to get extensions installed, DNS over https set up, changing default download behaviors, testing ad blocking and more. I have not regularly used Safari for many years, even on iOS, so it's taken some getting used to. There isn't 100% overlap between what's available for Mozilla and Chromium browsers and Safari. Additionally, many popular Safari extensions cost money, much more...

April 10th, 2025 Universal Apps

One For the Techies - SwiftDefaultApps

The problem of the day for me was finding an extension for Safari to automate opening paywalled websites at the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, the only extension in the App Store that does that is not available in the US. So, I turned to my go-to site for Apple Shortcuts, Routine Hub, to look for a solution there. I wasn't surprised to find one immediately. I downloaded it and set it up to work with Carlo Zottman's new app, Barcuts, which replaces the default menu bar for Shortcuts with one that is application-specific. I ran the shortcut on a paywalled article...

April 9th, 2025 Mac Apps