AppAddict

I replaced Apple Music with Yate, Swinsian, Navidrome, and an iPod Classic. Surprisingly better.

My ten-year experiment with Apple Music is over. Over the past month I rebuilt my workflow for managing a large local music collection; roughly 36,000 tracks. After a lot of experimentation, these are the tools that finally clicked. • Migration – Apple Music with iTunes Match ($25/year; you only need it once) • Repair – Yate (free) • Management – Swinsian ($34.95) • Maintenance – Yate + Swinsian • Consumption (hardware) – iPod Classic ($40–$400) • Consumption (streaming) – Navidrome (free) This is the story of moving from Apple Music back to files I actually own, and the workflow that makes that practical in 2026. Why Leave?Streaming trained us to tolerate a mess we never should have accepted....

April 6th, 2026

Radial 4 Works Best as an Automation Hub

I spent the afternoon experimenting with Radial 4, a rapidly evolving pie-menu app from independent developer Gustav Lubker of AppVerge. If you’re not familiar with pie menu apps, they present a circular menu divided into sections (or slices), each representing an action or command. When configured well, they map naturally to muscle memory and can be extremely fast to use. Other pie-menu apps I've used include: • Pieoneer (good) • CirMenu (good) • PieMenu (limited) • Kando (FOSS) InterfaceIn Radial, pie menus can include the following types of actions: • Input • • Keyboard Shortcut • Text • Clipboard • Open...

April 2nd, 2026

BackiGo is a Dependable & Full Featured iCloud Backup Solution

If you rely on iCloud but don’t have a true backup of that data, BackiGo is one of the simplest ways to create one. BackiGo is an iCloud backup app I can recommend for anyone looking for an alternative to Parachute. Parachute is a well-known iCloud backup utility that was recently acquired by a company with a solid reputation, but also a history of price increases and subscription transitions. Who This Is ForBackiGo is particularly useful if you: • Store large amounts of data in iCloud Drive or iCloud Photos • Use Optimize Mac Storage, meaning your Mac does not hold full local...

April 1st, 2026 Universal Apps

DoubleMemory Doing Great After a Year

I’m always impressed when an out-of-the-box thinker builds an app unlike anything I’ve seen before. Iterating on proven concepts is fine, but after testing enough clipboard managers and voice-to-text apps, they all start to blur together. Give me something new, clever, and useful, and I’ll happily change my workflow to make room for it. a year ago, DoubleMemory caught my attention with its interesting feature set and it's done nothing but improve since then. DoubleMemoryI sometimes worry that one day my brain will run out of capacity for new hotkey combinations. When that happens, any app that relies on them...

March 30th, 2026 Mac Apps

500 App Reviews Published!

I posted my 500th app review this week. If you keep typing long enough, this is what happens. It makes me super happy and I hope I have helped some of you find apps that you've grown to use and love. If I have, please leave a comment, it will be motivating and appreciated. I want to give a shout out to r/MacApps for all the support and feedback I've gotten there. I also want to thank Scribbles, the blogging platform I've used the entire time. I recently added a way for developers to alert me to their apps. If...

March 29th, 2026

Automation Fans Are Going to Love PicMal for Conversions

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...

March 26th, 2026

10 Tiny Mac Workflow Tweaks that Save Me Time Every Day

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...

March 25th, 2026 Mac Apps

Consul is Supremely Useful

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: • Switching from one e-reader (for example, Sony) to another (Kindle) and suddenly needing to convert an entire library of books. • My photography workflow revolves...

March 24th, 2026

If These Apps Are Missing My Mac Feels Broken

Some small utilities become so embedded in my workflow that they start to feel like part of macOS itself. When I sit down at someone else’s Mac or a freshly set-up machine and they aren’t there, it genuinely throws me off. I’m curious what apps fall into that category for you. SharefulOne of those apps for me is Shareful by Sindre Sorhus. The Mac share menu has always felt like an afterthought compared to iOS. Many developers don’t bother implementing it, and Apple keeps it oddly limited. Shareful fixes that by adding a few practical actions that save me a surprising number of...

March 22nd, 2026 Mac Apps

Resurf – A Well-Designed (Almost) Everything Box

Resurf is a clever new app, currently in beta, with a lot of potential. This is one of those “I needed an app to do X, so I built one” projects; the difference is that it was built by a design engineer who clearly understands macOS conventions. The result feels native and thoughtfully put together. Using it brought back a few workflow habits I haven’t used since the days when Evernote was king. The entry point into Resurf is a floating capture widget that you trigger with a shortcut. From there you can use either the mouse or the keyboard to...

March 21st, 2026 Mac Apps

Octarine: Powerful, Sophisticated and Easy to Use

I’ve been hearing about Octarine for a while. It’s one of those apps that people whose opinions I respect talk about with a certain level of admiration. After testing it as thoroughly as I’ve tested any app in a long time, I understand why. Octarine is a tool for creating, editing, and organizing text-based information using connected but independent documents: Markdown files. Without relying on plugins, it supports images, video, PDFs, and files created by other productivity apps. Those files can be linked inside Octarine but still open in their native applications. Octarine isn’t designed for a single purpose. It’s more like a flexible...

March 19th, 2026 Mac Apps

Setting Up a New Mac the Easy Way

[M4 Mac Mini]When I bought my last new Mac two years ago, I set it up the way I had been setting up my personal computers for years: plug in a Time Machine drive and run Migration Assistant. On a modern Mac with an SSD, even if you have hundreds of apps installed like I do, the whole process takes about 20 minutes. It recreates your Applications folder, brings over preferences, and generally makes the new machine feel finished almost immediately. Nothing could be easier. There is a downside, though. Migration Assistant faithfully brings over all the accumulated cruft along with...

March 16th, 2026 Mac Apps

Four Indie Mac Utilities That Quietly Improve Your Workflow

Independent developers continue to build some of the most thoughtful utilities on macOS. These are small, focused tools that solve real workflow problems instead of trying to become the next all-in-one productivity suite. Here are a few that recently caught my attention. StealthlyFor anyone whose workday involves frequent Zoom, Teams, or other online meetings, presenting a professional, distraction-free screen matters. The same is true if you record tutorials or training videos. You want viewers focused on the content; not scanning your Dock, desktop, or menu bar for clues about your life. I installed Stealthly for both myself and my wife as soon...

March 13th, 2026 Mac Apps

Developer Spotlight: The Low-Tech Guys, Maker of Clop, Lunar, rcmd, Pipiri and Crank

It’s always such a pleasure to find out when one of my favorite developers has released a new app. That’s how I felt recently, when I read that The Low‑Tech Guys not only had a new app but that it was going to be a pretty strong player in the Mac automation field. That prompted me to approach the lead developer to learn more about the past, present and future of the company. But first, the apps. Crank Crank acts on triggers you define to take action without requiring user intervention. It’s more powerful than just Apple Shortcuts or Shortery, but...

March 10th, 2026 Mac Apps

My Stream Deck Setup for macOS Automation

I get a lot of use out of my Elgato Stream Deck. It’s one of the best hardware purchases I’ve made in a long time. It didn’t start that way. Shortly after I bought it, I discovered that the device falls under the privacy policy of its parent company, Corsair. The policy reads like it was written by lawyers trying to cover every possible future use case. According to the policy, potential data categories include: • identity information (name, account ID, email) • device identifiers and serial numbers • IP address and network data • usage data and clickstream behavior •...

March 9th, 2026