AppAddict

I emphasize honest, practical reviews from my perspective as a power user and productivity enthusiast — not a marketer I have a particular fondness for the indie Mac scene, privacy-respecting software, open-source tools, and workflow automation. I also cover self-hosting, the de-Googling/de-Apple-ification of digital life, and the art of building efficient Mac workflows with the right combination of small, focused apps. Posts range from single-app deep dives to multi-app roundups, workflow walkthroughs, and developer spotlights. If you're a developer and have an app you'd like me to check out, let me know.

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Five Free Apps Alternative to Paid Apps

Are you paying for an ad blocker, folder automation, notes & PKM and image editing ? You don't have to. • wBlock - a next-generation ad/content blocker for Safari: 750,000 rule capacity across 5 Safari content-blocking extensions (150k each), ~40MB idle RAM by running Safari's native content-blocking API out-of-process, Protocol Buffers + LZ4 filter storage, HTTP conditional-request updates, and iCloud sync of filter selections/custom lists/userscripts/whitelist. It bundles an Element Zapper, "Tube Cleaner & Player Cleaner" userscripts that restore native Picture-in-Picture/background playback on media sites, a full Greasemonkey-API userscript engine, UserCSS support, custom AdGuard-syntax filter-list import, per-site controls, a blocked-request logger,...

August 16th, 2026

Lore: A Free App for YouTubeVideo Downloading, also Builds YouTube Playlists Without Signing In

TL;DR: Lore is a free Mac app that follows YouTube channels over plain RSS, no algorithm, no Google account, then archives what you keep as a permanent offline file with transcript search, highlights, and SponsorBlock built in. The site's source-code link 404s, so don't take open source on faith. Alternatives for readers who want a lighter touch: FreeTube (free, open source, no algorithm, no download) and Grayjay Desktop ($9.99 one time, aggregates YouTube with other platforms). Blog title: Lore Solves a Problem Neither of My Last Two Posts Could Reddit title: Lore: The Mac App That Skips YouTube's Algorithm and...

August 15th, 2026

The Extension Aided Method of Ignoring thee YouTube Algorithm

TL;DR: Control Panel for YouTube, UnTrap, and DeArrow all quiet YouTube down without making you leave the account, the browser, or the ecosystem behind. That's the whole point and the whole limit: you still get Google's ranking, you just stop looking at what it hands you. Control Panel is free and open source on Chrome and Firefox; the native Safari app is $3.99 once, no subscription. UnTrap is $4.99 once for all 250+ controls; an optional $3.99/month or $35.99/year adds cross-device sync and unlimited AI video summaries, which send content to a third party. DeArrow fixes a different problem, clickbait...

August 13th, 2026

How to Experience YouTube With No Algorithm

TL;DR: Play, Yattee and Unwatched all refuse to let YouTube pick your next video; each builds a feed from your subscriptions instead of Google's ranking. Play is free to download with the channel-following features behind Premium at $2.99/month, and it's the only one of the three that isn't locked to a single backend. Yattee runs through public Invidious and Piped instances, which Google has been blocking since 2024. Unwatched pulls from YouTube's own RSS feeds and Data API instead, which should make it sturdier, but needs macOS 15. Play, Yattee and Unwatched Won't Fix YouTube's Algorithm. They Just Won't Ask...

August 12th, 2026 Mac Apps

YouTube Premium kills the ads but doesn't solve the real problem. Here's the stack I use to do that.

TL;DR: Paid for YouTube Premium after years of DIY ad-blocking. Ads are gone; the algorithm, the clutter, and the impermanence aren't. Building a stack of small tools instead of hunting for one app that fixes all four. First post in a series; toolbox preview inside, full reviews coming. Google did not design YouTube to entertain you or to inform you. Every major design choice points toward one purpose: to make you watch more YouTube. Watching more leads to one of two outcomes: your attachment to the platform gets stronger, or you get shown more advertising. For a lot of people, it's...

August 11th, 2026 Mac Apps

Caption Snap: Meeting Transcriptions With No Bot, No Model to Download, No Data Transferred and No Drain on Your CPU - Free Trial, One Time, $9.99

TL;DR: CaptionSnap is a $9.99 one-time menu bar app that saves your Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet transcripts by reading the live captions the meeting app already displays. No audio recording, no bot in the call, no cloud, no model download, and Accessibility is the only permission it asks for. Speaker names come from the platform, so attribution is a lookup instead of a guess. You have to enable captions yourself, transcripts are only as good as the platform's captioning, and it requires macOS 26 on Apple Silicon. CaptionSnap Reads the Captions Your Meeting App Already Shows You Here is...

August 10th, 2026 Mac Apps

Autoshelf Has an MCP Server You Probably Don't Need and The Rule Engine Is Weak - A Review

TL;DR: AutoShelf ($19.99 one-time) ships an embedded MCP server that works, but do you actually need that? An AI model can write a launchd LaunchAgent and a shell script once and it runs forever, no app, no daemon, no purchase. The MCP's real value only shows up once you're managing enough rules to want conversational audit and editing instead of hand-maintained scripts, and even there, my hands-on testing found the rule engine underneath thin: no dynamic subfolder sorting, limited management by file size, and an action list a fraction of Hazel's. AutoShelf delivers less using AI than its marketing promises...

August 9th, 2026 Mac Apps

The Apps I Use So Apple Can't Take Everything

TL;DR: Part two of the Apple Account series. Backup apps that pull your iCloud data down to storage you control, email providers that speak IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV so Apple's own apps keep working without iCloud, ways to buy and track software outside the App Store, and a password manager that isn't Keychain. My own five picks are at the end, along with why you should be testing a restore every quarter. Disaster Avoidance Apps Yesterday I laid out what happens when Apple closes your account: your identity if it's an @icloud.com address, your photos and messages, your purchases, your hardware in every...

August 7th, 2026 Mac Apps

All Your Eggs in One Basket, The Apple Disaster Scenario

TL;DR: Mac power users vet apps carefully and then hand their entire digital life to Apple without a second thought. Apple can close your account on suspicion alone, keep your unspent balance, and never tell you why; a federal judge confirmed all of that in 2023 and threw the case out. An Apple Account is simultaneously an authentication system, cloud-storage account, software license repository, device-activation credential, communications identity, and payment account. A full lockout can therefore affect data, purchases, services, and hardware management at once.This post covers how accounts get closed, what you lose when it happens, why getting back...

August 6th, 2026 Mac Apps

When You Need a Mac, But All You Have is a Phone - The Verdict on Four Free Alternatives to Leaving Work Undone

TL;DR: Four free iPhone apps that handle jobs you would normally do on your Mac: API Bot for testing endpoints, View Source Vibe for inspecting a suspicious link, Fiper for algorithm-free RSS, and Owl VIP for sender-level email notifications. Two earn a place on your phone. Fiper loses to NetNewsWire for anyone reading this blog, and Owl VIP charges a subscription for something iOS Focus Modes mostly do free. None has a native Mac app. Every so often, something breaks and you are nowhere near your computer. An endpoint starts returning 500 errors while you are sitting in a parking...

August 3rd, 2026 iOS Apps

TextSniper, MacPilot, Unite Pro, PDF Squeezer and Video Paw on Sale from Their Devs Until Friday for %75+ Off

You have a chance this week (ending August 7th) to pick up five apps at the lowest prices I've seen them listed for. Sale Details. Reviews of Apps I Have Personally Tested• TextSniper - Better Than Native OCR | AppAddict ($7.99- On Sale For $1.99 -%75) Hit a hotkey, drag a box over anything on screen (a locked PDF, a video frame, a screenshot someone sent you), and the text lands on your clipboard; it also reads QR codes and barcodes and can speak the captured text aloud. OCR runs entirely on your Mac. textsniper.app, App Store • MacPilot Tweaks...

August 3rd, 2026 Mac Apps

RAD Weather for macOS Shows You Where the Forecasts Disagree

TL;DR: RAD Weather pulls forecasts from four services and shows you where they disagree instead of averaging the disagreement away. Free, with RAD Ultra at $1.99 a month, $19.99 a year, or $99.99 once, plus a MultiPass tier at $2.99 monthly or $29.99 annual. The Mac build is a real Mac app, the subscription is justified by per-forecast data costs, and there is no radar. RAD TV shipped in 7.6.7 and an Apple TV version is announced. RAD Weather's Unique Feature Years of obsessive cycling naturally paired with years of obsessive weather forecast following. Although none of us can do...

August 1st, 2026 Universal Apps

Using Orbit to manage the Google accounts I didn't want

TL;DR: Orbit runs each of your Google accounts in its own isolated WebKit session inside one native Mac window, for $89 one time instead of the $50 to $200 a year the alternatives want. It exists because you can de-Google yourself but you can't de-Google your father. The catch is that it only works as long as Google keeps letting Mac apps sign in, and passkey-only and Advanced Protection accounts already can't. The Google Accounts I Didn't Ask For My opinion of big tech companies has hardened over the years. Their business models turned into anti-privacy juggernauts, so I started...

July 31st, 2026 Mac Apps

Blankie, A Free and Open Source Ambient Sound Mixer is a Breath of Fresh Air, Right in Your Ear

TL;DR: Blankie is a free, open-source ambient sound mixer for Mac, iPhone, iPad and CarPlay; no ads, IAPs, or subscriptions. 24 mixable sounds, saved presets, custom audio import, menu bar control. Stacked against Noizio, Dark Noise, myNoise, and Endel, all of which charge something for depth or convenience Blankie gives away for free. I'm not usually one to complain about app pricing, but I make an exception when it feels like someone is misrepresenting the complexity of something simple to justify a monetization strategy. Ambient sound apps, at their core, are well-organized loop players, and nothing about them justifies subscriptions, tiered...

July 30th, 2026 Universal Apps

RetroMac is a Free Time Machine for Your Computer

Mac users tend to be nostalgic about the hardware and software they used in their earliest exposure to tech. That doesn't mean anyone wants to try to get real work done on a late-90s PowerPC Mac clone, or go back to 14-inch monitors. People just enjoy being reminded how far we've come, and pretend there was once a time when everything "just worked." (It didn't. I was there.) German developer Maik Klotz created a free app, RetroMac, that turns your current Mac into a version of the Wayback Machine. It doesn't touch your system. It paints. A Metal shader sits...

July 29th, 2026 Mac Apps