DailyMacApp
Latest
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Music Commander
Controlling iTunes with the keyboard is easy enough, but what if you want a little more information without having to resort to the full iTunes window? Music Commander is here to help. Sitting in the menu bar, Music Commander allows you to control iTunes with an extensive drop-down menu. You've got the usual play controls for quick access with your mouse, but you've also got some of iTunes more advanced music controls. You can rate the current song, switch shuffle and repeat on and off, as well as change the current playlist. Volume control is right there too, as well as the album art and metadata of the current track including album, artist and song name. If you want to get a bit social with your iTunes listening experience (no I'm not talking about Ping), Music Commander has Twitter, Facebook and last.fm built in, letting you tweet, post or scrobble the current song. When you've had enough you can even quit iTunes right from Music Commander. If you've been looking for a decent iTunes controller for your menu bar, Music Commander might just be the ticket. While you can accomplish quite a lot of the functionality using Apple keyboard media controls and Growl, Music Commander puts it all there, in one nice and tidy package. Music Commander is available for US$0.99 from the Mac App Store.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Moom
Window managers are numerous on the Mac, with most relying on keyboard shortcuts or edge snapping. Moom is different. Moom integrates into the existing Apple UI by providing a pop-up menu when you hover your mouse over the green "maximize" button in the top left-hand corner of your window. Clicking on one of the Moom menu options moves and zooms (mooms) your window to the desired sector of the screen. By default you've got horizontal and vertical half-screen configurations as well as full screen. If you want a quarter screen window, you can click and drag on the default Moom buttons to define the desired quarter. Sending the window to another monitor is as easy as dragging one of the buttons in the desired direction of the monitor. A grid below the buttons allows you to quickly define a new size and position by selecting the squares required. If all your Mooming gets a bit crazy, you can move the window back to its original position with the revert arrow. You can also define custom mooms in the settings, which are then accessible via a drop-down menu from the Moom pop-up or menu bar. Moom also includes robust support for keyboard shortcuts, including binding of window sizes and positions to individual shortcut keys. Moom takes keyboard usage one stage further with a keyboard control mode in which you can move the window around with the arrow keys, moom a window to any of the half-screen configurations, send it full screen or centered and even send it to the next monitor. Moom is also able to run as a menu bar icon, a standard OS X program or even "faceless" (hidden). We've covered a few other window management utilities on TUAW, but it's safe to say Moom is one of the best. For US$4.99 it's going to be one of the first apps I install on a Mac from here on in. If you're not convinced, give the free trial a go from the Many Tricks website.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Byword
To a writer a decent text editor is worth its weight in gold. Unlike Word or Pages, Byword is a text editor that gives you just enough to get the job done, while getting out of your way. In its most basic form it's a plain text editor, but it can also produce and edit rich-text files and MultiMarkdown support, meaning that for the most part, you can get almost any sort of creative writing done within its minimalist writing interface. When windowed, Byword gives you a svelte borderless writing experience, but when full-screen it removes all distractions with a blank off-white background that fills the screen with just a single column of text with some great typography in the center. Various tools like a file type indicator or word and character counters are available at the bottom of the screen in faint text, while search and full-screen buttons are hidden in the top right hand corner. The font size, color, column width and typography can all be customized, even allowing white text on a black background if required. Byword also includes a "focus" mode, which highlights a portion of the text (shown above), fading out the rest. You can choose from one to nine lines or just one paragraph to include in the highlight, which allows you to concentrate on just the text needed at the time. For US$9.99 Byword is a great text editor, providing just enough functionality while getting out of your way.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: iFogg
Apps that help you to focus when using a Mac that's chock-a-block full of distractions can be really helpful. iFogg, a US$0.99 app from the Mac App Store, helps you focus by dimming other windows and leaving only the active window at full brightness. iFogg sits in your menu bar, like many other programs that do similar tasks, and is active the moment you switch windows. The amount by which the rest of the windows and programs are dimmed is adjustable from full brightness to total black-out using a slider on a drop-down menu. You can also adjust whether the app dims all other windows, just windows from other programs, or just those windows not selected, meaning that you can have two windows from two different programs active at the same time. Dimmed windows can still be accessed, with drag-and-drop, scrolling and clicking unaffected. iFogg can also be quickly turned on and off from the menu bar icon and supports Spaces just fine. The odd thing about iFogg is that it'll only cover one monitor, so people with multiple monitors won't benefit from the inactive window dimming. You can also select the dimming overlay in Expose, which shows that it's just putting a colored full-screen window overlay on top of all the rest of the windows that aren't active. Still, it works and is pretty light on resources. iFogg is available now in the Mac App Store. A demo video is embedded below.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: swackett
Most weather apps display weather as you might expect with temperature and weather symbols. Swackett, a free (ad-supported) weather app from the Mac App Store, bucks the trend with cute cartoons of people showing the current and forecasted conditions. A "different kind of weather app," swackett shows you your current local weather conditions as well as today's, tonight's and tomorrow's forecast using characters of people wearing "suitable clothing" for each condition. For instance, if it's cool but not cold, swackett shows people wearing a light jacket, jeans and T-shirt. If it's going to rain, you'll see someone holding an umbrella. You'll even come across "easter eggs" for certain weather conditions from time to time, such as characters replicating a scene from Gone with the Wind for hot and sunny weather. A break-down of the day's weather is also displayed in 2-hour intervals along with a 7-day outlook and local, regional and national radar, plus regional satellite maps. Weather information is powered by AccuWeather.com, so there's a good chance your location is available. You can even tweet the current weather condition directly from the app. Swackett is also currently available as a web app (iPhone app coming soon), so you can get your weather predictions in the browser, too. An optional free login lets you save location and preference settings for temperature and other customizable features across devices. If you get sick of the free swackett characters, more can be purchased from the swackett store with "British Invasion" and "The 1950's" available for US$1.29 each. If you're looking for something a little different from a standard weather app that'll make you chuckle, then download swackett for free from the Mac App Store.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: iSplash
It's great to have lots of options of apps, and today's Daily Mac App adds to the plethora of colorization apps. iSplash is a selective color app just like Colorize and ColorWash, which we've covered before. iSplash is probably the simplest of the colorization apps we've played with so far. It's got an "open from iPhoto" dialog (although it'll open photos using Finder too), simple "Splash" painting tools (a brush) and undo/redo. There aren't any fancy fill features, or even a simple fill tool for that matter, but you can do just the same manually with a resizable brush tool that's managed with the "Splash size" slider on the tool bar. You can zoom in for precision work, and when you're finished you can export the image as a PNG. There aren't any options to speak of (you can't change the output format for instance), but iSplash will accept photos from anywhere and in PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF and BMP formats. If you're looking for a load of features and output options, you should look elsewhere. In fact, feature for feature, ColorWash is a better pick, especially since they're both on sale for US$0.99. It's good to have options, though, and that's just what iSplash is: another option. It'll do the job, just not as well as some others.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: AppCleaner
Last week on the Daily Mac App we featured the infamous uninstaller AppZapper. Today we've got a fully-featured free alternative, AppCleaner. Available from FreeMacSoft, the freeware (donations accepted) AppCleaner does what it says on the tin. Just like AppZapper, you can drag-and-drop the offending application onto AppCleaner to locate and delete all the associated files. Alternatively you can hit the Applications, Widgets or Others tabs to find and delete things directly from AppCleaner. "Others" thankfully includes Preference Panes, so you can get rid of any unwanted additions to your System Preferences with ease. So far so good, it does exactly what AppZapper does, but it's free. AppCleaner does have one unique feature, however, and that's "SmartDelete." An option in the preferences, SmartDelete allows you to carry on deleting apps the way Apple intended by just sending them to the trash, but with the added benefit of trashing all the associated files automatically. While SmartDelete is running, AppCleaner is supposed to detect that you've trashed an app and offer to find the associated files for you. I couldn't get it to work, but free's free right? If you want to get rid of some applications you've installed but never use, AppCleaner does the job fine. It may not be the most comprehensive Mac cleaning app out there, but as uninstallers go, AppCleaner is free and works great. Perhaps with Lion landing soon, now is the time to start clearing out the cobwebs and get your Mac ready for the shiny new OS X 10.7. Thanks to brijazz for the suggestion.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Quiet
We've covered apps that help you focus by masking other windows in the background in the past. Quiet is another app that will blank out distractions and help you stick to the task at hand. You can configure keyboard shortcuts or use the drop-down menu from the menu bar icon to enter and exit Focus mode for a selected app or Space. You get a choice of "isolation" effect, with Quiet defaulting to Fade to Black. Focus Out is available as well as Wallpaper, which removes everything off screen apart from the window or space you're focused on and reveals the wallpaper behind. Where the Fade to Black and Wallpaper modes worked fine, the defocus effect caused some temporary disruption to certain apps, which made it frustrating to use. A warning is displayed up to say that "Focus Out demands a powerful Mac" (Intel integrated video not supported), but you don't get much more powerful than a 2011 top-spec MacBook Pro. That's an option to avoid for most, then. Quiet will "quiet" certain apps or all supported apps at your preference. Apps such as Adium, iChat and Skype can be selectively suppressed along with Mail and the GrowlHelperApp, which blocks all Growl notifications. Quiet will also set your instant messaging status to DND with the default being "I'm in The Zone." Whereas other apps, such as HazeOver, quickly isolate windows automatically, Quiet is a heavier, totally manual affair. If that's something you're after, then Quiet will do the job for US$3.99 from the Mac App Store. If you're after something similar for a little less money, check out the free Isolator.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: TextWrangler
Trawling through and editing code can be loveless task. TextWrangler is a free app from the Mac App Store that could make it just a little bit more bearable. Brought to you by Bare Bones Software, the folks behind Yojimbo and the incredibly powerful BBEdit, the free TextWrangler is pretty intuitive and feature rich. Starting out as BBEdit lite, TextWrangler is a fully fledged editor in its own right. You've got pattern matching, full search and replace, syntax highlighting for quite a few source code languages, code folding, which compresses the code down to a more manageable length, and many other text manipulation and batch processing features. The interface is pretty simple to navigate with most needed tools available via an icon or keyboard shortcut, plus there is some decent text color-coding that makes reading code a little easier. You can open and save over FTP and SFTP, streamlining HTML authoring. TextWrangler even has support for both AppleScript and Mac OS X Unix scripting, making batch processing easy. Whether you're looking for a decent editor for HTML, CSS, XML or anything else, TextWrangler is a great free starting point. If you're just looking for an editor for writing plaintext files, a replacement for TextEdit, or modifying XML, .plist files or something similar, then TextWrangler is more than up to the job. TextWrangler is available for free in a slightly limited form from the Mac App Store and in its full glory from the Bare Bones Software website and will work on Mac OS X 10.5 and up.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Wunderlist
Have you ever found managing and syncing your task list more difficult than it really needs to be? Wunderlist is the answer. An incredibly simple, intuitive and good looking program, Wunderlist makes creating, syncing and clearing a list of tasks quick and easy. Either use the "Add your task here" box or hit Cmd+N or Cmd+T to create a new task. Next, set a date using the calendar or leave it with no date and "Star" those tasks that are the most important. If a task needs more information, attach a note to it to store information or outline some necessary detail. It's possible to create separate lists of tasks as well, so if you've got a party to organize, you just break down everything into tasks in their own list. That list can be shared with any of your friends who are using Wunderlist either on the Mac, a PC, Android, iOS or the Web. If they haven't been introduced to Wunderlist yet, they get an invitation to join. It's also easy to use CloudApp directly from Wunderlist to share your task list publicly via email, Twitter, Facebook or any other messaging service via a Cloudly link. Wunderlist for Mac syncs with the cloud, keeping your Mac, your work PC, your iPhone, iPad or Android phone all on the same page. No matter where you complete or create a task, it'll be in sync across all of your devices. Wunderlist is available for free from the Mac App Store and syncs with a free Wunderlist online account and with the free iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows apps. If you create and manage tasks on your Mac or mobile device, you really must try Wunderlist.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: VLC
Yesterday on the Daily Mac App, we showed you how to bestow QuickTime Player with the ability to play a multitude of formats and codecs, but sometimes even Perian won't cut it, and that's where you can turn to VLC to get the job done. VLC is a free, open-source, cross-platform multimedia player that we've covered extensively in the past, and for good reason. It'll play almost everything under the sun without requiring any additional codec packs or plug-ins. That means you can literally throw just about any media file you can find at it and marvel as it plays back in a fast and smooth fashion. No fuss -- it just works. If you like to delve into a myriad of settings and features, VLC comes up trumps. From being able to set playback delay for audio, ironing out those sync issues, to spitting out AC3 or DTS through an optical cable, it's all there in the preferences. VLC resembles the iTunes Mini Player and, for the most part, the UI is usable and gets out of your way. When you're playing video, you get a familiar disappearing media playback control bar that sinks into the background when not in use leaving you with your media. VLC is available free from the VideoLAN website, and it's an absolute must download if you ever play non-Apple approved media formats on your Mac. There are quite a few decent alternatives to VLC available on the Mac. If you've got a favorite, shout out in the comments and tell us why you prefer it over other options.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Perian
Have you ever wished QuickTime would just play all those random formats you've got? That you didn't have to resort to other programs, or worse converting everything, just to get them to play? You need Perian. We've covered Perian a lot in the past, and for good reason -- it's a one stop-shop media plug-in that just works. Installed as a Preference Pane, it essentially gives QuickTime support for a myriad of file formats, video and audio codecs, and subtitles. Included in the mix is playback of MKV files with H.264, DivX and VP6 video, which combined with AVI support, should mean that almost any file you find strewn across the internet can be played. If that wasn't enough, you've also got FLV support, so you can play back all those videos you downloaded from YouTube. With Perian installed you can turn QuickTime X into a proper video player, while still being able to revel in the sleek, minimalist Apple user experience with tight integration into your Mac. Perian is available for free, supports OS X 10.4.7 and higher and, if you don't want to resort to programs like VLC, could be the solution to your file playback problems.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: AppZapper
Uninstalling apps on a Mac is easy -- just delete the program from your Applications folder. But what about all the garbage of ancillary files that gets left behind? Zap 'em with AppZapper. AppZapper is an uninstaller that does everything for you and makes sure nothing is left behind. It'll find things like Services menu entries, preference files and any other small files not stored in the .app file. Simply drag-and-drop the application you want shot of, AppZapper will then show you what it's found and move it all to trash when you hit the "Zap!" button. AppZapper also has a more advanced program finder feature that lists all the programs you have installed that are ready for removal. It doesn't stop short of programs either -- Preference Panes, Dashboard widgets and plug-ins are all fair game. For those apps you want to keep, AppZapper also includes a "My Apps" feature. Simply drag-and-drop apps into a collection pane, and it will then create app "cards," on the back of which you can store license information and other things. Handy for keeping all your registration information in one place for those apps not in the Mac App Store. If you're constantly installing and uninstalling applications on your Mac, an app like AppZapper is a Godsend. It's quick, easy, and most of all, effective. There's a free trial available on the AppZapper website that gives you five free Zaps, so it's certainly worth a try. Once you've tried it and liked it, the app will set you back US$12.95.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: CloudApp
Sharing small files via email is easy with attachments. But what about sharing files via IM, Twitter, Facebook or the myriad of other services? That's where the incredibly simple CloudApp comes in. CloudApp sits in your menu bar waiting to upload files to the cloud, ready for sharing with friends, family and colleagues. Simply drag your file onto the menu bar icon and watch as the cloud fills up and a link to the file is copied to the clipboard. Previously uploaded files, as well as their view counts, are accessible from a drop-down menu or the CloudApp web app. These days, screenshots are often the easiest way to get your point across, and CloudApp will conveniently auto-upload any screenshots you take. That's not all, though; you can use global shortcuts from the keyboard or even a Services menu entry to upload files directly from Finder. All your uploads are stored in your personal Cloud account, either privately or publicly, which is free for a maximum of 10 daily uploads and files up to 25 MB. If you need more than that, unlimited uploads of up to 250 MB and the ability to use a custom domain are available with a Pro account, which costs from US$5 a month. It's simple, effective and free from the Mac App Store. Extensions called RainDrops, which hook into Adobe Photoshop and many other programs, are available from the CloudApp site.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Caffeine
Caffeine, like a shot of coffee at night, keeps your Mac awake and your screen bright. We first covered it a few years ago. A tiny menu bar utility, Caffeine prevents your Mac from activating the screen saver or sleeping when idle. Presenting as a cup of coffee, the icon indicates whether Caffeine is active, denoted by a full cup of coffee, or inactive, when the coffee cup is empty. Caffeine is activated by clicking on the menu bar icon. You can define a set period of activity from five minutes to five hours, or set it to be active indefinitely via a right-click or in the settings. While you can replicate the features of Caffeine using System Preferences, having a quick and easy sleep preventer in your menu bar is a real boon. It's cute, effective, and best of all, Caffeine is absolutely free. Grab it now from the Mac App Store.
TUAW'S Daily Mac App: Typist
When I was in high school in the late 90s, classes such as home economics, shorthand and basic keyboarding were already a thing of the past. I could read my Japanese textbook much easier than my mother's shorthand book from the early 70s. She learned proper touch typing in school while I developed a very fast method of hunt-and-peck that got me up to 73 words-per-minute. Typist tries to teach basic touch typing. You can take a basic course and then progress to speed drills, longer exercises and the like. Two specific sections focus on the calculator keypad and the Dvorak keyboard. Typist's lessons are baby steps in touch typing. You get used to having your hands positioned properly on the keyboard, then build up from there. Stats displayed during the exercise show keystrokes-per-minute, typing speed and your error ratio. When you make an error, the program makes a sound to let you know you're off. You can repeat exercises until you're confident enough to move on. The lessons gradually grow more complex as you build your typing speed and capability. Typist is a free download in the Mac App Store, and it's an excellent program for learning proper touch typing whether you're a student just starting out, or an adult who never learned how.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Carousel
Carousel from Mobelux isn't the first Instagram client for the Mac, but it is one of the most elegant. The program culls your Instagram feed and streams these images to your desktop in a gorgeous UI that resembles an old-fashioned photo album. Three buttons along the bottom toggle your view among current favorites, your feed and your photos. On each image, you select a person's avatar to see their profile, like the image by clicking on a heart or add a comment by clicking on the word bubble. You can save images by dragging them to iPhoto or saving through the drop-down menu. Carousel features a number of keyboard shortcuts that expands usability of the app, but you can only view pictures, not upload them from your Mac. You also can't search for other Instagram users, photos or tags at this point, which is a drawback. You'll have to do this all from your iPhone. You also can't resize the window below a certain point, which means it takes up a good chunk of smaller screens, such as on a MacBook Air. But, Carousal does a brilliant job at displaying the best that Instagram has to offer. It reminds me that I clearly don't use the app enough, and it's amazing to go through the popular feed and see the gorgeous photography people have shot using Instagram. Carousel is US$4.99 through the Mac App Store or Mobelux's website. They also have a free 15-day trial through the website.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Breeze
There are plenty of window management apps on the Mac platform. Some allow you to snap windows to the edges of your screen like BetterSnapTool, but others, like Autumn Apps' Breeze (which we covered last year), allow you to record a desired window size and position. Breeze sits in your menu bar and lets you define "states" of windows by positioning them on your screen wherever you want and selecting "Save State As." You can save states for one application and apply them to any window from any program or just for that one specific program. States can be bound to keyboard shortcuts or selected from a drop-down list from the menu bar. Once you've got all the window states you want defined, you can quickly and easily move your windows around with just a few key presses. Some programs don't react well to being manhandled like that, with one poignant example being Photoshop, but most programs behave as they should. If for some reason you have a problem with a window (maybe it moves too far off screen), Breeze has a handy "Rescue window" function that brings the window back on-screen for you to deal with. There's a free trial available from Autumn Apps' website, while purchasing the app will set you back US$8. Breeze works on Mac OS X 10.5 and up, including PPC-based Macs.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Decompose
Cutting out people, objects or even text from images for creation of new ones is an old-photoshopper's favorite. But it's not as easy as it looks and, for the most part, requires a steady hand and some pricey software. Decompose is a program that does one thing -- it extracts foreground objects for overlaying on other images. Now, for those of you who are proficient with Photoshop, you're not going to find much value in a US$29.99 app that extracts elements in this way. But for those of us who don't own Photoshop, or even Pixelmator, having a program that allows you just to roughly draw around your target object letting the computer take care of the rest is great. In testing, I was a little skeptical, but on several, admittedly plain images, I was really impressed with the ease of use and end result of using Decompose. You simply outline the object within the "Contour" mask, fill in the rest of the image within the "Front" mask, and hit "Result." Decompose then does its thing, using Grand Central Dispatch as of a recent update, and shows you the result for fine tuning or saving as a color-corrected TIFF. It was fast, simple and a great alternative to much higher priced packages. The problem is that Decompose is a single use program, and therefore, however clever the programming behind it may be, $30 could be asking a little too much. Still, if you're looking for a program that will quickly and easily extract objects out of photos, Decompose certainly gets the job done. If you've got a quick and handy image extraction alternative to Decompose, help your fellow TUAW readers out and let us know in the comments.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: QuickNotes
With our Macs in front of us, many still resort to pen and paper for taking down little snippets of information. QuickNotes is a program designed to help wean you off the dead wood and ink, allowing you to quickly jot down information with just a few key presses. Hiding in your menu bar, you can invoke QuickNotes either with a drop-down menu, or with Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+N, which pops up a small text entry window ready to take whatever text you want to type or paste into it. You can either hit Cmd+Enter or click "Add" to save the note, or click anywhere else or "Close" to dismiss the note. All your notes are stored in your menu bar ready for copying to a clipboard with a simple click or for re-editing. There are lots of other ways of taking notes on your Mac, you can use the free Stickies dashboard widget or simply open TextEdit to name just a few; but for US$1.99 QuickNotes gets the job done easily and quickly, ever present in your menu bar. Have you managed to ditch your pen and paper for your Mac? What programs do you use for quickly jotting down bits of information? Let us know in the comments.
