iOS and iPadOS 26: The MacStories Review - MacStories
Old and new through the liquid glass.
macOS 26 Tahoe: The MacStories Review - MacStories
I’m going to cut to the chase – I like macOS 26 Tahoe a lot. No, it’s not perfect, and yes, I wish Apple had done even more, but that’s the case every year. What I love about Tahoe is its balance. It’s not the sort of thing you can draw up a set of
MacStories Won’t Stand for Meta’s Dehumanizing and Harmful Moderation Policies
Just over two years ago, MacStories left Twitter behind. We left when Elon Musk began dismantling the company’s trust and safety infrastructure, allowing hateful speech and harassment on the platform. Meta is now doing the same thing with Threads and Instagram, so we’re leaving them behind, too. We were initially optimistic about Threads because of
Default Browser: A Mac Menu Bar Utility for Quickly Switching Browsers
Sindre Sorhus has released more apps than most indie developers I’ve covered, and many are among my favorite utilities. I suspect that a big part of Sorhus’ success is the tight focus of most of those apps, which are designed to eliminate specific points of friction for users. Sorhus’ latest utility is called Default Browser.
iOS and iPadOS 18: The MacStories Review
There is still fun beyond AI.
Highlighting Journalism on Mastodon
Eugen Rochko, writing on Mastodon’s blog today: To reinforce and encourage Mastodon as the go-to place for journalism, we’re launching a new feature today. You will notice that underneath some links shared on Mastodon, the author byline can be clicked to open the author’s associated fediverse account, right in the app. This highlights writers and
Sequel 2.0: An iPhone and iPad Media Tracker That Strikes an Elegant Balance Between Form and Function
Too often, media tracking apps feel like work. There’s too much effort involved in adding and browsing items, which makes them feel more like task managers than an inviting place that helps you decide how you want to spend your precious free time. Apps in this category seem to take one of a couple of
Sequel 2.3’s Magic Lookup Is a Perfect Example of How Apps Should Integrate AI
If you haven’t tried Sequel to track your media queues, you’re missing out and have some catching up to do. There’s a reason we gave Sequel 2.0 the MacStories Selects Best App Update award last year. The app, which is available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro, is one of the very best
Sofa 4.0: A Customizable Downtime Tracker Without Compromises
I’ve written about media-tracking apps a lot in the past, and they tend to fall into one of two categories: there are ‘generalist apps’ that cover multiple types of media, and there are ‘specialist apps’ that go much deeper into one particular kind. The benefit of the former is having a one-stop destination for all
Single-Space Challenge: Trying to Manage My macOS Windows All in One Virtual Desktop
A couple of weeks ago, in a members-only special episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, John Siracusa went in-depth on his window management techniques on the Mac. This was absolutely fascinating to me. I strongly recommend checking the episode out if you can. One of the many reasons it captivated me is the fact that
Wallpaper Frenzy: A Roundup of My Favorite Wallpaper Apps, Tools, and Artists in 2024
Wallpapers have always been a reflection of my often chaotic energy. I can sometimes spend months, or even years, without ever changing my wallpaper, and I can spend that same amount of time just frenetically changing it every day until I’m completely satisfied. A lot of that decision process is completely irrational, but I do
MacStories Weekly: Issue 401
MacStories Weekly: Issue 400
MacStories Weekly: Issue 397
MacStories Weekly: Issue 399
Widgets Upon Widgets: Interactivity Everywhere
Ever since Apple updated its OSes, I’ve been trying a long list of widgets. We’ve written about a lot of them, but there are always more, so I gathered up some additional favorites that are worth trying if you haven’t yet. Let’s have a look. Music Widgets It should come as no surprise that music
Home+ 6.2 Adds a Battery Smart Section and Widget
Matthias Hochgatterer’s Home+ 6 for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch is one of the most powerful HomeKit apps around, offering automation based on functionality exposed by Apple’s HomeKit framework that its own Home app doesn’t even use. The app also does a terrific job of surfacing sensor data that is buried deep in the
The Macintosh Desktop Experience: My Universal Control Setup
Timery’s extra-large widget. In one view, I have access to ten saved timers, my current timer, and stats about the time I’ve tracked for the current day and week.
The final widget in this first stack is one offered by the package delivery tracking app Parcel. I love that clicking on an entry in Parcel’s widget is deep-linked to that delivery, making it easy to get additional details.
CARROT Weather widget is easy to read
With Universal Control, I can keep the app I’m writing about open and just swipe the cursor over to the app as needed to test things.
As I test an app, I can move the cursor to the iPad, take a screenshot using a keyboard shortcut, use my Shortcuts widget to frame it with Apple Frames, and then upload it to our CDN with another shortcut that also copies the URL for the image to the clipboard. When I switch back to my Mac, that URL is there waiting for me, thanks to Universal Clipboard.
Getting Started with Shortcuts for Mac and the Stream Deck
The Stream Deck has been a favorite of Mac users who are into automation for a while now, but the device’s utility has grown substantially for a couple of reasons. First, you can use the Stream Deck to run Shortcuts, which expands the device into an entirely new realm of automation. Second, the Stream Deck