Technology

The Markdown Service Tools are a collection of OS X Services designed to make writing Markdown text that much easier. Services (also known as Quick Actions) work in any Cocoa-based application (

I've decided to build a dedicated space for MacSparky Studios. Here's the explanation and the initial plans. This also turned into a bit of a screencast on h...

I write a lot of things in a plain text format known as Markdown. It provides a set of standardised ways to mark up text for processing into other formats (such as HTML), whereby formatting and other rich content elements are applied. I write all of my blog posts in this format, and also posts for other sites where I publish and contribute. One of these sites is Buy Me a Coffee (BMAC), a site where you can donate to my coffee fund if you like the stuff I do. It is also where I post each month to let everyone know what I have been up to. It regularly surprises me just how much content and support to other Internet denizens I’ve actually provided during the course of a month! Over the course of the month I jot down notes in Drafts, and then in the following month I write these up, in Markdown ready for posting. Unfortunately, BMAC does not support Markdown, but it does support rich text.

Choosing the right file format for your images can be tricky, and at first glance the differences between PNG versus JPG can be unclear. Don't worry, we'll ...

France, Foret De Senonches, Le Perche recorded by Colin Hunter. h/t Alan Levine

I'm experimenting with subroutines in KM 10. h/t MacSparky David sparks

A fun mini-game about pop-ups and the deviousness of websites and apps h/t cogdog Alan Levine

Citizen DJ invites the public to make music using free-to-use audio and video collections. By embedding these materials in hip hop music, listeners can discover items in the library's vast collections that they likely would never have known existed. h/t cogdog alan Levine

Faced with the gargantuan task of digitising thousands of photos, Don decided to make this project-based tutorial to assist if you are ever faced with such a task. The secret is the speed and quality of scanning along with capable automation tools to make the whole process easier. In this screencast, Don takes you on a tour of his chosen method along with the tools he uses along the way, from scanning his images all the way to a final import into Photos.

This week, Tim is back with three more Zoom tips that can take your experience further, especially when you are the host. You learn about the vanishing pen, how to use the live transcripts feature, then take a closer look at statistics and what they can tell you.

Why Padlet is a surprisingly useful way to gather ideas

Like many others over the past week, when I saw the news that Wordle had been acquired by The New York Times, I immediately felt a mix of two feelings: I was genuinely happy (and still am!) for Wordle creator Josh Wardle, who managed to turn a simple web game into a successful venture; and

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Links from Video▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Pixelmatorhttps://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixelmator/id924695435?ign-mpt=uo%3D4▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬MacSparky Links▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬The Blogh...

You cannot change the target draft of the action. You can: Pass text to subsequent action steps either via variables in the case of scripting, or using custom template tags for non-scripted action steps. Or, queue another action to run with the new draft as the target draft. For 1: In your script, call draft.setTemplateTag("new-draft-content", dNew.content), then you can use the [[new-draft-content]] tag in subsequent action steps to get that text. For 2: Setup your other action the way y...

Building an accessible classroom community on the Discord platform 1. Teaching on Discord. 2. Classroom community builidng...

It works using three lesser-known Google Sheets features, which can pull off some really interesting things when combined.

Editor’s Note: Clean Up URLs and Remove Tracking Parameters with URL Cleaner is part of the MacStories Starter Pack, a collection of ready-to-use shortcuts, apps, workflows, and more that we’ve created to help you get the most out of your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Picture this: You’ve just come across an interesting article or product

Get rid of junk videos on your YouTube recommendations list.

The transition from listing out all your tasks to putting them into your calendar has long been an annoyance of mine. Long list of tasks, check. Time blocking habit in a calendar, check. But how do you seamlessly transfer tasks to your calendar without manually inserting each task in its own block? Enter Fantastical.

Don last covered CleanShot X back in June of 2020, and since then it's had no less than 33 updates! This video takes you through most of those new and improved features that make CleanShot X the premier screen capture utility for the Mac, and one that Don uses daily. If you're a Setapp subscriber, you can also get access to 10GB of free cloud storage with CleanShot Cloud, allowing you to store your screen captures and recordings and easily share them.

In the second part of this series, Lee continues his walkthrough of OmniGraffle on the Mac. Where the first video looked at the basics of the interface and populating the canvas with objects, Part 2 introduces topics like Object Stacks, Layers, using Stencils, as well as exporting your finished product.

In this tip show, Rosemary shows you some lesser-known features of the Messages app!

The iPhone is a much more popular product than the MacBook Pro, so naturally the discussion around the iPhone X’s notch was much larger than the discussion around the MacBook Pro’s notch. If we were discuss them relative to one another, I think more words have been spilled on the MacBook Pro’s notch.

If you own a Stream Deck and want a better way for adding your shortcuts to it, give Shortcuts by Sentinelite a try. I’ve only been playing with the plugin for a short time, but this is hands down the best way I’ve found for adding push-button convenience to Shortcuts on the Mac. I covered

If your Apple Watch is completely unresponsive, you can force it to restart.

Mark messages as really important, shuttle information between Teams and email, and more.