Tag Archives: App

uSketch: Apply Sketch, Color And Other Photo Filters To Images [Mac]

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Apps that add effects to photos are as common as perhaps water, so if you ever decide to use one, you want to make sure it offers you both a good range of effects as well as good execution. uSketch is a free Mac app that applies filters to your photos, and its interface alone will blow you away. In addition to its 19 filters that are 100% customizable, the app also has a wide range of sketch effects that are executed very well. You can use the app to take photos directly from webcam, or add ones from your system. It also lets you print, email and share photos on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Read More

Grid: Snap App Windows To Any Screen Corner via Shortcut Keys [Mac]

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Divvy is a very popular app window manager for Mac that costs $14.99, which is more than most people would be willing to pay just to snap their app windows to the side of their screen. The app is definitely feature rich, enough for it to be ported to Windows in the form of Windy, but if you’re looking for a similar app that’s more affordable or free, Grid might be a possible solution. Grid is a free Mac app that lets you use keyboard shortcuts to snap a window to one of four screen quadrants. Unlike Divvy, it doesn’t let you record shortcuts or divide the screen into custom parts for window resizing. It does, however, let you snap windows to the side, and resizes them automatically. Read More

CLCL Lite: App Launcher, Switcher & URL Opener Using Hot Keys [Mac]

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We’ve reviewed app launchers before; Chuck and Dammit are two that are worth mentioning. Chuck is a free download while Dammit will cost you $2.99. CLCL Lite is yet another app launcher for Mac, which is free and not like your usual app launchers. The app works using only two keys, and you can assign any function that will be triggered by those keys. You can chose to either open an app, bring the last app you were working in to the front, or create a successive list of apps that will open as you hit the the hotkey. It runs unobtrusively in the background, and can be toggled on/off from the menu bar. Read More

Finch: Track App Usage In Time & Tag Them Either Work Or Play In Mac [Paid]

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Some people are born workers, while others may stare blankly at a wall or have witty conversations with themselves rather than tackle the task at hand. At the end of the day, both types of people need to justify to themselves that they actually accomplished something, even if it’s just their job. For Mac users who find it increasingly difficult to concentrate on a single task, Finch is a Mac app available for $4.99 in the Mac App Store (free for today only) that allows you to record which apps you use, and tag them based on their usability, i.e., if you use an app for entertainment, you can mark it as such. Similarly, if you’ve used an app as part of your work, you can mark it likewise. The app can remember which apps you use for work and which are used for entertainment, and flag them automatically when they are launched. It records the time spent on a particular app and lets you view a summary of how you’ve spent the whole day. The concept behind the app is that, getting a visualization of how you spent your time on your system will help you curtail your unproductive activities or limit them to a certain extent. Read More

Todoist: A Simple Project & Task Organizer For Your Desktop [Mac]

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It’s never too late to get organized; unless your cat has taken to sleeping in the pile of papers on your desk, you can pretty much start organizing your life right now. Todoist is a free Mac app that lets you organize tasks and group them by projects. The app uses an online service, which you will have to create a free account for. The interface is super simple and lets you add as many projects and tasks as you like. A free account will let you create projects, add tasks, define a due date for those tasks, reorder tasks, delete completed tasks, prioritize them, move them to another project, and view projects by their due dates. Read More

Screen Vault: Enable Widgets, Themes & Padlock Lockscreen On Mac [Paid]

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We’ve covered a few lockscreen apps for Mac this month, out of which Screensavery and Screensaver+ Free are worth mentioning. Lockscreens may not be a very popular concept when it comes to a desktop system or even on Mac, still, Screen Vault is a Mac app worth $4.99 in the Mac App Store that is bound to change your mind. It comes as close to the lockscreen you’re used to seeing for smartphones, as possible. The app lets you lock and unlock your screen either by drawing a pattern or using your trackpad to enter a combination for the vault-like lock. It additionally lets you add system information to the lockscreen, snap pictures whenever someone enters an incorrect password, and customize every bit of the theme that you want. Read More

Recent Menu: View Recently Used Files From Any Folder In Mac [Paid]

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Spotlight is an excellent Mac feature; you can search for any type of file saved to any location simply by typing the name in the search bar. It is a pretty good fail safe, as long as you recall the file name. Imagine having to find a file that you just accessed, and being clueless as to where it was saved and having forgotten its name. You might have several versions of a file saved at different locations, or you might just want to get to your recently used files or apps. Recent Menu is a Mac app worth $0.99 in the Mac App Store that allows you to access recently used items, folders, apps, PDFs, movies, images, code, or all recently accessed files. The app lets you choose which items it should keep track of, and lets you add any folder to the app’s monitoring list. You can toggle the app menu via a customizable keyboard shortcut. Read More

Screensaver+ Free: Draw Pattern With Mouse To Lock/Unlock Screen [Mac]

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Last month we covered Screensaver +, a Mac app that adds an iOS like lockscreen to your Mac. The app was worth $1.99 and has been updated with new features. Screensavery is an app worth $2.99 featured just last week that allowed you to lock your screen with one of three different types of passwords, including a drawn out pattern entered via your trackpad. Screensaver + Free is the free version of Screensaver+, and it, too, allows you to lock/unlock your screen by drawing a pattern across a nine dot grid. The difference, other than that it is free, is that it allows you to draw the pattern simply with your mouse, no trackpad required. The paid version of this app has been upgraded with this feature as well, and is still available at its previously reviewed price tag. Read More

MindNode: Simple Mind Mapper For Your Small Scale Plans [Mac]

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Behind a really good idea, there may be a really well thought out plan or an extremely random chain of events and actions. For those with random thoughts and actions, move on, nothing to see here. For those who need to gather their thoughts or have a small rough sketch of what they’re going to do, there is MindNode, a free mind mapping app for Mac. The app is very basic, and is not meant for collaboration or sharing your mind maps with others. It lets you create a simple node structure with various parent and sub-nodes, which are color coded, so that you can easily distinguish ideas from the branch, and from one another. Read More

Easy File Hider: Quickly Hide/Show Files & Folders On Your Mac [Paid]

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Viewing hidden files on Mac isn’t one of the easier things to do. While it isn’t impossible, it requires you to either go poking in the Terminal, or to use a modifying app like Lion Secrets, and this is just to view hidden files. What if you wanted to hide a file like your Will, Insurance details or plans for conquering the world and the blue prints to your mind control machine? Easy File Hider is a Mac app worth $1.99 in the Mac App Store that lets you quickly mark a file as hidden or visible. Additionally, you can password protect access to this app, so that even if someone gains access to your system, they won’t be able to unhide your files and find them. Read More

Booknote Importer: Save Bookmarks To An Evernote Notebook [Mac]

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Many people use more than one browser and save bookmarks separately to each. When you need to access a bookmark saved to another browser, you will simply have to switch to another app, but that’s about as all it takes to fetch a bookmark from another browser. If you use Chrome, you can sync your bookmarks between systems. You can also use Xmarks, a popular browser extension available for both Firefox and Chrome, that allows you to sync bookmarks between browsers and systems. This is in the event that you’re always on your own system. If you use a public system or are using one temporarily, you might want an easier setup that can be removed quickly. If you use Evernote, the answer is pretty simple. Booknote Importer is a free Mac app that lets you save your bookmarks as notes to an Evernote notebook. All your folders and their respective bookmarks are sorted the way they were in your browser, and you can access them by signing into Evernote’s web interface. Read More

FindSpace: View Disk Space Usage On Your Hard Drive In Tree View [Mac]

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A while back, we covered two apps, DaisyDisk and Disk Scanner, the former worth $9.99 and the latter free. Both apps scan your hard disk and show you how your hard drive’s space is used in a daisy graph. The graph, while extremely appealing to look at, is one of the non-traditional and lesser known graph types. If you’re a novice using either of these apps, you might not be able to make much sense of the graph itself. FindSpace is a free Mac app that does roughly the same thing DaisyDisk and Disk Scanner do, only it displays results in a simple tree structure, something computer users are more familiar with. Read More

Conductor Server: Control Your Mac From An iPhone/iPad [Paid]

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A while back, we covered a Mac App, Mobile Mouse Server, which was a feature rich app that allowed you to use your iPhone as a mouse/trackpad replacement with your Mac. The Mac app was free while its iOS client cost $1.99, but the features are definitely worth it. Conductor Server is yet another Mac app that does the same, and likewise the Mac app is free while the iOS client is worth $1.99. Compares to Mobile Mouse Server, this app knocks it out of the park. The app has dedicated media controls, but additionally lets you switch between open windows of any app. You can preview thumbnails of the open windows and bring them to front on your Mac by simply selecting them on your iOS device. The app allows you to add a large variety of gestures and swipes. Read More

Dammit: Speed Dial To Open (Stacks Of) Apps, Files Or Folders On Mac [Paid]

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If you use either Opera or Chrome, you are probably familiar with the speed dial feature that allows you to quickly access your frequently visited sites. As far as browsers are concerned, this is a highly useful feature. Imagine having something similar on your desktop for your frequently-used files, folders and apps. Dammit is a Mac app available for $2.99 in the Mac app store that implements this very idea on you desktop. Mac users might question what the point of such an app is when you have Launchpad for launching your apps, but Dammit, literally, lets you use your number pad to open corresponding files/folders and apps. You can create stacks (groups of shortcuts, nine in each stack) and swipe through them using four finger swipe. The app runs in the background and can quickly be brought to front using custom shortcuts. Read More

ScreenSavery: Draw Password To Lock/Unlock Mac Screen

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You can lock or unlock your Mac with a simple alphanumeric password. By default, there are no keyboard shortcuts that will allow you to quickly lock your screen. While such a shortcut can be added, it is a bit of a long process, and that is why an app like  Lock Me Now exists. While this app provides an easy way to create a shortcut for locking your screen, ScreenSavery is a Mac app worth $2.99 in the Mac store that does all this and more. The app essentially does three things; adds animated screensavers to your Mac, lets you lock your screen with a keyboard shortcut, and lets you set up passwords in one of three ways. Passwords can be set the traditional way (alphanumeric passwords), they can be set up as a four digit number to be entered via a trackpad, or a swipe pattern that you have to draw on a nine dotted grid. Read More

SocialShoutings Lite: Post To Twitter & Facebook In One Go [Mac]

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We’ve covered apps in the past that allow you to manage multiple social network accounts from your menu bar. Facebox is one such app, covered last year, for viewing your Facebook feed, messages and posting updates. Social Lite is another app that lets you view feeds from Facebook and Twitter and view messages in your Gmail inbox. SocialShoutings Lite is a free Mac app that lets you post to Twiter and Facebook at the same time. The app shows a character count and supports URL shortners, Goo.gl, bit.ly, j.mp and is.gd. Read More

FeedWizard: Simple RSS Reader That Regularly Deletes Old Items [Mac]

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We covered quite a few RSS readers in the past, NewsBar is one such app that displays your feed on your desktop but costs $4.99. Cappuccino is another excellent RSS reader; it is free and lets you import feeds from Google Reader. FeedWizard is yet another free RSS reader for Mac that lets you manage your feeds. It is minimalistic and can be used to manage feeds without needing a Google account. The app comes with its built-in viewer that allows you to view a complete news item without opening your browser. No ads are displayed, and you simply view the text and the images in a news item with more article suggestions from the same site. Read More

Skip Tunes: Control The Default Music App In Mac From Menu Bar

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If you use iTunes, you are likely to have an app that lets you control iTunes from the menu bar. Either that, or, at some point, you may have tried using one to make using iTunes more convenient. For whatever reason you didn’t stick with the utility you tried, Skip Tunes is a Mac app worth $0.99 in the Mac app store that lets you control music in your default music player. This means it can work for either iTunes, or any other app that you use as your default music player. The app adds play/pause and forward controls to the menu bar, but expands to reveal a complete media player with a seek bar, a shuffle button and a backward and forward button. Skip Tunes itself present a neat interface that Mac lovers like to see in apps. Read More

Wake Up Time: Use Your Mac As Alarm Clock With Customizable Snooze

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If you’re in the habit of leaving your Mac on all night, either because you don’t see any point in turning it on/off again and again, or because you’ve started downloading a huge file that will probably take all night, you’ve basically got a highly sophisticated machine running all night but doing very little. Wake Up Time is a free Mac app that lends usability to an idle sitting Mac by allowing you to set an alarm on it. The app, although simple, has an excellent interface, lets you customize snooze interval, choose from one of three alarm sounds, and set to fade the alarm out. Read More

CSS Gradient Editor: Generate CSS Code For Gradient Background [Mac]

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CSS is all that governs how your web page or app will appear to the end user, but writing the basic sheet can take a while. It’s probably why you will find lots of auto CSS code generators that let you add effects, create objects or simple gradients. CSS Gradient Editor is a free Mac app that lets you create gradient backgrounds. The app provides you a simple GUI, letting you select any color for the gradient, add up to five stops and select where each stop is place. The gradient can be vertical or horizontal, and the app lets you create presets and generates CSS code compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 10, Opera, all matching the W3C standard. You can enter colors as RGB, HSL and Hex codes. Read More