mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06
Mac Power Users 855: Shortcuts with Viticci: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/mac-power-users-855-shortcuts-with-viticci/
I just spent an hour and a half talking Shortcuts with Federico Viticci, which means I walked away with about six new projects and zero free time. Federico runs MacStories and knows more about Shortcuts than just about anyone, so he was the person to talk to now that WWDC is behind us. We dug... Continue reading →
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Soldering My Way to 1MB: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/soldering-my-way-to-1mb/
Get a few nerds of a certain age talking about the early days of personal computing, and the same machines always come up. The Apple II gets its flowers. So does the Commodore 64. Somebody gets misty about the TRS-80. Nobody mentions the Atari ST. I’d like to fix that, because I owned one, and... Continue reading →
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100 New Reasons BBEdit Doesn’t Suck: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/100-new-reasons-bbedit-doesnt-suck/
Bare Bones has shipped BBEdit 16, a major update to the text editor that has outlived nearly everything else on my Mac. The release notes count more than 100 new features and refinements. The headline feature is text search inside images. BBEdit can now run its search engine, grep patterns and all, against the text... Continue reading →
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Designed in California: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/designed-in-california/
Jason Snell and Myke Hurley just put a new podcast on Kickstarter, and the pitch grabbed me right away. It’s called Designed in California, and it tells the story of Apple across all fifty years of the company. Jason did the research and writing. He and Myke present it together. If you’ve listened to either... Continue reading →
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Apple Intelligence Table Stakes: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/apple-intelligence-table-stakes/
Back in 2017, the night before the WWDC keynote, I wrote a short post about table stakes. I’d spent a year living on the iPad, and a lot of it still felt like swimming upstream. My argument was that fixing the iPad’s file management and multitasking wasn’t the impressive part of the story. It was... Continue reading →
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On Pain and Happiness: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/07/on-pain-and-happiness/
A listener recently wrote in about something that stopped him mid-page. He’d picked up Gregory Hays’s translation of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, while working through a hard stretch in his life, looking to Stoicism for a foothold. Then he hit a line in Hays’s introduction: “Marcus does not offer us a means of achieving happiness, but... Continue reading →
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Why Local AI Is Apple’s Play: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/why-local-ai-is-apples-play/
Right now, the frontier AI models are, at best, getting $200/month from AI consumers. And Sam Altman has said publicly that OpenAI loses money on every one of those subscriptions. The compute bills are just that large. Apple is doing something entirely different. At WWDC this year, they started making the case for local AI.... Continue reading →
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Where Apple’s Price Increases Landed: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/where-apples-price-increases-landed/
Last week I wrote that Apple’s price increases were coming and bet the high end would take the hit while the cheap stuff stayed cheap. The prices landed this week, and I was half right. The high end did take it. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio jumped from $3,999 to $5,299. That’s the worst of... Continue reading →
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Record Any Audio on Your Mac, with Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/record-any-audio-on-your-mac-with-audio-hijack-from-rogue-amoeba/
This post is sponsored by Rogue Amoeba. https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/?utm_source=macsparky&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=SPARKY-2606This week, my friends at Rogue Amoeba are back to sponsor MacSparky, and I want to spotlight their flagship recording tool for the Mac: Audio Hijack. Audio Hijack is the tool the pros rea...
PowerPhotos: The Apple Photos Power Tools You’re Missing (Sponsor): https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/powerphotos-the-apple-photos-power-tools-youre-missing-sponsor/
I’m happy to welcome back PowerPhotos as a MacSparky sponsor. If you spend any real time inside Apple Photos, you know what’s missing. PowerPhotos fills those gaps, and has been doing it for years. Apple Photos was built on the idea that you have one library and you trust the algorithm. Brian Webster and the... Continue rea...
What Apple Still Gets Wrong About Watch Faces: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/what-apple-still-gets-wrong-about-watch-faces/
I’ve been wearing an Apple Watch since 2015. The face problem hasn’t changed. That sounds like a complaint, and it is, but I want to be specific about it. The Apple Watch has changed enormously over ten years. The hardware is faster. The health features have saved lives. The battery on my Ultra runs for... Continue reading →
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My New Podcast: Intentional AI with Chris Bailey: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/my-new-podcast-intentional-ai-with-chris-bailey/
I’m proud to announce I just released a new podcast, and I’ve been wanting to tell you about it for months. It’s called Intentional AI, and it’s a show about using AI to actually get your work done. Not the doom. Not the hype. The practical, useful stuff that gives you your time back. The origin... Continue reading →
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The Silent Film Era of AI: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/the-silent-film-era-of-ai/
The first movies were shot from a theater seat. The camera sat where the audience would have sat. The actors moved across the frame like they were on a stage, and the shot didn’t change for the whole picture. You were watching a play that someone had happened to have filmed. It took years before... Continue reading →
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Mike Schmitz’s New Ideal Week Builder: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/mike-schmitzs-new-ideal-week-builder/
Mike Schmitz shipped a free web tool for designing an ideal week template, and it is pretty clever. The interface is a calendar grid. You drag blocks for your work hours, deep work, family time, exercise, whatever modes matter to you. You color them. You theme the days at the top. Then you export the... Continue reading →
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The Virtual OS Museum Is a Time Machine for Mac Nerds: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/the-virtual-os-museum-is-a-time-machine-for-mac-nerds/
If you ever owned a Mac that booted on a chime, the Virtual OS Museum is the rabbit hole for you. Andrew Warkentin has assembled a single emulation project covering more than 1,700 pre-installed operating systems and apps across 250 platforms. Classic Mac OS. A/UX. NeXTSTEP. System 1.0 through Mac OS 9. It ships two... Continue reading →
The po...
Marked 3 Is Officially Out: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/marked-3-is-officially-out/
Brett Terpstra just shipped Marked 3. It’s the biggest update in the app’s history. After more than a decade of Marked, that’s impressive. If you’ve never used it, Marked does one job. You write Markdown in whatever editor you like, and Marked shows you a live, rendered preview in its own window. Save the file... Continue reading →
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Mac Power Users 851: Feedback: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/mac-power-users-851-feedback/
It’s a feedback episode, which means Stephen and I finally crack open the mailbag that’s been piling up. I went hard at Apple Home since we last talked. I nuked my twelve-year-old setup, ran Ethernet cable around the house for Aqara cameras, and put in an Aqara U400 lock that opens when I walk up... Continue reading →
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A Ritual for Switching Gears: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/07/a-ritual-for-switching-gears/
Lately, I’ve had an influx of admin work as I’m shifting platforms. And I noticed over the last few days that all my unrelated work has felt harder, as my brain keeps shifting back to the admin tasks I suddenly find on my plate. Put simply, my mode shifting has been broken. I can’t seem... Continue reading →
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This Week in the Labs — July 3, 2026: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/07/this-week-in-the-labs-july-3-2026/
This was a transition week around here. A lot of you are moving into the new Circle home for MacSparky Labs, and it has been fun watching the place fill up. If you are a Labs member and you haven’t made the jump yet, send me a note and I’ll get you an invite link.... Continue reading →
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Mac Power Users 849: Managing Photos: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/mac-power-users-849-managing-photos/
On this episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and I dig into the wide and messy world of Apple photo management. We talk about pruning enormous libraries, what’s worth keeping, and the cleanup apps we trust to help. We also get into iCloud Shared Photo Library trade-offs and the fact that Apple’s 5 GB free... Continue reading →
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David Smith’s Six-Year Watch Map Project: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/david-smiths-six-year-watch-map-project/
David Smith shipped Pedometer++ 8.0 at the end of April, and the headline is mapping on the Apple Watch. Smith has been chipping away at watchOS maps for six years. And now we get detailed maps on the wrist. Dark mode. Offline support. An Expedition Mode that throttles the watch to extend battery life when... Continue reading →
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Carrot Weather Adds Multi-Model Forecasts: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/carrot-weather-adds-multi-model-forecasts/
Carrot Weather added two features in its March update. Multi-model forecasts, and Storm Prediction Center analysis for severe storms and wildfires in the US. The multi-model piece is the more interesting of the two. Most weather apps show you a single forecast. Carrot now shows you several at once. They are called ensemble forecasts, and... Continue reading →
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Cotypist Puts Smart Autocomplete Wherever You Type: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/cotypist-puts-smart-autocomplete-wherever-you-type/
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Cotypist. I’ve been writing with Cotypist for a couple of months now, and it’s become part of how I work on the Mac. So I’m glad to have Cotypist sponsoring MacSparky this week. Cotypist is autocomplete that follows you everywhere. Not autocomplete in one editor. Everywhere you type. Mail,... Continue reading →
The...
Where Apple’s Price Increases Will Land: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/where-apples-price-increases-will-land/
Tim Cook just told the Wall Street Journal that Apple is raising prices. The cause is a memory chip shortage. “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook said. He added that Apple has been trying to shield its customers, “but the situation has become unsustainable”. So prices go up. The question is where. My money is... Continue reading →
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This Week in the Labs — June 19, 2026: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/this-week-in-the-labs-june-19-2026/
It’s week two of the new betas and we’re learning more in the MacSparky Labs. Below you’ll find the week’s new videos and podcasts, a few of the conversations happening in the member community, and what’s coming next week. Most of those links lead straight into the Labs community on Circle, so they’ll only open... Continue reading →
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Intentional AI 2: The Useful Architecture: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/intentional-ai-2-the-useful-architecture/
On this episode of Intentional AI, Chris Bailey and I get into the part most people skip. Everybody knows you can chat with AI. Far fewer people know how to turn that chat into a system that actually does the work. So we lay out the four pieces that make a robot useful: the harness... Continue reading →
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Paste Meets MCP: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/paste-meets-mcp/
Paste, the Mac clipboard manager, just added MCP support. Your clipboard history can now talk to Claude, Codex, Cursor, or any other AI tool that speaks the protocol, through a local MCP server running on your Mac. Think about what passes through your clipboard in a week. Links, screenshots, snippets from PDFs, that paragraph you... Continue reading →
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This Week in the Labs — June 5, 2026: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/this-week-in-the-labs-june-5-2026/
Welcome to This Week in the Labs, my Friday roundup of everything that happened in MacSparky Labs over the past week. Below you’ll find the week’s new videos and podcasts, a few of the conversations happening in the member community, what’s coming next week, and a note on whatever I’m currently chewing on. If you’re... Continue reading →
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Focused 257: Stephen Robles: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/focused-257-stephen-robles/
On this episode of Focused, I’m joined by Mike and our guest Stephen Robles, the new co-host of Mac Power Users who went fully independent last October. Stephen makes the case for the generalist, the person who’s good at a lot of things instead of the best at one, and we get into why that... Continue reading →
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The Escape-Valve System: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/the-escape-valve-system/
At the top of my daily note, there are five little checkboxes. Shop. Bonsai. Exercise. Reading. Meditation. They aren’t on the calendar. They have no time blocks assigned. They just sit there. For a while, I thought of them as “non-negotiables”. Every box had to get checked every day. That was the deal I made... Continue reading →
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DEVONthink 4.3 and a Privacy-First MCP: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/devonthink-4-3-and-a-privacy-first-mcp/
DEVONthink 4.3 shipped last week, and the headline for me is a single feature. DEVONthink now has its own MCP server. If you’ve been following along with the Robot Assistant work, you know why that matters. MCP is the connector standard that lets an assistant like Claude reach into an app and actually do something.... Continue reading →
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Bartender 6: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/bartender-6/
Bartender 6 is out, and if you have a MacBook with a notch, the headline feature is Top Shelf. The idea: that camera notch at the top of your MacBook display is real estate that Apple has never done much with. Bartender Pro turns it into a useful surface for widgets, media controls, files, and... Continue reading →
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Mac Power Users 850: Overcast Transcripts and 48 Mac minis with Marco Arment: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/mac-power-users-850-overcast-transcripts-and-48-mac-minis-with-marco-arment/
On this episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and I sit down with Marco Arment to talk about what happens when a podcast app developer accidentally builds a data center. Overcast now transcribes podcasts on demand, and the hardware behind that feature is 48 Mac minis running in a rack. Marco walks us th...
FotoMagico, Revisited: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/fotomagico-revisited/
FotoMagico just hit 6.9. Boinx has been quietly shipping updates all year, which is a good excuse to revisit an app I suspect most of you have forgotten about. For years, I was the designated slideshow person in my family. Weddings, memorials, graduation parties. Someone would hand me a folder full of photos and say... Continue reading →
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Still on Kagi, Still Happy: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/still-on-kagi-still-happy/
John Gruber wrote about Kagi again this week, which is a good excuse for me to update my own take. I’ve been a paying subscriber for a couple of years now, and I have no plans to stop. My search results are better. They come from sources I actually trust. And I’m not being tracked,... Continue reading →
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Coyote vs. ACME Lives: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/coyote-vs-acme-lives/
After Warner Bros. tried to shelve the Coyote vs. ACME movie for a tax write-off in 2023, the finished film is finally getting a release. The trailer dropped a few weeks ago, and it hits theaters August 28. The movie is based on Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker piece, a deadpan legal complaint filed by... Continue reading →
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The Model Holds the Shovel. You Hold the Map.: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/the-model-holds-the-shovel-you-hold-the-map/
I spent the last month setting up a new community for the MacSparky audience. I’m not going to walk you through the build today. That’s a piece for another week. What I want to tell you about is where the actual decisions came from. I worked through option after option. Names, structures, pricing, rooms, access... Continue reading →
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The Lab Report for May 15, 2026: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/the-lab-report-for-may-15-2026/
This week the Lab Report opens with a tour of the new MacSparky Circle Community. Labs members are already inside, the Discord is winding down, and a public Field Notes space is where I’ll be cross-posting everything plus the works in progress… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? Or... Continue reading →
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May in the MacSparky Labs: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/may-in-the-macsparky-labs-2/
MacSparky Labs members get to participate in member events and receive a number of exclusive videos and podcasts each month. Here’s a summary of offerings this past month: May 2026 Labs content and its membership level: P – Pathfinder; I – Insider; M – Member If you’d like to be a part of the MacSparky... Continue reading →
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Cotypist Brings Smart Autocomplete to Every Mac App: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/cotypist-brings-smart-autocomplete-to-every-mac-app/
Daniel Gräfe launched Cotypist to the public yesterday, and it’s worth checking out. Cotypist is smart autocomplete for the Mac. Not autocomplete in one editor. Autocomplete everywhere you write. Mail, notes, documents, messages, the prompt box of whatever AI tool you’re using. You start typing, a suggestion appears, you press Tab, and you keep goin...
Focused 256: Time Architecture: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/focused-256-time-architecture/
On this episode of Focused, Mike and I pick up where we left off in episode 250 and dig into the part of weekly planning that breaks for most people. Mike argues you should build your week around modes and roles, not triage tasks into open slots. We walk through a 168-hour exercise, talk through... Continue reading →
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Asteroid City – My Obsidian Theme: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/asteroid-city-my-obsidian-theme/
A while back I started fiddling with Obsidian’s CSS to make my vault feel less like a dev tool and more like a place I actually wanted to spend time in. The result is Asteroid City, named after the Wes Anderson film… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? Or... Continue reading →
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The Productivity Apps That Don’t Speak Agent Will Lose: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/the-productivity-apps-that-dont-speak-agent-will-lose/
Spark Mail shipped a Mac CLI and agent skill hooks last week. Read-only email access is free. Write actions (send, move, archive) are behind the Pro subscription. Readdle also published open-source automation recipes and persona hooks for anyone building on top of it. I want to set the specific features aside for a moment and... Continue readin...
Focused 258: Defaults: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/focused-258-defaults/
On this episode of Focused, Mike and I dig into defaults, chronotype, and capacity. Three things that quietly shape how you work whether you pay attention to them or not. I talk about my practice of writing down my own belief systems, and what happens when you go back and read that stuff in a... Continue reading →
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Lettera, A New Markdown Editor for Mac from Bear Developers: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/lettera-a-new-markdown-editor-for-mac-from-bear-developers/
The team behind Bear just released the beta of Lettera, a native Markdown editor for the Mac. It grew out of Panda, the editor they built for Bear 2, and it’s now evolved into a standalone app. The feature list is the kind that makes a plain-text nerd lean in. Live CommonMark rendering, so the... Continue reading →
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The Lab Report for May 22, 2026. WWDC26 invites are out and the keynote is locked for June 8…
This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
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Apple Recognizes 50 Developer Community Leaders: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/05/apple-recognizes-50-developer-community-leaders/
Apple launched a new page on the developer site last week honoring 50 community leaders who help the Apple developer community through teaching, content creation, events, and accessibility advocacy. WWDC 2026 starts June 8, and the timing feels intentional. It’s a nice gesture. I mean that sincerely. I hope it’s also the beginning of something... Continue r...
Intentional AI 3: Context is King: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/07/intentional-ai-3-context-is-king/
On this episode of Intentional AI, Chris Bailey and I dig into the idea that sits under everything else: context is king. The model you pick matters less than the raw material you feed it, so we get practical about what context actually is, why long threads rot and turn the robot dumb, and how... Continue reading →
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Fantastical Tackles the Double-Booking Problem: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/fantastical-tackles-the-double-booking-problem/
If you run more than one calendar, you already know the double-booking trap. Your work calendar shows a meeting. Your personal calendar shows that same hour wide open. You say yes to lunch, and now you’ve promised to be in two places at once. The latest version of Fantastical goes after exactly this problem. The... Continue reading →
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This Week in the Labs — June 26, 2026: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/06/this-week-in-the-labs-june-26-2026/
A busy week in the labs as we continue to process the WWDC announcements and releases… Below you’ll find the week’s new videos and podcasts, a few of the conversations happening in the member community, and what’s coming next week. Most of those links lead straight into the Labs community on Circle, so they’ll only... Continue reading →
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