I previously linked to ProtonMail back in March. I’ve been using it sparingly for the past couple of months and the service is proving to be a dependable and convenient tool for secure email.
ProtonMail requires two layers of login to access the mailbox. First the account login and then the mailbox decryption. This is true of the iOS app and the web application. Without the mailbox encryption key there’s no way to get access to existing messages.
I still depend on Hazel and it’s one of my top five Mac applications. Version 4 is out today (after some website hiccups) and adds live rule preview and rule syncing through Dropbox. Hazel is one of the things that I most miss when I’m on iOS. Heck, Macdrifter probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for all the time Hazel saves me posting screenshots and publishing articles. It’s also still the heavy lifter in my photo management workflow.
Pretty neat stuff on Nik’s Crappy Blog although probably way outside of what I’m willing to do for my macros.
There’s more help with this built into Keyboard Maestro and on the forum.
A few people have asked me about replacing TextExpander fill-in snippets using Keyboard Maestro. While I think Keyboard Maestro is pretty easy to work with, it’s very different than a single purpose snippet expansion tool. Here’s a quick breakdown of a macro for responding to email. It opens a prompt and asks a few questions about the message and then inserts a draft message into an application window.
Variables Keyboard Maestro lives and breathes with variables.
I’ve dropped a few hints about using the iOS and Mac app Copied.app (that’s some brutal SEO) but I’ve never really explained what I mean.
Simple shortcut expansion is great when you have two key restrictions:
A memorable system of shortcuts A small collection of shortcuts I’ve discovered weaknesses in my systems for shortcut expansion as my collection grows. I just can’t remember all of them. Even worse, accidental triggers eliminate all of the efficiency gains for shortcuts.
I dislike wading into battles of opinion. While I may be cranky, I’m not all that self-important. But I’ve recommended the Mac and iOS app TextExpander many, many times and feel like I’ve endorsed it enough that I now have an obligation to all the people that listened to me, even if I don’t want it.
I recommend Dr. Drang’s post and the latest Back to Work episode for additional opinions from similarly invested nerds.
The Omni Group just released version 2.5 of OmniFocus for the Mac and it brings back custom styling. They even provide a FAQ for creating custom styles using the OmniFocusColors app or a text editor.
The transition from version 1 to 2 was rough for many people. The lack of theming in v2 was a big complaint for a lot of people I know. I might consider OmniFocus again when it reaches parity with version 1.
Wow, this new Sketch version looks like it will be dyn-o-mite. The symbols will save so much time prototyping apps and websites.
On my Mac, I’m a pretty big fan of Napkin and Acorn for annotating, cropping, and redacting images. They have all of the tools in one place and they all work well together. Napkin is easy to use but Acorn has real layers and loads more control.
While there’s a wealth of options on the Mac for image annotation, there are very few complete options on iOS. PointOut is wonderful for creating magnifier callouts but not much else.
The next version of Alfred for Mac will expand the options for custom filters and improve the clipboard and snippet manager. Sounds great to me.
