Timing for Time Tracking

Hello and welcome Mac Power Users. My name is Stephen Robz, Joined as always by my friend, David Sparks. How's it going David It is going excellent, Mr. Robz. Hopefully you're back safely from your trip We're recording this episode out of Tim gang But we wanted to talk about some of our favorite obscure Mac apps. You know, there's the apps that get talked about all the time, and there's the ones that we kind of like that never get mentioned. and we thought that would be a fun episode for today. Yeah, there's been some new ones recently just released, some recently discovered, and I need to hear how you're using some So we're going to get into that and on more power users, we're going to talk a little bit about notion. Well it's not new or obscure. we just have some complicated feelings about it and we want to kind of hash it out. So that's more power users today tellell me you want to go back and forth. Let's do it. Yeah, let's just dig in. The first one I want to pick is a new app. It just got released a few weeks ago U It's from the guy who makes the timiming app, which is a great kind of Mac app and u Daniel has been working this app now for I don't know, six months or something. and it's an AI implementation that's very interesting. So we've got a lot of AI tools out there. This one I'm going to say is kind of like a writing assistant, but it's really more a typing assistant. So it looks at the screen and looks at the words and it uses an AI model And as you type It tries to predict the next few words you're going to write and offers to insert them for you And I know this is a controversial pick because some people really don't like the idea of AI getting involved in writing I don't either. I don't want it writing for me, but when I'm doing text input Anything that can make it faster, I think is worth looking at. And this one sticks for me, Stehven So I downloaded this recently, Unbeknownst that you' about to talk about it today And the developer reached out. and so I was very curious I think I understand what it's doing. basasically as you're typing There's some suggestions, kind of like how you would have on iPhone, where as you type Yeah, there's some suggestions you could tap right above the software keyboard. and on the Mac it's doing that in line And then you can just tap the tab button on your keyboard and it will take whatever that auto suggestion is and just type it. And if orr hit the tab key multiple times in a row, it might type out a whole sentence or even up to a whole paragraph So I saw that There were a couple of times where it actually was re prettytty good. like it suggested something that I did want to do right away I also found it like it's there all the time as you're typing. And so I'm curious your experience like Is it distracting or has it gotten better as you use it? Because it's also learning as you do it I think part of the reason why it works so good it becomes more contextually aware as you use it more. So I've been using it since like the first betas. so It's pretty smart with me. and The thing I use it for a lot is like typing to the robot and flawed or filling out a form and like All that stuff is really handy But you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about it, anything substantive, I write with another app I'm going to share in a minute, a gy But I do dictation Uh so like If I write a newsletter I'll have an outline and I'll just speak it Or if I'm writing an email to a friend, I will speak it. I have dictated I dictate it like a hundred thousand words a month, I think. I just dictate everything U so So that's probably why I don't get that friction that some people have. Like when you're trying to write something substantive, like, You're trying to think of the right word to get the idea across and it keeps spitting suggestions at you. I could see that getting annoying But I don't do that with a keyboard. So this app really scratches the itch for me because the stuff I am typing, I just want to get the text in as soon as possible. And this app is kind of uncanny at its ability to do it Do you like there are prompts that I use for Claud and other things regularly And I am still putting those in text expander I have a folder and I have a semic colon and a bunch of different three to four word letter snippets that are prompts I use every week. Do Where do you put those kinds of prompts for you? Yeah, I use Text Expander too. You know, they have groups in Text Expander. and in the group setting, you can set a preface language like So mine is AI. AI dot. And so I just type AI dot and then and it gives it the update language, Hey, check your skills and update your records, you know, or so I use AI. something. u repeated promption But just generally working with it, it's still I need to type, you know, and I don't like doing that. So So c tyyp is really scratches the itch for me on that stuff Like I said, online forms I find it useful for. just basically like if I'm going type out a quick email, like a Somebody emails me and says, Hey, do you want to have lunch tomorrow at ten? And like it reads the email, I believe. It knows that it has enough knowledge, at least I've given it enough access that it helps me write the reply very fast. All that stuff, I think is great, makes me faster Well that's pretty cool. Well you can do c tyypest and use it for free. You have, I think it's it's one hundred completed words a day and there's a six dollars a month bill annually if you want unlimited completions and things like that. but Pretty cool. Solid developer, like solid Mac guy and And like he does, again, he does' it write. You download the model locally and. just a very intelligent use of this and an interesting use of AI. And like I said, I get that some people are not interested in this because it tread's too close to AI writing for me For the kind of writing I'm doing with keyboard, I'm totally fine with it Well I have another brand new app I want to feature, but I want to one other side note on dictation. I've been trying hard to just use dictation more when I'm tempted to like type, even on my phone. Like if I'm going to type a long message or email, like let me try to dictate it first. And I do find it more useful. And one of the things I was doing the other day was building a shortcut time zone conversion because someone in my community asked for a shortcut where it can submit several dates and times and then have it convert to another time zone that they specify and then send that in an email No One, I was getting the current location For current time zone via location, which works, you enter the Other time zone. And then I had a repeat action where you could tell it repeated three times. input dates and times, but the date and time picker in shortcuts can be pretty cumbersome especially if you're trying to get the exact moments and stuff Now let me replace that whole part of the flow with just a text dictation And I'm going to give all of that with the time one information to Apple Intelligence. And let's see if it can do it. And sure enough, it does it super easy. And so now I'll put a link to the shortcut in the show notes, but it basically says what time zone are you converting to? how many me? and then it just dictates. It actually doesn't even ask. You just say, June first at seven PM, june third at this time, june fifth at this time And then it takes what you dictated, Apple intntelligence and then pops up a window that says, here are those times in your timezone using your location and those times in the destination time zone Dictation. It's pretty good It is like I have been banging the drum of dictation. since Mac Patters started because as a practicing lawyer I was really early on board with that stuff. and I was I was good at it with the old tech, you know, where you had to dictate. and it wasn't great. A lot of people really struggled with it, but you had to like to it correctly if that makes any sense But now all those barriers are down with the age of whisper and and artificial intelligence. dictation is a solved problem. and There's some great apps now that allow you to do it. So I dictate Cstantly. Yeah yeah yeah. I'm working towards it All right, I want to highlight a brand new app This is called chalk lift. And we recently on a previous episode talked about our stream decks and setup and things like that. And if you don't have a stream deck, orr you know, you're not sure if you want to use one yet or if it would be useful to you, chalklift is an app for your Mac and your iPhone. that you install it on both It works totally for free If you want multiple pages of controls, then you have to do the in app purchase, but you can use it for free And on one page, you get eight controls on your iPhone And then it can do things on your Mac when you tap those controls And those could be apps, launching them. it could be running shortcuts So if you want to program some shortcuts and use your iPhone as a mini stream deck for your Mac You could totally do that right now. And maybe you just want to experiment to see if a hardware stream deck would be useful to you and if you would get in the habit of tapping that thing off to the side of your Mac and doing things. It's pretty cool. And there's even like gestures for it, like multi finger gestures for maximizing a window for copy and pasting. and you can do those gestures on your iPhone and it sends that command to the Mac And it is very cool. And so free to download and use with one page of controls and then an in app purchase if you want to have multiple pages. I thought that was pretty nifty Yeah, I wish they would make an iPad iteration of this Yes, that seems ideal. like they should do that And I think there's been a couple of apps like this in the past But I really like the design of this one and how Just kind of seamless everything is, the interface, the gestures and all the things like that. So chalklift. And the in app purchase, if you're curious, it's three dollars monthly subscription if you want to do like multiple pages, but one for free. You get eight controls for free. and yeah, little mini stream deck on your phone I haven't told you. We're going to do an iPad episode at some point, but I actuallyually keep my iPad in front of my mac. Okay. Now what keep get plugged in. You use universal control or sidecar? What are you doing with that? When I want to When I want to We'll talk about that in a future. but also just like a great little status board even without being connected Okay, all right. Put it to work, baby. P it to work. Piquking my interest Okay, let's see. we'll see. We'll get there All right, what else what else you get? I'm going to use my filate link so consider me biased, but this is the best one. I tested a bunch of these out for the Max Bare Labs and Some of them are super complicated and You know which you may want, Some of them are too simple. This one is Goldilocks. It allows you to have a custom dictionary. It has some custom controls. It maps very easily onto the globe key and you just hold the button down, you start talking or you double tap it and it just lets you record into it And it's fast It has a mobile app on the iPhone and iPad that works really good too. The custom dictionary is super important because I put all the words that it wouldn't normally recognize A lot of these every time I say Max Sparkkey, they write M AX space B A R K Y. Max Sparky. Yeah. In fact so much so that some of the lab members refer to me that now. and that's funny. But But this doesn't do that because I have my custom name in there or people or emails, it does snippets as well. I've just had so many people take my recommendation on this app and write me to tell me how they're just using it constantly. If you want to do more dictation and you're willing to throw a few bucks at it for something better It's Whisperflow. I think that's the one And it is, you know, because MacroS has built in dictation So but you would say like with the custom dictionary and the other features that this is worth it above just the stock Dictation on the map. It is just so much better. And like when you talk and it what it is is a very light AI pass, it does your words. like some of the more complicated ones like rewrite, you'll say something and then it'll type something else. You don't want that, you know Yeah this won't take your words, but like if it sounds like you're doing a numbered list, it'll make it a numbered list. you know If you say new paragraph, it'll put a new paragraph in instead of write new paragraph out like Siri does, you know? Um, it just, you know, so it does a very light AI pass at your dictation And it gets spellings right. So when I say obscure words, I don't know what the dictionary's using, but it's doing does way better than the built in magification It's so much better that on the iPhone because of security now, when you first enable it in an app It swipes you over to Whisperflow, where you have to enable and swipe back It' K kind of a pain in the neck, but it's worth the pain in the neck because the dictation is so much better And maybe at WWDC Apple will amaz us and you know, and improve built in serification so much that we don't need this anymore, but That's hard for me to believe. And I just really feel like this whisper flow moment right now is real. And people who want to dictate more like you, Stephven frankly. Yeah. if you're willing to throw a few bucks, Give it a try. I think they've got a free trial. so you'll know I will try it and actually try doing it on my Mac because I've been doing it more on my phone. But I've just never been in the habit of on my Mac dictating things. And especially for prompting claud or whatever, it would be way faster just to speak that stuff than try to type it all out So I will check that out. I'll check that out. I actually think my typing skills have degraded as I've been dictating more. Now when I do type, it's like it's terrible It But yeah But Whisper Flow, one of the smart things is it maps itself to that globe key when you first started up. So now you've got ation button on your Mac and it's great. I know there's already one on the F five gy, Just give it a try. Okay. All right, we'll do it. I have a newer app that's pretty obscure and very specific purpose But if embedding chapters into an MP three for podcasting is important to you, This app really helped me out. as the whole video in Apple has been changing and how chapters are going Putting chapters in my different podcasts has been more and more cumbersome. And so the system I have now, which works really well is You know, Riverside will auto give you chapters when you record But it gives way too many chapters. The title chapters are verbose and it's not easy to like change them at large. So what I do is I will download an SRT file which is the transcript subtitle type file that has timecodes in it. And I've been giving that SRT file to Claud on my Mac And rather than asking it for chapters automatically, I tell it the chapters I want. So I'll give it all the chapter titles that I want and it will laude would then just give me the timestamps with my chapter titles And I found that to be faster doing it that way rather than the reverse. seeeeing like what chapters it automates for me and then trying to edit those. I tell it the chapters I want and I ask it to give me the timestamps So that's been working well, but then getting that quickly into at MP three file That was like the challenge then well, okay, I have these timestamps, but Im got to bring this into Ferrite on my iPad to edit it. And this is where a new app, Matt Berchler is a developer. And he created this app called Chapterize And it is exactly the workflow that I wanted and was helping me facilitate this whole workflow. So what you can do is Smack app You give it your MP three or your Wave file, whatever your finished edited podcast is And then you can literally copy and paste from your clipboard. So you copy your chapter timestamps. so I copy the ones that Claud gives me. I just paste them into this little block and then chapterize will Cate all those chapters in that audio file. gives me the option to drag chapter artwork and add links per chapter if I want to do that And I can then export an MP three or wave file with those chapters embedded. I export the MP three And that's what I use for the audio version of my other podcast Now the reason why the process is complicated right now is because I'm trying to facilitate doing video and audio for one of my shows. And that whole process is very cumbersome right now. And so I needed this exact tool at this exact time to help me do exactly this. And it's it's really good at it. He's been updating it. It's a one time purchase. It's like twenty something dollars. So it's kind of quote unquote, expensive for an app But it's not a subscription. it's a one time purchase. And for my use case, it was well worth it for me And so chapterize is my pick It's a great It's a great app and I u I just downloaded it. Hey there you. There you go. because you liter chapters for any kind of audio file. Yes, you know. And it's a pain in the neck. I know that's kind of a creator thing, And yeah forecast has been a long time app from Marco Armment, recent guest on MacPower users. And forecast is still great The simple act of pasting timestamps with titles and having those just automatically generate into the file. That's that was the deal This episode of Mac Power Users is brought to you by Work Group Your developers love homebrew, but your security team maybe not as much. 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Go and check it out at workkbrew. com slash free That's workkbrew d. com slash free or click the link in the show notes to let them know you came from Mac Power users O thanks to WorkBrew for their support of this show and all of relay Okay, this one I just discovered a week ago and I am loving it. Have you ever seen this screensaver? Yes, I'm gonna to talk about a screens saaver. Thou house Clock I have not. I have not When I put this in the list, I'm like, Stehven is going to love that I put another clock in Well, so what I do is when we have a bunch of links in Notion, I copy, I just select all copy And then I have a shortcut that opens all those URLs in a browser window. And so I just see the tabs opening real quick, one after another. And this one like flashed by for a second. I was like What is that? What is she done again? What is this? Is another date Soia, tell me about Bhouse. I look Generally, I just have my screen go dark This came across my radar and it's so attractive, I couldn't help it. And yes, it's another clock, Steven. But when I walk into my studio now, I have a beautiful Bauhaus style clock on my screen And I have played with all the various clocks. There's another one that people like called flip clock. that's like a split flap clock that people have See see that a lot of the YouTubers, they've got it on their screen on their glamor shots of their desk This is so much better. this is so much better. And the person who made this, I don't know who he is. It's nineteen dollars is such a nerd. Like when you configure this, you can say because my kids gave me a watch, for Father's Day last year, and it's a mechanical watch. It's not a quartz watch And as a result, the ticks don't go one second at a time. It's like it's a lot more ticks between a second. In this app, you can configure it as a mechanical watch or as a quartz watch, or as a sweep watch. I mean, Every little detail you can think of and it looks beautiful, Dark background, light background. It has different modes. if if your computer' in light mode or dark mode or not And I just think it's gorgeous. And so I've been running it for a week Every time I come in the studio and I see the clock on, it just makes me smile. and Maybe for me only This is a at gemm It is a beautiful clock. But here here's my question to you. So you have You have the P display XDR and an Newer studio display right? Are those your two monitors right now? Yeah. ye So the older studio display older studioplay. Yeah. Even with my older studio display, I'm always a little ike I don't want the screen just on all the time if I'm not working on it. I don't like even when the technology doesn't risk burn in, I'm always like, I just don't want always on. So do you not Do Does that not bother you like leaving the monitor at all? Yeah, J thirty minutes to go start Yeah. This is like when I'm around. Yeah. Okay whenever When I go to bed, it gos dark Well then maybe I'll that. because this is beautiful and you can customize it with all the colors and That is very nice out of our nets. Okay That's fun, Bohouse, Clock and links to all these apps down below There the next one is more of an entertainment one. What has a grade map app It is sequL SQL is one of the many movie and TV show tracking apps But and I've tried a lot of them and there's a lot of great ones out there I really like SQL the Mac app is good. You can also have widgets because of the Mac app. so you could have like Desktop widgets, you can have the todayoday View widgets And I use I've now been using it and I've used sofa sofa's great If you want to look up movie information, use the call sheet app on your Mac. That's how you look up like cast and crew and other trivia But Squel is what I've been keeping track of movies I want to watch with my family with my spouse TV shows and sequels great for that And one of the reasons why I chose SQL is because it syncs with tract Tract T R A K T is a service kind of like letitterbox D or letitterbox where you like it syns all your data and then other apps can kind of plug into that. And you can basically get whatever app you want to use and it looks nice with your data that you already have But SQL, it is the visual aesthetic has been really nice. You can have a widgets for like The movies you want to watch soon or upcoming So like I have movies in my upcoming view of what they like the release date So there's like the death of Robin Hood in twenty two days and the Odyssey coming out july seventeenth, the Spiderm Man movie july thirtieth. So I can see all the movies that are about to come out in theaters. I got my watch list and then you can also have collections. collections of family movies. These are movies we may or may want to not watch with the kids. I don't know if the happening is too scary for the kids or not probably. But you know, I like being able to organize it Put it into family and spouse, see the upcoming movies in theaters. It also does books. I don't use it for that I use it for TV series and I use it for movies It looks great and it's great on the Mac. Squel S note Are you gonna Are you going to go watch Odyssey I mean, yes, I waited too long for tickets and so now like all like the opening weekend and week might be sold out everywhere around me But I'm going to probably set up a clawed schedued task to check a couple movie theaters. And as soon as there's like open tickets, they'll probably like do it But yes, I want to see it in the theaters T you I'm looking forward to it so much, I got the Emily Wilson translation and I'm reading it again. Oh my good, okay. good. And also I think this episode has come out a while ago, but can I shout out the fous episode where I got to be a guest with you Yeah. And and that was really wonderful. We talked a lot about books on that episode And yeah, mayaybe one day I can come back because I've got new book recommendations too. Oh excellent And I guess since we're going there Did you watch the Mandalorans And I've not seen it in theaters. I've You know, I saw the TV series with my kids, but I've not made it out there and with WW happening, just couldn't go'll maybe probably see it late, but did you, didid you go to theaters for it shhame on you But you went to the theaters and saw it Oh yeah. Oh I wasn't shy. I meant to ask you in an earlier episode and I forgot. Is it good? Okaykay ye Lot lot of fun, just fun. Well maybe anyway. we're recording out of time, but maybe I could squeeze it in before dub dub. Time wise this makes no sense. but ye anyway, we'llllow Sometimes that happens on a podcast. We'll follow up Well, since we're talking about media, I want to talk about perermute. Have you ever seen this app Yes, and I'm well acquainted with Charlie Monroe in all his apps, but I don't use perermute a lot personally, so tell me about it. Well, it's just it just it takes a media file and it makes it a different media file. And like I used to do this all the time like in quQuickT timee or like You know, handbrake is another one that people used to use for a lot of this stuff I just wanted a simple app that I could put audio or media into or video in it and have it spit out as something else And Permute like scratches that itge so nicely that I would highly recommend it. And if you're a setu subscriber, you already get it It's just it's excellent I love everything that he makes and I would probably use this a lot more The only thing is I use compressor all the time Yeah, okay. because I'm in compressor everyday exporting videos And compressor, I have like custom presets basically where you know, if I want to make it an audio or a video, like one of the things I do when I export a YouTube video from Final Cut Iended to compressor And then I have a little group. And when I drag that group over the video It will automatically add the MP three version that I'm going to take and transcribe and do a bunch of stuff with before the video renders out And then it does the video. And I'm just so used to compressor. If I need to quickly convert something to MP three or just shrink something, I use compressor for all of that, but if not for compressor I would hundred percent use per mute and I use his other app I don't know how much we can say about it, but Downey, Is also is another great app. I use that pretty much every day I'll be Thank you If you know, you know If you know, you know, that'sact that's exactly right. That's lious. But I think for normal folk, I think that perermmute is like the right tool. If you ever want to take a media file and switch it to something else, it just makes it su super easy Compressor is great if you're a production guy like Stephven is, but Permute is just a Fantastic little app and It's one that I think qualifies in our gym category For sure. Even just the ability to crop a video quickly specific. like it's great for all of that. So Definitely check that out Now, I'm going to shout out to a friend and co host of mine's app Because this is a this is a vibe coded app, David Okay But this might be interesting to you as well So this is contextly And conttextly is Jason Non's app In the app store, it's also on iPhone, if you want to get that Jason built this app because he wanted a notes app that used markdown. but also brought in caalendar events, and connected tasks all in one place And the biggest reason that he the biggest thing he uses it for is you can have your calendar on the right side You have your month view and then your agenda below it And you can create a new note that links to that event. just right clicking and creating a new note And so now I have a new note and it's connected to that event in the same way, if I'm looking at a note I can then, you know connect that to an event easily. And the way he works is, know, there's a meeting on the calendar, there's probably a note associated and he does all that there And you can also take a note that you might have been typing for a while, maybe you have a transcription in there. You can then create to dos using Apple Intelligence and send those to dos to reminders to things to various task apps So it's kind of like a middle Uh like interlocular for like events, notes and tasks And he also vbecoded Apple Intelligence in there. So in your note, you can get summaries, you can get you can do audio recordings and transcriptions in the app if you want to do that You can send those to dos to reminders to dos, things like that But it's pretty fun and it's the way he His brain works, and so he just wanted to make an app. and you know, something we've talked about on this show recently is you know, this is the vibe coded app page is allowing people to make the app that they want just like their brain works. And that's why there's so many great tasks and notode apps out there is because everybody works a little differently Yeahes. So he made this for him. And some other people, you know like it and their brain works that way too. so that's contextally You know, the more I talk to you and hear about kind of your preferences along nodes and I know you're kind of allergic to obsidian I feel like you have an inevitable date with note plan It is installed on my Mac I have it right here. I imported my entire bare note history into Note planan. And I like it And the design is really good And it would jive. There's just that hurdle of like, am I jumping ship? A I upending my entire workflow do this and like Ive it's it's so hard to make that Isn' that hard for you? Is it hard for you to like up in h? It's too easy, frankly. Okay, okay. All right But the u but like if you're doing kind of the robot stuff, you need a local bank of text files and Neeping gives you a native app and all that stuff and kind of like the integration that context does. but with a really well developed a mature application. I just feel like If you ever like spnd some time, I think you would you would fall into it pretty quickly I do off all the apps that try to do all these things together, I do love the design a lot and it jves. And I do like the idea I was justing the other day The day I ever move away from bare notes It is to do markdown files in folders Like I don't want to leave Bar just to do another proprietary database structure I would want it to have that flexibility, but it is where do I if I were to jump, where do I jump And Note Pe has been the closest to doing that. I honestly, that one is on the table for me too, because I'm teaching this course and I'm using Ups City and I wanted I didn't want to use an app that people had to pay for to learn to build the robot stuff So I chose Obsidian, but There could be a day in the not distant future where where I switch over to Nope planan, but Obsidian and Nope P both kind of do that job equally as a native app that you know works good on mobile and takes advantage of all the Apple features. Yeah Boy, No Plan is really is really a great app. We did a whole show on it. like a couple of years ago and maybe at some point we'll come back to that There's we got a bunch of episodes brewing of you or us doing deep dives into Note P into keyboard maestro into carbon Copy Cloner and like all that kind of stuff. So yeah Weve got work to in the future Okay, I've got a productivity related app that I think isn't on most people's radar, but it should be. It's called bike Bike Outliner. U they are now in version two point zero I have never heard of bike This is definitely a gem Diamond in the Rough. What Well Hogbay software, Jesse Grosschen He made task paper. you' familiar with the task paper format and Wite Rom. Jesse makes great little utility simple applications. and If you're looking for a simple outliner I don't think you can beat Bike and It's just really well done, you know, so It's a clean Mac Native application. It works very simply. It gives you plaintext. It's like task paper, but for outlining. and I guess that's really the cell there. if you know what I'm talking about Oh, that's pretty. That is one I have never heard of. So that's bike. And also mentioned just this was not on my list, but marked three from Bret Turstra is actually out now. you know, he was on the show a few weeks ago. and so I just want to throw that out there This episode of Mac Power Users is brought to you by ECam ECAM Live is the all in one studio built exclusively for Mac. 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You can also pull in guests via interview mode or record multi track audio for perfect post production And if you're into automation, ECM works beautifully with tos and apps like Stream Deck, which you've talked about a bunch on this show. and loop back as well as many Mac tools you already know and love. And you can upgrade to Pro and unlock EcCam for Zoom letting you feed your polished setup straight into Zoom meetings or webinars, share Zoom comments on screen, and even capture each participant's audio and video separately for easy post production work But don't wait any longer. Go and check it out now fifteen percent off, go to ecM dot com slash Mac Power users and use code MPU fifteen fifteen percent off at ecM dot com slash MacPower users with code MPU fifteen A thanks to ECam for sponsoring this show and all of relelay So a couple weeks ago, I think it is now we talked about like where we save links. and I'm still working on my process of Where do I save stuff? Where do I want to put stuff to refer to later Yeah But this app has been my solution for the last couple months and I do really enjoy it. and it's called Capture It's simple. There's a longer name in the app store. We'll put the exact link down in the show notes Capture has been I just run it from the share sheet And I save all the things there. And the reason why I like it so much is when you hit the share button, you can do likeike send it to a specific collection or a list as it's called in the capapture app. right there from the share sheet and I never have to open the cap trap to organize it It's just in the right list. Now we actually talked about An app called Readwise and we're going to get to that in a little bit because I've downloaded and tried it And we'll talk about that . But Capture has still been is what I'm using right now and I'm kind of experimenting. but I have lists for the different podcasts I do, for videos, and I just like putting in all the list. The one thing I'm not crazy about it is when you go into the app and you click something that you saved, it could be an article, it could be a video, it could be a social media post All you get is like the headline and the header image of that thing you saved. There's no way to read or Even see like the lead paragraph or whatever or the summary that would be in an RSS feed in the Capture app So you have to click and open it in the original source. whichich maybe that's how people want it and intend to use an app like this I want something a little more than that And that's why I like some of the features in Readwise, which we'll talk about I'm still using Capture because it's just lightning fast. it's easy to run from the share sheet The Mac app is great and everything syncs and it's easy, simple and fast. And there's a one time lifetime purchase. I think it's like twenty something dollars I always appreciate when it happened gives you that one time purchase forever I I've got one here that we've mentioned we talked about in our menuar episode, but I want to include it here as well because I just love it so much. I want people to use Drop zone It's an obscure gym to my mind. So the way Drop zone works, it goes in your menu bar. And it's a shelf up. You know, there's a bunch of them out there where you can take a file and you put it on a, quote unquote shelf It sometimes its on the side, sometimes it's in your dock Srop zone is in your menu bar. It pops down anytim you select a file. So the first thing it does is it's a shelf. So you can drag it up there They've got an icon called the drop bar, you put it there. And like especially if you're working on a laptop and you've got limited screen space and maybe you've got keynote in one space and files and others, something you want to move stuff around. putut it on the drop on shelf, you go to the other app, you drop it in really handy, but things that makes it truly great in my mind is the stuff it does beyond that The first thing it does is it allows you to lock an item on the shelf So every week I record the lab report podcast and I have to put the artwork in three different places in my publishing unit So I just locked that artwork into that zone. I can reach up, drop it in anywhere I want Back P users' artwork, I do the same thing. My headshot is in there. You know, just stuff that I frequently access. I put in there You can even put video clips in there. So like if you've got a little video exit for your video, you can just save it there and drop it in your video editor at random. So it's just really handy. L if you Another thing I use it for is my, you know, tax forms. likeike if somebody says, Ohh, we need to pay you, but we need your tenars ninety nine c or whatever. I've got them up there. I can just drop it into an email Just super handy for stuff like that The next kind of level this thing does is it allows you to save folders or locations to it and the location can be set in the way that you determine. like you can make somewhere Anything I drop on this folder, move it here Like so I have a sort folder for the Max Parking stuff that the robot sorts and puts stuff away for me I have that in the drop zone. So any file that comes in, whether it's an email attachment, on my desktop, whatever, I just drag it on the drop zone Put it in the St folder and then the robot figures it out from there So that's really nice, but you can also have it copy it to that location. So let's say you need something on the desktop just for a few hours. And you want the ability to just put it on the desktop and like work off of it like another type of shelf really. use the copy function there. So it does that then it's got like additional like actions I can do like it's got an airdrop button. so you can just move a file into airdrop that way. or You can create custom actions in there. It's just It's a shelf app done right. and I tried a lot of them, but this is the one that keeps sticking for me And if you haven't used this gyem, you're going to probably find a use for it if you try it out. You can get it on the Mac App store. You can also get this one from setetup as well That's pretty cool. And might need to try that and I'm just going to throw two in here real quick similar, but different If you wanted something like that, but only for airdrops deeveloper we talk about at least once a month, Sjere Surhouse of his many apps Menu Drop is one of his free ones Just this little icon on your menu bar, and it's strictly to airdrop But if you just want to be able to quickly drag an image, a file, a text, whatever Drag it up in the menu bar just to airdrop it Menu Drop is great for that. and it's in the MacApp store and it's free. And I also wanted I was curious if you'd seen I'm looking, I'm seeing more bartender pro stuff out there like in the Eether That people are sharing on social media. And I guess Bartender Pro was recently updated or Shing And I keep seeing people talking about it and I'm like I've tried Bartender a long time ago And we even talked about, you know, the menu bar management apps in our menu bar episode, But Bartender Pro is looking Pretty good. I'm curious. Yeah Yeah, there are a lot of nice new features on it and If you're using a laptop, it even has features for, you know, the notch R And it looks good. I need to spend time with it and I just haven't yet Yeah, it is it's onl list. we'll put a link below And o, yeah, go ahead, you do the next one I just did one. Oh yeah, okay, look at that ye. I was thrown a ide ones in here. This one's brand new This is a brand new app And as I've been experimenting with RSS readers here and there, There's a new one called Amethyst Amethyst is free And if you just want a simple RSS reader, but organize your stuff into folders and have it on all your Apple devices Aethyst and I've been tryrying it out I brought my RS feeds in there, OPML export, you know reader into ammethyst You can get it on the Mac App store. It's also available on all the other things, even Apple Vision Pro If you want to do that It's been pretty good. You know, it's very simple, bare bones But if you just want to try another new RSS reader, you know, everybody's slight preferences of You know how they want to read it or how they want their RS reader to look And is brand new, Amethyst. I can tell you're going through something with RSS right now. Well, Listen I've I've been someone. who really loves single purpose great apps for things. Yeah. Like you have a great RSS reader, you have a great notode app, you have a great task app, maybe two. And that that has worked for me for a long time Best in breed over Jack of all trrades Yes, yeah. but I also I feel The conglomeration of things that if they were in the same place or if you did this differently You're like This task would be faster, or this would be more streamlined And like we just mentioned on a recent episode, I'm always trying to weigh the balance of inccreased complexity versse change cost of an app verse, what is the benefit But yeah. I'ment I'm in an experimental phase right now. There you go. can't wait to see where this ends up. Well what is jaz likeike you call a jazz musician, their experimental phase or whatever, you know, it's Yeah. there go. It's that One another gem that I would like to share that I think a lot of people don't know about is tech sniper. and This is an app that does just one thing. If you've got a picture on the screen and it's got words on it and you want to get the words out of it, you just take a shot of it and it gives you the words. Apple added a feature like this last year to the operating system. Tech sniper is better. I've been trying them. I'm just telling you, it's better. It's easier to use. like once you get it going And you may or may not be somebody that needs that. but I often bump into that where I just want to grab some text from a website or something And I can't, you know, it's not selectable or it's in a picture and I just find myself using this app more often than youd think I would. There's really not much more to say about it, but You snap a picture, you get the words Honestly, and that's a task where on the mac I'm sometimes unsure like How to do that quickly And I'll be like, I guess I take a screenshot, open that in preview and then I can select it. And you know, sometimes preview, it's like on the wrong tool and it's not let you like select text right away. Or you have to have your mouse cursor just write around the words in order to select it So I think I'm going to get tech sniper today because honestly, I think it's going to make a way easier. It's just yeah It's just a tool to have in your tool belelt. you know, You know, we all spend money on things, right? But one of the things I did is I signed up for setup, which is kind of that app. you know, like Netflix for apps kind of thing. Sure. And it's, you know, I put links in the show notes for this one because a bunch of these are in setup and that really makes it easy for you to explore new apps because a lot of really great developers are contributing. They get a they get a cut of my monthly payment. they're happy And it allows me to experiment a lot of tech snipers in there, by the way So drop zone. I think bike is in there too, you know, permutees in there. So a lot of the apps I talk about are in there And it's just a great place to go and experiment on apps. You should try it sometimes. It's pretty great I should do that All right, this next one, this one's kind of exciting because I met this developer here in Tampa locally because listens to the various podcasts and such And this was also a vbe coded app But it's really good. So this is called inset It's a four dollars app, just a one time purchase, no subscription or anything And what it does You can it's also for the iPhone and iPad, but the Mac, I think is where it's really useful. Basically if there's something that you want to always have on top of all your windows So maybe that is You know, videos you can do picture and picture, but something like a Zoom call or a Google meet Sometimes those picture and picture tools and browser extensions don't really force those videos into picture and picture. orr you have it in a standalone app like Webx or the Zoom app And then picture and picture is not something that you really can get. Or maybe you're trying to watch the progress of a video render. And you want to see when it's done, but you don't want to have to like position the windows precisely right so you can see the progress bar off in the corner Well what Inet does is it lets you basically dist choose a portion of the screen that you want to be seeing all the time And then it creates a little window that stays persistent on top of everything else, no matter what And so you can monitor that app, whether it's a Zoom call prorogress bar, installation window, whatever And then you can put that like it's a picture and picture window wherever you want on your Mac and you're good to go And the reason why he made an iPhone version of that app is if you wanted to connect it, and see that progress bar captured on your Mac on your iPhone You can do that with a companion app So if you want it like if you're exporting a video, maybe it's a very long video, that export time is going to be a couple of hours, well you can pop into the Inet iPhone app. Take a look at what that progress bar is doing on your Mac rather than trying to do a whole VNC into it and do all of that If you're on the same network, you can J just look at the inset app on your iPhone. I know it's a great idea. Really useful again, for progress, for type video type calls or whatever, four bucks. Inset, Mac and iPhone I just bought it Hey. L at that prettyretty cool idea, right? I thought that was a pretty cool idea. No it is because like Zoom meetings is a great example. Like you forget that you're on camera. because you you like move to a different screen because they're asking about something or whatever and like I think this will be really good for that. Although I'm going to make a note not to use it when I'm Um when I'm broadcasting like when I'm running a meeting Because when you go to share a screen, I assume that would mean that this window shows up on your screen because the Zoom hides that, you know, when you share your screen. Right. But But for the ones I attend, I think this is perfect I just feel like I can find a lot of uses for this This episode of the Mac Power Users is brought to you by Decagon. 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Ready to transform your customer support Go to Deagon. a slash mpu to get a personalized demo and see what Deckagon can do for your team Deckicon now at D EC a G o n. Ai slash mpu. That's Deagon. Ai slash mpU. And our thanks to Decagon for their support of the Mac P users and Oliveverys next one is Txo Um, Tech Hope is an oldie but one that doesn't get discussed very often. But if you work with text and you ever want to do anything with it tech so, it really kind of pairs nicely with text sniper, you know, like Like sometometimes you go on the web and you'll copy text and it injects a bunch of formatting or does a bunch of carriage returns or doesn't put carriage returns, anything like that TextOope is an app that just fixes that. You put the text in there, it's got a bunch of built in filters. Uually the built in ones are good enough. But if you've got any kind of text that needs formatting tech soap works. And I know people are going to say, well, hey, Sparky, I can do that with Chat GPT or Claud But you're burning tokens when you do that there. and This is a very simple problem to solved locally. Alical. I still use tex soap Okay Eo I'll check that. I've not tried either. that's also in S set App if you want to get it there Oh ye, set upp I want to this is also another newer app This is for social media if you're on Mastodon and or Blue skky There's great apps, you know for both of those. Ivory is a great macadon client and there's a There's a great app for Blue Sky. I forget what it's called. It had a little hotterir balloon This one is indndigo and it's for both. Blue Sky and Mastodon I've been using this on my Mac, on my iPhone. And if you're balancing all the text based social media networks like I am Any tool that helps simplify that process is welcome. And indigo is exactly that One, if you are on both Blue Sky and Mastodon and you follow the people on both As you probably know, people cross post things. I cross post things or I'll post the same thing on Threads, Macodon, Blue skky And what this will do is it will identify cross posts and actually label it as such in the timeline And you can actually tap the little crosspost thing and you could say show me the Blue skky version or show me the Mastodon version, which that's cool If you want to post You can post to both Blue Sky and Mastodon at the same time. It also has timeline sync So you can scroll on your Mac and then you can open in to go on your iPhone and it's going to synink to that place in the timeline And it's just a really great app overall, reallyally smooth and trying to, you know Do that one less app that I have to look at and manage really goes a long way And you know, one day maybe I won't need socialedia maybe I don't need it now Right now, I'm posting all the things everywhere And Iigo is the way to do it. It's free to try. if you want to do things like cross posting. there is a subscription pricing five dollars a month, thirty five dollars a year. but you can also just use it for free if you want to be scrolling and just kind of combine those two feeds into one But I went to had him signed up for a year because it's making my life easier in the go I can never decide if I should like go and sign up for some of those services. You know, everyverybody says, Oh, you do social media. you got to do it. you do this content stuff. I can't get myself to do it soon. I feel like if you haven't done it, don't start now. You know what I mean? Like you have a business and you've set up your work in such a way where you are not Dpendent on it. And I that would I think be the better place. and I'm not ready to experiment with that yet. Maybe I'm at a place where I don't need it, but I also like Amazon affiliate revenue is still a thing that is a part of my income Yeah. And it's not insignificant. A consistent portion of that is on the smart homepage on my website But Sometimes I want to share a product, I want to share an affiliate link Like I don' want to make a whole video about this I want to put this in a podcast and so I post on social media. And you pointed out to me offline, I forgot that like I think my posts are going to mas it on. Oh, they don't. They I see it all the time. Yeah. And I'm like, And you said, well, how'd you hook that up? And I'm like, I don't even remember. honestly. Well, it's working like years ago. It's still working. However you got it done, it's still working Yeah So I guess I am doing it, but I just actually scrolling on it. But I do I do enjoy scrolling and seeing posts from other people, but I'll also post some affiliate links and just say like, hey, here's, you know, AirPods tips. These are the ones I like and recommend. and so here's an affiliate link and it's an easy low risk load whatever way of sharing things. So we willll see Sometimes I thought about like curating a private social media feed. like we both have communities. And we both have them in circle And I've thought about like, I wonder if I should just crereate a space in my circle account That's like a social media feed and I just post there And I tell people if they want to see posts from me, go to my cirval community look at I don't know.ave you Do you do that kind of? Well, you post so much content. It's kind of like You kinda do that anyway Yeah, ye. I mean, the thing I do is the now page, which I don't update as much as I should really, but if you go to maxparky. com slash now, kind of say what I'm doing now. and that's like my version of social media. It's like, o, this is the stuff he's making in the shop. this is the project he's work on Xparky and I feel like that is as close as I'm gonna get to that stuff And it's not like I'm holier than now or righteous about it. I know some people get really wound up about social media, but It's just it's just, um, It's just a question of time and attention, you know, And I just don't have enough for that I mean, I probably don't either. I just spend it anyways and so probably. But I still find myself going on Instagram. And completely as a lurker, really, I hardly ever post anything, but But like it has found the right combination of woodworkers and people who tie knots and You know, and like it knows the it knows me well enough to give me stuff if I really want to just like Zone out, I can go there and see something. but arere you more of a bowline or a tauntline hitch, I'll do them all, I'll do themem all. I was I was a scout of a kind when I was a kid and we did all the got testing. Yeah I know my square knights and my parallel lashing and you know, all that stuff. Nothing makes me happier than when there's a problem I can solve with a piece of rope. I'll just tell Those are good problems to have, you know what I mean? Like they're proble Exactly. That's a nice problem. That's a problem a very well executed knot makes me happy. Listen Absolutely. And like I mean I used to go on camping trips and like lash stuff together we would lash together like I think we called them like Chiwa kitchens or whatever but it basically like a TP over the fire, then like a little shelf basically and we would continuous lash the shelf on the side and then we would have a bunch of cross lashes on the thing. and like I loved having a super clean Especially a nice parallel lashing can't be it Another one I have, maybe this is just for us nerds that make stuff for the interternet. But if you've ever taken a screenshot of your phone or your watch or anything and you wanted to put an nice frame around it that looks like the device Share shhots are great out for that. and they got a Mac app got a mobile app, it's awesome. and The one way I really like it is when I send screenshots to people, even just friends And from the phone, you hit the share sheet and then you share shots share sheet pluggin And then it sends it with it. And they always write back, How'd you do that? you know? It's like, I think they think I took a picture of the phone and cropped it or something.. No, no, no I love Sharehot. I use this almost daily They can you can put it in the control center And the control center action will just immediately frame your last screenshot, which is cool. And it has great shortcuts actions And whenever I need to bulk frame screenshots I have a shortcodut where I can select files or photos And it can just run through as many as I choose and it frames all the screenshots, puts the nice gradient background behind it It's wonderful. Share shots. highly recommend Yeah and it then like it's your device. like if you have an orange iPhone, it makes it orange. It's nice. Exactly. And it does it for Mac too. So if you have Mac screenshots it'll put it in like an iMac or a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro And you can choose your device too. Yeah All right, I have one more because I did some homework for this episode. But before I do, I do want to shout out Parachute. because it's keeping me backed up and it's a backcaap that I didn't use and I'm ee, it's right that's running. rununning weekly And saving my iCloud photos and my iCloud drive. So Parachute backup is good. We can all sleep easy. You're That's right And then from a previous episode, Homework for saving things and reading He talks about read wise. Yeah Readwise is a service and there's the Readwise app which is like for book highlighting or article highlighting, things like that And then there's the companion secondary app called Readwise Reader Yeah And this is an app you can get on your iPhone and get on your Mac and it allows you to Either read RSS feed. So it's actually an RSS reader also But then also lets you read things and highlight them and send them to ReadWise Reader and things like that So in addition to Amethyst I took my OPML file of all my RSS feeds and I threw it in a readwise reader T see what that's like I like their app icon first of all Uh we should we should do like an app icon rating like our favorite Mac app an iPhone app icon someday, that'd be pretty good. Yeah. I feel like that's a great bonus episode. Yeahah. Yeahes, that' a bonus episode. So I like their icon The app is nicely designed, especially on iPhone I was using it on the Mac And it did all the things that I wanted and needed it to do. I can do it from the share sheet There are shortcuts actions. There's even an API you can plug into if you want to build more advanced shortcuts It has all the features I need pllus the readwise portion, I was like, this could be Rather than taking pictures of my physical books, I can do it all here. It still might be. it still might be I have to say the sometimes you could tell me youve ever experienced this thing about the UI was just a friction point for me It wasn't bad, it wasn't slow, it wasn't buggy. It wasn't any of those things But just the overall like here's the middle column with your list of articles from RSS feeds Here's it expanding. I don't know if it was a spacing thing, if it was just a layout thing. It got me a little off at first but If I use it and it literally does all the things I need it to do Well and streamlined and it's functional and I'm sure it's solid I might stick with it, but I was a little U J just unsure about the UI of it, but it's really nice and really good, especially on iPhone. so I'm going to keep trying it. So I will report back Continue with it. I would recommend on the Mac Are you just use it in a web? They have the web view. and They use a set of keyboard shortcuts they're very similar to the old kind of standard Gmail stuff, like to archive, you just press E to tag it, you press T And I can fly on this thing on the web version of Readwise in Reader. So I go through it and I can tag it as a ential labs video or as a research item or whatever, and then hit E and it archives it and jumps to the next one And the other piece of this for me, as we talked about in that prior show is like I almost think of this app partartly is for me, but it's also an app that exists for the robot in the sense that the MCP does so much work for me on the back end. L when I I see an article and I say, Oh, I want to put that in the Lab repeport podcast this week. I want to talk about that I hit T and then LR and then it goes it gives it the tag and then I hit E and it disappears. And that's it, you know And on the backke end, the robot every day sweeps the Readwise MCP and says, oh, he tagged this article for Lab report Well, I know he records that on Wednesday night, so I'm going to make the note for next week if it's not already made. I'm going to get the link. I'm going to put it in there I'll put a summary of what it says. I'll give him all the links to the source articles so he can read it before I record. Yeah, it does all that stuff for me So there are apps now that I treat almost as like companions for my robot, more than for me And it's that piece of read wise that makes it so useful to me. because I honestly think Unread is prettier for RSS. if it was just for the human I would probably use unread, but but for because This thing has got so much power under the hood and works so easily with a robot. That's why I use it and I can navigate it very fast because I really look at that sweep through The readwise reader is a triage. You know a lot of this stuff, I just hit the E and move on to the next one So this is I'll You know, you can see, you can download and use it on a web. This is what it looks like on the web. And I think what threw me off at first is I like the left side where it has all the feeds organized by folder I imported all of that from Reader Classic from my opPML file. Yeah. It has the full list of articles And I like how when I hover my mouse over an article On the far right, which is like a third pane, it has a title, a summary, and some metadata about that link or article And I think the thing that threw me is My expectation when I click an article in this middle view is for it to open up in the third pane like it does in Reader and other RSS type feed apps and keep the list of articles static and just load the full article in that far right column And so that is just a behavioral difference, I think I' need to get used to It's not a design thing because I do think this looks fine And you know, it has a lot of powerful options for like taking actions on a particular story or link. And it's very fast And I do like fast And then you also have You know, in addition to your feeds, which you can organize by folders, you can organize by type So if you do send videos into reader or social media posts or PDF's you can organize those in those different boxes as I'm going to spend more time and actually see what this feels like and see what it's about, but R report back. Yeah, and like it also just to go down the rabbit hole because it connects to the readwise service. If I highlight something there, then it goes into the space repetition system in Readwise whichich I don't really do with RSS stuff, you know. But I also have all my e books in there because you can upload your ePUub files and they're there. and Also the long form news items I get and emails are all in there. So I read them all there. and some of that stuff is stuff that's highlightwthy. So it gives me one app to kind of do all that stuff as opposed to you know, the jack of all trades versus best in class I'm not sure this is the best in class as an RSS app as an ePub reader as all this other stuff It is for me very handy to have a Jack of all trades in this case because it keeps everything in one place. If I'm on a plane, I can open up and read a book or I can read an article And because of the MCP connection with the robot suddenly, It gives me a whole new levels of behind the scenes automation that I can do with it without me having to do anything, which is a big advantage Well and people have asked me to build lots of shortcuts for them using Readwise because they want to save certain things and use the API. So I want to do more experimenting with it. Yeah This episode of the Mac Power Users is brought to you by one password Go to onepassword. com slash NpU You get twenty percent off your account One password is the service that both Stehven and I use to protect ourselves and our family It makes it easy to create, manage, and use an unlimited number of strong passwords, and sharing is a breeze with one password. You can securely share logins, credit cards, Wi codes and other sensitive data with appropriate permissions I just shared a one password loggin recently with a family member who said, Hey wait a second, I don't have this app Itesn't matter. You can share it with anybody And you have a lot of control over those sharing privileges. For instance, you can say, after it's used once or accessed once, then don't let that link be shared again. It's all very clever. 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I didn't have an app for this because I don't really do it I'm curious Do you time track yourself Yes You occasionally Okay I think time tracking is an excellent tool for you to to figure things out. As humans We have this assumption that how long things take to do And we're always wrong. I mean, we really don't understand it Like I remember I used to because Omnifocus is my favorite task manager. It's in limbo a little bit right now as I'm doing robot experimentation. People say, well, how much time do you spend doing that? And it sounded like I was like spending my whole day organizing my deck chairs on the Titanic. And so but when I do time trac and I discover I spend like ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes in the evening, you know It's not that much time. and Whereas other things like Let's say that you like Instagram woodworkers You might find that you're spending an hour a day on that. like and you didn't realize it. know. Um you time tracking gives you insight that you wouldn't get otherwise. My favorite there's a bunch of them for it. Timer is a very popular one. there's services My favorite one is from the guy who makes cotyps. It's called Ting And the reason I like it is because it's a Mac app., but that's where I do my work. And It looks at your actual time. And back when I was a lawyer, it was super helpful Because like I'd be working on a contract or something at the end of day and I' had to bill for it. and like, well, How much time did I spend in that thing? And it'll tell you how much time you spent in a Microsoft Word document during the day, you It's just super great and made by a conscientious developer. So it's always gettingiv updates and It's got features so like so you can add time when you're offline and do all that. I just think Daniel, you know I started the show talking about him and his c type as Apple. I think timiming is equally a gem. But it's not unheard. A lot of listeners are aware of timing But I do think it's the one. and the way I do is once a quarter I run it for a week You know, and I just it's like an audit system. likeike I every quarter I like I kind of try and regenerate what I'm doing and figure out what's important and stuff. and Towards the end of each quarter, I run it for a week or two and that gives me data. And if I get surprises in there, I may run it for a bit longer But I actually have a very good idea of how my time is spent because of that. And I think most people don't So this basically will track the time you spend in different apps and then you can categorize them afterwards as what it was. Yeah. And it's got some smarts where it'll start figuring it out what types of your life. It'll look at your calendar and it'll match that up to your calendar if you give it access. Um, it's just like he's got a lot of cool features in it And it doesn't just look at what app you're in, it looks at what page you're in. Okay, I might try this because that's the one thing I've tried Timery and toggle in the past because I used to hear CGP Greay and Mike talk about time tracking Yeah for a long time And I could never get in the habit of it. but I think if it's just going to proactively the things and then I can categorize it later Yeah, I would that And so the advantage of Gray and Mike's method is that you manually throw the switch when you change modes. In a lot of ways, that, you know, there's transition costs of changing between work and If you switch a timer, maybe that's in your brain, the little switch that throws This says, okay, now I'm done doing this. I'm going to do that. and that helps you But if you don't do that reliably, then you just get garbage data and you end up spending your time trying to figure out what you actually did You know to solve the problem of find out how you're actually spending your time You need a passive monitor. And I think that's what timing is. and Yeah it's it's better for that kind of thing Yeah, that's good. And also because I don't on single tasks in blocks like that. I mean, when I'm editing a video, I'll be locked in for an hour or two and just be editing in final cut But most of the time I'm jumping around because I'm starting this task here, I'll wait and go to something else. So yeah, that's curious But I think that's the one. In fact, let me know how it goes for you. I'd be curious to hear what you discover because you will discover things about yourself if you run that for a week or two. So that kind of data can be scary, but I want to know I want to it's good. Yeah, it's good data. so you can make better decisions So and speaking of decisions, I want to decide How I feel about notion Not fun, you know, just to see. I want to talk about it. Sore we're going to go to more Power ussers. We're going to talk about our feelings about notion, maybe reminders, things like that. So you can join and support the show by clicking the member link down in the show nots, become a member. You get more Power users ad free and our monthly bonus episodes, which we recorded a monthly bonus episode. I think there's two to three out right now. if if not, they'll be out soon And we want to thank our sponsors, Work Brew, ECM One password Thanks, everyone. We'll catch you next time