All Current Tutorials

Whilst working from his web browser this week, Lee was trying to capture some text from an image that wasn't playing ball…He then discovered a workaround that he wanted to share.

This led him to creating this short video covering Live Text on macOS and how you can use it to capture information. At the end of the video, Lee fires up Shortcuts and creates a simple shortcut that automates this process for you!

The feature shown here will work on a Mac with an M1 chip or newer running macOS 12 or later.

A lot has changed with this episode's app in the last 4 years, but one thing remains the same: Ulysses remains a great writing app for the Mac. In this screencast, Mike walks through the major new features since ScreenCastsONLINE last covered Ulysses back in 2021.

You see useful features in action, including the ability to post directly to a handful of social media accounts, linking to other sheets internally, create great-looking equations, generate a table of contents (TOC), and more.

Ulysses runs on macOS 13 or newer; iOS or iPadOS 17 or later.

Snailed It Development Ltd have got another hit on their hands with the release of Capsule, the Medication Tracker for iOS and iPadOS that can really help keep you on top of the medications you need to take. It's a highly customisable app that focuses on one premise, and executing that premise well - ensuring that yourself, and your loved ones, take your medication when you should. With support for advanced scheduling, minimum dose frequencies, tags, Shortcuts and Widgets, this is a must-have application if you have a complex medication routine that needs regulating.

After a lengthy beta testing period, DEVONthink 4 is out and in this video, Lee kicks the tyres of the best new features that come with it. It will come as no surprise to users of DEVONthink that AI is now a core addition to the feature-set, however unlike other applications, it's not forced upon you at every turn. In fact, you can install the latest version and not even realise that AI is available -  which is a good thing. It can be used in a small capacity, or as the main framework behind all of your work -  the choice is yours.

Lee will walk you through how to configure DEVONthink to use a 3rd party AI engine for basic queries, summarisation, transcriptions, advanced queries with multiple documents, even writing scripts with the built-in Script Assistant! Not all features are AI-centric. DEVONthink 4 now introduces Audit-Proof Databases, which prevent modifications to ANY files contained within, we have automatic versioning for documents that are edited within DEVONthink as well as the ability to add a Table Of Contents to any PDF file. It's a solid update.

When Bear v2 came out in the second half of 2023, we released two shows covering the changes as it had undergone some major updates, which were extremely well received. Well the team at Bear hasn't rested on its laurels and has been providing its users with incremental feature updates since we discussed them last. In this video, Lee gives you a tour of the new additions you can enjoy in Bear.

He walks you through how to use Quick Open, open notes in Read-Only mode, enjoy new cosmetic changes, as well as his favourite feature: Callouts within notes. Bear is certainly one of the most aesthetically pleasing applications on the market today.

Bear runs on macOS 12.4 (Monterey) or newer; iOS and iPadOS 15.6 or later.

Have you ever wished you could write your own application but didn't know where to start? Do you find programming to be difficult and intimidating? Well it's now possible to create apps from scratch with zero programming knowledge; All you need is an idea.

In this tutorial, Don dives into the power of Replit, a web-based platform that creates apps, websites and more, without you needing to write a single line of code. You learn alongside Don as he designs a simple to-do app, improving on it using Replit Agent which does the heavy lifting, and bringing it to life as a fully featured, multi-user web app and iPhone app.

While many apps like Apple’s native Passwords do a good job of organising and securing your login credentials, there are many more types of data that need the same treatment. Access provides a secure space to store a range of information like bank details, drivers licences and passports. With even more categories that include gift cards and software licences. This app can secure almost anything with private, customisable spaces and provides the perfect addition to your regular passwords manager.

Many apps are built around the actual writing of a screenplay or novel but neglect the story behind the story.  Anyone involved in creative writing knows the backstory of their characters, the locations of their stories, events, and an endless amount of information that informs what you eventually come to write. Untold Novel accounts for all this information, providing seperate categories to organise everything and allowing it all to be viewed in context to each other. Over time you’ll build out a rich backstory to begin writing your main one.

Whilst scouting through some recent Indie app releases, Lee happened upon a wonderful utility for macOS that helps streamline your Desktop items. If you are the kind of user who loves having a desktop full of files and folders, yet finds it gets overloaded, InfiniDesk is for you, as you can create individual virtual desktops that house subsets of these items.

This tip video starts off with an overview of macOS Desktop Spaces and how they work, and concludes with a walkthrough of the InfiniDesk application.

In the first set of apps by the prolific developer Sindre Sorhus, Allison taught you how to use Dato, Aiko, and Velja. She's back with four more small but powerful apps from Sindre.

Plain Text Editor for Mac, iPad, and iPhone gives you a place to get your thoughts down without distraction of things like formatting.

Online Check simply tells you when your Mac has gone offline, and when it goes back online.

If Dato was too much in a calendar menu bar app, Today might be for you. It only shows you the things on your calendar today.

Any Text will let you create text widgets on your lockscreen or home screen of your Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

In Show 1414, Lee looked at the Option key on macOS and how it can be used in conjunction with other keys on your keyboard to get to commonly-used actions quickly. There was a lot there, however it's not the only key with hidden talents; The Globe key (also known as the Function key) performs a similar role. In this video, Lee shows you some of the useful functionality it's hiding that might very well be of use to you when spending time at your Mac.As a bonus, you also get a brief look at BetterTouchTool, a wonderful utility that Lee used to remap one of the top-row function keys.

Ecamm Live may be best known as a tool for live streamers, but this powerful Mac video production studio can also significantly improve the quality (and effectiveness) of any online workshop or presentation.In this screencast, Mike walks you through the Ecamm Live interface and shows some specific workflows for switching camera sources, creating scenes. He also goes over using the Ecamm's virtual camera with Zoom to make your next meeting a lot more polished.Ecamm Live runs on a Mac from 2015 or later, running macOS 11.2 or newer.

It's time to get a little geeky! When it comes to using Mail daily, lots of tasks can become repetitive and whilst it may not seem like a lot of time is wasted on these actions, when you add up the time involved, it soon builds up. Now lots of these tasks can be automated with a little bit of AppleScript and in this video, Lee walks you through three simple examples that will help create new message templates, download files to a specific location as well as move messages and change their flagged and read status.

You can also download the text files Lee uses as examples, from the link below.

Proton Mail is part of a growing suite of privacy-focused applications developed by scientists who met at CERN. Designed with security and freedom as core principles, Proton Mail not only offers robust encryption—it also delivers a clean, user-friendly interface.

In this video, Lee guides you through everything you need to know to get started. You’ll learn how to set up different types of Proton Mail accounts, compose encrypted emails, and see what it’s like for someone without a Proton account to receive a password-protected message. Lee also covers how to forward emails from Gmail into Proton Mail—and even how to migrate your entire Gmail account if you’re ready to make the switch.

For some of us, organising a trip can be a nice way to look forward to it, while others just want to be there already. Travel Scan is the app for both of these scenarios. You can scan screenshots and PDF files of your itinerary, event tickets or anything else you might have handy, and Travel Scan captures the details and converts them into events that help you visualise your journey. The app also includes a map view that shows you previous itineraries so you can reminisce, or perhaps go on that same trip a second time!

Join Darcy as your guide on this exploration of Travel Scan and its numerous features.

Travel Scan runs on iOS and iPadOS 15.1 or later.

Focusmo is a new app on the scene that streamlines task management. You can use it to capture text from anywhere on your computer, then begin a related task right away, or save it to your queue for later. You can organise you tasks then work through them one by one using the built-in Pomodoro timer, which invites you to take short, regular breaks. All of your completed tasks can sync retroactively to your calendar so you're able to look back on your completed work and its duration. Download your trial of Focusmo and follow along with Darcy as he shows you the ins and outs of this useful app.

Focusmo runs on macOS 11 or newer, and offers a 3-day trial, after which you have a few purchase options — see pricing link below for details.

Terminology is celebrating its 15th birthday this year and to celebrate, it's undergone a massive redesign from the ground up. For those of you who don't know what this wonderful application can do, then this video may surprise you. I use it as my go-to tool for researching a subject or topic when I'm working on the iPad or iPhone. Yes, it started life primarily as a dictionary and thesaurus however over the years it has grown into so much more, and with hooks into some of your favourite AI services, such as ChatGPT, it's the Research app you may not have known you needed

More of a conceptual video this time round as Lee walks you through his menu bar setup, starting with a look at how it's structured, followed by a brief look at the software used to manage it. Then, the bulk of the video centres on some brief overviews as to the apps themselves, and how they are used. If you are looking for inspiration as to how to set up your own menu bar, or just look for some new apps, this could be the video for you.

If you've decided to go all in on Apple Notes for your note-taking needs, it doesn't take long for it to get messy and disorganised.  Those short notes that you capture over the course of the day can build up and before you know it, you have a slew of them that make it difficult to navigate easily.In this video, Lee demonstrates how to organise your notes so that you can find what you need when you need it. You learn about folders and Smart folders, and how to use tags (and its lesser-know cousins, negative tags!).  Get ready to give your Notes collection a much-needed overhaul!Notes requires macOS 11 or newer, iOS or iPadOS 9 and later.

Large language models (LLMs for short) have been making lots of waves in the past year especially, but Google's NotebookLM takes a different approach. It does so by providing answers based on only the sources you choose to upload to it. This gives you responses that are much more specific and relevant.

In this episode, Mike covers the new iOS version of this one-of-a-kind research assistant. You get to learn how to create notebooks, have a chat with your source documents and files, create a two-host podcast based on your sources, and much more. Mike also points out the differences between the iOS version and NotebookLM on the web.

NotebookLM on iOS requires iOS 17 or newer.