This entry was posted in iPad Journal and tagged Notes, Productivity, Simplicity, Text, Tools on March 6, 2017. Post navigation ← Contributing to Apple Maps Podcast Apps: Overcast vs Apple Podcasts →.
Welcome back productivity nerds. This is part two of a gripping trilogy on software highlights from 2017. In part one, I catalogued some of my favourite iPad apps from last year. The meat between the iOS device sandwich, is of course the Mac. So here we go again.
- The best calendar apps on the Mac and iOS are Fantastical, BusyCal, Calendars 5 and Timepage. Special mention to Informant 5: it's an app for handling a busy schedule and so includes a calendar.
- Pick the best journal app for Mac from the list below. Many long-time users of the Day One journaling app were surprised by the company’s move to subscription pricing. The app, which helps users keep a daily record of their lives, previously subsisted on one-time fees that thousands of users gladly paid.
Before we begin, if you’re interested a number of the apps on this list come with Setapp. That is something I’ve written enough about recently, so if you'd like to read more about Setapp, you can do so here. The apps in question are clearly marked with the appropriate links. Remember, these are just the highlights.
Back to the Mac
The barometer I use for organisational tools is how much time it takes to manage them. That I spend very little time in the app itself, is a good indication Things is doing what it’s supposed to. The way Things handles the inbox is better than any other task manager I have used. I don't feel like I am double handling tasks. I thought I might miss the automation of Todoist, but so far I haven't really, the email to Things feature is enough.
I still haven’t found the time to write this up properly, but I did give it a cursory post. While you can get lightweight versions of some features, there still nothing like Scrivener. This new version is a long way from the early skeuomorphic days. Now that the interface is so crisp, and clean, it looks every bit the modern Mac app. Further to the visual touches, a long list of new features have improved an already powerful piece of software. If you do any kind of serious long-form writing, and you’re still using a traditional word processor, I’m sorry but you’re mad. 1
Ulysses also makes the charts across both platforms. I use Scrivener a little more on macOS. But as I mentioned in the iPad post, all other project based, long-form writing, and content for this blog is created in Ulysses. I now also use it for posting directly to WordPress, and I couldn’t be happier with how well that works. Setapp takes care of my Ulysses subscription on macOS, and iOS.
Most of my reading, annotating, and editing of PDFs happens on the iPad now. I’m so used to doing that work with an Apple Pencil that marking up PDFs on a Mac can be frustrating. Despite that, there are occasions that demand more screen space, and sometime I need to extract a lot of text from a PDF. Highlights can extract highlighted text, and annotations in Markdown, which is something I cannot do on iOS — defintely not in markdown. 2 Now that DEVONthink handles all of my OCR needs, this is the only other PDF app I need on the Mac.
While coverage has focused on the iOS version, 2017 was also the year I went all in with DEVONthink on macOS. I once shared the superficial concerns of some prospective users, but even if i’d like to see the interface overhauled, I’m glad I got over myself. 3 DEVONthink is a heavyweight application, so getting the most from it takes time. The depth of functionality is perfectly suited to the archive, search, and retrieve workflows required of serious research, so that time is worth investing. I no longer have any trouble finding important documents. My records are organised with some sanity, and I know how, and where to find research I have spent considerable time gathering.
I have known about TaskPaper for a long time, but never really used it properly. That changed last year. With TaskPaper’s plain text super powers, I have cobbled together something resembling a system for planning and tracking my reading, among other things. It might seem like overkill to be employing a form of task management on top of a dedicated task manager, but it helps my scattered mind no end to seperate the finer details. Setapp
Anyone working with text should have this in their kit. No matter what that work entails. Marked is a kind of Swiss army knife for writers. If you are relentlessly obsessive about what you do with words, you will recognise a fellow traveller in this app. It even includes features to improve your writing. Anything I write about Marked risks underselling it. It’s worth a hell of a lot more than what it will cost you. Setapp
I archive a lot of data in DEVONthink, but I don’t use it for bookmarks. Instead I use the perennial wonder machine, Pinboard.in for archiving web pages. Spillo is easily my favourite macOS client for pinboard. Minimal, and opinionated with just the right amount of nerdiness. It’s fully scriptable, and even has its own plugin SDK. Since setting up an Alfred workflow with Spillo, I get more use out of Pinboard than ever.
Being and Nerdiness
Until last year, I hadn’t done any programming for a long time. I still don’t, but I can at least lay claim to vandalising code in my attempts to learn how to. For my humble use of git as it is, Tower is more than I need. Then again, using such a wonderfully designed piece of software can only be helpful if I’m to learn things the right way. Working Copy on iOS is currently my favourite Git client on any platform, but this is a pretty close second. Things could change any day now.
I agonised over choosing a text editor for learning development skills. With growing support out there for Visual Studio, I gave it a test run. If easier to configure, ultimately I didn’t like working in it. I tried Atom, and liked the general feel, but I can’t yet benefit from its configurability — honestly it felt kind of slow. In the end, true to form, I landed where I started. Now that I have it set up properly, Sublime text has become one of my favourite applications. As for extensibility, the Sublime SFTP package is the best thirty bucks I have spent in some time.
Another of the technical tools I require, this one has a lot of tricks. To call Forklift the best FTP client I know of would undersell it4. With a slick designed dual pane file browser, file syncing, drive mounting, keyboard kung fu, and all round excellence, these days it is always open on my Mac. Setapp
The most deceptively simple looking app I own. Super Duper overcame a momentary rough patch to deliver an unbelievable improvement to an already excellent utility. With the advent of APFS, it now creates bootable snapshots. The scheduler works so efficiently, I hardly even notice. I can’t begin to express the peace of mind.
The Digital Cage
There was an intense time-tracking trend among a sub-section of nerds last year. Trust me, that’s not happening here. I find the idea of tracking every aspect of your life disturbing. I use this app in a much less pervasive way, for tracking writing projects. I gather data on how long it takes me to write certain things, so I can better understand deadlines. Whether self-imposed, or not. Timing makes this easy, as it can automatically capture time spent in particular applications. Setapp
A contacts app is not something that would ordinarily interest me, I have only humble contact management needs. Since contact syncing started to work properly, I have been happy to use the native contacts app and forget about it. I felt much the same way about calendars until I tried Fantastical. The Flexibits natural language engine is like magic, and sure enough they have put it to good use in Cardhop.
Utilities
Spotlight can only take you so far. For keyboard warriors, an application launcher is mandatory. Beyond a long list of built in features, Alfred is an endlessly extensible, powerful automation tool. An active, and generous user community means there are workflows for just about anything, and help at hand if you want to hack together your own.
This is one of those utilities I never knew I needed. It’s common knowledge iTunes is a mess. Apple’s answer is to remove things without replacing them. Whenever it seems I can no longer do something with an iOS device, the answer is iMazing. Setapp
Journal Apps For Mac
I could have put this on the iOS list too. I published a post recently on how I use 1Blocker to keep me sane while using the internet. Whether you want to block ads or not, the web is often a shady place. Stopping yourself from being tracked might be a hopeless pursuit, but you can at least make it difficult. I’m happy knowing my computing resources aren’t being filched for crypto-mining. I’m also a control freak, so I’ll let through what I please thank you very much.
For much the same reason as above. I prefer to know what’s dialling home. While incredibly powerful, Little Snitch is too noisy for my liking. Radio Silence is much more simple, and yet it still gives me the control I want. In short, this little firewall rules.
Without this little utility, my menu bar would look insane. Version 3 was released a few months back. Instead of dropping beneath, the menu bar now toggles between your main utilities and whatever you choose to hide. A subtle, but worthwhile change. It works so well it will probably be sherlocked.
Making and Breaking
This is an aspirational app at the moment, it’s probably overkill. My image editing needs a fairly simple, and most of it is done on the iPad. Especially now, with Affinity Photo on iPad Pro. However, Pixelmator has always been an app that I could grok easier than other image editors, so I picked this up in the hope that I could develop some chops. What little I have done with it so far, has been a pleasure.
Another project yet to see the light of day led me to this audio marvel. If you have any cause for routing, or capturing audio on your Mac, this is how you do it. The modular, drag and drop, visual workflow, makes sense out of confusing audio chains. Along with all the built in audio processing, it even supports Audio Unit plugins.
- The idea of long-form writing seems to have taken on new meaning recently. To be clear, I’m referring to books, theses, and so on. For long blog posts, it might be overkill. ↩
- Unless somebody knows an app that can do this? ↩
- It could probably lose a few features ↩
- Yes, yes SFTP. Of course. ↩
Related
Journaling and writing blogs are considered as one of the best ways to record our memories or share our moments with others. Now with the advancement in software development and technology, we can easily maintain a video diary rather opting for old school journal. Hence, if you are person who loves the idea of capturing their precious moments in form of vlogs, here are 4 hand-picked video journal apps that are absolutely amazing tools for making video diaries. Some of them are web apps while some are applications. Any which way, these are applications you’ll love to explore.
4 Best Video Diary Apps For Video Journaling:
Here are the 4 best video journal software that can be used online or on your mobile device. Read on to know more about them.
1. MindLogr
MindLogr is basically a journaling software that includes video capturing capability. You can easily record thoughts and experiences to save and share it with people you love.
MindLogr asks for permission to record parameters like location, current health, your fitness and weather. Due to amalgamation of video journaling with overall health, MindLogr also offers a feature called ‘Mind Exploration Guide’ that helps you stay calm and peaceful. It also provides other guided logs to explore app to the fullest.
MindLogr is specially designed for video journaling. You can upload and tag files of different sizes. Moreover, MindLogr automatically compresses the file without compromising its quality while uploading it. Hence, it results into quick transfer of files.
The application allows you to customize logbook appearance such as changing background images. MindLogr keeps entries secure and even helps you to share content on social media. With MindLogr, you can even appoint a curator for your account who will responsible to manage videos if you pass away.
As a free version, you can only use MindLogr as a web app. To enjoy its mobile application, you can upgrade other versions. Here are the following plans: –
- $1 for a month or $10 for a year (Standard plan)
- $5.00 for a month or $50 for a year (Premium plan)
Although MindLogr isn’t much popular over the Internet, you can certainly try its free version for a taste of the features it holds and then decide whether to buy it or not. Click here to visit the website for more details.
Best Mac Journal
2. LiveJournal
LiveJournal is a wonderful video journal app that can be used to share content with like-minded people. With LiveJournal, you get both blogging and social networking in one hand.
LiveJournal is a web application, which means that you must create video and upload it to website. The mobile application does not contain an inbuilt feature to record videos till now. Some great features of the app are uploading videos and images, creating polls and offline mode. As mentioned above, LiveJournal offers a huge community of users where you can share and enjoy another users’ content. You can also comment on them.
The free version of LiveJournal has limited useful features. For no ads and extensive features, LiveJournal introduces three plans: –
- $5 for one month
- $15 for 6 months
- $25 for a year
LiveJournal has got many great features and can be called as one of the best video diary apps you will ever come across. Click here to visit the website for more details.
3. 1-Second Everyday: Video Diary
The 1-Second Everyday: Video Diary works around a different concept of capturing your everyday precious moments for a second. It helps you to capture your journey for a second and ultimately create an interesting story from your moments.
The video journal app has been rewarded twice with the “Best Use of a Mobile Camera” WEBBY Award. It provides unlimited mashing of several one second videos. You can set daily creative reminders to create videos via app. Moreover, the videos are securely backed up on Google Drive. You can also share mashed videos to different social networking platforms. To download the iOS variant, click here.
4. Journey
Journey can be considered as one of the most versatile video journal apps that works on different platforms. You can also access Journey as a desktop software that can be accessed offline or as a web app at Journey Cloud.
With Journey app, you can easily add video files to your diary. Like the Diary app, you can even record directly using the mobile application. Inbuilt video recording feature is also available in the desktop variant. However, you cannot capture videos directly using Journey Cloud. To avail recording feature on desktop app, you must buy the premium version of the app that costs $4.99 (one-time fee). You can also avail cloud add-on for $2.99 per month.
Best Mac Journal App 2017 Download
Again, the Journey app includes a long list of features that probably makes it the Google’s Choice app. It is integrated with Google Drive. Therefore, you can access your video journals from anywhere. Journey also allows you to upload images and panoramas. You can tag files to locate them conveniently. You can even download files in the form of PDF or Word file. Click here to visit the website. Click here to download the app. To download the iOS variant, click here.
Best Mac Journal App
These are the 4 best video journals we will suggest you explore. Currently, there are few applications that are designed to create video journals. However, these video diary apps will serve your purposes. We hope these apps help you create wonderful video journals. Share your experience with these apps in the comments section below.