Tag: Healthier

Overlooked Apps: My Favorite macOS Utilities

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If you look at this blog’s tag cloud, you can get a quick overview of some of the apps that are essential to my workflows. These are the apps and services like Omnifocus, Keyboard Maestro, and Pocket, but there’s another set of apps that don’t get as much love that are just as essential. In fact, I have used them for so long I often forget they’re not actually part of macOS in the first place. Today I wanted to share some of my favorites that don’t get as much love on the blog.

Bartender ($15)

I cringe a little bit whenever I catch a glimpse of a menu bar that stretches across an entire 27” display. Don’t get me wrong, I love my menu bar apps, but Bartender allows me to be much more intentional with how I use my menubar. My default menubar now only contains Fantastical and the time. Everything else lives tucked away in the Bartender bar or is hidden entirely unless I need it.

Minimal MenuBar

A view of my menubar while I’m working

One of my favorite features of Bartender is it’s ability to only show a menubar app when it has an update. This lets me see when Crashplan or Time Machine are backing up or my MacBook Pro’s battery is dying without having them in my menubar. Not only does it keep my menubar streamlined, but I now notice when something pops into it much more helping me to know what’s going on on the computer.

Taking things a step further, many of my menubar apps only launch under certain conditions thanks to Keyboard Maestro.

Healthier ($3.99)

Healthier is one of those menubar apps that Keyboard Maestro launches only when I’m at work. It’s function is simple – every 60 minutes, it overlays the screen with a quote and a quick timer to remind me to get up and take a break from my computer. Unlike other apps that remind you to take breaks, this one lets you continue to work if you happen to be working on something important which I like.

Moom ($9.99)

Apple tried to improve window management in El Capitan, but it just didn’t work in the way I had hoped. As much as I hate to admit it, Microsoft was on to something when they added the Aero Snap feature to Windows. Moom brings that experience and more to the Mac. Snapping windows side by side is something I do regularly and immediately notice when it’s not there.

PopClip ($6.99)

The first time I tried this app, I hated it. It was always getting in the way and seemed like a total nuisance at first. It wasn’t until I took some time to explore the various extensions for it that I learned to love it. Now sending highlighted text to Day One, Deliveries, Notes or Omnifocus are just a click away. It also automatically calculates word counts and allows me to highlight PDFs in Preview with ease.

QuickCast (Free)

Working in tech support, I’m often needing to show people how things are done. QuickCast is the best lightweight screencasting app I’ve found.

ClamXAV ($29.95)

While viruses are still fairly rare on Macs, I still like to keep some sort of virus protection on my computer. I never know what kind of attachment someone might attach to their support request or email. I also don’t want to be that person who unintentionally sends something malicious along to some poor unassuming Windows user. ClamXAV has been there for me as long as I’ve used a Mac. It’s not free anymore, but for $30, it’s well worth it.

GhostTile ($9.99)

This is one of those apps I never see mentioned anywhere. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m very intentional about what is visible on my devices, and many of the apps I like to keep running in the background don’t have settings to hide their dock icon. Apple’s also made it increasingly difficult to modify the app’s settings to hide the icon without also breaking the app. Ghosttile is the only app I’ve found that successfully hides the icons of apps I truly never need to have in my dock.

I’m always on the lookout for new apps, so what are some of your favorite “hidden gems” for your Mac?

Healthy Habits with Keyboard Maestro

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By this point, pretty much everyone knows about the dangers of sitting in front of a computer all day. Unfortunately, some of us work desk jobs and just don’t have a choice. Even more unfortunate is my tendency to forget to get up and move around unless I’m reminded. I don’t have an Apple Watch to remind me to move, and I’m hesitant to create too many alarms on my Fitbit Charge HR that might detract from my main reason for using alarms, medication reminders. Thankfully, Keyboard Maestro has saved the day once again.

Inactivity Reminders

A little over a year ago, I bought an app called Healthier. It’s a simple app that lives in your menubar reminding you to take a break by overlaying the screen after a time period of your choosing (between 10 and 90 minutes). Unlike most of the break reminders, you can override it so that it doesn’t prevent you from working when you’re in the zone, which I like.

I found having Healthier running all the time a bit too much though. For instance, if I’m in class, I can’t always get up to take a break as much as I’d like. Thanks to Keyboard Maestro, I was able to set up a macro to launch Healthier only when my Time Machine back up in my office is attached. This allows me to get reminders to get up when I really need them, sitting in my office, rather than all the time.

Note: If you don’t want to buy Healthier, and just want notifications or alerts to get up and move (without the screen overlay) you can also just use Keyboard Maestro to send you reminders periodically. Keep reading for more information.

Hydration Reminders

I’m terrible at remembering to drink water throughout the day. Even with a water bottle in front of me, I still forget, so you can bet I’ve spent a lot of time looking for the best app, water bottle, reminder – anything to remind me to drink water. None of the things I tried managed to stick though. It turns out Keyboard Maestro is perfect for this too (provided I don’t need reminders on my phone).

I have two separate macros enabled. The first sends me a notification reminding me to drink water every 45 minutes between 11 AM (when I’m typically done my morning coffee) and 4:30PM. The second is a bit more extensive, and actually prompts me to enter my how much water I’ve had and then enters it on the Fitbit website twice a day. (All I need to do is hit submit.) I have a tendency to forget to track my water intake, so this removes nearly all the friction of having to open the app or go to the website.

Mindfulness Reminders

Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m fairly high strung and easily get worked up about things, so I’m trying to be better at staying calm throughout the day. There are plenty of mindfulness reminder apps available but most seem to rely on a chime of some sort. Since I normally keep my Mac muted at work, none of these really worked for me. Much like my hydration reminders, I set up a Keyboard Maestro macro set to remind me to take a deep breath every 90 minutes while I’m in the office.

Keyboard Maestro seems to be the app that keeps on giving, and keeping me healthy is just one more reason to love it.