A Mac App I'd Like to Have

Software
1

Like most people, I have quite a few apps I’ve installed for various reasons. There are some I don’t use or use very infrequently, but they could come in handy…if I could remember what they did. I’d like to see an app that would run through the apps, make a list of them, and do a 1-2 line synopsis of what they do.

Not sure how feasible this is, but it sure would be handy!

Thanks,

Tony

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2

You can get a poor man’s version from ChatGPT. Give it a prompt like “Provide a one sentence summary of each of the following Mac applications:” and paste in your apps (cmd+a to select them all in the Applications folder, then copy.) You’ll probably have to hit continue generating output a few times.

The only one it really botched was the new Ninja Turtles game on Arcade:

Time Sink: A time tracking app that monitors and logs the time spent on various applications and websites to help users analyze and manage their productivity.
Timery: A time tracking app that integrates with Toggl, allowing users to track and manage their time spent on tasks and projects.
TMNT: A file transfer app that allows users to securely send and receive files over the internet using encrypted connections.

3

You have two choices:

  1. use the app “file list export” to export a list of /applications, copy to chat GPT and have it list the purposes of each app.

  2. copy the list from file list from #1 to excel and do it yourself (this is what I did)

2 Likes
4

There’s an easy way to get a list of apps. Go to the applications folder. Select all and copy. Paste into a PLAIN TEXT editor (TextEdit works well). Your list is done. I do a search and replace to remove the .app, and it’s a nice list to work with.

@cornchip I’ll try ChatGPT. That might work if the apps are prior to 2021.

5

Thanks! That worked pretty well. I haven’t completely checked the accuracy, but it generally looks good.

1 Like
6

I know I talk about this App often.

But Notenik has a feature similar to what you’re describing.

3 Likes
7

Thanks for surfacing another nice feature in Notenik!

2 Likes
8

Indeed. I have downloaded Notenik but never used it for much. This feature alone is great.

9

I don’t know of a way to automate this, but files (and applications) can have comments. You can add a comment by doing a “Get Info” and adding the comment. There must be a way to do this programatically, I just don’t know how.

Anyway, in Finder you can add the Comment field in List View.