What was your "Why did I wait so long?" app of 2018?

iStatMenus is the one for me.

Thanks! I think I’m up to date on Curio. Appreciate the thought though.

It’s deceptive: the Mac/PC app is very plain and not that great looking, but it’s jam-packed with options and add-ons. I’d say my learning curve with it is ongoing, but I think anyone can get effectively started with it within a week or less. I’d suggest not using the latest version (2.1) and instead stick with 2.0 m for the reason being that many of the most useful add-ons aren’t upgraded to work with the newest edition.

The manual on the site is ABSOLUTELY essential reading to understand everything that can be achieved with the software. It takes a bit of tinkering, but within a week you’ll be sold on using it.

Beginning in October I began really using the Activity App in my Apple Watch (Series 3). Since Oct 13 (72 days) I’ve filled my rings everyday (move is set at 630 cal). This has been one of the key reasons I’ve lost 18.65 kilos or 41 pounds (from 85.75 to 67.10 or 189 lbs to 148 lbs) and never felt better. I’d had an Apple Watch since Series 1 but had never used the watch for health purposes. Now that I do, I can’t live without it. The Watch is adding years to my life.

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Wow! That’s fantastic

I’m trying to learn Thai again and someone mentioned Anki, so I downloaded it and gave it a try on my Mac. My only problem with it was the business model: every version on every platform is free, except for the iPhone which supports everything.
Since I only want iPhone, that seemed unreasonable to me and I ended up with
Studies by The Mental Faculty
This has the opposite model (I know), so I get to try it first on the phone, plus it’s on SetApp if you use that. I’d rather both just charged sensible amounts for each version.
Oh, and it doesn’t so blatantly try to ride on Anki’s success, like one or two other apps in this space.

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I was wondering about Keep It since Federico picked it as part of his best apps of 2018.

I’ve been using a very imperfect series of text files in dropbox since leaving Evernote. it’s not sustainable, but I don’t want to get locked into another ecosystem.

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That’s one of the reasons I like Notebooks. On my Mac I started using it simply by pointing it at my 30GB Documents folder as the ‘library’ and it almost instantly showed me all my files, available for viewing, editing and searching. I discussed it here:

Next step is taking my EagleFiler-only files and setting them up for syncing with the iOS app, and seeing how well it works cross-platform.

One of the nice things I read about Devonthink To Go on iOS is that you don’t need to sync+download all files to your iOS devices, but instead retain searchable metadata info on the devices, and be able to pull it down later if needed. Neat trick.

like you, I was intrigued, but the sample macros didn’t provide any value for me. I started by figuring out my annoyances and then try to solve them with KM.

For me, I created macros that changed my default printer based on what wireless network I was on, and a macro to dismiss all notifications at once. both involved shell/applescript, but I was mostly cutting and pasting what I found from other people.

Then I created a very long macro for when I start work in the morning that launches about 7 apps and three web pages, and then resizes/moves them around.

now I have tons of custom palettes (macro groups that appear on the screen) for individual apps.

I love it!

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agreed. it’s not like AnyList does things that no one else does, I just find it does everything a little better!

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One thing I do with it is change the keyboard language. When I plug in my Dvorak keyboard, KM switches macOS to US, and when I unplug my keyboard, it switches macOS to Dvorak.
Probably doesn’t make sense, but it’s really handy :slight_smile:

I’ve also created a palette of tag words for my reference library in Bookends. The Bookends tagging system is lacking such basic things as incremental lookup. So to be consistent, I have my palette and can just click on the words I want. This ensures they are all spelled correctly, and helps me limit the terms I use.

Oh, KM also can start my VPN client for school, type username, password, and ‘push’ so I get a notification on my watch. The same keystroke disconnects the vpn if it is running, so it acts as a toggle.

Day One is mine. I have written in it almost every day since downloading and subscribing to it last week.

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Hazel, I’ve had it for quite a while but never really used it until this year. Finally got some things working and am restructuring a lot of my regular filing tasks to take advantage of Hazel.

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Trying Notebooks out today, is it just me or does Dropbox syncing seem really janky?

Iphone version of which app? He mentions several

Setapp for me. Not one app, but as I get several of the apps I use regularly and the possibility to test new one’s, this is my choice.

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1Password. Had LastPass before but 1Password is a real game changer and makes having a password manager so much nicer.

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As a LastPass user I’m curious: What about 1Password makes it so much nicer?

I’m interested to hear your perspective as well. I made the leap from LP to 1P about a year ago. I like 1P a little bit more, mostly in the user interface. But if i knew then what i know know, i wouldnt have spent the extra money.

One of the big things was that 1Password noticed password changes or creating an account a lot better than LastPass. It was so bad for me on LastPass that I would make sure to copy the password to the clipboard beforehand just to make sure I had it. This is huge for me and 1Password really gets it. They get it so well that they save the password either way in the vault “just in case” and they have the name of the site along with it so you know where it came from while LastPass kind of hides there password history and it really doesn’t tell you where the password came from.

I also like how 1Password handles 2FA codes. LastPass made you use a different app and if you tried to install that app onto another device it would use the last device so all my 2FA codes only updated to my iPad which was super annoying. With 1Password when I log in it automatically copies the 2FA code to the clipboard and I can paste it right in, so much more seamless while still be super secure. 1Password built in QR reader is kind of cool too and makes it quicker to setup than opening the LastPass 2FA app.

Settings on LastPass are a bit much. You have two settings areas and so many submenus you have to go through to find what you want. While 1Password has a super simple settings area.

I don’t know if LastPass has gotten more shortcuts but 1Password shortcut are so nice. To log in I hit CMD+\ and it auto fills it for me.

When I use the 1Password X extension I love how it recommends a password when signing up or updating under the password text field. I also love how it pops up when you have selected a password and ask you to save it right away so you don’t worry about it.

I also trust HaveIBeenPwned more that whatever system LastPass uses to check for bad passwords.

Another big one is security. I love how 1Password uses a secret key which if you ask me should be a standard for the industry. And it seems LastPass doesn’t encrypt enough data, like URL’s and folder names are not encrypted which just seem not smart to me. But what really blew my mind is that they sent me a email a couple of weeks ago bragging about how their users created 67 million new passwords in 2018 which to me is data they should not know.

One more before I write too much is that 1Password also does diceware words for passwords. I love this because some accounts need long passwords but are easy for me to type in manually.

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