Productivity tips and tricks for Mac, iOS and other platforms, including reviews of the apps and services that I use to get things done.
Spending too much time checking email can hamper your productivity at work and make it difficult to stay focused on your to-do list tasks. Over the years, I’ve refined my email workflow in an effort to boost my personal productivity, and the list below highlights a few of the tips, tricks and tools I’ve found most helpful.
Here is a list of the best productivity apps for Mac users, based on my personal experience. Since I continuously stumble across new applications and services, I’ll keep adding to it. So bookmark this post and check back from time to time.
In this Calendly vs. WhenWorks review, I compare two of my favorite calendar scheduling apps that I have used for the past few months. Both scheduling tools offer unique features, which makes it difficult to pick a winner. Why I Need A Calendar Availability Tool As part of my sales and marketing job, I have …
Dropbox is without a doubt the leading cloud storage service. No other solution, including Apple’s iCloud, has come close to what Dropbox has to offer. But with the release of iOS 11 and macOS 10.13, Apple has made significant improvements to iCloud Drive. In this article, I will compare Dropbox vs. iCloud Drive and share with …
Read moreDropbox vs. iCloud – Comparison of Cloud Storage Solutions
CrashPlan recently announced that it would exit the consumer backup business. As a result, the company will discontinue its CrashPlan for Home product and is advising customers to switch to their business plan or Carbonite. In the search for a viable alternative, I stumbled across Backblaze. In this article, I will compare Backblaze vs. CrashPlan …
Read moreBackblaze vs. CrashPlan – Comparison of Cloud Backup Solutions
If you are working in a team that is using shared (Dropbox) folders to collaborate, it’s sometimes necessary to point team members to where they can find an individual file or folder. Instead of sending them a link that opens in a browser, I often just want to point them to a particular file they …
Did you know that you can change the icon of files and folders in macOS? If you did not, in this article I will show you how it is done! Out of the box, macOS uses a generic blue icon for folders. That’s perfectly fine as you can always identify the folder by its name. …
Read moreThis is how to change the icon of files and folders in macOS
macOS offers multiple options to print to PDF. In fact, you can save almost every file as PDF, regardless of if the application supports saving to PDF or not. In this article, I will show you how to quickly print to PDF using a keyboard shortcut and automatically save the PDF in a particular folder. …
Have you ever noticed that “missing font” warning when you opened a document or spreadsheet on your iOS device that was created on a Mac or Windows machine? In this article, I will show you how to fix that problem and how to install fonts on iPhone or iPad using a free app called iFont. …
Grammarly is an advanced grammar and spell checker for iOS and Mac. It helps me write better copy at work and in my capacity as a blogger. If you write as much as I do, I would highly recommend checking it out. The Need for an Advanced Grammar and Punctuation Checker Let’s face it: the …
Read moreGrammarly Review – Advanced Grammar and Spell Checker
Both OS X and macOS offer built-in commands allowing you to take screenshots of the active window, the full screen and more. In this article, we will go one step further and see how to take a screenshot in macOS and automatically create a Dropbox link from it that you can share with anybody. Additionally, …
Read moreHow To Take A Screenshot In macOS And Create A Dropbox Link
As part of my paperless workflow, I save a lot of documents in PDF format. Some applications don’t support “save to PDF,” but fortunately, macOS has a “print to PDF” feature that works system-wide and in any application. In this article, I will show you how to print to PDF in iOS 9 or newer using …
Read moreHow to print to PDF in iOS without a third-party app
I am a productivity and automation freak, and in this article, I will show you how to encrypt a PDF and redact sensitive information using a combination of Automator, AppleScript, and PDFpenPro. I will also show you how to apply Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and how to detect if a PDF already has an OCR …
Read moreHow to Encrypt a PDF Using AppleScript and PDFpenPro
Creating a Dropbox link for files and folders already stored in Dropbox is easy. But in this article, I’ll show you how to create a Dropbox link for any file in Finder, regardless of where the file is stored using Automator and the Dropbox API. Note: The technique I describe below does not rely on …
Read moreHow to Create a Dropbox Link With AppleScript & Automator
I’m always working on improving my productivity, so I can get things done more quickly and efficiently. That pays off with frequently recurring tasks and technologies I use every day. In this post, I share with you my top Mac productivity tips and app recommendations. Many of the tricks below I learned from David Sparks …
Much of what I do on my Mac is working with files. That includes finding, opening, saving and organizing them. If you don’t have a good workflow you can easily waste time on each of those tasks, thus reducing your productivity. In this post I’ll show you how to save time by quickly changing the current …
Have you ever used the Help menu in macOS? Until a few weeks ago, I did not, missing out on a powerful feature I didn’t even know existed. Pretty much every application in OS X has its dedicated help menu. It’s usually the last menu in the menu bar, on the upper edge of your …
Spotlight is Apple’s answer to all your search needs in OS X. With the release of OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Apple has added additional capabilities to make Spotlight more powerful. In this post, I’ll share some tricks that make Spotlight even better at finding exactly what you’re looking for. Spotlight in a Nutshell Spotlight …
Workflow, a productivity app that Apple recently acquired makes iOS automation incredibly easy. In this article, I would like to share how I automate tasks and workflows with the Workflow app. One of the things I love about macOS is the ability to automate tasks, such as filing receipts. iOS was pretty limited in this …
I always try to automate repetitive tasks, such as filing receipts and invoices. For exactly that reason I created a script using AppleScript to help with those tasks. Now I have discovered an even better way to do that using Noodlesoft’s Hazel. After download and installation, Hazel is accessible through System Preferences or through the OS X menu …
In this article, I will demonstrate how to use Apple Script and Automator to create reminders in Apple Mail and any other application via a shortcut. I have tested the described technique works in OS X 10.9 Mavericks and macOS 10.14 Mojave and all releases in between. How to create reminders in Apple Mail One …
I’m very picky when it comes to organizing my workspace and that includes my desktop. One of the features that really helps me organize my screen is virtual desktops, which allows me to pin certain applications to certain virtual desktops, instead of having all application windows on a single screen. To add virtual desktops launch …
Passwords are a necessary evil that we all have to deal with. Depending on your online behavior you may be dealing with a handful to dozens of accounts requiring a password, such as your personal email (iCloud, Google Mail, Hotmail…), online banking, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. How many of you use a different password for …
Read moreHow to choose strong passwords that are easy to remember