Apps 52 posts

I just love the awkward Apple Music interactions on macOS... a link inside Apple Music will open Safari, only to take you back to Apple Music. lol

Between power outages and an exploding garage door spring, I still managed to get a build of Tapestry to TestFlight for the traditional push-to-prod-on-friday. We work on the app almost every day. It gets regular updates. It reads your RSS and your Mastodon and your Bluesky. It's pretty good on iOS. (Less good on macOS, I admit, but there's only one of me and it's rather a large project and macCatalyst is literally *the worst*.) Anyway, you should buy it or sponsor it: https://tapestry.iconfactory.com/

Last week's LookUp update for macOS included a bunch of new features, including the ability to annotate words with notes; origin maps, and pronunciation tips. More updates next week.

Also just a reminder that you can easily adjust chapter timings in the transcript editor. This works on the iPhone and iPad as well. Anyway, download ChapterPod here https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chapterpod/id6757309769 And read the full release blog here https://birchtree.me/blog/chapterpod-1-3-is-out-now/

ChapterPod has an update out now with a few nice upgrades! 1. Bring your own SRT for editing chapters 2. Audit page when exporting 3. Nice new icon

:tapestry_app: Tapestry sponsorship slots are available now and are an effective way to promote your app, product, podcast or service. They're simple, affordable and let you reach a large audience of engaged, tech-savvy users. Learn more and then get in touch! https://tapestry.iconfactory.com/sponsors/

RE: https://explore.alt.store/@altstore/116064858981971577 🚀 AltStore PAL 2.3 RC is now available for all Patrons! This is the final build before 2.3 with fediverse support & Liquid Glass UI — it’s packed with improvements, bug fixes, and a new app icon to celebrate AltStore PAL’s arrival in Japan! 🤩 For complete release notes, check out our Patreon post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/150672608

Valentine’s Day is approaching. But if you’re not quite feeling the love in the air, this Stanford grad student’s Date Drop app touts itself as a viable solution. “Our matches convert to actual dates at about 10x the rate of Tinder,” Henry Weng told @Techcrunch. “Instead of swiping, we get to know each person deeply and send them one compatible match per week.” Here’s more: https://flip.it/CnKFJ5 #Tech #Dating #Apps #DatingApps #ValentinesDay #Technology

This week for a big MacStories Weekly 500, I have two stories: - Three Ways I'd Like to See Creator Studio Expanded https://www.macstories.net/club/three-ways-id-like-to-see-creator-studio-expanded/ and Ideas for the kind of things you can automate with AI: - Clean up an Obsidian Vault - Batch print crossword puzzles - Filter unread RSS stories - Make quick work of Apple press releases https://www.macstories.net/club/four-ideas-for-automating-tasks-with-ai/

I built Claude Code Remote, an advanced companion shortcut for Claude Code that lets you type or dictate requests from your iPhone. Except…I didn't build it. My upcoming generative AI system did. And it showed me the future of Shortcuts automation. My story: https://www.macstories.net/club/claude-code-remote-a-companion-shortcut-for-claude-codewhich-was-generated-by-ai/

My S3 app can show metadata for files in the Files app. https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6447647340?pt=125181172&ct=mastodon&mt=8

StopTheMadness Pro 24.2 released in the App Store https://underpassapp.com/news/2026/2/2.html

@matt_birchler I‘m at a similar point every year when my @flexibits Sub renews. Everytime I come to the conclusion that it is the best and I’m not willing to sacrifice a few features to use another app - happy customer even if it’s a bummer that there isn’t a cheaper tier without a lot of „business“ features that I rarely use.

Behold the majesty of my work calendar! I'm using Notion Calendar right now because it's free and quite excellent. I'm just assessing the market right now, but are there any calendar apps you find truly spectacular at the moment? Do not say Apple Calendar, I have tried and tried, and it suuuuuuuuucks for me 😅

i have 56 reviews and 10 new cards to learn in anki today and now i get why people have a love hate relationship with this gd app

FB21948013 — [ER] Proposal: I think the App Store should have 'AI Nutrition Labels', same as privacy and accessibility ones #radars

The web App Store is missing the Utilities category. https://apps.apple.com/us/iphone/collections/eds.3acb8565-d7d4-4de9-8a15-5eb9ee98eca9

⭐️ Here's a closer look at Lights Off for Android, ported from the iOS Swift codebase to Android's Java, screen for screen, in full, by Codex 5.3. It uses the latest Material Design 3 patterns and styles, and it even has an adaptive 'dynamic' theme that inherits your system colors. It supports phone, foldable and tablet devices, with an expanded layout to match, and it runs all the way back to Android 5.0 (Lollipop) Download: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.steventroughtonsmith.lightsoff (Scroll back up the thread for more detail)

Transform How You Interact With Your Mac - New ScreenCastsONLINE tutorial JUST RELEASED - BetterTouchTool 6 - Part One - https://screencastsonline.com/mac/show/1543/ - View as part of your free 7-day trial membership.

Has anyone managed to get a Home Screen widget to refresh after a CloudKit sync while the app is in the background or terminated? A push wakes my app, it syncs with CloudKit, and reloadAllTimelines() is called, but the widget still does not update while in the background. I would have expected this to just work with CloudKit. As it stands, CloudKit and widgets feel like a poor match. Is widget push the only reliable way to force a reload in this case?

Textastic 10.9.2 adds syntax definitions for TOML, Kotlin and Jsonnet. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/textastic-code-editor/id1049254261?ct=mastodon&pt=15967&mt=8

I love Pi, and I wanted to embed it into my iOS apps, so I had it vibe ported to Swift: https://github.com/xibbon/PiSwift To learn more about Pi itself, check: https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/

This is how you provide access to older versions of your apps: https://www.rogueamoeba.com/legacy/ Supporting back to Mac OS X 10.2, congrats @RogueAmoeba 👏🏻

You can download the app here https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quick-subtitles/id6747410609 Or read more about the changes in this blog post. https://birchtree.me/blog/quick-subtitles-2-0-transcribes-a-one-hour-podcast-in-30-seconds-on-an-iphone-this-is-magic-and-its-out-now/

There's also a new model, Parakeet V3, which is about the same as Apple's model in terms of quality, but blows it out of the water in performance. It's genuinely 2x faster much of the time, and can transcribe an hour-long podcast in 30 seconds on an iPhone. It's nuts.

Then there's the simple fact these models don't get everything right, so there is a new clean up feature that detects likely errors and suggests fixes. This works for those with a Quick Subtitles AI subscription or who have their own Gemini key in the app. You can also manually edit the transcript.

I'm thrilled to announce the Quick Subtitles 2 is out out, and it sports: 1. Multi-document workflows 2. Transcript clean up 3. Up to 2x performance with a new model More in the 🧵

I'm thrilled to announce the Quick Subtitles 2 is out out, and it sports: 1. Multi-document workflows 2. Transcript clean up 3. Up to 2x performance with a new model More in the 🧵

Does Instagram Reels make iOS 26.3 Safari freeze for anyone else? It happens with StopTheMadness Pro disabled, so not my fault!

Never thought I'd see this: An official YouTube app for the Vision Pro! https://www.macstories.net/news/google-releases-youtube-app-for-apple-vision-pro/

A nice surprise for Vision Pro users. https://www.macstories.net/news/google-releases-youtube-app-for-apple-vision-pro/

YouTube app on Vision Pro at long last 🙌🏻

YouTube launches an app for the Apple Vision Pro, with standard videos, 180° and 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts; devices with the M5 chip can play 8K videos (Joe Rossignol/MacRumors) https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/12/youtube-app-apple-vision-pro/ http://www.techmeme.com/260212/p36#a260212p36

YouTube is coming to the Apple Vision Pro https://www.theverge.com/tech/878097/youtube-apple-vision-pro-visionos-app

I created today’s Bob’s Burgers Valentine’s Day wallpapers months ago and with the holiday looming they’re finally in the wild. Really pleased how this set turned out, very bright and joyful. 🥰 Even if you don’t watch the show, as with most of our releases there’s extra variants that are just fun and great to use on the Home Screen. Be sure to check them out by subscribing in Wallaroo or grab them as stand alone walls on our Patreon. 💕 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wallaroo/id1630565980 https://www.patreon.com/cw/iconfactory

:wallaroo_app: Celebrate Valentine’s Day the Bob’s Burgers way with these super-sweet wallpapers inspired by the animated series. 🍔🩷 Set wallpapers with a single tap in Wallaroo, our handy iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wallaroo/id1630565980 Also on Patreon as part of your sub or purchase the walls directly w/ no commitment https://www.patreon.com/cw/iconfactory #WallarooApp #ValentinesDay #BobsBurgers

@lapcatsoftware I can’t get it to reliably reproduce, but keeping an old Reddit tab hanging around in the background sometimes triggers it. (Also, Safari downloaded a couple pages *before* it started asking my permission to download on Reddit.com, so that bit of security theatre makes me feel great.)

I was about to get annoyed editing a URL in the mobile Safari address bar, but then I remembered StopTheMadness has a workaround for this problem.

Anyone else finding Reddit — and only Reddit — is sometimes downloading zero kilobyte documents of the current page in Safari?

Good news, everyone: My Safari extension ChangeTheHeaders has returned to the App Store! I temporarily removed the app back in November because of some bad Safari bugs, but the bugs appear to be fixed in Safari 26.3 released yesterday. ChangeTheHeaders allows you to customize HTTP request headers in Safari such as Accept, Accept-Language, Cookie, and User-Agent. https://underpassapp.com/news/2026/2/1.html

A new built is out for my #OnThisDay app in TestFlight. It includes many smaller or bigger layout changes. Let me know what you think

Speaking of real world examples, BlogBook uses Apex for preparing Markdown for EPUB export and it works perfectly. Just include the Swift package and presto.

TIL App Store actually runs sanctions check for app downloads…

AppLovin reports Q4 revenue up 66% YoY to $1.66B, vs. $1.61B est., and forecasts Q1 revenue and adjusted EBITDA above estimates; APP drops 6%+ after hours (Luke Kawa/Sherwood News) https://sherwood.news/markets/applovin-q4-earnings-software-adtech-ai/ http://www.techmeme.com/260211/p50#a260211p50

Apple Creator Studio Usage Restrictions https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/02/11/apple-creator-studio-usage-restrictions

I realized I haven't posted much about my Kickstart project recently – apologies! It's already out to the first TestFlight users, and I'll be adding more next week. I wanted to make a short video demoing key features, and it ended up being 20 minutes despite me going quickly 🫠 (The app does a lot!)

I hate how washed out and ghostly my monitor makes my face look during video calls, so I made a tiny little Mac app to address my vanity. https://lexfriedman.com/cameraready/ Camera Ready is free and lets you pick a color palette to beam on your face while you're on video calls so that you look even better. You already look great, by the way.

A huge congratulations to @kayathomas for her App of the Day feature! She was able to leverage our SQLiteData library to easily add privacy-first synchronization and data sharing to her app. Be sure to check it out are share with your loved ones: https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1854932622

This is a great gem of an app that I stumbled across recently. Dot is a menu bar calendar app that combines a modern design with a great core set of features. https://www.macstories.net/reviews/dot-the-menu-bar-calendar-thats-become-my-main-calendar/