Minimalist Notification Sound

I don’t know how I stuck with the super annoying default notification sound for a successfully expanded Text Expander snippet for all these years, but I finally got around to finding a suitable and non-intrusive replacement.

Here’s the sound in .mp3 format, for previewing it; and the .aif sound file to download and drop into your ~/Library/Sounds/ folder (both are Dropbox links).

Notifications sounds on macOS have to be in .aif format, and it’s a bit convoluted to do it with iTunes.

I edited the original sound file, which I obtained here.

Run a Photoshop Action from Applescript

Handy info for running Photoshop actions via Applescript on your Mac. I used this so I can send an image to Photoshop via the Acquire iPhone app (my “scanner”), and then have Drafts save a text file in Dropbox that Hazel picks up and tells Photoshop to run my default scanned sketch Photoshop Action on the artwork image.

Call a Photoshop Action from Applescript

Play & Control iPhone Audio on Mac

So you want to send the audio from your iPhone to your Mac, and be able to control the playback functions on the iPhone from the Mac? Airfoil and iKeyboardRemote will do the trick. Read on for how to do this, and why you would even bother. 

Secure Input & Photoshop’s Hand Tool Spacebar Shortcut

If you are a fellow Photoshop user, and have experienced an unexplained loss of accessing the Hand tool using the spacebar keyboard shortcut, this  may have been caused if you are running password manager software 1Password and have used the “Hide” menu option.

I would have never found this had it not been for the warning on TextExpander‘s menubar icon, and the resulting blog post they published regarding TextExpander and Secure Input.

Quitting 1Password and relaunching it fixed the issue for me, so I can only assume it was indeed the culprit.

Add Entries to Day One via Text File

I use this setup to automate the addition of new entries in Day One by saving text files via Drafts to Dropbox. You lose the location and weather info, but those can be manually added. The Mac app doesn’t even support them yet anyways.

The Apple Artist Podcast #15

I just posted our 15th podcast over at The Apple Artist. If you’re a digital artist working on a Mac, this is for you. Joined by my Mac artist friends Krishna Sadasivam and Tracy Bishop. We discuss the popular Cintiq alternative Yiynova MSP19u and the brand new Manga Studio 5. As usual, filled with other tips, app suggestions and other geeky stuff. I’ve even been told that PC artists find it helpful!

More Yiynova MSP19u & Manga Studio 5 – The Apple Artist Podcast #15 – The Apple Artist.

Applescript: Add Sender of Email to a Contacts Group

Thanks to some helpful folks over at Stack Exchange’s Apple section, I now have a handy Applescript to add the sender of an email to a specific group in the Contacts app.

TextExpander: Typing Shortcut Utility

TextExpander has always on the top of my must-have Mac software list. The basic functionality is simple: you type certain characters, and TextExpander replaces those characters with something else. As you can see in the screenshot above, a simple use for this is to fix commonly mistyped words. But that’s barely scratching the surface of what TextExpander offers. 

Hazel: Essential Mac Automation Tool

Hazel is hands-down one of my top Mac productivity software tools. And it’s one of those tools that tough to describe exactly why you would want it, because what it does is up to the user. In its most simplest form, Hazel is a utility that watches folders you tell it to watch, and does things to files that meet the criteria you set up. A very small set of actions it can perform are things like setting the color label of the file, renaming a file, moving files into subfolders, moving files to other folders (including the Trash), run AppleScripts and Automator actions, import files to iPhoto or iTunes, open files, set Spotlight comments, and lots more.

If you’ve ever used Smart Playlists in iTunes, then you’ll understand how Hazel works. But Hazel goes a step further and lets you perform actions on the files that meet the criteria in the “Smart Playlists”. If you are familiar with Folder Actions in OS X, Hazel is like Folder Actions on steroids. The best way to explain Hazel is to give you a few of my usage examples, but keep in mind that there are not “built-in”, nor are you limited to these actions. They are just some of the many things I use Hazel to automate on my Mac.

PopClip: Excellent Keyboard-Based Text Utility

PopClip for Mac is becoming one of my must-have Mac utilities. Its primary function is to do things with selected text. The app is inspired by the “action menu” for highlighted text iOS. But PopClip goes even further with the actions you can run on your selected text. Simply highlight some text, and the small action menu pop-up appears.