LINKDING

> Choose a lucky charm and hang it from the top of your Mac. It sways while you work, stays out of every click, and drops in when you call it. Ok, the developer pitched this and I said "why?" Then I read [this blog post](https://karthikmahadevan.com/lucky-dangle) and I'm sold on it as entertainment, with various types of spiritual significance from a range of cultures. Plus, the physics are really cool.

> Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon, > VirtualBuddy is a virtual machine GUI for macOS M1, M2, M3, M4 I can't believe it took me this long to find this. It's a perfect way to run both older macOS and beta versions in virtual machines, with an amazing interface and a ton of configuration options. Hat tip to Thomas Tempelmann for pointing this out.

> Your work deserves a better video. Screen record and produce stunning demos, tutorials, and presentations in minutes. This might be even better than ScreenKite. Truly easy screen recording with automatic zoom and transition, multi-clip, and can even clone your voice from a 20s recording for AI voiceovers.

Copy and paste images from Terminal.

> A native macOS command center for git repositories and worktrees. A great way to manage multiple worktrees and maintain agent context between them. Works great with [Tower](https://www.git-tower.com/) as an external tool using the built-in command options.

> Peeku is a private Mac workspace companion that locks your screen when you walk away, nudges you to walk and rest your eyes, and keeps camera processing local. The auto-lock feature only works with the direct version due to Apple limitations, so I'd recommend getting that one.

> Mainspring reveals the settings macOS hides — as 90+ one-click, fully reversible power-ups, recipes, and scenes. A precision tool for tuning your Mac. $29 once, 1-day free trial. A nice update to tools like Onyx, with easy reversion of changes.

Cool little utility that, as opposed to a standard clipboard manager, cycles through recent pastes as you hit the keyboard shortcut, replacing the insertion. It's the kill ring I've played with in KeyboardBindings.dict, but covers images and other formats as well.

> ScreenSnap Pro turns plain screenshots into pro visuals — backgrounds, annotations, GIF recording, instant cloud links. One-time purchase. This looks like a really great app. Not sure anything could ever replace CleanShot for me, but this looks to be a great alternative, and doesn't require a subscription. Trying it out for a while, I'll report back.

Markdown notes that fold. An interesting notes app for Mac and iOS with section folding, inline tasks, and iCloud sync. Just added support for Bike outlines, too. In beta, as far as I can tell.

A beautiful, native macOS text editor built for writers who value focus and simplicity. One-time $9.99 purchase.

Cool, focused little app for image conversion and compression. Read [the launch story](https://thabodavidnyakalloklass.medium.com/i-got-tired-of-uploading-my-photos-to-random-websites-just-to-convert-them-so-i-built-a-native-mac-e21ae53d6fa7) to learn more.

Super cool development for Tintd: it now runs in the background and automatically applies colors and icons based on folder names. Pretty brilliant.

> A menubar app for quickly sharing animated GIFs anywhere you can type on your Mac from Lex Friedman. Free to use for 5 minutes, then you can only post Rick Astley or Weird Al GIFs without purachsing, which is pretty funny. As a GIF app should be. *Side note: I was initially confused by the note in the docs that it was named "Gnome" because that's how Lex pronounces the G in GIF. I thought it was a joke, but Mastodon reminded me that the Linux version of the word GNOME is often pronounced Guh-nome. Which led to the usual arguments around the letter "G," and Lex weighed in to basically say he was trolling. And I fell for it.*

I can't believe this is free. > The screen recorder for people who ship. Fast & native macOS, no subscription. Auto-zoom, built-in editor, Metal-accelerated export. Free.

A fun one from Ralf Hülsmann: a retro LED dot-matrix ticker for the macOS menu bar, controlled from the command line.

Display macOS dialogs from terminal and scripts. Another handy scripting tool. There was a more involved version of this that I used to use years ago, but this fits the bill nicely for my current needs.

Send User Notifications on macOS from the command-line. A great shell script companion.

The fastest way to encode, decode, format, hash, and convert — 50+ developer tools, one click from your menu bar. No subscriptions, no internet required.

A cool (free) idea that lets you connect a macOS desktop widget to Cursor using an MCP. What I'll use it for is yet to be determined, but I like the idea.

A lightweight URL bridge for macOS automation, and a companion for [dy.lan](https://github.com/rhsev/dy.lan), which I [wrote about last week](https://brettterpstra.com/2026/01/27/a-url-router-that-turns-your-local-network-into-a-workflow-engine/).

Big update to Bartender. Tahoe-ready, widgets, and more. And yes, they've [responded to the blowback](https://macbartender.com/b5blog/Lets-Try-This-Again/) they initially received after the acquisition. Still the best menu bar manager I've found, though Barbee is getting there.

I've tested this out and it's pretty great. As a side note, there's a brand new app called [Stash](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stash-clipboard-shelf/id6752602271?mt=12) that functions more as an AI-powered [Yoink](https://eternalstorms.at/yoink/mac/) that looks worth checking out (as is Yoink). > Quip is the first clipboard manager powered by AI, built for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Automatically save everything you copy, organize it with Smart Collections, and paste anywhere using Super Shortcuts. Enjoy powerful search, full editing, and seamless iCloud sync—designed with privacy in mind.

This looks really cool for experimenting with Swift and Python. More languages to come. Similar to CodeRunner but with additional features (like AI).

> QuickSheet by GnomeApps is a micro-spreadsheet app for your Mac’s menu bar. Instantly create, edit, and manage spreadsheets, perfect for quick office, budget,… Totally free!

An MCP (Model Context Protocal) server to run AppleScript and JXA (JavaScript for Automation) on macOS. It's a pretty intense project for this kind of thing, but if you want remote scripting capabilities on your Mac and have a little bit of Node.js experience, this should fit the bill nicely.

> Customize and colorize your MacOS folder icons in one click. Choose from 1500+ icons, create custom colors, and make your Desktop beautiful. A handy little app I've enjoyed using.

This eloquently elucidates my frustration with the state of automation on the Mac. AppleScript offered us so many possibilities, whereas Shortcuts severely curtails them. And to make it worse, Shortcuts is still treated like an afterthought. I miss Sal. (Note that this was published in 2020, but the core complaint remains absolutely the same).

The excellent developers behind Kaleidoscope have acquired _another_ excellent app: Taska, a beautiful Mac app for viewing and editing GitHub/GitLab issues.

> Methods that responder subclasses implement to support key binding commands, such as inserting tabs and newlines, or moving the insertion point. I've had trouble finding this resource in the past, but if you play with DefaultKeyBindings.dict at all, this is the reference you need for all methods available to your key binding assignments.

I often promote LaunchControl for working with launchd automations on macOS, but Lingon (which I used many years ago) is still kicking and only costs $6. If you're a more casual automator, it's a great solution for setting up background tasks that run at intervals or when a file is changed.

While nothing has ever lived up to an old Mac app called Fluid for me, there are a few good options for creating Single Site Browsers (Mac apps dedicated to a single web service) these days. Flotato is the fastest and lightest weight one I've seen, while still offering niceties like automatic mobile view and dock badges. It can create a new app from a service like Hulu or Facebook almost instantly, and the browsers it runs are lightweight. Plus it has the automatic benefit of siloing your use of a service from your other browser activities.