This Week in the Labs — June 5, 2026

Welcome to This Week in the Labs, my Friday roundup of everything that happened in MacSparky Labs over the past week. Below you’ll find the week’s new videos and podcasts, a few of the conversations happening in the member community, what’s coming next week, and a note on whatever I’m currently chewing on. If you’re a Labs member, consider this your week at a glance. If you’re not, it’s a peek at what you’re missing. (Note: the below links are directly into the Labs community and will only work for members. If you’re a member and not in the Circle community yet, drop me a note.)

The Week’s Releases

WWDC Week in the Labs

Announcement · June 2 · all tiers
We’re spending WWDC week together. I’ll be in the Circle chat room for the live keynote on Monday, there’s a Labs meetup Wednesday to talk through the announcements, and a Pathfinder deep dive on the new betas later in the week.

I Did a Thing

Video · June 2 · all tiers
I bought something. I spent a year talking myself out of it, and then I did it anyway. Members got the full confession this week. That’s all I’m going to say about that, for now.

Labs Book Club: The Creative Act

Announcement · June 3 · all tiers
The votes are in. Our July Book Club pick is The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, and we’re meeting Thursday, July 30 at noon Pacific to talk it through. That’s plenty of time to read along, so grab a copy and join us.

Deep Dive: Accessibility Features Everyone Should Know

Deep Dive · June 4 · Pathfinder
Apple’s Accessibility menu has some genuinely useful tools that most people walk right past. I covered the Accessibility Shortcut, Back Tap, AssistiveTouch, Voice Control with a full live demo, the new Accessibility Reader in iOS 26, and more.

The Lab Report for June 5, 2026

Podcast · June 5 · all tiers
This week’s Apple news and rumors, with WWDC days away. The last read on the rumor mill before Apple takes the stage.

In the Community

HTML Report — Robot Message Board
A member built a fully linked HTML report from about 1,350 NotePlan files using Cowork — pulling from a SQLite database and embeds — in roughly 20 minutes. The file links open directly in NotePlan. The thread drew a lot of interest from folks curious about the workflow and what else it could be adapted for.

Non-compliance / Flakiness / Verbosity? — Robot Message Board
One member raised a real question about the long-term durability of skill-based Cowork workflows: are code implementations more stable than skill references, especially as models update? It sparked a good back-and-forth about how to build Cowork setups that hold up over time.

existing cowork projects transfer? — Robot Message Board
A new member who bought the Robot Field Guide hit a practical snag: they already had Cowork projects spread across iCloud — outside Obsidian entirely — and wasn’t sure how to bridge the gap without starting over. Helpful discussion for anyone who came to the Field Guide mid-stream.

If you’re a Labs member and haven’t joined the Circle community yet, let me know and I’ll get you set up.

Coming Up

Next week is the WWDC extravaganza!

June Labs WWDC Meetup — Wednesday, June 10 · All members
June Deep Dive – Exploring the New Beta Software — Thursday, June 11 · Pathfinder

From My Desk

WWDC is Monday, and I’m in full pre-keynote mode. I have opinions about what Apple should do with AI this year, but I’ve learned to hold those until we see what they actually do. If you’re a Labs member, come hang out in the chat room during the keynote. Watching it with friends beats watching it alone.

Also, behind the scenes this week, my robot assistant and I have been moving the Lab Report back catalog into the Circle community archive. Years of episodes, all landing in one searchable place. We’re not done yet, but it’s the kind of tedious job I never would have attempted before the robots showed up.

Links of Interest

Ben Thompson published an interview with Satya Nadella about finding core competencies, and it’s a revealing look at how Microsoft thinks about its place in the AI race.
John Voorhees wrote about what “developer” even means now as AI tools pull more people into making Mac apps.
Figs in Winter on family affection, a Stoic take on the people closest to us.

The videos, podcasts, and live sessions above are inside MacSparky Labs. Join at macsparky.com/join.

Designed in California

Jason Snell and Myke Hurley just put a new podcast on Kickstarter, and the pitch grabbed me right away. It’s called Designed in California, and it tells the story of Apple across all fifty years of the company.

Jason did the research and writing. He and Myke present it together. If you’ve listened to either of them for any length of time, you already know that’s a strong combination. Jason has been covering Apple longer than most of us have owned a Mac, and Myke knows how to turn a good story into great audio.

Apple turns fifty this year. That’s a lot of history. The early Apple, the wilderness years, the return of Steve Jobs, the iPod, the iPhone, and everything since. I’ve read bits and pieces of it over the years, but I’ve never had it told to me start to finish by people who understand why it mattered.

You can read Jason’s full write-up at Six Colors and Myke’s take over at The Enthusiast.

I backed it. I don’t say that about every project that lands in my inbox. This is the rare one where the people and the subject both pull me in. An honest history of Apple, made by folks who love the topic and know how to tell a story. I want it to exist.

If you care about where this stuff came from, go take a look at the campaign and consider chipping in.

My New Podcast: Intentional AI with Chris Bailey

I’m proud to announce I just released a new podcast , and I’ve been wanting to tell you about it for months.

It’s called Intentional AI, and it’s a show about using AI to actually get your work done. Not the doom. Not the hype. The practical, useful stuff that gives you your time back.

The origin story for this goes back to my co-host, Chris Bailey, and me looking, in vain, for a show like this. Everywhere we looked, the AI conversation was either about the world ending or about AI fixing everything by Tuesday. Neither one helps you on a Wednesday afternoon when you’ve got real work to do. So we decided to make the thing we wanted to listen to.

Let me brag about Chris for a second, because I get to co-host this with one of my best friends and one of the smartest people I know. Chris has spent more than a decade studying productivity and written four books about it, including The Productivity Project and his newest, Intentional. He comes at this from the productivity side. I come at it from the technology side. He’s the big-picture productivity guy, I’m the big-picture tech guy, and this show is where those two paths meet.

The idea we keep circling back to is a simple one. Anyone can cook. If you’ve been telling yourself this AI stuff is too complicated for you, it isn’t. Teaching the Robot Assistant Field Guide has convinced me of that.

I’ve watched regular people build real, useful tools, and the barrier is a lot lower than anyone thinks. You used to need programming knowledge to make a computer do serious work for you. Now the computer brings the programming knowledge. You just have to learn the ingredients.

There’s a first-mover thing here, too. Most of the world hasn’t yet realized that the donkey work of daily life can be handed off with little effort. The people who figure that out early will get the most out of it. None of that is meant to scare you. It’s early, and being early counts.

Episode 1 sets the table. We lay out why the show exists, introduce ourselves, and I close with a Show and Tell on the Circle community I built with a robot, including the part where I asked it to make the whole thing look like a Wes Anderson movie. From there, we get into the architecture, the pieces, and the tactics, one at a time.

Intentional AI is part of the Relay podcast network. New episodes drop every two weeks. There are audio and video versions on YouTube, so you can listen or watch, whichever you prefer.

You can listen to Episode 1 right now over on Relay, and you can find the whole show here. You can watch the first episode on YouTube here!. Come along for the ride.

Focused 257: Stephen Robles

On this episode of Focused, I’m joined by Mike and our guest Stephen Robles, the new co-host of Mac Power Users who went fully independent last October. Stephen makes the case for the generalist, the person who’s good at a lot of things instead of the best at one, and we get into why that might be the right bet in the age of AI.

From there it turns personal. We compare notes on intentional technology use with our kids, talk through what’s on the nightstand, and run a fun round of shiny new objects. I had a great time with this one.

This episode of Focused is sponsored by:

Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code FOCUSED.
Keeper: Get 60% off personal and family plans.

Marked 3 Is Officially Out

Brett Terpstra just shipped Marked 3. It’s the biggest update in the app’s history. After more than a decade of Marked, that’s impressive.

If you’ve never used it, Marked does one job. You write Markdown in whatever editor you like, and Marked shows you a live, rendered preview in its own window. Save the file and the preview updates on its own. It sounds small. It isn’t. Once you’ve written a long document this way, going back to an editor that can’t show you the finished page feels like working blind.

Version 3 is more than a point release. Two-way DOCX support means Marked can now move your writing in and out of Word. Brett added Custom Processors and Custom Rules for writers who want exact control over how their Markdown renders. There’s also a Style Stealer that copies the look of a site you write for, so your preview matches what your readers will actually see.

The list keeps going. Built-in Mermaid diagrams, full MathJax support, new CommonMark GFM and Kramdown processors, updated Scrivener live preview, EPUB export with custom CSS, new PDF options, and a speed reading mode.

Marked 3 ships with early bird pricing of $2.99 a month or $29.99 for the year. Brett also sells a permanent unlock for people who are done collecting subscriptions, and it’s included with Setapp. There’s a free seven-day trial on the Mac App Store and the direct Paddle version.

Brett has been building Mac tools for about as long as I’ve been writing about them. Marked is one of his best.

Mac Power Users 851: Feedback

It’s a feedback episode, which means Stephen and I finally crack open the mailbag that’s been piling up. I went hard at Apple Home since we last talked. I nuked my twelve-year-old setup, ran Ethernet cable around the house for Aqara cameras, and put in an Aqara U400 lock that opens when I walk up with my arms full of groceries.

We also get into the smart scale I’m sending back, why I still process raw photos in Pixelmator Pro, and the risk-and-reward math of letting an AI read your email. Stephen brought actual contraband to this one, a DJI Osmo Pocket 4 that “fell off a truck” in front of his house. I talk about my new TRMNL X e-ink display, the new MCP server DEVONthink 4.3 added, and my long-running campaign to get Stephen to back up off-site.

Over in More Power Users, Stephen walks through every piece of gear he’s hauling to WWDC. Come for the home automation, stay for the battery hoarding.

Episode Links

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code MPU.
1Password: Never forget a password again.

The Escape-Valve System

At the top of my daily note, there are five little checkboxes. Shop. Bonsai. Exercise. Reading. Meditation. They aren’t on the calendar. They have no time blocks assigned. They just sit there.

For a while, I thought of them as “non-negotiables”. Every box had to get checked every day. That was the deal I made with myself. But it started to feel like a burden, and I kind of lost the thread. I love all five of them.

The shift happened gradually. I started thinking of them less as obligations and more as escape valves. When I finish a hard chunk of writing, or a run of support emails, or a meeting that took more out of me than it should have, I look at the boxes. I pick one. I go.

Shop time means out in my garage-turned-maker space, planing a board or cutting a joint. Bonsai means out on the patio, caring for a tree. Exercise could be a walk, a ride, or a Pilates session (I do A LOT of those). Reading means a good book, often something from the Greek philosophers, but also sometimes just a good story. Meditation is 30 minutes on the mat. Different activities. Same function.

Most days, I hit at least three. Some days I hit all five. But I don’t expect to hit all five, which makes it better when I do.

The variety matters more than I realized at first. If my brain is cooked from three hours of writing, I don’t always want to sit quietly with a book. I recharge better working with my hands. If I’m physically tired but mentally wound up, a few rounds of bonsai work do more for me than exercise. The five options let me pick the one that fits the kind of tired I’m actually feeling.

Time blocking gets a bad reputation because it can sound like programming yourself. You miss a block, and suddenly you’re behind on a system you made for yourself. I get it.

Escape valves change that feeling. This isn’t just taking a break. A break is passive — you stop and wait.

An escape valve is active. You’re going somewhere with intention, doing something that requires your hands or your attention in a completely different direction. My day still has structure and intention, but when I finish a hard piece of work, I’m not immediately locked into the next hard piece of work. I can look at the boxes and give myself permission to go somewhere else for a bit. The day doesn’t get looser. It just gets more human.

And the transition back in is usually where my best work happens. I spent an hour in the shop today, right before sitting down to write this newsletter. And I think it is pretty good. That hour wasn’t wasted. It made the work better.

If time blocking keeps feeling like a straitjacket, maybe the fix isn’t to abandon it. Maybe it just needs some escape valves.

May in the MacSparky Labs

MacSparky Labs members get to participate in member events and receive a number of exclusive videos and podcasts each month. Here’s a summary of offerings this past month:

May 2026

2026-05-29 – May in the MacSparky Labs (M,I,P) (Post)
2026-05-29 – May Deep Dive – Accessibility Features Everyone Should Know (Event) (P) (Event)
2026-05-29 – Lab Report — May 29, 2026 (I,P,M) (Video)
2026-05-28 – Plaud Note Pro AI Voice Recorder (I,P) (Video)
2026-05-22 – The Lab Report for May 22, 2026 (I,P,M) (Video)
2026-05-19 – Asteroid City – My Obsidian Theme (I,P,M) (Video)
2026-05-15 – Lab Report — May 15, 2026 (I,P,M) (Video)
2026-05-14 – Labs May Meetup (Media Release) (I,P)
2026-05-12 – TRMNL X for Status Dashboards (I,P,M) (Video)
2026-05-08 – Testing Typer (I,P) (Video)
2026-05-08 – The Lab Report for May 8, 2026 (I,P,M) (Video)
2026-05-07 – Labs May Meetup (Event) (I,P)
2026-05-05 – Mastering Text with Your Keyboard (M,I,P) (Video)
2026-05-01 – Lab Report — May 1, 2026 (I,P,M) (Video)

Labs content and its membership level: P – Pathfinder; I – Insider; M – Member

If you’d like to be a part of the MacSparky Labs, you can get more information and join right here.

DEVONthink 4.3 and a Privacy-First MCP

DEVONthink 4.3 shipped last week, and the headline for me is a single feature. DEVONthink now has its own MCP server.

If you’ve been following along with the Robot Assistant work, you know why that matters. MCP is the connector standard that lets an assistant like Claude reach into an app and actually do something.

Until now, getting Claude to work with your DEVONthink databases meant exporting files or building your own bridge. Version 4.3 closes that gap. The new server exposes close to 60 commands, so Claude can search, read, and organize inside your databases directly.

What I appreciate is how carefully DEVONtechnologies built it. They designed the server with privacy at the center. You control both local and remote access. It redacts sensitive information before anything leaves your Mac. It respects items you’ve already marked as excluded from AI. And it blocks direct filesystem access to the database internals, so the assistant works through DEVONthink instead of around it.

There’s a new Exclude from Chat & MCP option too. Some databases simply shouldn’t touch an AI, and now you can flag a whole database at once. DEVONthink does this automatically for encrypted and revision-proof databases, which is the right default.

The chat assistant inside DEVONthink got the same attention. It now redacts a wider range of sensitive data, including phone numbers, credit card numbers, authentication tokens, and anything you’ve labeled as a secret, before that text reaches a language model. That protection carries through to the AI smart actions and the summarize and transform features.

Connecting an AI to your knowledge base is a real decision. A lot of MCP servers shipped over the past year without much thought about security, and the gap showed. DEVONthink clearly thought about it.

The rest of 4.3 is a solid update on its own. There’s a new Markdown engine that replaces MultiMarkdown and adds callouts, citations, captioned tables, and better CriticMarkup. Markdown documents now handle smart quotes and dashes natively. There are new desktop widgets for macOS Sequoia, a handful of improvements to the web interface for DEVONthink Server users, and a rebuilt PDF viewer with a table of contents, page thumbnails, and full-text search.

DEVONthink 4.3 is a free update for 4.x users and needs macOS Ventura or later. If you keep your files and research in DEVONthink and you’ve been curious about putting an assistant to work on them, this is the update that makes it possible. After spending a week with the update, I’m finding myself loading even more in DEVONthink.