Capto: One App to Record, Edit, and Share Your Screen

This post is sponsored by Global Delight, makers of Capto.

If you’ve ever tried to put together a screen recording to explain a workflow, a feature, or a concept, you know how quickly it turns into a multi-app job. One app to record, another to edit, a third to annotate, something else to share. By the time you’ve bounced between all of them, you’ve usually lost the thread of what you were trying to explain.

Capto does all of that in one place.

It’s a screen recording, capture, and editing app for Mac that handles the whole process without you ever switching apps. You can record your full screen or a selected region. Add a webcam overlay and voice narration while you record. Then edit, annotate, and share, all from within Capto.

The annotation tools are where Capto earns its keep for instructional content. You can add arrows, text, highlights, and blur out anything you don’t want visible. The scrolling capture feature handles full-page and long-interface captures. These are the kind that are awkward to document any other way.

Beyond annotations, Capto has video editing built in. Trimming, cropping, cutting. The basics you need to remove a fumbled intro or a section where you lost your train of thought. Nothing fancy, but it covers what most recording projects actually need.

The use cases are broad. Remote teams walking colleagues through processes, trainers building onboarding materials, educators recording lessons. Any situation where you need to explain something visually and get it cleaned up fast. Capto keeps that whole workflow inside one app instead of five.

If that sounds like your kind of tool, Capto is worth a serious look. It’s available on the Mac App Store and the Global Delight website.

My Episode of First, Last, Everything

Jonathan Reed runs a show called First, Last, Everything over at MacStories. The format is simple: he asks guests about the first piece of tech they remember, the last thing they bought, and works through a conversation about everything in between.

I was the guest a couple of weeks ago, and it was a fun hour. Jonathan asks good questions. The kind where you start answering and find yourself somewhere you didn’t expect.

We talked about how I got into podcasting, the field guide work, the Robot Assistant project, and my thoughts on where AI is headed for regular people. There were also some embarrassing early tech memories I probably should have kept to myself.

If you want to give it a listen, the episode is up on MacStories now. Thanks to Jonathan for having me on. It’s always nice to step out of the host seat for a bit.

Mac Power Users 844: Apple Home

On this episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and David compare notes on their Apple smart home setups and cover what you need to know to build one yourself. They get into the weeds on Matter, Thread, HomeKit Secure Video, smart locks, and which cameras are actually worth buying. David also shares his ongoing tension between a HomeKit-only setup and Home Assistant. If you’ve spent any time with HA, you already know the feeling. Plus a lightning round of their favorite devices and a walkthrough of the best automations to get running first.

Episode Links

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

Mercury Weather: Forecasts, beautifully done. Download now for free.
Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code MPU.

In Defense of the Desktop / Laptop Setup

A few weeks ago, I came very close to buying a MacBook Pro. Not just any MacBook Pro. The big one, the maxed-out M4 Max with enough RAM to make a server blush. My plan was to simplify: one computer, everywhere, always. No desktop, no juggling.

I talked myself out of it. And I’m glad I did.

The thing that stopped me wasn’t the price, though the price didn’t help. It was something more fundamental. I kept thinking about what I’d actually be giving up.

My desktop Mac is an always-on machine. It never sleeps, never powers down, never needs to be woken up. When I come in first thing in the morning, everything is where I left it. Backups have run. Syncs have completed. My AI automations have been doing their thing all night. In the age of AI assistants and robot workflows, that matters more than ever. An agent can only do its work if the machine it’s running on is actually running.

There’s also the peripheral situation. My desktop has a big display, a microphone that sounds like I know what I’m doing, and input devices I’ve spent years getting right. Every time I sit down at that desk, I’m at full capability. No re-pairing, no hunting for a dongle. The laptop is for couch work and coffee shops. The desk is for real work. That physical distinction helps.

Then there’s the anxiety problem.

I’ve owned expensive laptops before. The problem is, they’re expensive. When I had a $3,000 MacBook Pro, I was perpetually terrified of it. Taking it out of the house felt like a hostage negotiation. I second-guessed every bag, every coffee shop table, every time it went through airport security. It wasn’t fun.

A MacBook Air doesn’t carry that weight. I genuinely don’t stress if it gets scratched or left in the wrong bag. And if something happens to it, nothing important is lost. Everything that matters lives on the desktop or in the cloud.

That’s the other part of the math that gets overlooked: you can get a genuinely excellent MacBook Air for around $1,100 (or a Neo for $600!). It’s fast and light and handles everything a laptop needs to handle on the road. You’re not compromising on capability. You’re just not paying for portable horsepower you don’t need away from the desk.

Meanwhile, the desktop can be as powerful as your work demands. Mine has unified memory I’d never need in a laptop and storage that would be eye-watering in a portable form factor. That’s where I do video editing, heavy writing, and anything that takes a lot of time. The laptop handles everything else.

The reliability piece is real, too. A desktop just runs. It doesn’t throttle when it gets hot. The battery never degrades. I don’t think about it. When I need to let a process run for an hour, I set it up and walk away. That kind of dependability is underrated.

And there’s something to the mode-shift value of two separate machines. Sitting down at my desktop means I’m working. Opening the laptop somewhere else means lighter work. That physical difference creates a mental one, and I don’t think that’s trivial.

The upgrade cycle is calmer too. An entry MacBook Air will be plenty fast for casual use for years. A good desktop Mac can run even longer before the speed gap becomes noticeable for real work. And when it’s time to upgrade the desktop, that decision has nothing to do with the portable workflow. They’re independent.

I came close to collapsing it all into one machine. I’ll acknowledge I’m in the minority here, but the two-machine setup does more, and stresses me out less.

Bonsai and the Slow Work

I spend most of my days trying to get things done faster. Better systems, better tools, better workflows. That’s kind of my whole deal. So it’s a little funny that one of the things I look forward to most each week is tending to something that will take decades to finish.

I’ve been getting into bonsai. And the thing about bonsai is that the tree does not care about your timeline. You make a cut, and then you wait. Sometimes years. You wire a branch into position and check on it next year. There’s no keyboard shortcut for this.

I trimmed a juniper last fall that I won’t touch again until this summer. That’s the plan. Leave it alone and let it grow. If I get impatient and start fussing with it, I’ll set it back. The best thing I can do for that tree right now is nothing.

That’s a hard lesson for someone like me.

We live in a culture that treats speed as a virtue. Get more done. Ship faster. Optimize everything. And I’m not going to pretend I’m immune to that. I built a career on it. But bonsai has been teaching me that some of the most important work happens slowly. You can’t rush a root system. You can’t shortcut the way a trunk thickens over years of careful pruning.

I’ve been reading Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity lately (I went through the Shortform summary first, which is a great way to get the core argument quickly). Newport makes a case I keep coming back to: real productivity isn’t about doing more things faster. It’s about doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, and caring deeply about quality. His third principle, obsessing over quality, is basically the bonsai philosophy in business terms. You don’t rush the work that matters most.

Newport points out that many of the people we consider most productive across history, writers, scientists, artists, actually worked slowly by modern standards. They had long gaps between major works. They weren’t optimizing their daily throughput. They were protecting their ability to do the deep, patient work that produced something lasting.

That landed for me. Because when I’m standing at my bonsai bench with a pair of scissors and a tree that may outlive me, I’m not being productive in any measurable way. Nobody’s going to see a result for years. But I’m practicing something I think I need more of: the ability to stay with something without needing to see immediate progress.

It turns out the same patience that makes a good bonsai also makes better writing, better teaching, and better thinking. When I sit down to work on a field guide, the best sessions are the ones where I stop watching the clock and just stay with the material until it’s right. Not fast. Right.

I’m not saying throw out your task manager. But I’ve started asking myself a different question when I plan my week. Instead of “how much can I get done?”, I’m asking “what deserves slow work this week?” Usually, it’s one thing. And giving that one thing the bonsai treatment, patient attention without rushing to a result, has made the work better.

The tree doesn’t care about your schedule. And maybe that’s exactly the reminder I need sitting on my desk.

The Studio Display XDR’s Quiet $400 Haircut

Apple just dropped the price of the VESA-mount Studio Display XDR by $400. The standless version is now $2,899, down from $3,299. The stand version stays at $3,299.

That’s a big correction for a product that’s only been on the market for a few weeks. And it makes me curious about the internal conversations that led to it. Did the original pricing miss the mark? Were pre-order numbers lower than expected? Did someone at Apple realize that charging the same price for a monitor without a stand as one with a stand didn’t make a lot of sense?

Either way, if you are looking at the new monitor sans stand, it just got a bit more affordable.

A Birthday, Not a Victory Lap

Apple turned 50 today. If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a fun animated history running on Apple’s homepage that sketches its way through five decades of products. It’s clever but not too clever. If you’ve been around through Apple’s triumphs and failures, it’s a good watch.

I’m glad Apple is marking the occasion. Fifty years is a real milestone, and the company has earned a moment to look back. The Apple II. The Mac. The near-death experience. The iPod, the iPhone, and everything that followed. That’s a story worth reflecting on.

But I hope they don’t overdo it.

The reason I became an Apple customer wasn’t nostalgia. It was the opposite. Apple’s thing has always been an unrelenting focus on what’s next. What’s the best product we can make right now? What problem can we solve tomorrow? That restlessness is what made them interesting and what kept me buying their stuff year after year.

A 50th birthday celebration is great. A 50th birthday year where every keynote opens with a sepia-toned montage? Less great. Apple is at its best when it’s building the future, not curating the past.

So happy birthday, Apple. Now get back to work.

March 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:

March 2026

2026-03-27 – The Lab Report for March 27, 2026 (M,I,P) (Podcast)
2026-03-25 – Sparky’s Robot Sample (I,P,M) (Video)
2026-03-24 – The J-K-L Window Trick: Keyboard Maestro on Two Displays (I,P) (Video)
2026-03-20 – Running Your Robot From Bed (M,I,P) (Video)
2026-03-20 – The Lab Report for March 20, 2026 (M,I,P) (Podcast)
2026-03-19 – 2026 Q1 Q&A (I,P,M) (Video)
2026-03-19 – March Deep Dive – Sparky’s Robot Assistant (Media Release) (P) (Video)
2026-03-17 – Exploring Bloom, An Interesting Finder Alternative (I,P) (Video)
2026-03-13 – The Lab Report for March 13, 2026 (M,I,P) (Podcast)
2026-03-12 – March Deep Dive – Sparky’s Robot Assistant (Event) (P) (Event)
2026-03-12 – Going Deeper with SuperWhisper (M,I,P) (Video)
2026-03-11 – Labs March Meetup (Media Release) (I,P) (Post)
2026-03-10 – Testing Acme Weather (I,P) (Video)
2026-03-07 – The March Labs Meetup Summary (I,P) (Post)
2026-03-06 – Lab Report 2026-03-06 (M,I,P) (Podcast)
2026-03-05 – Book Club: Intentional (Podcast) (M,I,P) (Podcast)
2026-03-04 – Labs March Meetup (Event) (I,P) (Event)
2026-03-03 – Stephen Millard’s Stream Deck Plugin (I,P) (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.

The Supportive Podcast Appearance

I was a guest on The Supportive, a podcast from Help Scout hosted by Mat Patterson. The episode is about customer support, small business, and figuring out what matters when you’re a one-person operation.

When Mat first reached out, I wasn’t sure an interview made sense. What I do is small. I make video tutorials and run a website. I’m not managing a support team or fielding thousands of tickets a day. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I actually care a lot about customer support. Maybe more than I’d admitted to myself.

We ended up going deep on some things I don’t usually talk about in public. My early days working at RadioShack. The values my dad taught me over lunch when I told him I wanted to be a lawyer. Why I chose a small law firm over the big ones. And how all of that shaped the way I run MacSparky today.

The part of the conversation I keep coming back to is about kindness as a business strategy. Not in a soft, abstract way. In a practical way. If you solve for kindness in your customer interactions, you end up attracting the kind of audience you want. The aggressive people filter themselves out. That’s been my experience for twenty years now.

We also talked about the tension between growth and staying hands-on. Mat did a great job of getting me to talk about things I don’t usually discuss.