Posts Tagged → sponsor

Time Track with Timing (Sponsor)

I’ve talked and written extensively over the years about the utility of time tracking. Yet, many of us don’t track our time. And the reason is usually simple: it’s cumbersome and way too easy to forget.

This week’s sponsor, Timing, gives you the benefit of time tracking without the inconvenience. Timing is an app for your Mac that automatically tracks your time. You don’t need to push buttons. Timing just does its job. It’s smart, it’s beautiful, and it’s easy to use.

Just download and install Timing, and it’ll start recording how much time you spend on each app, document, and website you use.

And with the latest update, Timing will now import your iPhone and iPad usage from Screen Time as well! This means you’ll get the complete picture of how you spend your time across all your devices.

One of my favorite features is how Timing learns to associate certain activities on your Mac with specific projects. For instance, I track MacSparky Labs Admin time when I’m on the Memberful admin panel in Safari. So I set up a rule to assign time spent in the Memberful admin panel to that project and now Timing automatically makes makes the connection for me. But on the flip side, if Timing isn’t sure what I’m working on, I can manually set and adjust project assignments with a few clicks. This gives me solid, actionable data about how I’m spending my time.

If you’ve tried time-tracking before and gave up on it, try Timing. It does the work for you. I’ve even made some videos showing how the app works.

Avoid Email Overwhelm with SaneBox (Sponsor)

Email can get overwhelming for all of us. It just keeps coming. And the more emails you reply to, the more people write you back, generating even more email. When you get down to it, however, for most of us the truly daunting thing about email is sorting the wheat from the chafe. Where are the five email messages that truly matter in that inbox of 267 items? That’s where SaneBox, this week’s MacSparky sponsor, will save you time. 

Those newsletters and other unimportant emails you receive that you don’t need to read right away? You can stop them from interrupting your flow. With your training, SaneBox’s A.I. will analyze your email history. After learning what’s important to you, it ensures that only important email stays in your inbox. Those pesky emails that don’t require your immediate attention? You can get a daily digest from SaneBox at the time of your choosing and deal with them later.

Tidy up your inbox and let SaneBox deal with the clutter by sending them to your Sane folders. If you’re not quite sold, you can try it out for yourself. For MacSparky friends, SaneBox has a special offer. You can sign up for a free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Welcome to email sanity, it’s that simple.

Hoban Cards and Stationery (Sponsor)

We all have things that are important to us … things where we sweat the details. For this week’s sponsor, Hoban Cards and Stationery, that is letterpress printing. Hoban products are classy, tastefully designed letterpress cards and stationery that you can be proud of.

Your calling card represents you. Why not bring some intentionality to your game? This week, MacSparky is sponsored by Hoban Cards, where they use a 1902 letterpress machine to make cards that your colleagues, clients, and customers will never forget. I sure love mine.

Evan and the gang at Hoban Cards are masters at the craft of designing and making letterpress calling cards. They have some beautiful templates to choose from, or you can roll your own.

I love handing out letterpress cards. It is always a conversation starter. Hoban Cards is where I go to buy them, and it is where you should too. Throw out those ugly, conventional, mass-produced, soulless business cards and reach out to Hoban Cards. Best of all, use ‘MacSparky’ to get $10 off any order. Get yours today.

Drafts (Sponsor)

This week, MacSparky is sponsored by Drafts, where text always starts for me. Sometimes, apps need time to grow on me. With Drafts, it was love at first sight. First and foremost, Drafts is a text capture app. You open the app, and you’ve got a blinking cursor. Anytime I need to write down something on my phone. I tap the Drafts icon and get to work.

The thing is, my workflow on the Mac is the same. I keep Drafts in my menu bar. If I’m on a call and want to take notes or jot down a phone number, I click the Drafts icon and go.

But that isn’t all. Drafts is the poster child for third-party apps. You tap the complication, start speaking, and capture text that shows up on your phone and Mac.

In short, Drafts is the place to capture text. For some, that is enough. If you want more, Drafts has that too:

  • Drafts also has a full suite of editing tools.
  • Drafts can automate so your text gets sent to other places.
  • Drafts lets you create actions right in the app.

Drafts is the Swiss army knife for text. I keep it on all my devices all the time. You should too.

That’s not all, Drafts’ developer has a special deal for MacSparky readers. You can get 50% off your first year of a new Drafts Pro subscription with this link. In order to work, this must be redeemed on an iPhone or iPad.

P.S. This post, like all others, began its life in Drafts. 🙂

TextSniper: The Ultimate Mac Text Capture Tool (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by a killer Mac utility, TextSniper. TextSniper is a Mac OCR app that can extract text anywhere on your Mac’s screen and automatically save it to your clipboard, so you can paste it anywhere you need it. It can even read the text to you. The whole thing works a lot like the built-in screen capture on the Mac, just way more powerful. You know those websites that won’t let you copy text? With TextSniper, you can. Do you know the pain of getting a phone number out of a document? It’s easy with Text Sniper.

That’s not all. With TextSniper, you can:

  • Quickly get text from PDFs, Zoom calls, Presentations, and Videos. 
  • Read QR codes and barcodes.
  • Get text out of just about any image format, including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.

I use this app often. It’s made by a developer who spends much time making it the best capture utility on the Mac. You can even use your iPhone or iPad camera to take a photo for TextSniper to perform its magic.

Moreover, in an era where so much software is more about data mining than giving you a service, TextSniper doesn’t collect your data. The text recognition is processed on your Mac and does not require an internet connection. 

TextSniper works with macOS Catalina and later and also works with Parallels Desktop

Get TextSniper now and enjoy the fastest way to copy uncopyable text, wherever you find it. Use promo code TSMS2023 to get an additional 25% off.

Tidy Your Inbox with SaneBox (Sponsor)

Let’s say you get 50–100 emails a day. Are all of them important? Of course not. So are you spending or wasting your precious time filtering through your emails to get to the important ones? SaneBox, this week’s MacSparky sponsor, will save you time. 

Those newsletters and other unimportant emails you receive that you don’t need to read right away? You can stop them from interrupting your flow. With your training, SaneBox’s A.I. will analyze your email history. After learning what’s important to you, it makes sure that only important email stays in your inbox. Those pesky emails that don’t require your immediate attention? You can get a daily digest from SaneBox at the time of your choosing and deal with them later.

Tidy up your inbox and let SaneBox deal with the clutter by sending them to your Sane folders. If you’re not quite sold, you can try it out for for yourself. For MacSparky friends, SaneBox has a special offer. You can sign up for a free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Welcome to email sanity, it’s that simple. 

Turn Any Website into an App with Unite 4 (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Unite 4, the best app for turning websites into apps. These days, many of us are using web services that require us to navigate a website to interact with them. This creates all sorts of issues. When you close your browser, you are closing your tools. When you want to jump straight to the tool, there is no easy way. Some of them are Electron-based and use up your Mac’s resources. Moreover, they often don’t follow conventional macOS standards.

You can fix all of that with Unite 4. Unite 4 takes a website and turns it into an app. It’s dead simple. You type in a URL, and you get a Mac app. It even creates an attractive Mac-friendly icon. 

Of course, people use Unite 4 for productivity apps like Gmail, Hey, Slack, Basecamp, and every other web-based productivity app. But you can also make entertainment apps like Netflix, YouTube, and Disney+. Unite 4 goes a step further with the ability to put these apps in your status bar (which, by the way, is an excellent place for Slack) and create floating windows. It also lets you take a “slice” of a website and put it in your Dock for quick reference.

Best of all, MacSparky readers are getting 20% off this week. Stop going to web pages to get your work done. Check out Unite 4.

Timing: Track Your Time Without Timers; Now Even on iOS! (Sponsor)

Time is the most valuable resource you have. It’s the only resource you can’t get more of.

Yet, many of us don’t track our time. And the reason is usually simple: it’s cumbersome, and it’s way too easy to forget.

Not anymore! Timing is an app for your Mac that automatically tracks your time, no timers needed. It’s smart, it’s beautiful, and it’s easy to use.

Just download and install Timing and it’ll start recording how much time you spend on each app, document and website you use.

And with the latest update, Timing will now import your iPhone and iPad usage from Screen Time as well! This means you’ll get the full picture of how you spend your time, across all your devices.

I use Timing because of how easy it is to get good data. The app is smart. It learns how to categorize time for you (with a bit of help from you), and the reports are beautiful. I put screenshots of my Timing reports in my weekly/monthly reviews in Day One.

If you’ve tried time-tracking before and gave up on it, give Timing a try. It literally does the work for you.

Drafts Is the Tool for Text (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Drafts, the one text app to rule them all. I’m a fan of Drafts. So much so that we recorded an entire MPU episode about it. But if I had to summarize why I dig this app so much, there are a few points to make:

Fast Capture

I can get into Drafts and start typing or dictating faster than any other app. Sometimes it feels like an idea is a fish I’m trying to land. The sooner I get it in the boat, the less likely it gets off the hook. Drafts helps you land bigger fish.

Text Tools

Once your precious words are in Drafts, you can do just about anything to them. You can send them to others, format them, send them to your favorite app, and add automation. As Drafts has matured, you can even keep them all right there in Drafts.

The Big Picture

Drafts is the only text app I know that constantly evolves and grows. There is polish everywhere. Not surprisingly, I wrote this post in Drafts. If you haven’t tried Drafts, you really should.