A shoutout to TextExpander, MacSparky’s sponsor this week. I’ve been a user of TextExpander for a long time. It’s been a real difference-maker in my workflow by doing a lot of the work for me.

TextExpander supports a variety of macros, and one supported macro is the Tab key. What does that mean for you? TextExpander can insert some text, press Tab for you, then insert more text.

For instance, I regularly send my assistant emails with updates about the latest Field Guide I’m working on. TextExpander allows me to use just a couple of keystrokes and I can start the new email and then trigger a snippet.

The beauty of TextExpander is the snippet will automatically type my assistant’s email address, press tab, put in the the same email subject line, press tab, and fill in a general template for the body of the email. The cursor is ready for me and placed right where I need to start typing the new information for the week. That’s a more efficient use of time. And that’s what TextExpander can do for you: allow you to take your time back. Get 20% off your first year. Leave the boring, repetitive tasks in the past: get TextExpander and focus on what matters most.

My thanks to MacSparky’s sponsor this week, SaneBox. My plate is full enough as it is, but I’ve got SaneBox to help me clear my plate by managing my inbox. I’ve tried using rules before, but things would slip through that weren’t supposed to, so rules didn’t work for me. What works for me, what does the work for me, is SaneBox. It takes some training, but SaneBox manages the emails that I don’t need to read immediately and moves these distractions into folders like SaneLater, and moves the unwanted and annoying ones into SaneBlackHole.

If you’re looking to manage your workflow more productively, try SaneBox with a free trial. You’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Don’t waste your time on the clutter and unimportant emails. Spend time on working on what are actually your priority messages and what’s important to you. 

This week MacSparky is sponsored by the Timing App, the time tracking app that tracks time for you automatically. It’s that “automatic” part you should really pay attention to. Because I do so much work at my Mac these days, I’ve been using Timing and it is really nice being able to have the application keep track of exactly how long I spent in this Word document or on that Website. It makes my time tracking data so much easier (and more accurate).

Also, the app recently got a new “Activities” screen which gives you everything you need to know including App usage and project time spent. Other new improvements include the ability to start and stop timers right inside the app and growing support for automation. For instance, I’m working on a Shortcut that will call out to the Timing web API and automatically start and stop timers from my iPhone and iPad. (It’s still a bit ugly but I’ll share it here soon.) If you’re curious, you can get started with Timing’s  web app to track time from anywhere, and combine that with Timing’s sample Siri shortcuts to start and stop timers as quickly as possible. 

If you want simple, accurate time tracking data and you work on a Mac, look no further. You can download the free 14-day trial today and get 10% off for the first year.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Daylite, which also sponsored this week’s Focus Mode webinar. Daylite has been the definitive CRM solution on the Mac for a long time. While most CRMs these days rely on a boring, uninspired web interface, Daylite has native apps for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, taking full advantage of all the Apple APIs. At the same time, Daylite uses the latest cloud syncing technology to give you your data wherever you need it. It’s like combining peanut butter with chocolate.

Of course Daylite already has support for Apple’s Focus Mode, including setting up Daylite notifications as time-sensitive. You can learn more about Daylite and Focus Mode right here. There is no reason your CRM shouldn’t give you that native app feel and feature list. Just head over to Daylite and check it out.

My thanks to this week’s MacSparky sponsor, TextExpander. TextExpander works for you to take your time back by helping you work faster and smarter so you can focus your time on your most important work by instantly inserting your text snippets with just a few keystrokes. 

Think of all of the different kinds of links you share everyday with your friends, colleagues, or customers. You can turn all of these must-see links into TextExpander snippets in a way that won’t look like alphabet soup, but that will also save you time. Once you create a new Snippet Group for things you frequently link to, like “My GIFs” or “Work Links” or “Affiliate Sites”, you would just have to type the abbreviation you created for your link snippet, instead of copying and pasting an entire address. For example, you could set up a snippet “/twitter” or “/instagram” which will pop up your account URLs so you can share links to your social media accounts. Or a link snippet could save you time if you have to go to a recurring video conference room. If you’ve created a link snippet for this virtual meeting room, you don’t have to go searching for that URL or email that has it for you to join that meeting. Think of all the link snippets you could create. 

Just a couple of keystrokes can instantly expand your snippets with TextExpander. It’s an instant productivity booster. You can leave the boring, repetitive tasks in the past when you get TextExpander and focus on what matters most.

Excited about the macOS Monterey? So are we! Daylite is an award-winning CRM and productivity app made exclusively for your Mac, and it’s now Monterey ready! Daylite empowers small businesses by improving team efficiency and making collaboration easy—everything is organized, searchable, and accessible, with or without an internet connection. Daylite is the only Mac-focused CRM app that seamlessly integrates with Apple devices and most of the built-in Apple apps and features, like direct Apple Mail integration, so you and your team can capture all email communication in one place. That means you can create opportunities, appointments and tasks in Daylite right from your Apple Mail.

Daylite’s productivity-focused design helps you and your team get more done throughout the full customer lifecycle. From meeting prospects and winning business to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through to following up for referrals and repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite.

If you live by the Mac, you’ll love Daylite. Start your free 30-day Daylite trial today!

SaneBox is this week’s MacSparky sponsor. There’s a lot of email going around, and SaneBox and its A.I. helps me keep focused on actionable emails and takes the work of filtering what does not need to be read right now.

One of the ways SaneBox does this is with the @SaneCC. It’s a filtering folder. What goes in there? It’s the emails I’m CC’ed on. It just makes sense to me. When I’m not on the “To:” line, that means the email isn’t necessarily an actionable item, more like I’m included on the information, a sort of FYI. So do I have to read it RIGHT NOW? No, and that’s the beauty of SaneBox. Once I’ve trained @SaneCC, I can go to this folder and read these emails later when I have the time to read them.

But SaneBox doesn’t just work for me, it works with me. If there’s an email from someone who is Inbox-worthy, I can train SaneBox to put the email from them into my Inbox, even though I’m CC’ed because I can control @SaneCC from my Trainings list. Once a sender is trained, SaneBox knows to let this sender gets to pass through the velvet rope into my Inbox.

If you’re curious how to get SaneBox identify your important messages, hide distractions, banish annoying senders, remind you to follow up and more, now is the time to try it out. You can sign up for a free trial and get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription.

I’m excited that this week’s sponsor, TextExpander, is about to release version 7. I’ve written and talked a lot about TextExpander. It instantly insert snippets of text that you’ve saved as abbreviations in order to streamline and speed up everything you type. What’s new with the upcoming 7.0 version is that it:

• Updates and unifies the user experience

• Improves main window search

• Improves performance and responsiveness

• Improves conflict management

• Broadens accessibility

• Has other fixes and improvements.

TextExpander 7 is expected soon and is already in the app’s beta channel. If you’re currently a user, you can check “include beta builds” in TextExpander’s Update preference tab to be prompted to update to the public beta. This is going to be a popular update.

My thanks to this week’s sponsor, TextExpander. TextExpander allows me and my team to work faster and smarter. I’ve got a team of people I work with and one of those people is an assistant. By using TextExpander, we can use shared snippets to keep us on message. I can manage and share snippets so she can easily and accurately answer some of the more common questions with just a few keystrokes. And I can style our snippet text and add images and links, which she can then easily personalize and edit when and how she needs to.

TextExpander gives us the ability to streamline and speed up what we type, which makes it easier for a productive Team MacSparky to to get our work done. Redeem an offer from TextExpander for 20% off and try for yourself how you and your team can say more with less work.

This week’s sponsor at MacSparky is TextExpander. With TextExpander, you create snippets, whether it’s a word, a phrase, a sentence or longer. Once you save that snippet with a short abbreviation, you can, with few keystrokes rather than typing your snippet out, quickly insert the text you want anywhere you type. 

There are some words and phrases that I can’t get my fingers to type correctly, or I don’t remember the correct spelling or where the accent mark goes. With TextExpander at my fingertips, I never have to worry about this. For instance, I like saying, “Forget about it,” but what I really mean is, “Fuhgeddaboudit!” I cannot remember how to spell that. I use four keystrokes and TextExpender pops in the 14-letter word. I’m lucky that MacSparky’s worldwide, and sometimes, I like to say thanks back in another language. There’s a Thanks group in my TextExpander library so I never have to look that up since I just keep (and update) TextExpander snippets on how to say, “Thank you.” 감사합니다, TextExpander.

TextExpander helps you work faster and smarter so you can focus your time on your most important work. Get 20% off TextExpander and get ready to minimize effort and maximize productivity.