This week MacSparky.com is sponsored by TextExpander, the easiest way to start automating your work on Mac, iPad, and iPhone. TextExpander is a text replacement tool. With it, you can type a phrase like “ccell” and it will automatically fill in your cell phone number. But TextExpander is so much more than that.

Using TextExpander, you can have it automatically create the date and time. For example, when I talk with someone on the phone related to the day job and want to keep notes about the conversation, I just type “xdts” which, in my head, means date and time string. Then TextExpander automatically creates something like this, “2018-03-28 06:42”. If I need to put the full date in a letter, I just type “fdate” and TextExpander puts in the current date, like this, “March 28, 2018”.

TextExpander can still go deeper. It can use the contents of your clipboard to auto-fill in snippets. It can press keyboard keys, like the tab key, to automate filling in forms on the web or creating an email. You can get it for yourself and your team members so you can share snippets with your team members. 

I’ve done so much with TextExpander over the years that I even have a page of snippets I’ve created that you can download ranging from movie to reviews to conference calls. One of my personal favorite groups is foreign thanks where you can say thank you to people in most language. Sending an email to a French friend, just type “french thanks” and TextExpander gives you “Merci”. It’s like your own, personal translator.

To learn more, head over to TextExpander.com and let them know you heard about it at MacSparky in the “Where did you hear about us” field.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by one of my favorite Mac utilities, BetterTouchTool. Your Mac has a lot of input devices: trackpads, mice, Touch Bars, and more. BetterTouchTool makes all of them better. Anyone can set it up and become more productive in just minutes.

Lately, I’ve been investigating Obsidian, an interesting new Mac app. I like the app, but it is based on Electron, which makes some of the user interface wonky. So I spent 10 minutes using BetterTouchTool to map several of its more tedious UI elements to Touch Bar buttons on my MacBook. Now I can open the template window and switch between light and dark mode without preference spelunking.

BetterTouchTool doesn’t just improve the Touch Bar, but also works with your trackpad, mouse, and any other input device you’re using. No matter what app you use, a little more control can help out and that’s what BetterTouchTool gives you. You can get BetterTouchTool directly from the developer or as part of your Setapp subscription. Check out BetterTouchTool. It will make your life easier.

Everything these days is about artificial intelligence. Often people are using AI in apps where I have to wonder if it is worth the trouble. However, this week’s sponsor, SaneBox, is artificial intelligence at its best, helping you with your email. Imagine for a moment that instead of waking up to 200 items in your inbox, you wake up to five, and those five are the most critical emails that you need to read. You can have that experience with SaneBox. And SaneBox is not proprietary—you can use it with any email app or service.

SaneBox is the solution to so many of my email problems. What if you had an assistant who worked for you 24/7 who did nothing but sort and manage your email? Wouldn’t that be nice? That is what SaneBox does. SaneBox is the email service that adds a pile of productivity features to your email, regardless of what email client you use. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox at your back, you can:

• Wake up every day to find that the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant.

• Defer email for hours, days, or weeks, so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time. They have even added a new feature that can optionally auto-reply to snoozed email with something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m underwater right now. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email, SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

• Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

• Use their SaneFwd service to automatically send appropriate emails to services such as Evernote, Expensify, or Kayak.

• Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on, and MacSparky readers love this service. I have heard from so many readers over the years who finally figured out email when they signed up for SaneBox. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account? If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription.

We’re all feeling overwhelmed lately. One way to take your time back is with this week’s sponsor, TextExpander. Take your time back with the power of TextExpander. Repetitive typing, little mistakes, searching for answers – they’re all taking precious time away from you and your team. With TextExpander, you can take it back.

The latest version of TextExpander even has new and improved statistics reporting for organizations, including the ability to build reports with customizable date ranges for Enterprise and individuals so you can track how much time your team saves.

With TextExpander, you can:

• Keep your team consistent, accurate, and current

• Share your text and images with the whole staff to keep them on track. Everyone will share the same message and give the same answers to all customer questions.

• Work faster and smarter

• Use TextExpander’s powerful shortcuts and abbreviations to streamline and speed up everything you type.

• Create powerful snippets to save you time so that all you type is a short abbreviation, and TextExpander does the rest of the typing for you.

• Keep your whole team communicating efficiently and with consistent language.

• Share your snippets of messaging, signatures, and descriptions with everyone who works on projects with you.

The thing I can’t emphasize enough is just how easy it is to start using TextExpander. If you want to start automating but not spend a lot of time getting up and running, TextExpander is for you. Best of all, TextExpander is available on Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, iPad. MacSparky readers get 20% off their first year.

Magic Lasso Adblock is an efficient and high-performance ad blocker for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

It allows you to experience a cleaner, faster web—without ads. As a native Safari content-blocking extension, Magic Lasso blocks intrusive ads, pop-ups, and trackers when browsing the web.

Magic Lasso Adblock provides a 2.0x speed increase on common websites, improves your privacy and security by removing ad trackers, and works with Safari across all Apple devices. It is as if Apple themselves had designed an ad blocker. 

And unlike some other ad blockers, Magic Lasso Adblock respects your privacy, doesn’t accept payment from advertisers, and is 100% supported by its community of over 150,000 users. I didn’t realize it before, but a lot of ad blockers actually take money from advertisers. Crazy.

Version 2.0 delivers a host of new features including:

• Community allowlists: Once enabled, ad blocking is disabled on sites that have been frequently allowed by Magic Lasso users. Through anonymous crowd-sourcing of allowlists, ads are only allowed on sites the community deem worthy.

• Battery boost: Additional ad-blocking rules target and block JavaScript, which use significant CPU energy, ensuring pages are responsive while improving browser battery life.

• New look and feel: The new three-pane interface provides a quick overview of current status, easy access to see recent rules updates, and a simple way to view and configure allowed sites.

Download for free today via the Magic Lasso website, the App Store and Mac App Store.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Timing  a Mac app that keeps granular track of your time without relying on you to keep pressing buttons like those guys on Lost. Instead, Timing automatically tracks which apps, documents and websites you use — without start/stop timers. It then intelligently sorts that for you, assembling a beautiful time-tracking report.

You can point it at your calendar to help Timing figure out what you were working on so if you are a time blocker like me, you are already ahead, again automatically. Timing also can sync data between multiple Macs and even gives you a web view of your data. And if you are away from your Mac, Timing has a web app to track time from anywhere.

The Timing team is even adding team support so members can share projects across an entire team. If you are interested contact Timing’s developer for more details.

I’m a fan of timing. There is no better way to get accurate time reports of what you are doing on your Mac. Go download the free 14-day trial today and get 10% off for the first year!

This week MacSparky is sponsored by SaneBox, the email service I use every day to manage my email. SaneBox acts as your email assistant, sorting your inbox for you, so you only see the most important emails with less important email getting relegated to other mailboxes for later.

The best part is that it can work with just about any domain, email service, or email app. All of those great SaneBox features, like inbox sorting, snoozing, the black hole, and reminders when folks don’t reply to essential emails are yours without trapping yourself in a proprietary app. That’s why companies like eBay, Coca-Cola, Adidas, and LinkedIn are all using SaneBox.

SaneBox serves as a set of power tools for email, and you can have it today without switching providers or mail applications. If you’d like to become the boss of your email, go sign up for a free SaneBox trial today to get a significant discount when you sign up.

Let’s talk for a minute about your calling cards. What are you handing out? Something silly you got from a big box store or something you made on your printer? 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.

There is no doubt I am a geek, but I have to admit that I really love handing out letterpress cards. It is always a conversation starter. Put simply, Hoban Cards is where you go for the unique and classy alternative to conventional, mass-produced, soulless business cards. Best of all, use ‘MacSparky’ to get $10 off any order. Get yours today.

Spam folders are great—until they are not. If your email client/service decides to start throwing important email into the spam folder, then you’ve got trouble. I had that happen with some customer support emails a few months ago. So I went looking for way to stop an overly aggressive spam filter from upsetting customers without giving up on spam filters entirely.

The solution was with this week’s sponsor, SaneBox. SaneBox adds a pile of email features to your email, no matter what email service you use or what email app you choose. One of those features is the SaneNotSpam folder.

When your @SaneNotSpam folder is enabled, SaneBox constantly monitors your spam folder, looking for emails that might be inbox-worthy. When SaneBox finds one, it is moved into your SaneNotSpam folder. This means that either the person it was sent by or the service that was sending it was considered by the SaneBox algorithms to be normally inbox-worthy. Either way, it lets me find important email without digging through my spam folder.

There are so many more features you get with SaneBox:

• Wake up every day to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant.

• Defer email for hours, days, or weeks, so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time. They’ve even added a new feature that can optionally auto-reply to snoozed email with something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m underwater right now. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email, SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

• Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

• Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.

• Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on, and MacSparky readers love this service. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account today? If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription.