This week’s MacSparky sponsor, TextExpander, is one of my favorite tools to recommend to folks interested in working smarter, not harder. TextExpander is a text expansion tool that changes your game. Text expansion tools have always been useful. Type “ccell” and the app automatically fills in your cell phone number, correctly formatted. 

What makes TextExpander so much better, however, is all the icing on the cake. And when it comes to TextExpander, there is a lot of icing. 

Need rich text and a picture in your snippet? Yup.

Want to add an AppleScript to your snippet? TextExpander does that.

Want to share snippets? You can do that. (I did that.)

Want to use it on Windows, Mac, and iOS. TextExpander does that too.

You can even get team accounts, so everyone in your company is giving out precisely the right message.

I use TextExpander every day, and the application saves me a ton of time. If you’d like to make your computer do the work, so you don’t have to, look no further. Check out TextExpander, and let them know you heard about it here for a discount.

This week, MacSparky is sponsored by the Omni Group and their new release OmniFocus 3 for iOS. I love the new version of OmniFocus for my iPad and iPhone. 

One of my favorite new features is the improved Forecast view. With the new version, OmniFocus mixes your due tasks in between your events, in order. Then, in Forecast view, you can see exactly how your day will (ideally) go. Click to enlarge the sample below.

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So much of staying productive hinges on setting yourself up for success without overdoing it. Laying your calendar on top of your tasks in order has really helped me be more realistic in planning my days.

That is just one feature of the new OmniFocus 3 for iPad and iPhone. The Omni Group is a brilliant group of programmers, designers, and generally nice people. Head over to the OmniFocus website to learn more.

Do you ever receive emails with winmail.dat files on your Mac? Windows users send them to me all the time. These files are windows formatted Microsoft Outlook email attachments and one of the rare file formats that your Mac has no idea how to handle. I get winmail.dat files too often, and I finally found the right app for dealing them with Letter Opener.

Letter Opener converts and displays the content of winmail.dat files automatically inside macOS Mail so that they appear just like any other email. With Letter Opener, you will never have to think about winmail.dat attachments again. Letter Opener is fully localized in Arabic, Cat, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

I love Letter Opener because, since installing it, a long-time problem just went away. Now I’m barely even aware of receiving winmail.dat files because everything is taken care of right in Apple Mail. And for you mobile warriors, there’s also an iOS version. Go check out Letter Opener today and use the code “MACSPARKY” for 10% off.

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I’ve heard a lot about automation this week as the Automators podcast gets launched. One of the easiest ways to get started with automation is by getting TextExpander installed on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. TextExpander is a text replacement tool and so much more. With TextExpander, 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, “2018-07-13 13:23”. If I need to put the full date in a letter, I just type “fdate” and TextExpander puts in the current date, like this, “July 13, 2018”.

But TextExpander goes much 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. 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 SaneBox, the email service that can change your life … today. For a lot of folks, email is that thorn in your side that you can’t quite ever escape. The problem is that email never sleeps. It just keeps coming at you. So why don’t you get on email tool on your side that also never sleeps. That’s SaneBox. With SaneBox at your back, you add a powerful set of email tools that can work in just about any email client. With SaneBox you can:

• 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.
• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up. (This is huge in my daily workflows.)
• 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. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account and bringing a gun to a knife fight. I’ve been a SaneBox subscriber since 2012. If you sign up with this link, you get a free trial and $10 off when you subscribe. Do you know how many MacSparky readers have tried and loved SaneBox? A lot. You should try it too.

This week, MacSparky.com is sponsored by OmniFocus. Check out the new OmniFocus, version 3 for iPad and iPhone. It’s everything you’ve always loved about OmniFocus, just more powerful and easier to use. 

The new version allows you to add tags to your tasks, like location, person, energy level, and priority. You can even sort by multiple tags to build perspectives that get exactly the tasks you need in front of you right now. 

Speaking of perspectives, there are some useful built-in perspectives with the new version including forecasts but if that’s not enough for you, with the pro version you can make your own custom perspectives. I use these every day to get my work done.

I’ve been hearing from readers that are worried about upgrading to the new version on iPad and iPhone while they’re still using version 2 on the Mac. This is not a problem. The Omni group spent a lot of time making sure that the files will work just fine across version 2 on your Mac and version 3 on your iPad and iPhone period. (Version 3 for the Mac should arrive later this summer.)

So stop waiting and get yourself set up with OmniFocus, version 3 for iPad and iPhone and let them know you heard about it here at MacSparky.com.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Smile Software, makers of TextExpander and PDFpen. This month Smile is celebrating 15 years of bringing its productivity software to the world. They’ve had several products over the years and there is an excellent series of blog posts over on Smile’s website about how the company formed and their journey.

Of course, I have an affinity for companies passionate about making productivity software and Smile has been delivering the goods to me (and a lot of other users) for a long time.

Have you checked out Smile’s current software lineup? If not, you should. 

TextExpander is a text replacement application, but so much more. As a result of Smile’s hard work, TextExpander is exponentially more powerful than a normal text replacement application. Here are just a few examples of what I do with TextExpander.

PDFpen has been my only PDF app on the Mac for years. I use it every day to review and markup contracts and otherwise get work done.

Thanks Smile for an amazing 15 years. I can’t wait to see what you do next.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Timing for Mac. Once installed, Timing watches how you use your Mac and gives you colorful, detailed reports on how you’re spending your time. 

You know that new feature Apple is adding to iOS 12 called Screen Time? Timing is like that, but for the Mac and way more detailed. 

Timing is a great tool to help you get your act together. It’s very difficult to keep track of how you’re spending your time. Throwing manual timers adds a lot of mental overhead and inevitably leads to bad data. Because Timing is automatic, you don’t have to think about it and the data is better. With Timing data, you can learn a lot about your work habits and where you can get better. Once you sort that out, Timing can help keep you honest.

Timing even scores your productivity based on what apps you spend time in. It’s a great app and using this link, you can get it at a discount. If you’re a SetApp subscriber, you can also get Timing as part of your subscription. Go download Timing today and see for yourself how much more productive you can be.

This week’s MacSparky sponsor is Gemini Photos, the new iPhone app that helps you tame your photos library. It’s easy, and smart to take extra pictures. You never know when that first one comes out of focus or your nephew will finally decide to look at the camera and smile. The trouble is, you always come home with a lot more pictures than you need. 

On a recent trip to Disneyland, where I took a bunch of random pictures and then shot the new parade, I came back with some 400 pictures. There was no way I wanted to keep them all but I also didn’t want to manually sort through them all.

Instead, I just ran Gemini Photos on my iPhone. Gemini looks at the photos for you and pulls out the best. In doing so it looks for the photos with the best focus, people with their eyes open and smiling, and even those that you’ve already edited and favorited. Gemini Photos then marks the remaining photos for deletion. You can scroll through and easily confirm or change the selection and then, with one tap, delete the extras. 

Gemini Photos can also unclutter your photos library with shots it thinks you don’t want to keep long-term, like screenshots. Again, everything is easy and you have the final say.

Gemini Photos is a brand new app and available now. Check it out.