Unclutter (App Store)(Website) is a handy little utility from the same developers that brought us DaisyDisk. A few days ago Macworld posted a generally favorable review of the app. I’ve been using Unclutter for some time. (Disclosure: DaisyDisk is a sometimes-sponsor of MPU).

Unclutter installs a drawer at the top of your Mac’s screen that you can pull down (by gesture or keyboard command) to get quick access to a group of files, an always-ready text field, and your clipboard. The ability to store files on your Unclutter shelf remind me of a similar feature I used to use in Quicksilver. It is really handy being able to put files somewhere for easy access later.

This is far superior to storing files on the desktop, particularly in light of the fact that I often use full screen apps. When I’m moving email attachments or graphics files between various places like Keynote and iBooks Author, the Unclutter file shelf works out great. I’ve tweaked this a bit over the default installation. For one thing, I’ve moved the location of Unclutter documents to a folder on Dropbox and pointed both my laptop and iMac at the same folder. This way if I put something in Unclutter on my iMac, it also shows up there on my MacBook. Another thing I’ve done is add a Hazel rule to sweep the desktop of any files over a certain age into Unclutter. This helps me, for lack of a better explanation, unclutter the desktop. Here’s the rule.

The next most often used bit of Unclutter for me is the the text box. If I’m on the phone or otherwise need to jot a quick note I’ll do it there. For example, yesterday I received a call from an attorney on a new matter and didn’t have her contact card or the matter’s text file set up yet in nvALT. So I took notes in the Unclutter text field. After I got off the call, I set up the necessary bits and moved the text in.

The clipboard is my least often used feature of Unclutter since I’ve been doing that with my launcher. (LaunchBar and Alfred both do this splendidly.)

There are lots of great utilities for grabbing and temporarily holding files but Unclutter is the one that’s stuck with me. The quick access combined with the additional text feature are what put it over the top for me.

This week’s MPU episode features Katie and I spilling our guts on how we manage contacts in OS X and iOS. In it, I got to talk at some length about how I use the often-forgotten Notes Field and how I’ve been using Cobook to help me get past some of the Contacts app’s shortcomings. 

Aleh Cherp at the Macademic has a post on how he uses tags and folders with file management. I’m still figuring this out myself but Aleh’s idea of tags for reference files and folders for project files is very similar to the way I’ve been using Mavericks tags. As an aside, the Macademic is a great site and completely worth your RSS subscription.

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As part of my little Automator screencast I did earlier this week, I used a special symbol in the file name. The character viewer opened during the screencast and I received several emails/tweets asking about how I did that.

A lot of people don’t even realize the character viewer is a thing. You can activate it in the Keyboard Preferences by ticking the “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar” box and the character viewer icons shows up.

Clicking Show Character Viewer opens a screen we’ve  had for some time in OS X that lets you pick among the various symbols not otherwise easily accessible.

Starting with Mavericks, Apple made this even easier. You can open a slightly friendlier (more iOS-y) character viewer with the key combination Control-Command-Space.

On the heels of yesterday’s post about alternative text selection, how about alternative keyboards? Where this type of utility was verboten on iOS for so long, Apple appears to no longer have a problem. The early leader for alternative keyboards is Fleksy (App Store)(website). I downloaded it and found it interesting but not so mind-blowing that I’d put all my text in their app exclusively.

Now Fleksy has opened up their SDK for anyone on iOS. The mechanic lets you start using the Fleksy keyboard once you activate the copy and paste pop-up selections. I’m curious how long the selection of that keyboard will “stick” after the users decides to start using it. If it reverts to the standard keyboard when you close the app, I think they are in trouble. If Apple really wanted to embrace alternative keyboards, they’d need to make it a preference. Don’t hold your breath on that one.

Regardless, I’m curious to see how much traction this gets. If forced to handicap it, I think this will be one of those edgy nerd-things. However the ability to use colors and themes may be enough to draw in the muggles.

The Thoughts 2 developer had an interesting idea for text selection. Specifically, he put right and left arrows on the text selection points that allow more fine-tuned selection. They’ve got a clever little video showing off the feature. I bet there are some pretty big fights inside Apple when they decide how fiddly to get with these controls.

Chris Brogan bought a Dell tablet and things went downhill from there. I’ve been out of the PC market for years now. Hasn’t anyone on the Windows side tried the Apple model of customer service? They should.

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