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The Journal.

Tips, guides and honest essays from the people who build the apps, plus release notes, straight from the apps’ own update feeds.

Guide · 6 minMove off browser-saved passwords in an hourThe browser's password box is fine until the day it isn't. Here's the migration in order, which passwords to fix first, and the one risk you're taking on.Guide · 5 minSend a big file to another device without the cloudUploading a 4 GB video so it can come straight back down to a laptop in the same room is absurd. Three tools, and when each one is the right answer.Guide · 7 minLeave a photo subscription without losing your libraryGetting the files out is the easy part. The metadata trap, the backup maths, and the honest reason most people should stay put.List · 6 minPaid tools you can replace with a browser tabA short list of jobs that no longer need an install, a licence or an upload, and the cases where paying is still the right answer.Guide · 6 minYour menu bar is out of room. Here's the triage.Every app wants a permanent seat at the top of your screen. Almost none of them have earned it. A three-bucket system for taking the bar back.Guide · 8 minWhy your Mac wakes at 3am, and how to read the sleep logThe fan spins up in a dark room and nobody's touching it. macOS records exactly why. Here's how to read the log and fix the cause instead of guessing.Guide · 5 minMechanical keyboard sound without the mechanical keyboardTyping sounds are the cheapest upgrade to how a laptop feels. They're also the category with the worst privacy story. How to get one without the other.Essay · 7 minSherlocked: what happens when Apple ships your appTwenty years of indie apps absorbed into the OS. The pattern in who died, who shrank, and who was fine, and what it means if you're shipping into Apple's blast radius.Guide · 8 minSetting up a Mac from scratch in 2026: the 20-minute utility layerNot a 60-app list. The settings and the six utilities that make a new Mac feel like yours, in the order that wastes the least time.List · 7 minPocket shut down. Where did everyone actually land?A year on from the shutdown, the honest accounting: which read-later services took the refugees, which quietly died too, and how many people just stopped saving.Essay · 6 minThe read-later graveyard: why most saved links dieSaving a link feels like dealing with it. That feeling is the whole problem, and it explains why the queue only ever grows.Guide · 6 minHow to sign a PDF without uploading it anywhereThe documents that need signing are exactly the ones you shouldn't hand to a free converter site. Every way to sign one locally, on every platform.Guide · 7 minEvery app icon size for iOS, macOS, Android and Chrome, one cheat sheetThe full list, per platform, with the rules that get builds rejected: alpha channels, safe zones and the corners you must not round yourself.Guide · 6 minApp Store screenshot sizes that still get accepted in 2026Apple rejects wrong pixel dimensions outright, with an error that doesn't say which one. The exact numbers for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch, TV and Play.Guide · 6 minQR codes that don't expire: static vs dynamic, and who owns the redirectEvery printed QR code is a bet that a URL will still work in five years. Most "free" generators quietly make that bet on your behalf, in their favour.Essay · 7 minASO when nobody browses the store any moreStore optimisation was built for people scrolling categories. They stopped. What replaces it when the first thing that reads your listing is a machine summarising it for someone else.Essay · 8 minPricing a $12 Mac app: one-time vs subscription, with real numbersThe crossover maths, the store's cut, and why the honest answer depends almost entirely on whether your app has a server behind it.Guide · 6 minMake your own apps sell each other: the cross-promo stripNine products, nine websites, nine audiences that never met. The cheapest distribution you own is the traffic already visiting your other apps.Guide · 8 minNotarisation and the six things that get a Mac app rejectedNotarisation is an automated check, which means every failure has an exact cause and an exact fix. The six that account for nearly all of them.Guide · 4 minKeep a MacBook awake with the lid closed, safelyClamshell sleep is the one case caffeinate can't fix. Here's why, what actually works, and the thermal catch nobody mentions.Essay · 5 minThe notch is a UI surface. Treat it like one.Apple shipped a black rectangle in the most valuable pixel row on the screen, then did nothing with it. The iPhone fixed this. The Mac hasn't.Tips · 3 minYour wallpaper is the only always-visible pixel you ownTodo apps fail at the moment of forgetting. The fix isn't a better app, it's a surface you can't close.Tips · 3 minStop saving links you'll never openSaving feels like progress. It isn't. What separates a queue you clear from a graveyard you feed.List · 4 minFive menu-bar apps that earn their keepThe menu bar fills up fast with icons you forget. These five keep paying rent, including two of ours and three we just admire.

Fresh from the changelog

Release · 2026-09-05Oreo 0.5.0Release · 2026-08-27Insomniac 1.0.6Release · 2026-08-27Oreo 0.4.1Release · 2026-08-27Oreo 0.4.0Launch · 2026-08-23LinkPeek joined the shelfLaunch · 2026-08-22Vouch launched
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