You Need These 30 Apps - PART 2

Welcome to Syntax, a podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Today, we've got the second half of the 30 apps or so that you need on your computer. We've got so many cool apps that we need to show you. We're gonna dip into, some stuff around productivity, some stuff around window management, a bunch of utilities that we use, screenshots, screen recording software, and a couple dev picks as well. My name is Wes Bos, developer from Canada. With the as always is Scott. How are you doing today, Scott? Doing super good.

Yeah. Hey, Wes.

Turns out Wes you jump on a trampoline and you have a tree above you Yeah. You can kick that tree. I did a a backflip this weekend, and I I did a a monster air. I'm just gonna say this. I did way more air than I was expecting even though I'm I'm no no stranger to getting a lot of air. But, man, I I did a massive backflip, and I kicked a tree branch. And both of my both of my feet are destroyed. Yeah. The trees are destroyed. Oh, did really? Okay. Oh, dude. I my my toes are, like, black and blue. My feet are all scraped up.

It was kinda gnarly, so, be careful out there.

I'm I'm I wanna, like, start skateboarding again, but I'm just like, I don't know. I I feel like I'm gonna fall and then have that same thing where

I'm all bruised and broken. It's it's a tricky one. It's a tricky one. I I did some skateboarding in Hawaii with, Travis when we were there. We were at the park. I dropped in on, like, a 4 footer. And Yeah.

It's terrifying. It's like, I've not done this since I was, 18 or something. And, yeah, it was very scary, but I did not die. So hey. You can do it.

Load up with some pads. Yeah.

So before we get started talking about these apps, let's talk about a utility that we know and love, which is Sentry, the best place to track all of your errors and exceptions. Let me tell you, I use this thing on every single project. I even started using an experimental Godot one on my game that I'm making, with my son. So Sanity can be with you anywhere and and really just save your bacon anytime you have some errors here and there in your application.

And I actually saw a this is a little side story, Wes. I saw a tweet the other day, and it was like, oh, thank you so much for so and so for letting me know about this bug before other people saw it. And it's like, if you had Sentry, you wouldn't need that.

You'd have that that bug in your dashboard before anybody got to see it. So, check it out at century.ioforward/

syntax. Sign up and get 2 months for free. Alright. So we're gonna start off with, a bunch of utilities that we use on our computers. And for those who didn't listen to the first half, a lot of these are going to be Mac only.

We will try to throw in there or if if you know in the comments, throw in a Windows equivalent, and and you can pick that up on there. So I'm gonna start with the first one here, which is better touch tool. Better touch tool is a Swiss army knife of doing in-depth automation on your Mac without have having to write any or too much code. So what I primarily use it for is, first, I use it for window management, which making up my own keyboard shortcuts. I've tried all of the window management things out there, and they are either so complex that you have to write like Lua or, like, spend your entire day configuring the thing, which I am very jealous of. I wish I could do that type of thing.

And then on the on the flip side, there's these, like, really simple ones that don't really do what it is that I want. So I ended up writing my whole own set of window management shortcuts.

I know I just said that it didn't want to do that, but I have all of these shortcuts that allow me to, of course, like, move the thing up and down on different parts of my screen. Like, that's very simple. And then I also have ones that can help me resize the recording. Oh, it just jumped off my screen there to the to my recording one. Because when I record my courses, I don't record my entire screen.

I just record part of the screen. And these window management shortcuts will allow me to adjust my windows on that section of the screen. So I have these, like, resize recording left, recording safe, let right, and then I have a a whole bunch of increase and decrease shortcuts here that can be used to increase, like, a window by 10% or decrease it by 10%.

So I've been very happy with this, and it it sort of meets all of my needs. I I every now and then, I do

dip into some of these programmatic ones that you can code up or they, like, try to rearrange your windows smart for you, but I've never been able to Scott dip into it. Yeah. Yeah. I the window snapping is such a big thing. And now I you know, it's gonna be baked into the next version of Wes, but I don't know to what degree Is it? Keyboard shortcuts are there. Really good.

Even even if it is built in,

the better touch tool will like like, when you create a better touch tool shortcut, what it does is it allows you to just add all of these different things that are from like, click on this thing, take a screenshot, send this keyboard shortcut to something else. Like like, a very simple one that I do is I have command f.

When I'm in Spotify and I hit command f, send command l to Spotify. Why? Because that, for some reason, search in Spotify is command l, and I just remapped it to to command f. Weird. And it's very, very simple. I also use it for, Hyperkey? I don't use that for hyperkey.

I use because in order to remap, hyperkey, you need to use elements.

It does that at the a lower level system view, so you have to use that. I do, like, bind all of them. So if I have all these different Stripe test cards here and my Stripe test cards are shift option control command Wes.

And what that it really is bound to is hyper Wes, and that what what that will do is it will paste in TypeScript test card, delay it 0.10 seconds, hit tab, paste in 227, Delay it. Paste in 777.

Delay it. Tab tab. Put in a postal code. Right? And I have all of these Stripe shortcuts all mapped to the exact same keyboard shortcut. And when I hit that, what it does is it pops up all of these possible options that are a a declined generic Stripe card, a declined CVC fail, incorrect card data, insufficient funds. So those are my 4, like, commonly used failure cards in Stripe, and then I have 3 different kinds of success cards. Like, one that's just a a regular Stripe card, one that does a three d secure, which is it has to redirect to the user's bank and then come back, and then Node which is a debit card, which is a little bit of a different process sometimes in Stripe. So I have all of those set up for me, and they'll do that same process of auto filling. And that saves me a ton ton of time in better touch tool.

What else do I have here in window management? I have a whole bunch of, like, cropping in my recording. So in ScreenFlow, I have, like, all these little triggers that I wanna do over and over again. So I just I have them all properly set up. So let's see here.

Insert bumper. Here we go. So, I hit command bat command left arrow, then command a, then command bracket, then command v, and then command s. You know? Like, that's just something I was doing a 1000000 times, so I just sort of, like, architected it in better touch tool. And now we can just hit 1 single keyboard shortcut, and it'll just do all these triggers for me. There's a 1000000 things I have in better touch tool, and I I like, I know I talk about it a lot. Like, even my macro pad here. If I wanna turn off, I have this little macro pad, which is sort of like a mini keyboard. And if I were to hit any of the buttons on this, they're all hooked up to turn on and off my recording lights, to turn the office lights on and off. And that's really nice because when I'm sitting here and I'm about to record, I go, oh, shoot. I gotta turn my recording light on. I just, bam, hit the key on the keyboard, and we're off and running. So highly recommend you check it out. I won't go through all of my better touch tool things because I have a 1,000,000 of them, but I'm the biggest fan.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I only currently use better touch tool for one thing right now, and that's setting dark mode on Tuesdays. So for me, that's the the only thing it is. I it's funny. I had other better touch tool things, and I've solely kinda replaced them. But, yeah, that that's it for me. It's like Wes we record on Tuesdays, I'm gonna have some major glare coming off my browser. So I I have one specifically for that. And, Wes, actually, they did add hyper key support specifically in better touch tools somewhat recently. So they added the ability to bind to hyper key,

but they didn't add the ability to, like, actually rewrite it at a system level. So now instead of of doing what I did, which is listen for command, control, option s, they added unless I'm wrong about that. Raycast did it as Wes, where they'll they'll display the that those 4 keyboard shortcuts as a hyper symbol.

Yeah. I let's see. It's very specific JS in hyper key support, but I I don't know exactly, you know, how that entails. I'm not a better touch tool master here. I actually for that specific functionality, I use an app called Hyper Key.

It's a single single function app, and all it does is is turn your caps ESLint a hyper key. That's it. Oh. I use this just because it's extremely easy. It just works. You know?

Yeah. I just reading the documentation.

So the Hyperkey and BetterTouch tool can only be used in BetterTouch tool, which is not what I want because I wanna be able to use Likewise. Yeah. Hyperkey in literally any application.

So using what is it that you use? Super Key?

Hyper key app. Hyper key dot app. Yeah. Hyper key app or,

carabiner elements. Those things will do it at a like a system level, which is really cool. And you can even define it by which keyboard you're using. Yeah. Totally.

Super cool app and, nice and easy. Nothing crazy. And for window snapping, I do use Raycast myself. I I found that Raycast specifically is not bad for that at all because if I hold my hyperkey and hit an arrow, I can, like, change the width of this based on whatever I can center it. And this is all just with, ray cast. And that was really simple to set up. So for me, it was like I I don't have as strict, I guess, guidelines in terms of moving things beyond either like, it's almost always full height for me. So it's at full height Wes is it in the center or the left, whatever. And that way I can have, like, 3 up if I wanted. I can have 2 up. I can have, you know, 1 in the middle, 3 by side by Node, full screen, whatever, all easy enough for me. And that's just done only via Raycast. I know a lot of people are gonna suggest who who use Mac. You buy. Yeah. I tried this Node. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. The SKHD and you buy these 2 are amethyst. Man. That's the one I tried too. Sorry. Go ahead. These are all apparently very, very powerful. There's other ones like rectangle and, I don't know. There's there's a whole bunch of Node, like, one where you could draw it on a grid. But, ultimately, I just don't need that. You know? I just Node it to to put my windows where I want them to be Yeah. To split them, move them around, those types of things. I I don't wanna get into a massive config object for this. Maybe I need to try Raycast again because it seems like they do have a couple options.

But I did try this one called amethyst, which is, like, a tiling one. So, like, if you you remove a window, it, like it'll, like, retile everything. And then if you add a window, it will retile it all, and it'll try to, like, use the space as best as it is. So there's no dragging around windows or or any of that. It simply just is like, focus on this one. Make it bigger. Make it smaller. And everything else will sort of just rearrange itself, which is kinda cool, but it's it was too much for me. I like, I really tried to to get into, and I love

complex stuff like this. But Yeah. Same with me. It's goodbye. It's like like a Linux level. I feel like I would really like this app if I had the time to spend managing my window manager. But, like, I it's just not that important to me once mine's working fine. It's like, Yeah. I I did have this working at some point, in, like, SKHD. I believe this is like a keyboard shortcut manager, which, again, I feel like I have a lot of apps that kind of overlap here, but I'm not using either of these really just because they feel too intense. They feel way too intense for me. Another one I have here is called Clack. This one's really silly, but I really like it. Clack is a app that will give you a mechanical

keyboard sound as you type, and I quite like it. And last time I talked about Clack, a bunch of people brought over this other one called Mech Vibes, and this is a one that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's completely free, and it has, like, way more sound packs, which is so cool.

You get to hear all of these other ones. So I would probably grab this Mech Vibes Node, if you're gonna try it out. And it sounds silly, but there's something about the sound of it. And, like, I'm not everyone's good at mechanical keyboard. I've tried. I have I literally have, like, 10, and I just can't get into it. I just love the Mac keyboard, but I'd like the sound. So this this works well.

Yeah. I I find this Node to be a little goofy for me, but I appreciate you in liking it.

I have one which is bottom or BTM, which is a command line utility. It's built in Rust that gives you a system and process monitor nice and easy. You know, there's several of these whether it's g top, h top, all of the different versions of top that comes within your, your OS.

But I found this one to be just super duper nice. I mean, it looks great. And I could have this thing. I pop it open on the side screen or something, or I have a a server computer back there. I just throw it on the server computer. So you walk into my office, you see this. You think it looks kinda like, hey, man. It's a hacker man. We're doing hacker man stuff. ESLint some serious business running this.

When in reality, it's just a, you know, performant little system monitor that it's nice to have around. I I find like that even running activity monitor can crunch your system sometimes. So having this available is is nice to have. So

activity monitor is crunching your system. Does it show up in activity monitor?

I actually don't know if that's true, Wes. It's more of a vibe Space thing. And it could just be I open Activity Monitor whenever my computer is slowing down. You know? So yeah. Definitely a Vibe Space thing. Also, there's an app that a lot of people use called CleanMyMac, which I'm gonna highly suggest you don't use CleanMyMac because it's one of those pieces of software that they have really shady practices around.

It's impossible to cancel. They make you pay for updates at wrong times and and, like, just to have basic functionality. And and and they just kind of like I think it started off as a good utility that you maybe didn't Node, but at the same time, I and I think they're they're just like I don't know. In my mind, I get bad vibes from the app. So I, found this one which is an open source alternative called pnpm cleaner. Now pair cleaner is not a beautiful application compared to CleanMyMac, but it does all the same stuff that CleanMyMac does. Like, for instance, if you want to uninstall software and have it remove all of the system files that come along with it. On Mac, that is just something that doesn't happen automatically. So using something like AirCleaner. Wes.

That like, you deleted you you take an app from your your app folder and you drag it into the trash, it's leaving all kinds of garbage on your system, which is why next time I get a computer, I'm going I'm going fresh. You know? I'm I'm sick of moving over because sometimes I look in, like, the root directory, and I have, like, files from, like like, 7 years ago. I'm like, what what is this from?

Exactly. And so JS you can even see, I just popped up in Ableton, and there's, you know, library, a ESLint files, and something in the your Yarn folders. It's like this. Make sure you get everything away when you delete an application and not just the application file. Yeah. Has a mini mode, has a sentinel monitor that enables to watch trash folder for deleted apps to clean up. So that's, like, really nice. It's a cool little app, especially for being free open source, all that stuff. So Yeah. I use Node called App Cleaner 2. It's also free. It's been around for many, many years. If you go to the website, it's like a throwback to Mhmm. Do you remember the days when we put banners on everything? But here we go. Look. I just I just dumped a little app I have in here that I don't need, and it found,

of course, the application itself, but probably 15 different p list files and and application support folders and all that stuff, and that's all garbage. You know? I'm gonna go ahead and remove that.

And I typed in my password, and it's all gone. So big fan of that one as well. I don't know if I think the your pnpm cleaner looks a lot nicer than this free Maxsoft, but it's never let me down.

It's new, and newer. There's there's themes and stuff. It it's just a nice little app, and I think it's like a, a well loved community app. So if you're into open source software, this is a good choice.

For typing emojis, I'm a big fan of this app called Rocket.

It's from Matthew Palmer, and I've I've talked about it many times, in the past. And what Rocket will do is as you are typing something, you can just hit I have mine hooked up to the plus, and and then it will automatically just bring up a little emoji picker for you. I find this to be much faster than the built in macOS one. See how slow the macOS one is to open? Whereas, like, Rocket will immediately you just type plus, and you keep on typing.

I was falling out of love with it for a while because it wasn't getting good at, like, keeping up with, like, pop culture. Like, if you if you wanted to, like, say, like like, dead, you want the skull emoji. Right? And it wasn't showing up, and I found it hard to find the one that I wanted. I was like, I don't know what to type to find the one that I want. So I finally ended up I just went into the rocket settings, and there's these booster packs you can download for free.

And one of them is, like, a whole list of of words that will also work, and it works really well. I there's I know there's the Raycast one. If I can can't find it, I open up the Raycast emoji Node.

Yeah. And I use the Raycast emoji one. It is, Like I find it just gets in the way. Emoji, then you have to search for it.

Yeah. But the thing I like about well, I like how yours is a grid. Mine is not a grid. Oh, no.

Yeah. Why is not mine not a grid? Maybe you have a, like, an add on. This is baked into

Oh, gotcha.

Yes. I have the search emoji add on, and I think I got this because of reasons like maybe I got this before it was baked in. But, yeah, I always had an issue if I, like, type in wave, it would give me a wave instead of a hand waving. You Node? Not not in the Raycast one, but in in Rocket or any of these. So so for me, it's like, yeah, I gotta have I gotta have that kind of fuzzy search around emojis. But I should use Rocket because it is a pain in the butt to open Raycast, find the emoji Node, then start searching for your emoji. It's like a multistep process when it it doesn't have to be.

I think I think Raycast has some sort of AI behind theirs because it's Yeah. It's really good at, like, like, pop culture references. Like, what's what's something the kids are saying right now? You know?

Iconic.

Like, clapped out.

It's clapped out of those. It says clapped out. Clapped out. Yes. The automobile is the third one that shows up.

Okay. So that makes sense. And a wrench.

And a wrench. Interesting. Okay.

Interesting.

Yeah. I I I need some rocket in my life just because that's, like, the best part about using Discord or Slack is how easy it is to get to a party. It doesn't as you're writing it, it doesn't get in the way. Yeah.

Totally. 1 for managing your keyboard clipboard history. You actually sick picked this in, like, one of the very first syntax episodes. It's called Clippy.

And what it does is I have it hooked up to caps lock v or or sorry, hyper v. And what it will do is it will show you your actual history, that you've copied. And I find that really handy because if you've copied something and then you, oh, I accidentally copied something else, you can still get to your your past one. You know? Like, there's always that, like if you don't have this, there's always that, like, there's something in my clipboard, and I I need to keep it. So this is really nice.

I do also use the Raycast clipboard one. It's a little bit more full featured. But, again, I don't feel like opening up Raycast and getting in my way. This one just does it right in line as you're typing. I actually do use the Raycast one, Wes, and I have it connected directly to a shortcut, which for me is command shift v. Yeah. And so if I'm at anywhere and I do command shift v, it gives me my clipboard. So Oh, yeah. That makes it a little bit easier to to reason about. I did move from Clippy to using Raycast full time. So, for that specifically.

Search.

Like, you can go back days. You can filter. You can preview images. The Raycast Node is better, but I just wish that it was smaller or, like, in line. Yeah. You know? Like, I wanted to go where my cursor is, not pop up a thing in front of me.

I hear you. Yeah. Definitely. But it works it works really well in case you don't wanna have a a separate app for that. But, yeah, I I I think if you're out there and you're not using a clipboard manager, a clipboard manager is one of the most, necessary things I could possibly have in my workflow. I don't it can't tell me how many times there's something like, you copy one thing, you copy another thing, you copy another thing, you go to your thing, and then you paste them all sequentially or whatever.

There's so many infinite times that you copy something at some point in your history and you Node to get and especially in in code. Right? I can think of, like, cutting lines of code from various files and moving them. I can think of URLs that potentially I have that are unique to certain apps that I wanna have in my clipboard or keys or all kinds of stuff, right, that, you wanna make sure that you have access to and need when you need them. So a clipboard manager for me is pretty essential.

I I think a lot about people who just use Bos devices full time.

You know? People are like, yeah. IPad is a replacement for a computer, or or people are going to college without a laptop. And I think, like, how are you getting anything done in any amount of efficiency when you're pasting copy and pasting on Ios is so painful, and there's no history. You're screwed if if you accidentally copy paste something that's not there.

I cannot imagine that is a fun time whatsoever.

And, like, that's, like, the whole thing is that if Apple ever wants that system to be a replacement for a computer, they're gonna have to open it up, man. They Yeah. The the sandboxing or whatever's going on Wes you don't have access to a terminal, you don't have access to the system in all these kinds of ways, the babying has to stop, for that system to be useful as a computer. You know? And to me, it's always just going to be a like, a media consumption device. Right?

Alright. Let's move on to bunch of stuff around screenshots and screen recordings. This is obviously something Scott and I do quite a bit, and I have been bellyaching about my cloud app for many Yarn. Node so cloud app was like a little screenshot tool. You take a screenshot, and it will upload it and give you a URL. And you can you can upload files to it as Wes. And I have a custom domain name with it, and it's just gotten, like, kinda crappy over the years. So I'm trying to move over this new one called drop share.

You pay for it once, and then you hook it up with your own hosting, which is so cool. So it will hook up to any s three compatible host out there, which is I have it currently hooked up to Backblaze, and it will automatically give you a URL for it. You can have full control over it. I've seen people writing little Cloudflare workers that sit in front of it, and it works really, really well. So now anytime I have, like, a big file I need to send somebody, I just drag and drop it into my drop share, and then, ping, it gives me the URL for it. And I can go ahead and share it on out.

So big fan. This has been around for probably 10 years, and I've I've been talking about wanting something like this for a long time. Yeah. And I finally I finally found it, or it finally found me. So big fan.

Yeah. I we're gonna get into some screen recording stuff here, and we have a lot of screen recording software on this list.

I've used any screen recording software under the sun. So before you say try this, try that, I I've used it all. Even just from, like, straight up QuickTime to ScreenFlow, to I show you, cap, Screen Studio, all these. There's there's an endless amount of this. And, even what's the the new one with AI transcript stuff? There's, like, pnpm 1,000,000 of them. Yeah. Either way, I can't even think of it. There's too many of these.

What I have found, and this is thanks to CJ from the syntax team, that OBS with the source record plug in is a pain to get set up. But once you have it, this to me is the promised land because what it does is I can record multiple sources at once, as many as I want to a degree, and those sources are going to just spit out an MP 4 at the end of the day. No proprietary format.

No attachment to editing. Like, ScreenFlow is great because you can record a whole bunch of sources and it drops them into a timeline. It makes it easy to edit, but the app is garbage. So, there's a lot of problems just using straight up ScreenFlow for this, and all I've wanted.

I even went as far as building my own, which I didn't complete because of, screen recording capabilities in Tori. Yeah. But I ended up building my own for this, and that's how badly I wanted something that would just record each source individually and out an pnpm p 4 at the end of the day. So that way I can use my own tools to edit, to take care of it, take it across the finish line. So if you're the type of person who wants that full control, who wants an m p 4 and doesn't wanna be handheld through it, and to use professional editing stuff, OBS, source record JS the way to go. It works super well. Yeah. I

I even went as far to message the developer behind source record, and, like, I was like, I will buy, like, a slight gooey that sits on top of source record because setting it up is a pain in the butt. And then as soon as you wanna record something else, it changes like, it it does need to be. And, also, like, I was getting mega mega lag on my mouse when I was using, like, too many things. I forget exactly what it was, but very, very close. And I almost wonder if if I were to upgrade to, like, a M3 MacBook Pro, if that would go away. And, like, we're almost at a point now where you can record Windows instead of screens, which is my dream because I when I do my videos, I wanna record, like, my browser and my code editor. And right now, what I do is I put them all on the screen, and then I trim them after the fact. And then I can I can swoop in the code editor and then swoop in the browser as I need it? But if you accidentally overlap Node of them, then you'll lose what's on that on that thing. So wouldn't it be cool to record Windows?

Yeah. You know what? That's on my, target list. So I mentioned that I I'm building my own, and I did Scott, stop building my own. So I am still doing that. I I'm just, like, waiting for better support for for screen recording.

And, the idea for mine will be that you can record as many sources as you want, but also when you get into screen recording, you could record as many windows as you want, and it would just output them in their, native aspect ratio, whatever that window is. So that's really the the goal here with this app, but it's, yeah, it's slow going, man. It it's kinda tough to get. What what you don't get we talked about this a little bit in the Tori app or in the Tori episode. What you don't get with a Tori site when you request screen permissions is the dialogue that says, what do would you like to record? The window, the screen, whatever. You don't get that dialogue from Safari. And because that dialogue doesn't exist within the web view, it just automatically returns a you don't have permissions for this. So in reality, what you need to do is you need to find a way to give the app screen recording permissions and have that be okay. The thing is is it does work in production after you build the app. But that makes developing the app really tough because when you're trying to develop, yeah, it's requesting permissions from the command line, which, Yeah.

It it yeah. It's a it's a big mess. Something I would like to get working at some point here. But this app will exist at some point. Yeah.

I've been playing with, Screen Studio quite a bit lately, and what this will do is it it tracks where your mouse is, and then you can also give it the size of your output video. Like, if you wanna do, like, a TikTok video or a YouTube video, and it will give its, like, best guess as to, like, where you should zoom in. And usually, it's, like, around your pointer. And you can go ahead and edit it a little bit. I found it too limiting. Like, I I've done a couple of videos here and there, and it looks really good, especially, like, the whatever math they're using around their easing and zooming in and their their blurring when you zoom into something, it looks really good. Like, so much better than any other app I've seen, but it's still just a little bit too limited. Like, I'm still not able to crop exactly how I want it. And, like, I recorded my whole screen, and I wanted to be able to, like like, trim the the videos. There's only 1 track. If you wanted to move between the 2, it it just didn't work. But I'm very bullish on this application. I think it's gonna do do really well. I just hope it doesn't go down the, like Yeah. What ScreenFlow did, which is just, like, try and make it too simple.

You know? I my whole life is just a constant battle between wanting an app that's easy to use and wanting full control.

That's exactly it. Yeah. Because the OBS and DaVinci Resolve workflow is great if you have the time and the knowledge and the skills of being a professional editor. And if you don't, then, it's harder to make things that look really nice. And sometimes it's even, you know, super easy to make things that look really nice in any of this stuff. I don't know if you've seen detail as well. Detail.co is a similar, application to that.

And this was the exact same situation for me. It was like the moment I wanted to move my little headshot somewhere else or change the anything beyond the defaults, it was like I was SOL.

Yeah. But to have the app work as intended is really nice.

Here's another one, you know, that people often say to use Loom to record quick recordings for your your job with your face. Here's an open source alternative to Loom. It's CAP, CAP.SO.

This application is actually built with Tori, and I use this source, quite extensively to gain research into screen recording in a Tori app. And they're doing things a little bit crazier, so I'm not going to be able to, you know, freely, like, utilize any of that stuff. But it is a cool a cool, repo to take a look at if you're interested in Node, desktop applications with Tori, 2, screen recording in that regard locally. And it just works as nice as an app. So, check it out if you you are currently using Loom and wanting an open source alternative. Yeah. I also use one called CAP, but it JS a different one. Yes. I know. It makes searching for it very difficult. Yours is c a p,

and Yours is k a p.

CAPPRO is $9 a month. Your Cap Pro.

Yes. This one is just a very simple you need to record the screen, do very light trimming and cropping after, and export to m p four after. So I don't use this a ton, but when I simply just need to record my screen as fast as possible, I'll reach for this one. I've also been using another one called CleanShot or CleanShot x, and this is fantastic for capturing your screen.

It has all these really neat features. Like, you if you wanna record an entire website or you wanna take a screenshot of an entire website, you can just scroll the website, and it will make a single screenshot for you.

Just the highlighting, it will also put really nice backgrounds on your screenshots, which I find to be really nice. So I also really like this this one as well. I paid for it, and I've been been enjoying it. But I asked them, can I upload files? Because that's why I'm still using my cloud app. And they he's like he was kinda interested, but I don't think it's gonna gonna happen. But this is a neat one. If you need to take screenshots and quickly give somebody the URL for it, both recording yourself and actual screenshots, check out CleanShot.

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's pretty dope. Yeah. With the Cap app that you mentioned before, that app's been around for a while as a really awesome, like, open source capture application.

And it it's like one of the in my mind, one of the, like, really awesome open source, continuously improved applications. I I remember, like, versions of this thing a long time ago. It just doesn't do as much as I need it to do. But Yeah. If you're looking for an alternative to, like, screen recording on QuickTime or something like that, this Gitcap is a really good one. As far as video editing goes, we get a lot of questions about this, especially when people are like, help me get off of Adobe software. Right? Yeah. He's Adobe Premiere.

What do I do? So for me and and this is not just an alternative to Adobe Premiere. This JS, like, professional grade editing. Maybe the best professional grade color grading software, like, out there. But DaVinci Resolve just hit version 19, is free to use in the non studio version. And the Node like, the normal version, the free version of this application is more than you could possibly need.

So good. Yeah. Yeah. The amount of features you get in the free version of this app are just absolutely wild. So I did eventually upgrade to the studio version of the app, but it was only to get access to a couple of little extra things here and there.

For the most Yarn, though, if you're just editing anything and you want professional grade editing software, DaVinci Resolve is a deep well. It is an absolutely massive video editing software.

Yeah. And to me personally, I would never buy Final Cut Pro. I would never buy Premiere.

Can you even buy Adobe products anymore? Well, yes. No. I I I yes. I would not get Adobe money for their product. Yes. I would not rent Adobe Premiere. I would certainly not buy, Final Scott. And this to me is, like, the end all be all of video editing software right now. It's it's so good, and

it it's like I was talking earlier about, like, that mix between extremely powerful but also easy to use. And, like, I'm I feel like I'm, like, 10% ESLint DaVinci Resolve, and, like, I I can use it, but I, like, also I was dipping into making a bunch of reusable what what's the word for where you make those things that all clip together, arrows?

Oh, oh, nodes and, like Node. Yeah. What's what's the word for that? Wes you Are you talking about, like, infusion?

Yeah. Infusion mode. Yeah. Where it's, like, not just a a linear editor, but you can actually put some logic to how these things work. Yes.

Amazing. And that's, like like, I don't know, $350 and you get a lifetime license to it. I don't know because it was 18 a while ago. Now it's 19, and they didn't charge you for an upgrade. I'm sure at some point, they'll say, alright. Well, if you have a license from 18 and we're moving to 20, you have to you have to buy it again. But they're not squeezing you and giving you $29 per user per month for these types of things, which because it gives them all the respect. They sell cameras. Right? So, like, I think that's for a game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're wondering why this is free,

this photo on my screen, which is a a big giant editing console JS why, because they sell, full on master, like, control panels that production grade studios use. And if they get everybody hooked on using DaVinci Resolve and DaVinci Resolve being the thing to use, then, of course, when you go professional, you're gonna want one of these Fairlight consoles that cost, you know, massive amounts of money. But you're right. They also it's Blackmagic Design JS the company that makes this. And Blackmagic Design does make most of their money off of, cinema cameras, Wes k cameras. Wes almost bought the Blackmagic 6 k camera when we, Wes we're moving to century as our our main camera because the cameras are incredible.

So either way, DaVinci Resolve to me is software that I hold near and dear because, you Node it it just does so much for you, and it it's such a good editor.

Another good Adobe alternative, which I tried moving to. I just I just couldn't pry myself out of, like, I'm a heavy user of Photoshop and a heavy user of Illustrator.

Really? And they especially Photoshop. There's not a good alternative to it, but Adobe Affinity Designer is pretty close.

And Affinity Designer is really cool because it does a lot of the vector stuff that Illustrator does, but then it also does a lot of the raster stuff that Photoshop would do. So it's a pretty good alternative, and it's it's relatively affordable. What does it cost?

Yeah. I purchased Affinity Photo a while ago. I I'd have never gotten into Affinity Designer because it felt like to me, like, it was a wannabe sketch, wannabe Adobe XD or Figma. And to me, I just always stayed with those. I know those tools are more of, like, UI and rather than, like, Illustrator. Right? Illustrator has so many illustrative, tools that Figma and Sketch don't have. Yeah. So, yeah, that that's definitely work that coming in. It's just not work that I do very often. Right? I I couldn't even put ESLint the like, photos, photo editing,

and, like, textures JS well as, like, you get if you get into complex like, I've crashed Figma many times with, with some vector too many vector points.

Yeah. Yeah. I I do say as a, a Photoshop alternative, Affinity photo is super good, especially if you, like, don't need some of the crazy AI stuff. Now I don't I actually don't even use Photoshop very much anymore. I used to use it a whole lot. I don't use it anymore really. So I do have Affinity Photo 2. I don't really use it. My Adobe alternatives are pretty much DaVinci Resolve and and Figma Yarn the 2 things that I needed the most. And honestly, after effects, but I stopped doing any kind of actual motion graphics, so I don't really need after effects anymore. I end up using an app. Actually, this is a good time, to bring this app back because I I I did a whole course on this app, and I don't know if this is still in production because I haven't used it in a little while. But principle for Mac is an app that makes motion design really easy. Now this is primarily made for UI.

Like like, hey. The stuff that Figma does now Wes you can transition between UI screens. That's what it's made for. But this app can export in 4 k.

And what I would do is I would make my motion graphics screens in Figma. I would import them into principle for Mac, and then I would animate them, export as 4 k 60 FPS.

That's effortless motion graphics software right there, which is really what I was using after effects for was, you know, zoom zoom things, and do all that kind of stuff. So I I I use this app a lot. One of my more favorite applications for things that should be easier than they are.

I also will will throw, Inkscape out there, and Inkscape is a totally open source free vector editing software. So if you ever need to do just a little bit of vector editing, you know, you're like, oh, I I need to edit this logo and and change the color or I need to make something a little bit bigger, Inkscape is probably a good solution for that. I only got into it because my wife has an embroidery machine.

And if you want to convert designs to something that a embroidery machine can handle, one of the biggest pieces of software for that is called InkStitch.

And, it's a plug in for Inkscape, and it works really, really well. It's it's wild, watching it convert a vector thing to how a stitch will will look Wes it's actually being done by the machine.

Yeah. Let's get into some development tools here. And this one first Node is called DB engine, which I actually thought this was called d begin for a long time to the point where I was searching for this and googling, like, where the hell is this app? And and turns out I was just calling it the wrong thing. This app makes it effortless. Node, it works with Mac or Windows, but it makes it effortless to start your databases and, not have to rely on something like Homebrew to keep those databases and those services up and running, which, like, I always found that process of, like, going to my command line and having a, let's say, a Postgres process start or always start via the command line, I found that to be, like, so nontransparent.

Like, is this thing running? Where is this thing right? Like, I kinda wanna gooey sometimes like DB engine to just show me Yeah. What's running right now. A green circle or a red circle. I'm a simple man.

Simple man. Right. Yes. That's exactly.

And, also, like, if you have multiple versions of of MySQL running, you can do that.

I love it. It's I I moved from just running Postgres and MySQL on the CLI to this.

And by default, it has MySQL, Postgres, and Redis, but then it will also, like, scrape your, Homebrew folder and look for any other services that it can run. Like, you can see it it it found that I have a Caddy installed, so I can start Caddy right from here, which is I like that. That's one of my biggest gripes with Caddy is that, like, I have to go to the CLI and start it. And then if I wanna see the output, it's, like, sometimes just barfed into

over top of my Node and stuff. So Yeah. Big fan of this. Yeah. And and this app is a 100% free. And if you're wondering why, like they say, it's because it's actively developed and maintained by another app that we have and love, which is a table plus. Now table plus Yeah.

TablePlus is and and also works for Linux, Windows.

I didn't know it worked for Bos. That feels kinda crazy. But, yeah, TablePlus basically is the database management software, and this is an app I pay for. It's awesome because it basically lets you connect to your databases and modify them, control them, import, export, backup, anything you could possibly want for database management, which let me tell you, it supports everything. It does everything. And, man, I this app is only, like, slightly annoying to me because of some little interface tweaks where it tries to open up in another window when you don't want it to here and there. But in terms of, like, modifying a database, I feel like I've used a lot of software like this. And this one in particular works so very well and has everything I needed to do.

It is a paid app, but I'm just on the the free one. And I I think it only allows you to have 3 tabs open at once. I think that's the the limitation, which has been fine for me.

I used it the other day. We had an issue with Adam Argyle's episode

Yeah. Adam Gargoyle.

Adam Adam was named Adam Gargoyle in the thing for, like, 3 years on the website, and no one ever noticed it. And How? Yeah. What what ended up happening is that when he came back on the show, there was a a unique constraint on the database for his Twitter.

Meaning that it tried to create another social login for the same Twitter, but, yeah, our database schema says that must be unique.

And, usually, what happens when there's 2 people on it, it just it just reuses it because but because there was Adam Gargoyle and Adam Vercel, it it had all these issues. So I tried I tried deleting it from, like, the UI, and and that didn't work because there was a unique constraint. So I went into Prisma table or with Prisma Studio and tried to delete it, but it didn't let me delete it for some odd reason. I don't know. It just dumped the whole thing. So I was like, you know what? Prisma tries to, like, run it through all of the, like, oh, it's related to this item, and you can't delete it. So I just was like, screw it. I'm just gonna go straight into the database and nuke the record for that as well as the related records that were needed. And, I just went into table plus, deleted it, and, everything was all fixed.

Warp. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's something that I I at this point, you know, I'm working with a lot of databases. It's something that I I have to use. You know, I used to only use the MongoDB one, whatever that was. I forget what called at this point. MongoDB Compass. That's that's a great one.

It's great, but it's only Mongo. And so it's like when I moved over to working less in Mongo, because remember, my background's in Meteor. That's all Mongo. So for me, it was like getting into this stuff was like, yes. I have an app that's as good as this stuff, and it works super well. Let's talk about, Proxyman, which is an app we all love and use. Proxyman, a great way to proxy requests and see exactly what's going on. If you wanna see

what an app is doing so, like, right now, let's take a look at ScreenFlow.

You can see the request that ScreenFlow is making, and then you can right click on it and a proxy, the SSL certificate.

And for most applications that will allow you to see what payloads are actually being sent through it. So Proximan has been fantastic for both debugging and snooping around, in terms of applications. And I love that you can filter it by the domain name as well as, the application that is sending data out.

I used to use Node called Wireshark, and Wireshark is a little bit more I don't know. It can do literally everything. Like, it does TCP connections and, like, literally anything.

It's a protocol network protocol analyzer.

And if you're getting into, like, IoT hacking, you're probably still using Wireshark.

But if you're just a web developer trying to figure out what requests a domain or application are using, this is fantastic.

Yeah. Super cool. I love all these tools. My favorite development tool on the Mac is Polypane, by the way. Polypane is just it's a browser for ambitious web developers. But, really, what it is, it's like the best browser for testing your application.

And this thing revealed all kinds of accessibility issues, whether that's, like, heading order.

It reveals it reveals all. I think that's, like, the best way to state this app. It will reveal everything that's wrong with either the design or the accessibility of your application.

And it has, like, you can see here, your windows open and all the different more, modes. You can inspect it all. You can screen record.

It it is like the the, device lab from the future that does everything for you. And so I I use this thing nonstop. I happily pay for this app, and I get so much hey. I'm on the, I'm on the testimonials.

Polly Payne really saving my bacon. Yes.

Yes. Love it. I also have 1 more that people have been mentioning. It's not a development app. But a lot of people, when we talk about apps on this episode, people are like, Setapp. Setapp. Talk about Setapp.

Set app is basically a subscription service where you get access to a bunch of apps.

Now this is not my kind of thing. You Node, there's a lot of stuff in here, and I'm more of a I will pay more to have the app, license myself.

Because what's happening when you use set app is the moment that that you stop paying that $9 a month to set app JS, you know, you don't have access to your apps. I don't feel like I wanna be tethered to a subscription for all this stuff. Yeah. Just have access to all these apps. And I feel like once you start getting in that mode, you're gonna get, top of yourself. If we're wondering why we didn't talk about set app in the last, version of this, I think we're both kind of more by the license type of people.

It's it seems to be, like, less and less of a thing, and it where you can just buy the application. Even I saw the developer of Screen Studio, which I just picked, he's they're about to roll out. Instead of paying for it once, you are going to be $9 a month for it, which I I understand as well, but it seems like absolutely every single one of them is is going that way.

One Chrome extension that I I really like is called SVG grabber.

And this is really handy if you are trying to get a logo for something and you want to save the SVG.

When it's an image source, you can very easily save that SVG, but often, the SVGs are inlined on a website. So what SVG grabber will do, you just click on the Chrome extension, and it will scan the page for all of the SVGs used on that page. And it will give you the ability to copy them or download them.

Big fan of this. I use this all the time. Yeah. When we we were gonna do a whole episode on Raycast. I use something for Raycast for SVGs, but it doesn't grab them from a website like this. So I'm gonna have to use this because You Node, what's the grabbing SVGs.

The Node, place that I use it that I probably shouldn't is sometimes I need to just quickly trace and vectorize something.

And there's this 1 app that website that I use, and it will let you trace the whole thing and vectorize it and everything. And then as soon as you go to download it, they go, hey. Node. I'm coming back. Bucks. $15, and I go, damn it. Oh, they got me. I just spent half an hour. I thought this was free. So what I what did I do? I just SVG grabber ed it and, and downloaded it. Went on my way.

High crimes on the podcast. Yeah.

Wes Yes. I don't do it. It was at one time because it it tricked me. You know? Don't let me use the entire app as if I am gonna be able to download it. You showed me a download button and then come with the Node two punch.

Yeah. That's right. Don't trick us. So that's, that's it for this episode. We're also gonna be doing a couple more of apps on this. We're gonna be talking about some of our favorite productivity tools, upcoming here. So if you've been wondering what about some of our productivity's tools, which are mostly just, I would say they're more of, like, web apps and and native apps than they are Apple apps or Mac apps, desktop apps. Yes. And we're also gonna be talking about Raycast too in the future. So if you thought we missed anything there, don't worry. We're gonna be talking about all that stuff in the future. So let's get into some sick picks.

Wes, do you have a sick pick for us today?

Yes. I'm going to sick pick the mag magnetile magblock marble run. So in the past, I've sick picked these things called magnetiles or magnetiles.

They're there's they're under a 1000000 different names out there.

And what is so cool about these is it's kinda like LEGO, where you can just build whatever you want, but they're magnet based. And we we bought them probably 10 years ago, and we still use them at least once a week.

And for my one of my kids' birthday recently, we bought the marble run that connects to it. So you can make your own little marble run with your existing tiles. So we've got quite the set now for this, and you can make these really fun marble runs. So highly recommend it. And this is one of those gifts.

If you are like, oh, my friend just had their 1st kid, like or what do I buy them? Or, like, I'm going to this 1 year old's birthday party. Get them Magna Tiles. Get 3 by 3 inch Magna Tiles, and they will love you forever. You know, in 10 years, oh, remember they got us this. Uncle Joey bought us the the Magna Tiles. Coach. Best gift ever.

Yeah. Uncle Jesse got us the, the magnet tiles. You know what? We we got these and the best part about magnet tiles is even if you have some and you get more, it just expands what you can do with them. So we we've gotten them as gifts even though we already had some, and they were really well, used and received. I wish we would have gotten this marble run instead of I think we got the kids last or 2 years ago for Christmas, like an actual marble run. Oh, yeah. Now now we got 2 things. You know? You got the marble run, which they do use, but it would be cooler if they could, use the magnet tiles with it. Yeah. I'm going to sick pick a a documentary on Netflix.

You know, Netflix does all these untold kind of sports documentaries, and I tend to like them all. So we've been we I feel like we don't miss any of them. But one of the most recent ones was near and dear to my heart, which JS, sign stealer, untold sign stealer. In this sports documentary, Connor Stallion addresses the allegations surrounding Michigan football sign stealing.

So I'm a big Michigan fan. I went to Michigan.

Obviously, Michigan football winning the national championship last year was incredible. But, I'm also going to be an apologist here, and I'm gonna say this man did nothing wrong. And the Michigan their their team did absolutely nothing. What did he did? Did he steal a sign? So so the long and short of it is that sign stealing and and, like, thing in football JS, like, they they don't have headsets. So the the coaches to communicate with the players, they do all sorts of signs.

And the other team's trying to decipher those signs so they can figure out what play the other team's gonna do. It's a whole, like, back and forth. Encryption.

Okay.

But what you're not allowed to do yes. Encryption. Perfectly. What you're not allowed to do is videotape your own, with your own camera, the sideline to steal those signs, but you're allowed to use the broadcast to identify those signs. So there's, like, a whole network of underground sign stealers that are, like, sharing clips and whatever. And if you wanna if you wanna see some dedication, this man That's wild. Took photos of himself doing, like, a 100 different or a thousands of different signs and and made a a manifesto, and it's like crazy town. The whole thing is so interesting.

He is even spotted on the sidelines of a central Michigan football game wearing a disguise in those, meta glasses with the camera in them, the steel sign from the other team.

It's a it's a it's a wild documentary. And as someone who's, like, from the Ann Arbor area, went to that school, it was really cool to see,

your school and stuff on on TV and that kind of place. So yeah. That's I I don't like sports at all, but one thing I would love to do is to go to a either a university football game Yeah. Or to, like, a Buffalo Bills tailgate.

It's just I've never like, I've been to CSS.

Yeah. Football game, it sucks. But it seems way different football culture down in the States.

Yeah. And especially in in the college football too. I mean, I remember we would go to tailgates and not go to the game because I didn't have tickets when I went there. Tailgate sounds like my kinda jam.

Yeah. It JS, Wes is a sports starts? A massive party. Yeah. That's exactly how that's exactly how a lot of people I knew, to get advantage of going to a school like this. But yeah. Yeah. The Big House too. The biggest stadiums in the world JS an incredible experience. So, yeah, check this documentary out. Really cool. Sweet.

Alright. Thanks everybody for tuning in. We will catch you later.

Peace. Peace.