"Trouble In the Fields" by Nanci Griffith

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What is a song that makes you think of your first job? - Trouble In the Fields by Nanci Griffith

I was a farm kid, but my last few years at home were marked by the drought that finally led my family to give up that life after more than 100 years and take what are called "public jobs" - ones where you have a boss, but also a paycheck. This song, by the unforgettable Nanci Griffith (RIP) captures the heartbreak.

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"Four Seasons" by Vivaldi

What is the oldest song you like? - Four Seasons by Vivaldi

I don't know much about classical music, but I know what I like. The opening movements of Vivaldi's Four Seasons instantly transports me back to the early 90s when my kids were in elementary and middle school. All of them loved this CD and we played it all the time when cleaning house on Saturdays. It made the weekly chores something they looked forward to. Magic.

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"Hold On" by Alabama Shakes

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A song from the 2010s that you like or means something to you. - Hold on by Alabama Shakes

After an eight-year hiatus, Alabama Shakes reunited last year, started touring and they are working on an album - and every album they've ever made has won at least one Grammy. Like most people, this is the song that introduced them to me. It's a classic already.

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The mark of a good Internet citizen is whether they star the GitHub repositories they like and whether they upvote helpful posts on Reddit. As someone who devotes a lot of time to online communities, racking up a few Internet points always feels good. I used to be slightly intimidated by GitHub. For the most part, it's full of indie apps by individual devs, so there isn't a marketing department designing websites and writing copy. It's just the same dude who coded the app you want to try. If you spend time looking around, you find that GitHub also contains plenty of goodies that aren't apps. There are repositories for scripts, app settings, Black Friday deals, and more. I'm not a dev, but even I have a couple of public repos. On one, I share my collection of 800 Keyboard Maestro macros, plus Hazel rules and Better Touch Tool actions. My other public repo is a collection of markdown documents with quotes from people wiser than me. I added over 300 new notes there last week.

One obsessive soul created a repo where he documented 1,600 Obsidian extensions AND another for 1,700 Raycast extensions. It's impossible, I think, to keep something like that up to date, but both are good resources.

You can see a list of 81 repositories I felt worthy of being added to my Raindrop collection here. Here are a few highlights. I'm always looking for more, so hit me up if you have anything to share.

macOS Apps & Utilities

MAS

Command-line interface for the Mac App Store. Search, install, update, and manage App Store apps from the terminal. Easy to use as part of a launchd item or cron job to force updates when the Mac App Store is being stubborn about doing it for you.

Mole

Terminal-based tool for cleaning, uninstalling, analyzing, optimizing, and monitoring your Mac. This is the free version that does almost everything the GUI (which is not free) does.

Cardinal

Fast macOS file search app using Everything-compatible syntax with filters for file type, size, tags, and content.

Obsidian

Obsidian Webclipper Templates

Customizable Obsidian Webclipper templates with LLM integration that automatically organize and categorize clipped web content into structured notes. I've tried every way known to mankind to get selected web content into my vault.

This is the way.

Automators Vault

Obsidian vault for the late great Automators Podcast community, containing automation-related notes, show notes, and resources.

Raycast

script-commands

Official Raycast collection of community-contributed script commands you can install and run directly from the launcher.

raycast_extensions_by_downloads

Auto-generated, regularly updated ranking of Raycast extensions sorted by download count.

Automation and Scripting

Tools for automating tasks on macOS and the command line.

Gum

Charm tool for writing interactive shell scripts with styled prompts, spinners, and formatted output.

Topgrade

Single command to upgrade everything on your system -- The Mac App Store, package managers, Homebrew apps, runtimes, and more -- all at once. See also Topgrade - Upgrade All the Things | AppAddict and How to Use Topgrade Silently and Automatically for Multiple Update Protocols (Free) | AppAddict

Privacy, Networking and Security

DNS Easy Switcher

Simple macOS app for quickly switching between DNS server configurations.

Betterfox

Firefox user.js configuration file for optimal privacy and security hardening without breaking normal browsing.

Curated Lists & Directories

Awesome lists, resource hubs, and community-maintained directories.

awesome-mac

High-quality, community-curated list of macOS software, tools, and resources organized by category.

open-source-mac-os-apps

Comprehensive list of open-source macOS applications available for free, organized by type.

Black-Friday-Deals

Community-maintained list of Black Friday deals on macOS/iOS software and books, updated annually.

AI & Language Models

Tools for running, hosting, and working with AI and local language models.

apfel

Exposes Apple's built-in on-device language model as a local OpenAI-compatible API server on macOS. Enables AI capabilities without cloud APIs or API keys.

llamafile

Distribute and run LLMs as a single self-contained executable file. Removes the complexity of setting up local models across platforms.

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"S.O.B." by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

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A song from the 2000s that you like or means something to you. - S.O.B. by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

I am absolutely the cliche who almost never listens to anything new and I have been that way for the entirety of the 21st century, just about. Every once in a while, someone will break through because of a video I see on social media or an earnest recommendation from a friend. This is one of those cases. Great sing. Great video.

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In trying to be open-minded, I recently agreed to try Ejectify, an app that performs a task for which I already had a solution: to automatically eject external disks from my Mac before it goes to sleep and to remount them when it wakes. I worked off a MacBook for a long, long time, and I needed a way to just shut it, unplug, and move on without getting nagged to death about thumb drives and external volumes. I've been using Jettison to do that since I saw it in Macworld in 2011. The developer, St. Clair Software, also makes Default Folder X, History Hound, and App Tamer.

The reason I opted to try Ejectify is that it ticks some boxes that are pretty important in 2026. It's open source and on Github, meaning you can essentially get it for free if you have the chops to build it. You can also see how the developer, Niels Mouthaan, responds to issues, both in troubleshooting and in planning for additional features. I've used other apps from Niels, and he has provided me with good support.

Aside from philosophical differences with Jettison, there are also some features added by using Ejectify.

• Volumes are managed individually, not as one size fits all, so you have more control.
• Provides a way to force unmount a disk on a case-by-case basis.
• Allows you to mute "Disks Not Ejected Properly" messages if you and macOS can't reach an agreement on what that means.

The full feature set (from the website):

• Helps prevent "Disk Not Ejected Properly" notifications after wake.
• Helps reduce the risk of data loss or corrupted volumes by safely unmounting them first.
• Lets you choose which supported volumes Ejectify manages, including external volumes, ejectable internal volumes, and disk images.
• Supports automatic unmounting when the display turns off or the system starts sleeping, then attempts to mount volumes again after wake.
• Includes force unmount, force mute notifications, and instant "Unmount all" actions, plus a global keyboard shortcut for manual unmount-all.

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"The Ghost of Tom Joad" by Bruce Springsteen

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A song from the 1990s that you like or means something to you. - The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen

The Boss won the 1995 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album for the eponymous album that included this track. It was hist first acoustic album since Nebraska and it is a worthy successor. The song and album really cemented his legacy as a successor the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bon Dylan as folk music interpreters of the real America.

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"Lunatic Fringe" by Red Rider

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A song from the 1980s that you like or means something to you. - Lunatic Fringe by Red Rider

The 80s encompassed ages 15-25 for me. It was the decade when I listened to the radio more than any other. it was the last thing I did at night and the first thing I did in the morning. Lunatic Fringe got a lot of airplay during my high school days. It's a good tune and one I still add to playlists to this day.

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"Whipping Post (Live at the Fillmore East: Second Show, 1971)" by The Allman Brothers Band

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A song from the 1970s that you like or means something to you. - Whipping Post by The Allman Brothers Band

I could go the rest of my life and only listen to songs from a single year, 1971.

• Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zeppelin
• Who's Next - The Who
• Sticky Fingers - The Rolling Stones
• L.A. Woman - The Doors
• At Fillmore East - The Allman Brothers Band
• Meddle - Pink Floyd
• Hunky Dory - David Bowie
• Electric Warrior - T. Rex
• Aqualung - Jethro Tull
• Master of Reality - Black Sabbath
• Fragile - Yes
• The Yes Album - Yes
• Every Picture Tells a Story - Rod Stewart
• Imagine - John Lennon
• Blue - Joni Mitchell
• Tapestry - Carole King
• Pearl - Janis Joplin
• There's a Riot Goin' On - Sly and the Family Stone

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I like using Apple Shortcuts when it fits my workflow, but advanced features can be confusing. I manage simple loops and variables, but it’s slow and tricky. That’s why I was happy to see MacStories release Shortcuts Playground, a free plugin for Codex and Claude Code. It lets you describe what you want in natural language and creates a real Apple Shortcut you can use or share. You can read about it and get installation instructions for free if you have those platforms.

It’s been years since I updated my list of free and cheap apps that boost Apple Shortcuts, so here’s the 2026 edition.

Best Standalone App for Triggers - Shortery

Apps like Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, and BetterTouchTool can trigger Shortcuts but take time to learn. Shortery costs $29.99 and is easier to use. Apple also added some automation triggers in macOS:

• macOS Shortcuts covers basics
• • Apps, Files and folders, Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth, Displays, Focus, Time, Wake/sleep
• Shortery adds extras
• • Audio, Camera, Clamshell, Calendar, Keyboard hotkeys, Login/logout, LAN, Power details, Screen lock/unlock, Sunrise/sunset, More device triggers

Best Deep System Control: Shortcutie

For $10, Shortcutie offers 70+ system actions Apple won’t allow directly. It can change defaults without prompts, clear all notifications, quit all apps, scrape browser tabs, run JavaScript, and grab selected text from any window.

Best for Extra Shortcut Actions: Toolbox and Actions.app

Sindre Sorhus’s free app Actions offers 170 Shortcut actions for all Apple platforms. See a partial list here.

Toolbox Pro costs $5.99 one-time and adds powerful features for date/time, dictionaries, contacts, files, media, reminders, system tasks, and text.

Best for Persistent Data: Data Jar

Shortcuts handle temporary data well but can’t save it long-term. Data Jar (donationware) stores structured data for Shortcuts to read and update later, helping workflows track state over time—making Shortcuts act like apps.

Good for: settings, preferences, counters, lists, saved variables, workflow state.

Best for Notes-Centric Workflows: Actions for Obsidian

Actions for Obsidian adds Shortcut features to import web content, calendars, contacts, health data, and more into Obsidian notes.

Other Useful Shortcut Enhancers

• BarCuts: macOS Shortcuts Launcher — menu bar app shows relevant Shortcuts without clutter 
• Menu Box — create custom Shortcut menus

Find helpful Shortcuts at:
Routine Hub
Matthew Cassinelli
Shortcuts Gallery
MacStories Shortcuts Archive

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"Fields of Gold" by Eva Cassidy

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Pick a song that reminds you of a color. What color? - Fields of Gold by Eva Cassidy

I'll keep going back to the Eva Cassidy well as long as I can. This photo captures what I see in my mind's eye when I hear this song.

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"Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen

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Post a song that mentions another recording artist or artists. - Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen

"Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, that's me and I want you only,. Don't turn me home again. I just can't face myself alone again."

“In 1975, when I went into the studio to record ‘Born to Run,’ ” Bruce Springsteen once said, “I wanted to make a record with words like Bob Dylan, that sounded like Phil Spector’s productions, but most of all I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison.”

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Brett Terpstra has released Marked 3, and this is not just a routine update. It’s one of those releases that makes you stop and think about where a tool actually fits in your workflow. If you write in Markdown on a Mac, there’s a very good chance Marked has been the missing piece all along.

For years, I lived in Microsoft Word for anything that wasn’t email. That was the EdTech world: Word was the standard, `.doc` and `.docx` were the expected formats, and no one wanted to hear about alternatives. Never mind the huge app footprint, the licensing mess, the cost, or the absurdity of the entire Office suite when all you really needed was a word processor.

And whenever someone in tech tried to suggest something leaner — OpenOffice, Google Docs, anything that didn’t come with Microsoft baggage — the pushback was immediate and emotional. In 2015, we were literally one day away from canceling our Microsoft contract when the superintendent made a late-afternoon phone call to my boss with a $100K purchase order to renew. That was the kind of environment it was.

So yes, I value the freedom to choose my own tools now.

Plain text has become the backbone of the way I work. Obsidian handles notes and longer writing. Drafts is where quick capture happens. Blogging tools and publishing platforms fill in the rest. Markdown wasn’t hard to learn, and once it clicks, it’s hard to go back. But Markdown has one weakness: the writing experience is only as good as the tools around it.

That’s where Marked comes in.

Marked Defined

Marked is not an editor. That’s the first thing to understand. It works alongside your editor, taking Markdown and rendering it live so you can actually see what your writing looks like without breaking your flow.

It also works with HTML and OPML files, which makes it more flexible than a lot of people realize. And beyond rendering, Marked can convert documents to PDF, HTML, DOCX, and RTF. It also brings prose analysis, syntax checking, and integration with all sorts of writing and outlining apps.

Who It’s For

The short answer: anybody who writes.

If you’re a coder or a technical writer, you get a lot of useful extras:

• Syntax highlighting for code blocks
• MathJax and KaTeX support
• Mermaid diagrams
• MultiMarkdown, YAML, and Pandoc metadata support
• CriticMarkup

That’s useful, sure, but it’s not really why I care about it.

For the kind of writing I do, the most valuable features are the ones that help me clean up my prose before I hit publish:

• Spelling and grammar checking
• Sentence simplification tips
• Word count, sentence count, and sentence complexity
• Reading time
• Grade-level scoring

That’s the real value. Write where you’re comfortable, then let Marked tell you what the page actually looks like.

The Little Things That Make It Better

Marked has a bunch of features that sound minor until you actually start using them regularly. Flexible search. Automatic table of contents generation. Bookmarking. A visual document overview. Collapsible sections. Keyboard access almost everywhere.

It’s also a very nice Markdown reader, even when you’re not editing. Auto-scroll is there. So is distraction-free mode. And if you want to read faster, there’s even an RSVP-style overlay with adjustable WPM.

If you work with outlines or mind maps, Marked supports embeds from popular apps and can even turn an outline into a mind map directly. That’s a niche feature, but a genuinely useful one if your brain works that way.

There are also browser extensions for sending page URLs or selected content straight into Marked 3, which is a nice touch if you spend any time collecting notes from the web.

Integrations Matter

Marked works the way good Mac software should: it gets out of the way and plays well with the tools you already use.

That means it fits alongside Scrivener, Word, MarsEdit, Bear, Ulysses, Obsidian, and other writing apps. In v3, Scrivener rendering with live preview is new, and Bear and Obsidian callouts are now fully supported.

And for the automation crowd, there’s CLI support and AppleScript. That alone makes it much more interesting than a typical “pretty preview” app.

Final Thoughts

If you have a Setapp subscription, Marked 3 is already there. Otherwise, you can download it directly for a free trial or pick it up from the Mac App Store.

The lifetime price is $69.99, which is a little steep, though not outrageous for a serious utility you’ll keep using. The subscription option is $2.99 per month, which is much easier to justify.

Marked 3 is the kind of Mac app that quietly improves everything around it. It doesn’t try to replace your editor. It makes your writing workflow better by giving you a clearer view of what you’ve actually written, and that’s a pretty compelling trick.

And in classic Brett Terpstra fashion, it’s built by someone who clearly understands the people using it.

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"Down In the Valley to Pray" by Doc Watson

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Post a song that's a different speed than you're used to - Down In The Valley to Pray by Doc Watson

This solo dirge by Doc Watson is a definite break from his usual lively bluegrass and folk flat picking style, but it's my favorite version of the sone, even more than the one from O Brother Where Art Thou. Seeing Doc Watson twice was one of the highlights of my concert going career.

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"White & Nerdy (Parody of "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire feat. Krayzie Bone)" by "Weird Al" Yankovic

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Pick a song that matches what you are really thinking about just now - White and Nerdy by Weird Al Yankovic

I'm a big weird Al fan. My wife stood ina Taco Bell line with him, so there's only one degree of separation between us. The lyrics are a but dated but the ethos remains strong. I still find it hilarious that Chamillionaire sued Weird Al over this parody.

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"Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond

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The last song you heard on the radio - Sweet Caroline b y Neil Diamond

In my dad's car on my Dad's SIrius oldies station.

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"Something So Right" by Paul Simon

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Hit shuffle on your music library and post the first song played - Something So Right by Paul Simon

Another one of the songs of my life. Gotta thank my Mom for making me a Paul Simon fan for the past 50 years. She even bought me and my siblings concert tickets during the Graceland tour.

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"Do You Feel Like We Do (Live)" by Peter Frampton

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Post a song that uses an instrument in an abnormal way - Do You Feel Like We Do by Peter Frampton

The talk box turns the guitar into a voice-like instrument, especially in the live version from Frampton Comes Alive!.

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"Zombie" by The Cranberries

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Share a song released 2+ years ago that you recently discovered. - Zombie by the Cranberries

First of all, I can't name a single song released in the last two years, so there's that. I somehow never listened to the Cranberries back in the day. I just missed them. After hearing a few of their songs on the TV show, Derry Girls, I did a little research and found this cultural phenomena. Wow! I cheated myself out of decades of listening pleasure.

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"The Streets of Laredo (Mono)" by Johnny Cash

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**What song has the same vibe as your favorite book? Which book? Streets of Laredo by Johnny Cash"

The great American novel is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, on the surface, just a western, but underneath it deals with the the roles of men and women, the lives the previously enslaved and Native Americans. It speaks to the rule of law, of the military and of big business. It's about friendship, duty, family, foibles all at once. It's a hell of a story.

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