I do almost all my programming and scientific writing in Emacs, and I am a Mac user running a recent version of macOS (usually the latest release available). I try to install most of the third-party software I use with Homebrew. It makes it much easier to install the software I need (including Emacs, BSD make, OpenSSL, Python, and Qt) and keep the software updated (regularly running the command «b …

Mailspring is a free mail client for Mac, Linux, and Windows (a paid Pro version is also available). Mailspring's user interface (UI) is open source (GPLv3). It is built on a plugin architecture and is designed to be easy to extend.

I have started using Mainspring on macOS recently, and since I find keyboard shortcuts important when using an email client efficiently, Mailscript's highly configurab …

I just converted a lot of home videos from VHS to MP4 files. I planned to upload and view the resulting files on my iPad. I used HandBrake to reduce the size of the files and WALTR PRO (remember to turn of Automatic Content Recognition in the Preferences) to transfer the videos to my iPad. But, before I transferred them to the iPad, I wanted to add a title and an artwork image to the metadata of e …

I have been using Apple Notes for all my note-taking since 2016. For not-so-interesting reasons, I recently had to change to Microsoft OneNote. However, I did not want to leave all my meeting notes behind. I had to find a solution to get all my notes out for Apple Notes. And as many times before, AppleScript (and Python) was part of the solution.

My first attempt was to search for possible tools o …

In a previous posting, I explained how to use Apple Script to automate an action and connect it to a keyboard shortcut. Recently, I changed the approach for several such actions on my Macs. The new approaches are all based on Keysmith. My experience is that the resulting actions from Keysmith are executed much more efficiently than my previous solution.

Update, June 25 2024

Sometimes, I experience …

I am currently on my Mac using the Microsoft Outlook application for email. For a lot of reasons, I have turned off automatically downloading pictures from the Internet (see Preferences→Reading→Security). But sometimes, I want to see the pictures included in the email message I am reading. I can push the button Download pictures to see them. However, I prefer to use the keyboard. I have not found …