People Sure Are Picky About PDF Tools

https://preview.redd.it/b0k7kfxc6uzf1.png?width=730&format=png&auto=webp&s=ea66f9dc45181cf1c57910228e267f2c379dbb55

Few categories of software arouse as much debate as apps designed to work with PDFs, primarily because there are such a variety of use cases and work flows around these documents. As anyone who has ever worked in IT support can tell you, every ignorant enterprise user that has ever lived is convinced they need Adobe Acrobat Pro - to hell with its huge footprint, huge cost and hefty learning curve. Even knowledgable Mac users who are infrequent users of PDFS, remain in the dark about all the powerful features available in the native macOS Preview app:

Annotate and mark-up Documents & Images: add highlights, underlines, shapes, text boxes, free-hand drawing, callouts, sticky notes.
Fill out PDF forms / add signatures: you can type into detected form fields and insert an e-signature with a trackpad or camera.
Rearrange, delete, insert pages in PDFs: drag pages in the sidebar, drop in images or other documents, merge PDFS.
Obscure or permanently hide sensitive content in PDFs/images: Black-out areas so they cannot be recovered.
Export/convert file formats: e.g., change image formats, export PDFs with encryption/passwords, save in different file types.
Built-in OCR/text selection on images (in some cases): lets you hover/select text in an image and copy it.
Password protect & set permissions in PDFs when exporting: you can lock a document so it can't be printed/copied/edited.

Users who have easily defendable specific needs for powerful PDF apps include those in academia, the legal profession and finance, where there are often laws concerning data retention for the massive amounts of data generated. And, of course there are lots of one off cases for different roles that can be incredibly specific.

For many users, occasional PDF needs can be easily met by free online tools that do document conversion, signatures and advanced annotation:

iLovePDF | Online PDF tools for PDF lovers
[Smallpdf.com - A Free Solution to all your PDF Problems](https://smallpdf.com/)
Best PDF Editor | Edit, Sign, Merge & Secure

For my advanced needs, which are primarily the conversion of large PDFs into ePub and other formats along with adding OCR to PDFS that don't have it. I am partial to Abby Fine Reader, which is a hefty $70 a year.

Currently, SwiftDoo PDF for Mac is on sale for $7.99, a considerable discount from the usual price of $98. At the discounted price, it's a decent bargain if your PDF needs fall in the these categories:

Text/Image/Link editing \-- Unlike many simpler PDF viewers, you can edit text, change font/size/style, insert images, and embed hyperlinks. (Vendor version 2.0.0.3 added this explicitly.)
Annotation tools \-- Highlights, underlines, strikethroughs, sticky notes, shapes, drawing freehand: useful when marking up documents rather than just reading.
Page-/document-management \-- You can rotate, insert, delete pages, reorder, etc. Good for cleaning up multi-page PDFs.
Security features \-- Password protection, permission settings (view/copy/print/edit) are included in the Mac version.

When compared to the Windows version of the app, the Mac version comes up short, primarily because it lacks OCR conversion and batch conversions. It's also not optimized for Apple Silicon, meaning it requires Rosetta which will not be supported after the current version of macOS. You can spend more money and get more features from other PDF suites like PDF Expert ($140 one-time) and Foxit PDF Editor ($130 - year)

https://redd.it/1oqubfj
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Rule the Rule of Three 🤓
https://redd.it/1or033j
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Is Wispr Flow worth it?

Hey guys, I was just wondering if Wispr Flow is worth paying for.


Currently with the student discount and everything, I believe comes up to $6 USD, which is about $8.25 CAD. At least that's for me and the price that it's given me on the Wispr Flow app.

Just wanted to know your thoughts on whether paying for Wispr Flow is worth it or if we should seek out a better and free alternative out there.

I mainly use it on my iOS device, and sometimes on my computer as well.

https://redd.it/1or39k3
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From the OffersDen community on Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/OffersDen/comments/1opt2j5/whos_looking_for_sora_2_invite_codes/?share_id=fEVhHVUZDrSlhvF5ekME7&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&utm_source=share&utm_term=22

https://redd.it/1or43sm
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Rogue Amoeba audio apps sale thru November

Mac audio users, Rogue Amoeba is having one of their rare app sales, announced via their customer email newsletter. For November (the 11th month of the year), there is a discount of $11 off any purchase from Rogue's store, via discount code PUMPKINSPICE. Here is their store:

Rogue Amoeba | The Rogue Amoeba Store

I'm a user of several RA apps, and consider them to be great apps from a solid developer that has offered good support to users for many years. The two apps I use the most are Audio Hijack (for capturing app and external audio; I esp. like its scheduled capture feature), and Fission (for lossless editing of compressed audio files, like MP3s). Highly recommended.

Worth noting is that macOS Tahoe's v. 26 shipped with audio bugs that impacted some RA apps and apps from other audio devs. The newsletter notes that Apple fixed the main bugs in v26.1, and RA's latest updates make their apps compatible with Tahoe, as long as one upgrades to 26.1.

https://redd.it/1or6zj6
@macappsbackup

Animated/dynamic wallpaper app that has the default wallpapers

Hey y'all,

I'm looking for an animated wallpaper app for my macbook. I like the default wallpapers (specifically the tea gardens one), so what I'm looking for is an app that basically keeps the default wallpaper's animation on even when you've logged in.

I'm also interested in dynamic (as in changes depending on the time of day), high quality wallpapers app with a nature's aesthetic like the default ones. I'd appreciate some help with finding this stuff :)

Thanks!

https://redd.it/1orb3ot
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Griddle - now free forever

Hi Reddit, the last time I did a giveaway and it was well received, I was excited, I launched my first Mac app. Some of you supported and paid for the full version.

I still use griddle everyday, it is easily the best tiling manager (for me at least). And I want to just give this to everyone for free.

Thanks for making this fun.

Price: $0

https://getgriddle.app/




https://redd.it/1orcqo1
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Cloud Gaming (Open for Tester)

Cloud gaming is here 🚀
You can now play AAA games straight from the cloud — no high-end PC needed.

We’re opening Storm for early testers ⚡️

Available on Mac, Windows, & Linux.
Join the community and get early access 👇
🎮 Discord: https://discord.gg/PNbZZ597

https://redd.it/1orfz17
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All of the New Apps = Hard Drive Chaos

BLUF - You need a plan to clean your mac hard drive. A plan, not necessarily an app. That plan is up to you, your technical competence and your time.

The new era of app "development" requires that everyone who uses more than built-in apps to have a plan for MacOS cleaning. The amount of trash being littered throughout the hard drive by vibe-coded, or new to software development, apps is only going to get worse.

Convention is no longer being followed. Many of the new apps just put files in random places across the hard drive and standard cleaners might not find them.

Some store their permanent preferences and data inside of cache locations.
Others store logs in /Users/Shared or /Documents.
Some store in multiple directories inside of \~/Library.
Most don’t come with an uninstall noscript.
Some create background tasks and install extensions with no cleanup noscript.
Add in local AI models and large data files: you’ve got a recipe for running out of disk space and it won’t be obvious why.
New self-hosted advocacy has people installing docker containers, tapping brew sources and trying all sorts of solutions without consideration to the cleanup repercussions.

The main cleaner apps won't account for these types of mistakes because they assume proper locations for storage that conform to proper developer locations.

I wrote a blog article about this for those interested: “Why Everyone Needs a Cleaning Plan for MacOS Computers”.

If you aren’t interested, pick your plan, your app, your process….but you actually need one.

https://www.trashpandamacos.com/blog

https://redd.it/1orf3q2
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I built a native Safari power-tool for Mac (that you also get on iOS) to block trackers, force redirects, and fix annoying sites. It's live on Product Hunt today! (50%+ off over the weekend)
https://redd.it/1orkf3n
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Sidebar the modern Dock replacement for macOS - Major 1.9.0 update
https://redd.it/1orin2p
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In Search Of App Capable Of Advanced Indexing, Organization, Search and Meta Data For Image Files

A little background: I am a designer (mostly/sometimes). I've been doing this for a while and thus have utilized several computers/drives over the years. I am in the process of transferring files to a new system right now and in moving some unused stuff to my cloud storage, I started looking through some other previously-archived drives/directories and had a few moments of "oh that's where that ended up - that might have come in handy for XXX". I'm talking about image files of every sort... stock photos, sketches, mockups, web interfaces, icons, etc, etc... of various image file formats, including the editable ones like .ai and .psd. it seems that back in my younger years, I was not quite as organized as I like to think I am today so there is stuff EVERYWHERE.

What I would love would be to have a tool that can go through and index all of the various image files in all these archives (let's just say for the sake of keeping it simple, that they are all scattered about 1 gigantic external SSD accessible directly from the workstation on which this tool would be running), use AI to to figure out what kind of image it is (illustration, photograph, UI, etc) and add some other meta info like a denoscription, keywords/tags that then allows the files to be found via a search within this tool.

I've seen a few things out there that kind of come close but nothing that hits the nail right on the head for my level of clutter and lack or organization, or even good file names for that matter. Being able to include PSDs and AIs (and EPSs, PDFs and maybe even some OBJs and/or BLENDs) AND being able to auto-assign at least some keywords are pretty important.

Obviously, the free-er the better, but a tool of this magnitude would surely be worth paying for a license for me.

Any suggestions for something that comes close?

https://redd.it/1ornw1t
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Need help naming my app. It's digital garden, personal space app where you can capture all things your like and care about.
https://redd.it/1orp70y
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Alt Update - Multilingual Trannoscription Support for 100 Languages
https://redd.it/1oruie6
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DockFlow review: Your Dock just learned to read the room
https://todayonmac.com/dockflow-review-your-dock-just-learned-to-read-the-room/

https://redd.it/1orucxy
@macappsbackup

Inside the mind of a Dev — why do you make what you make?

As a daily visitor to this subreddit, I see many devs posting about their new apps, workflows every day here. I have also seen some devs working on improving OSS by adding features to make it much better.

On the other hand, I’ve seen a flood of similar apps - pomodoro timers, Todo manager, dock apps - often with just minor tweaks or fresh UI layers on top of already great originals. This sometimes makes the App Store feel a bit clogged and unbalanced, where genuinely good apps risk getting buried among dozens of near-copies

So I’m curious:

👉 What makes you to create something new, instead of working on available app when available?

👉 Would you rather work on your own app idea, or contribute to improving existing ones (if the project genuinely excites you)?

Would love to hear your thoughts! Hope this post sits well within the community rules :)


@Mods, I’m unsure of right flair to use, so please change it if necessary

https://redd.it/1orx2vs
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Keyboard shortcut to 'love' an Apple Music Song, after 3.5 years

The app Looking Glass - Music Remote in the Mac App Store is a menu bar app that allows you to control or skip music etc.

If you're in the menu bar, you can hit "Cmd L" but if you're in something else it doesn't work. There's a submenu in the settings that allows you to record a custom keyboard shortcut, so I set mine to Ctrl Opt Cmd L and it works from anywhere.

I previously tried doing this through Apple's system settings and that never worked. I tried a few specific methods.

This is all I wanted from Apple Music ever.

I'm not dumb, but I might be, and I just wish this functionality was native already haha.

https://redd.it/1os15cs
@macappsbackup

Anyone here tried Refbox for keeping visual notes or refs on screen?

I came across of Refbox app and it looks interesting
From what i get it lets you keep images or notes floating over other apps, basically like a small workspace for refs and reminders

Anyone here has tried it for real work?
Does it feel smooth or get buggy?
Im trying to find something light that helps keep visual stuff in view without switching windows all the time

https://redd.it/1os2q1f
@macappsbackup

App similar to "Findings"

https://findingsapp.com

Discontinued a few years ago, it looks like a notes organizer geared to scientific stuff. Wondering if anyone used it and what they replaced it with, if anything.

I'm researching for a writing project and something like this seems pretty cool.

https://redd.it/1os44s8
@macappsbackup

BETA I made a posture reminder menu bar app

https://preview.redd.it/gxoqs2fil50g1.png?width=2296&format=png&auto=webp&s=f6116c11c91029399f0c496e5a4b11c63bf9be0b

https://preview.redd.it/5c012ohql50g1.png?width=1838&format=png&auto=webp&s=104a1071693dfa8c7b6382dc41d969bbc14dad4b

I always end up slouching in front of my laptop so I made a posture reminder app that shows me how I look every 20 minutes.


You can customize the interval and see some nice stats on how often you were straight v. straightened up, etc.


TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/Gtp7HEvd

https://redd.it/1os9a15
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Does Betterdsipaly natively change DDC?

DOes betterdisplay natively change DDC, as in same as clicking the monitor's buttons to adjust brightness, contrast, etc? Also, if I can change brightness and volume with betterdisplay, I have DDC right? Idk what monitor model exactly, but I know it's an acer nitro VG something.

https://redd.it/1ose0zw
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