Feek's macOS useful tools, utilities and applications thread

Does anyone use Goodnotes 5? I'm not that impressed with LiquidNotes. The interface is rubbish. I did some YouTube searching, and Goodnotes 5 seems a well-regarded app. I was just wondering if I bought it on the mac, would I also need to buy it on the iPad? Also, does the iPad version include the iPhone version?
 
There aren't really good free PDF editors as far as complex stuff go, preview is good for annotating but if you need to remove stuff and edit tables, etc then you need to pay Adobe. Even other paid tools are nowhere near as good. They offer a free trial so if it's a one-off thing you can just use Adobe.
 
Si. said:
I went from Firefox back to Safari a while ago and find Safari much better, but I just came across Brave (https://brave.com) this is a more security orientated browser. Anyone using it and have feedback?
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I use Safari most of the time but I also use Brave on occasion. It’s a good quick browser with support for Web3 addresses and one click options for turning on Tor. No complaints from me. If I could get my rear in gear and copy all my Safari bookmarks into Brave then I’d happily use it full time. Certainly it’s much better than Firefox which seems quite clunky these days.
 
Checked Brave out.

Seems like it's a combination of a few things:

Chromium-based browser
Ad blocking
Tight privacy settings
Fingerprint randomiser
Option to route network via Tor in private browsing

Impressive all-in-one solution and ticks most privacy boxes, but any browser can be customised to have those features with a few extensions and settings.

They are also on Chromium 100.0.4896.127 which is the latest stable version (same as Chrome), even Microsoft Edge isn't as up-to-date. Wasn't a fan of the crypto stuff that's integrated though.
 
I used to use Brave, can't remember why I stopped using it.

On another note, I regularly SSH to stuff (as well as the occasional SFTP) and I had been using Termius. I like it, the UI is intuitive, it manages its own keys and with the paid option it has cloud sync. That means it's effortless to use on all my Apple devices. Granted, it's not often I use SSH from my iPhone or iPad, but when I do the app is great. At $99 a year it's not cheap though.

I get Royal TSX for free and it can do everything Termius can do and more, including 1Password hook in, RDP, VNC etc. I use it for SSH and RDP. But the UI is a bit clunky and although cloud sync is possible by saving its file to iCloud or OneDrive, I don't think there is an IOS version of the app.

Termius is coming up to renewal and I'm in two minds about whether to bother. I much prefer the UI over Royal TSX and it's very handy to be able to use it on my iPhone and iPad, the cloud sync works better than Royal TSX where I've ended up with duplicate files, or I forget to save etc.

If it were a little cheaper, say $60 a year I wouldn't even be hesitating. Then again <$0.30 for something I use almost daily isn't exactly a huge amount of money! And I might be able to get work to pay for the license.

Edit - screw it, I've just put an IT request in to ask if I can have it. The worst they can say is no.
 
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I've used pretty much every browser at some point. When I was on Windows, Linux or Android then Firefox was my browser of choice but now I have a Mac, an iPhone and an iPad the integration with Safari is just too good so I stick to that now. If Safari could implement Firefox Containers I think I would be in heaven. That is the best feature of any browser out now. Oh, and if you get Mozilla VPN you can have different tabs open using different VPN servers in random countries so you could access a USA website in one tab and a German site in another tab. I think that is probably the best thing about Firefox and Mozilla VPN.
 
ChrisD. said:
On another note, I regularly SSH to stuff (as well as the occasional SFTP) and I had been using Termius. I like it, the UI is intuitive, it manages its own keys and with the paid option it has cloud sync. That means it's effortless to use on all my Apple devices. Granted, it's not often I use SSH from my iPhone or iPad, but when I do the app is great. At $99 a year it's not cheap though.
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I do a lot of SSH myself but never considered paying for it. Most of the time I have access to a computer so I can just use Tabby but I'll have to look into an iPhone / iPad solution as well. $99 for SSH seems a bit steep but I guess you get what you pay for.
 
Cromulent said:
I do a lot of SSH myself but never considered paying for it. Most of the time I have access to a computer so I can just use Tabby but I'll have to look into an iPhone / iPad solution as well. $99 for SSH seems a bit steep but I guess you get what you pay for.
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I also use Tabby but I regularly connect to 10 maybe more devices. I also change them quite often when I rebuild things or experiment with stuff. Termius makes it super easy in comparison. Create a new connection, enter in creds or keypair, and done. It's then remembered and sync'd across all devices.
 
ChrisD. said:
I also use Tabby but I regularly connect to 10 maybe more devices. I also change them quite often when I rebuild things or experiment with stuff. Termius makes it super easy in comparison. Create a new connection, enter in creds or keypair, and done. It's then remembered and sync'd across all devices.
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Is there a limit to the number of SSH key pairs you can have? I tend to split my servers into groups so that even if someone gets hold of my SSH private key they only get access to a limited set of my servers. This does have the downside of managing a rather large set of key pairs though.
 
My main goal for getting my Mac and iPad was for studying so I've been looking a lot into eBook reading solutions and also PDF note-taking apps that sync between a Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Well, I can happily report to finding the best eBook solution. Use Calibre on the Mac and BookFusion on your iPhone and iPad and it will sync items from your Calibre library to the BookFusion cloud which will then sync your position, notes and highlights. $5 a month. It is a total no brainer. There is a 25 book free version but the max file size on the free plan for one eBook is only 15MB.

As for PDF note-taking apps, I'm still looking. So if anyone can help me there I'd appreciate it. The best I can find so far is LiquidText but £105 a year for a PDF note-taking app seems a bit steep.
 
@Cromulent I've really enjoyed reading and following your experiences as a newcomer to the Apple ecosystem. It's great seeing you searching for (and finding) solutions and workflows for everything you want to do. I can't help with this one but just wanted to tell you that.
 
I'm just trialing Path Finder as a finder replacement and it seems OK so far.. however one big bugbear is there is no delete on the right click menu.. so if I right click on a file I can't delete it.. is there a way to enable this?
 
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