Glui For Mac Is A Simple Alternative To Skitch With Dropbox Support

If you’re looking for a Mac app that takes screenshots, lets you annotate them, uploads them to the cloud directly, and does it all for free, Skitch is probably the first app that’ll come to your mind, and what most people would recommend. Skitch has more than just the few features listed above; in fact, as far as screenshot apps for Mac go, it is possibly the most feature-rich free app of its category that we’ve come across. Though you might really like it for all its features that could save you a lot of time, or you might really hate it for all the features you’ll probably never use and the controls that aren’t very easy to figure out. For a simpler solution albeit one with a price tag of $2.99, Glui is a great alternative. It’s an app available in the Mac App Store that lets you take screenshots (of a particular area, the whole screen, or just one window), annotate them, draw on them with a pen tool, add some basic arrows or rectangular shapes to them, and upload them to your Dropbox account, without having to use separate apps for the purpose, or use a heavyweight app like Skitch that offers many features you don’t require.

Glui adds a camera icon to the Menu Bar to let you take screenshots and access the app’s preferences. Screenshots can be take either by selecting one of the options in the app’s menu, or by using one of the keyboard shortcuts. Glui has its own shortcuts and does not use the default Mac ones for the purpose.

Once you snap a screenshot, the captured image opens in a window ready to be edited, uploaded, or saved to your system. The buttons located along the bottom allow you to draw an arrow (in any direction), a rectangular shape, a freehand drawing, or a text string to the screenshot. What’s really neat about Glui is that you can drag & reposition each element that you’ve added to the image, including individual drawings made with the pen tool. What’s not so good is that you can’t delete them at random, and there is no eraser tool for the purpose either. Additionally you can’t change the color of any of the annotation tools.

To save a screenshot to your hard drive, click the first button at the bottom-right and then drag & drop the image to the location where you want to save it. To upload the image to Dropbox, click the ‘Upload’ button. You will have to connect the app with your Dropbox account in order for this feature to work.
You can chose what the app does once a screenshot has been uploaded; you can have it copy the direct image link or the link of its share page to your clipboard. Glui adds both a Menu Bar icon and a Dock icon but you can choose to enable only one of them from the preferences if you want.

Glui works well at what it does, but it’s missing a few features that would make it a better replacement for Skitch and justify its price tag. The developers should add crop, resize and eraser tools, and make it possible to select custom colors for the drawings, arrows, text and rectangles added to the image.
Download Glui From Mac App Store

Read More

ClawMenu Is A Combined Mac Finder & Launchpad Alternative

Developers and designers often create variations of how or what the next version of iOS could/should look like, but you don’t see as many conceptualizations and renderings for OS X. ClawMenu is a Mac app that dares to re-imagine how Finder and Launchpad could work together, providing you with a single place to browse files in Finder and launch apps. It’s worth $7.99 in the Mac App Store and has a demo version that you can use for seven days, no strings attached. It allows you to add folder locations, preview and open files, launch apps, and add folder shortcuts. The app can be brought to front by moving your mouse cursor to a screen edge of your choice.

ClawMenu is both a file browser and an app launcher; the interface comprises two bars, one each at the top and bottom with a large center panel for viewing files, apps and folders. It adds an icon to both the Menu Bar and the Dock. Clicking either one will launch app. At the top and bottom, you can add folder locations or shortcuts. Click the plus sign on the top bar to add a folder to the top bar, and click anywhere on the bottom bar to add items to it. Your Mac HD, Applications and Home folders are added by default.
The Application folder is meant to be a Launchpad alternative, though it scrolls vertically and does not have a search feature.

When browsing folders, hover your mouse over a file to preview and click to open. You will not be able to access the right-click context menu that you get when browsing files in Finder, which is another shortcoming of the app. You can, however, open the file in Finder. Clicking on an empty area will dismiss the app.
Interestingly, we actually found the app to be faster at opening and loading folder content compared to Finder.

From ClawMenu’s preferences, you can set the app to launch at login, set an active screen border, or change the Menu Bar icon’s appearance.

We don’t normally review apps worth $7.99, but this one is quite unique, hence the exception. Still, I must say that the app, although promising, does seem slightly overpriced. It could use considerable improvement in some areas. A gesture and a keyboard shortcut to activate it would be a good addition, and we wouldn’t oppose a price drop either.
We recommend giving the demo version of the app a try before you decide to purchase the full variant.
Download ClawMenu From Mac App Store

Read More

How To Manage Mac Startup Items & Prevent Apps From Creating Them

Startup items delay startup; the more you have, the longer it will take before your system is ready for use, which is kind of the downside of settings apps to launch as soon as you boot your computer. For Mac users who want to temporarily stop apps from launching at startup and reduce the boot time, the process is very simple, as is managing the apps that launch each time you boot; you can head to System Preferences > Users & Groups and manage them from the ‘Login Items’ tab. Though there isn’t exactly a preventive measure to stop apps from adding themselves to the startup list. Some apps will explicitly ask for your permission, while others will be sneaky about it. Here’s how you can prevent apps from adding themselves to the startup items list, delay startup time for apps, and be notified each time an app tries to add itself to the list.

Delay Startup

Delay Start is a free Mac app available in the Mac App Store that allows you to choose a delay time for startup apps to launch. Just the app, add all the apps you want to delay the launch of in the ‘Apps to be started:’ list using the + button, enter a time (in seconds) for the delay, and that’s it. Once your system has booted, run Delay Start and it will launch the apps after the timer expires. You can’t set it to start at login from the app itself, but you can probably add  it to the startup items from the System Preferences. It lets you launch multiple apps at once with a single click. If you’re looking for a smarter way to manage the login items, give Exhaust a try too.

Prevent Apps From Adding Themselves To Login Items

When apps add themselves to the login items list, they are in fact writing to a plist file. You can stop apps from doing so if you simply lock that particular file. Go to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist and open the file’s ‘Get Info’ window. Now simply lick the ‘Locked’ option, and apps will no longer be able to add themselves to this list without your explicit permission. If you’re ever unable to add an app to the login items list, you should unlock this file temporarily, add the app to it according to its format, and then lock the file again.

Get Notified When An App Installs An Item To The Login Folder

Automatic Launch Object Detection is an app we reviewed last year that monitors several folders on your Mac for launch agent items. Among the list of folders that it monitors is /System/Library/StartupItems. Each time an app adds something to this folder (or any of the other ones), you will receive a notification and can view the newly added item. You might want to try this approach if you aren’t up for locking the plist file completely.

Removing Apps From The Login Items List

If you don’t feel like digging through the login items list to remove an app from it, you can turn to its Dock icon for help. Right click the icon, go to Options and uncheck the ‘Open at Login’ option. Needless to say, this is only a good idea if you have just one app to remove.

Hopefully, you will now be able to manage login items better and control what’s added to the list. Some of the suggestions in this post will not only let you monitor apps being added to the login items list, but also notify you when scripts have been installed to run, which is an added advantage.
Download Delay Start From The Mac App Store

Read More

How To Record Audio From Skype Calls In High Quality On Mac

If you’ve ever held interviews, conference calls or just any important calls over Skype that you later needed the transcript for, you might have wished there was a way to record a Skype call. Windows’ users have it easy when it comes to recording Skype calls, but there aren’t many free solutions if you’re using a Mac. This little guide details all the information you’ll need to record a Skype call on your Mac. You will be working with free apps entirely, and there will be no Terminal commands to complicate things. The overall process to set everything up shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes.

Apps You Will Be Working With

1. SoundFlower
2. Audacity
3. Skype
4. Audio MIDI Setup (Stock app; no need to download)

First of all, install SoundFlower; its installation procedure requires a system restart, so it is best to get it out of the way first.
Next, install Audacity, and launch Skype if you don’t already have it. Audacity will be the app that does all the recording. If you hit the record button in Audacity, you will find that it is recording only the input (what you’re saying), because your mic input is the default recording source set in Audacity. At any given time, Audacity will not be able to record the audio from the same input and output device. Confused? Try talking to someone at the very same time while they’re talking to you too. You will find you need an additional brain to make sense of the conversation.

Why You Need Soundflower

To fix the aforementioned problem, you need a separate set of speakers and an additional mic so that Audacity can listen to the output from the speakers through the second mic. We’re assuming you don’t want to buy any additional hardware, and this is where SoundFlower comes in. Using SoundFlower, you will create a separate audio stream i.e. a virtual sound device that you can route the output audio to, and then have Audacity listen to it as if it were input from a second mic.
If you’ve already installed SoundFlower, you should see two new input and output options in your system sound preferences; Soundflower (2ch) and Soundflower (64ch). You can use these options to create a virtual device that can listen to your speaker’s output.

Creating An Aggregate Device

Go to Applications > Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup and from the Window menu, select ‘Show Audio Window’. What you have to do here is to reroute the audio to an output device (a virtual one) that Audacity can listen to and record from. From the plus sign at the bottom, select ‘Create Multi-Output Device’. Once created, select your output source (we were using our built-in speakers) and Soundflower (2ch).

Next, click the plus sign again and select ‘Create Aggregate Device’. Here, select your input device (we are using the mic that came built-in with our webcam) and ‘Soundflower (2ch)’.

Selecting Output Destination For Skype

Go to Skype’s preferences and select this newly created ‘Multi-Output Device’ as the output device for ‘Speakers’. Your audio output from Skype will be routed to it (don’t worry, you will be able to hear everything just fine).

Selecting Recording Source For Audacity

Finally launch Audacity (or quit and relaunch it if it was previously running) and go to its preferences. From the Devices tab, select the newly created ‘Soundflower (2ch)’ as the ‘Device’ under the recording options.  What this has done is sent the output from Skype to our virtual output device which will be picked up by Soundflower and used by Audacity as the input device for recording.

Start Recording

One final thing you need to do is open the channel dropdown in Audacity and set it to listen from 3 channels. This is because you have one channel for your mic, and two for the other person’s audio. You’re all set now; just hit the record button and start a call in Skype to begin recording.

[via Mactuts+]

Read More