By Philip Michaels
App Report: Command centers
We like simple tools here at the App Report, but we also admire apps that could settle for handling just one task but find ways to expand that mission that actually make sense. To that end, two of the entries in this week’s round-up start off with the seemingly simple jobs of expanding text and transcribing meetings, respectively, and turn them into productivity hubs that handle much, much more.
But don’t worry, fans of simplicity — we have some other apps on display that take a much more restrained approach to things like widgets, RSS feeds and reminders.
Whether you’ve got a simple app or a more complex one, we want to hear from you. Send a description to apps@sixcolors.com, and we’ll take a look. We can’t respond to every email, but you might just wind up seeing your submission in a future report.
TypeFire
Text expanders with expanded responsibilities seem to be all the rage these days. A few weeks back, we talked about Klackey, and now you can add TypeFire to the roster of multipurpose utilities.
TypeFire is primarily a text expander — and a good one, based on my time using the app — but it also features a clipboard manager that saves every snippet, URL and block of text you copy. The app also can manage Markdown notes — all you have to do is connect the app to a file containing anything written in Markdown, and you can open them from within TypeFire.
It’s the text expanding features that piqued my interest, and TypeFire handles things in a pretty straightforward way. Just come up with a keyboard combo for expanding text, and put a ; or z at the front so you’re unlikely to trigger that shortcut by mistake. From there, it’s simply a matter of typing that combination of keystrokes into any app that accepts text, be it a text editor like BBEdit or an email in Gmail on your web browser. (Just be sure when creating your shortcut to fill in the abbreviation field — a step I initially missed when putting TypeFire through its paces.)
TypeFire has a few nice additions like the ability to pin frequently used items in your Clipboard manager and tags to better organize text snippets and clips. Sadly, those tags don’t seem to cross over from TypeFire’s text expanding and clipboard managing capabilities — at least not in my initial use of the app.
You can download TypeFire for free, and put it through its paces via a 7-day trial. An $18 Pro license gives you lifetime access to features like unlimited clips, Selection Prompts, Prompt Chains, notes sync and note version history. The app also works as a Chrome extension and an iOS version is in the works.
Weeve
Lots of macOS apps can record and transcribe meetings so that you can review who said what later on. Weeve wants to use that transcript to produce action items for after the meeting, without having to upload anything to the cloud.
When you launch Weeve for the first time, you’ll be prompted to download a 4.3GB language model to handle all the transcription and analysis locally. That not only keeps your conversations private, but it also means that Weeve can work even when your Mac is offline.
I tested the app by recording a conversation between me and my wife where we planned out our week ahead. Afterwards, Weeve produced a transcript and summary of our talk, but the really valuable stuff came as I scrolled down through the meeting report. Weeve also breaks out decisions made during your conversation and action items arising from the meeting. Other sections include Risks and Blockers, Open Questions, Key Metrics, Feedback and Reactions, Context and Background, key quotes from participants, and the names of any people you mention. Weeve also flags key moments of the conversation, like when my wife mentioned a surprise dentist appointment; you have the ability to flag sections of the recording on your own, too.
The transcript generated by Weeve was fairly accurate, though when my daughter interrupted us mid-conversation, the app had a difficult time recognizing a new speaker. With more usage, I suspect the app would do a better job recognizing who was speaking. Plus, I get the impression the real value of Weeve comes with the analytical features.
Does this strike you as overkill for a meeting transcriber? Then you are probably not the intended audience for Weeve, which has a definite business bent. (Another clue that Weeve is designed for serious endeavors: its pricing structure includes a rate for teams as well as individual licenses.)
You can check out Weeve in a free trial that gives you 10 recordings and two projects, with features such as speaker ID, chat and automations, and the ability to mark key moments. After that, a pro license will cost €13/month, with an annual subscription dropping the monthly cost to €10.
BetterMacWidgets
If you find the current crop of widgets available for your Mac desktop to be a little plain, BetterMacWidgets looks to liven things up by adding different styles, animations and themes to the widgets at hand. Just pick a widget from the selection in the BetterMacWidgets app, preview it and tweak it to your liking, and click add to make it a part of your desktop.
BetterMacWidgets offers 10 widgets as part of its free tier — standard stuff like clock, weather, reminders, calendar and timer tools. Pay €13 for the Pro tier, and you get all 50 widgets available through the app in a variety of sizes. Paid tier widgets let you show off your photos, track your stocks, add up things on a calculator and more.
Other features in BetterMacWidgets let you place widgets on the lock screen or use AI tools to build and customize your own widget. That’s available for a separate €13 fee, though a €20 bundle unlocks all the paid tier widgets along with the widget creation and lock screen capabilities.
FeedLizard
A good RSS reader can deliver news on the topics you want to read about from the sources you trust, and FeedLizard is set up to let you do that in relative peace and quiet. You don’t have to register your email address to use the app — just subscribe to the feeds you want and have them delivered to your device.
FeedLizard comes with a list of curated feeds from sources in a variety of topics such as technology, Apple news, sports, general news and more. But if there’s a site you want to add — and it offers an RSS feed — it’s easy enough to enter that URL into FeedLizard. I was able to put Six Colors and the Guardian into the app without any fuss.
The app offers two views — Scroll and Pages. The former gives you a couple paragraphs of each article, and you can tap a button to read the rest on the site itself, while Pages gives you the full article broken up into the screens that you flip or swipe through.
The App Store listing for FeedLizard only shows iOS and iPadOS support, though once I had the app downloaded onto my phone, I was able to open up a version on my Mac. iCloud synchronization works between the different devices.
You pay $3 to download FeedLizard, but that’s all — there are no recurring fees or in-app purchases.
Nudge Monster
As good as the built-in Reminders app on your iPhone can be, it can be easy to let those notifications go unheeded and have tasks remain undone. Nudge Monster looks to address that by making its reminders much harder to ignore.
In many ways, Nudge Monster works the same as Reminders — you enter in a reminder with a deadline, and the app pings you when it’s due. But Nudge Monster also brings a countdown feature to the Dynamic Island on your iPhone, so that a task or reminder is never far from view. And if you miss your deadline, Nudge Monster will send notifications every four hours until you mark the task complete.
Monster Mode ups the ante with an alarm that will ring even if your iPhone is on silent or if you’re in Focus mode. Reminders for missed deadlines pop up every two hours in this mode.
While the built-in Reminders app has its own alarm feature, Nudge Monster stands out in another way with a Birthday tab to remind you when someone’s big day has arrived so you can send them well wishes. I plugged in my daughter’s birthday, and as the clock struck midnight, Nudge Monster was pinging me to let me know to celebrate her big day.
In using the app, I found that the menu bar at the bottom of the screen covered up some tasks in various views. But I like the fact that Nudge Monster is a free download with unlimited reminders and birthdays. You can pay $4/month (or $20/year) for a Pro version with unlimited Monster Modes and the ability to track five countdowns at once; Pro users also get a home screen widget.
[Philip Michaels has been writing about technology since 1999, most notably for Macworld and Tom’s Guide. He currently finds himself between jobs, so if you need someone who can string a few sentences together (or make your sentences read a lot better), drop him a line.]
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