tech

A Keyboard Maestro Plugin for Apple Shortcuts | ThoughtAsylum

A Keyboard Maestro Plugin for Apple Shortcuts | ThoughtAsylum:

With the public release of macOS Monterey, I have been trying out a few ways of interacting with Shortcuts from a number of automation tools. Shortcuts can be triggered on macOS using AppleScript or shell script, both of which are relatively easy to do with the Swiss Army knife of Mac automation, Keyboard Maestro. However, I thought it would be fun to create a convenience plugin to make it even easier to integrate Keyboard Maestro with Shortcuts.

[Great stuff!]

How to bring back multi-touch gestures after it crashes without reboot?

macos – How to bring back multi-touch gestures after it crashes without reboot?:

By my experience, multi-touch crashes on a per-app basis. I could quit the app and relaunch it, and gestures would be back.

Apparently, sleeping the display and then waking up the system again will bring back crippled gesture. You can click button to do that, or just close the lid, or use terminal:

pmset displaysleepnow; sleep 5; caffeinate -u -t 1

After one second of black screen, gestures are back.

[Worked for me, although I have a screen sleep corner, so easy enough. I hope Apple fixes this, it’s become a little too routine.]

Why Daytona is a game-changer

Why Daytona is a game-changer:

I laughed out loud when the result came back. Yes, that’s exactly what I was looking for. It wasn’t in a place a user would have looked, and Google never would have found it.

The point is this — it’s past time to take responsibility for finding the stuff we write, and if we do it well, and Daytona does, all of a sudden blogging works so much better, and the incentive to write stuff, to document, to narrate our work, to index everything you can, makes total sense.

[I’ve built a number of apps that integrated search. Each time I had the same thought. Relying on the Big Search Engines is *so* much worse than doing it yourself. Kudos to Dave for making this happen for his stuff.]

Source: Scripting News

New tool: Mess with DNS!

New tool: Mess with DNS!:

Hello! I’ve been thinking about how to explain DNS a bunch in the last year.

I like to learn in a very hands-on way. And so when I write a zine, I often
close the zine by saying something like “… and the best way to learn more
about this is to play around and experiment!“.

So I built a site where you can do experiments with DNS called Mess With DNS. It has examples of experiments you can try, and
you’ve very encouraged to come up with your own experiments.

I hope this project helps some of you understand DNS better, and I’d love to
hear about any problems you run into. Again, the site is at
https://messwithdns.net and you can report problems on GitHub.

[Interesting!]

Source: Julia Evans

Moving from 1Password to iCloud Keychain ↦

Moving from 1Password to iCloud Keychain ↦:

This is a nice post from developer Simon B. Støvring about getting data out of 1Password and into iCloud Keychain:

Ensuring all items in 1Password have a valid website address is necessary in order to import the items. iCloud Keychain will skip any items that do not have a valid website address.

After ensuring all items have a valid website address, they can be exported from 1Password by selecting a single vault and navigating to File -> Export -> All items…. After entering the Master Password the dialog below is presented. It’s important to change the file format to “iCloud Keychain (.csv)” before exporting.

The article also includes a link to Ricky Mondello’s shortcut for opening the Passwords interface directly on macOS or iOS.

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

[Once again, a note to make it easier to find.]

Source: Six Colors

Fixing the date

“Fixing the date forces you to commit to shipping, no matter how much polishing you think it still needs.”

“We don’t go on because we’re ready, we go on because it’s eleven o’clock.”
—Lorne Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live

∞ Apple Support: How to turn on AirPods Pro Conversation Boost

∞ Apple Support: How to turn on AirPods Pro Conversation Boost:

In a million years I would not have figured this one out. Watch the video below, see if you agree. This is some pretty low discoverability.

That said, props to the Apple Support team for making this video. Very well explained.

[There’s almost no way I’d remember all those steps… but at least they made the video.]

Source: The Loop

iPad Pro Magic Keyboard trackpad suddenly stops working

iPad Pro Magic Keyboard trackpad suddenly stops working:

I had the same problem, 2018 iPad Pro running 13.5.1 with the Magic Keyboard. Removing the both the iPad and the USB-C power cord from the keyboard (i.e. no power going to the Magic Keyboard from any source) seems to reset things enough to get it to start working again.

[I’m marking this just for me to find again. It doesn’t happen very frequently for me, but when it does I never remember exactly what to do… (of course, now I will)]

Source: Apple Community

Piping stdout and stderr to Preview

Piping stdout and stderr to Preview:

A while back, I wrote about how handy it was to redirect a man page into Preview. This allows you to keep the man page open, search it, and generally have a better user experience than struggling with more (or less) to navigate through the information provided there.

man -t apropos | open -fa Preview

Recently, someone asked me about more modern command line interaction, specifically, commands that use --help or similar to provide their documentation. Could that information be opened in Preview as well.

So I put on my thinking hat and set to work.