Warp: A Simple, Keyboard-Driven Mac Utility for Saving Window Setups

By John Voorhees

One of the cornerstone features coming to macOS Ventura this fall is Stage Manager, which lets you create sets of multiple apps, decluttering your desktop without a lot of fiddling. In my limited use so far, I’m optimistic about Stage Manager’s future as a way to manage apps, but it’s not for everyone, which is fine because there are so many other ways to manage windows on a Mac.

There are other utilities available for arranging windows on your desktop and saving those configurations. For window placement, I use Magnet. I love that the app can be driven entirely by keyboard shortcuts but is also always available in my Mac’s menu bar.

However, for some reason, utilities for saving the window configurations I create with Magnet have never stuck as part of my workflow. With Stage Manager on my mind recently, though, I thought I’d give a new app called Warp a try.

I like the way Warp previews layouts in its preferences.

Warp is the creation of Mike Choi, who released Juice, a macOS Bluetooth device manager that I covered in 2019. I’ve only been using Warp for a few days, but it has already fit neatly into my Mac workflow because it’s a simple, keyboard-driven utility that scratches the same sort of itch as Magnet.

OutlineEdit 3 Offers a Fast, Keyboard-Driven Way to Outline Your Thoughts

By John Voorhees

One of my earliest MacStories reviews was of OutlineEdit 1.0, a Mac-only outlining app that caught my eye with its attention to the kind of details that are a must for creating carefully structured outlines quickly. Version 3.0 recently landed on the Mac App Store and at its core, OutlineEdit is just as capable as ever at effortlessly turning ideas into outlines. The changes introduced with version 3.0 include refinements to existing features, as well as a handful of new features that extend OutlineEdit’s capabilities. Let’s take a look.

MacStories Unwind: A Tech Confession, Quick Note, Keyboards, TV, and a Podcast

By John Voorhees

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Sponsored by: FitnessView – All-in-One Health & Fitness Dashboard

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

MacStories Weekly
- Part 3 of Federico’s Obsidian Setup Series covering his Dashboard note and the plugins and shortcuts he uses to manage it
- An interview with Shahid Ahmad about the Playdate
- John on when it’s best to not automate something

AppStories

AppStories, Episode 234 – Beta OS Impressions Continued

Unwind

Alex’s Pick:
- Outer Banks
John’s Pick:
- Panic Podcast, The Story of Playdate

Apple Releases New Mac Keyboards and Pointing Devices

By John Voorhees

Apple has updated its online store with new accessories that first debuted with the M1 iMac. The updated accessories were spotted by Rene Ritchie, who tweeted about them:

New Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Mouse that debuted with the M1 iMac are now available for individual purchase (in silver and white) from Apple. (Touch ID on the new keyboards only works with M1 Macs, including the M1 Mac mini)https://t.co/2a6JpWp0Cb pic.twitter.com/47uGZ1C0vi

— Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) August 3, 2021

Among the items listed, which each come with a woven USB-C to Lightning cable and come in white and silver only, are:

Magic Keyboard ($99). The Magic Keyboard features rounded corners and some changes to its keys, including a dedicated Globe/Fn key and Spotlight, Dictation, and Do Not Disturb functionality mapped to the F4 - F6 keys.
Magic Keyboard with Touch ID ($149). Along with the design and key changes of the Magic Keyboard, this model includes Touch ID, which works with M1 Macs only.
Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad ($179)
Magic Trackpad ($129). The corners of the new Magic Trackpad are more rounded than before, but it’s functionally the same as prior models.
Magic Mouse ($79). The Magic Mouse is listed as new, too, although apart from the woven USB-C to Lightning cable in the box, there don’t appear to be any other differences between this model and the prior model.

I’ve been using the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Mouse for a couple of months with an M1 iMac. Based on my experience, the trackpad and mouse haven’t changed enough to warrant purchasing one unless you need one anyway. However, if you’ve got an M1 Mac mini or M1 laptop that you run in clamshell mode, the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID is a nice addition to any setup. Having Touch ID always available is fantastic, and I’ve grown used to using the Do Not Disturb button along with the Globe + Q keyboard shortcut for Quick Note, the new Notes feature coming to macOS Monterey this fall, which is the same when using an iPad running the iPadOS 15 beta with a Magic Keyboard attached.

The iPad’s New Universal Keyboard Shortcuts →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors about one of the new keyboard-related additions to iPadOS 15:

In iPadOS 14, if you hold down the Command key, you can see a list of app-specific features and their key equivalents. It’s like a quick-reference card for keyboard shortcuts. In iPadOS 15, it’s been expanded to become more like the iPad equivalent of the Mac menu bar—not only does it list keyboard shortcuts, but it can list every command in the app, and you can click any of them to execute them. iPad apps that build out the Mac menu bar for their Catalyst version can pick this feature up for free. It’s another way that the Mac and iPad are trading features and complementing one another.

Then there’s the Globe key. Hold it down in any app in iPadOS 15, and you’ll see a different set of commands, all of which can be applied globally. (Get it?) These menus are full of shortcuts to switch to the home screen (Globe-H), open a Quick Note (Globe-Q), activate Control Center (Globe-C), and pretty much any other system-level area.

I particularly like Snell’s suggestion regarding these new global keyboard shortcuts and the Shortcuts app in the future. As I explained on Connected this week, I’ve been using iPadOS 15 since the first beta came out at WWDC, and I’m still learning all kinds of new keyboard shortcuts that are now supported by the system. Impressively, the new Globe modifier has been associated with all sorts of system functions, including Siri and Control Center.

If you use a third-party hardware keyboard that doesn’t have a Globe key, you can always remap another one in Settings ⇾ General ⇾ Keyboard ⇾ Hardware Keyboard ⇾ Modifier Keys. And while the keyboard shortcuts menu can be dismissed by holding the Globe key (or ⌘, for app-specific commands) again or clicking outside of it, you can also press the ⌘. shortcut (which is the equivalent of an Escape button on iPadOS) to instantly close it. Lastly, you can start typing while the menu is shown to quickly filter commands by name.

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AppStories, Episode 223 – WWDC 2021: Shortcuts for the Mac, iPad Keyboard Navigation, and Developer Tools →

Linked By John Voorhees

In today’s special WWDC 2021 episode, we cover Shortcuts for Mac, new ways to navigate the iPad using the keyboard, and developer tools, including TestFlight for Mac, Swift Playgrounds, and RealityKit 2’s Object Capture.

Sponsored by:

Raycast – Goodbye Spotlight. Hello Raycast.

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GoodLinks Updated with Three-Column iPad Layout, Widgets, and New Keyboard Shortcuts

By John Voorhees

GoodLinks has only been out since June, but it quickly became my go-to read it later app that I dip in and out of every day. That position has only been reinforced with its frequent updates in the months following release, including its most recent update which adds a new three-column iPad layout, widgets, and new keyboard shortcuts.

The new iPad sidebar design is particularly well-suited to GoodLinks. The first column, which can be hidden, allows users to navigate between Unread, Starred, Untagged, Read, and Tags. The Tags section is collapsible, which declutters the sidebar when you don’t need to view a specific tag.

The second column is the article list that displays the favicon for each post, its title, a short excerpt, image, site and author information, and associated tags. The top of the second column features a button to sort from oldest to newest and vice versa, and one to add new links.

Pixelmator 2.6 Adds Pointer Support and More Than 70 Keyboard Shortcuts for iPad Users

By John Voorhees

The modernization of Pixelmator continues apace with the addition of more iPad-friendly features in version 2.6. Earlier this year, Pixelmator 2.5 added the native iOS and iPadOS document browser along with nine categories of preset image templates.

The latest version picks up where 2.5 left off with iPadOS pointer support. Whether you’re using the Magic Keyboard’s trackpad with your iPad or another trackpad or mouse, Pixelmator 2.6 fully supports pointer interaction with all UI controls, transforming to indicate available actions when performing actions like editing an image, in which case it turns into a double arrow for resizing.

Pixelmator 2.6 includes pointer support throughout.

The Pixelmator update also includes a long list of keyboard shortcuts. There are over 70 shortcuts, which are catalogued on Pixelmator’s website. There’s little that isn’t covered by the shortcuts. You can enter the app’s various editing modes to do things like crop an image, use the app’s selection tools, and arrange layers. There are also shortcuts to view an image at its actual size or zoom in so it fills the screen, and when you’re finished editing, there’s a keyboard shortcut for exporting too.

Pixelmator Photo is one of my favorite image editors on the iPad, but it’s strictly a photo editing app. To composite images, I rely on Pixelmator, which is why I’m so glad to see that it continues to get the sort of updates that make working with images on my iPad easier than before.

Pixelmator 2.6 is available on the App Store and is a free update for existing users.