MacStories Team

406 posts on MacStories since July 2011

Articles by the MacStories team.

Founded by Federico Viticci in April 2009, MacStories attracts millions of readers every month thanks to in-depth, personal, and informed coverage that offers a balanced mix of Apple news, app reviews, and opinion.

team@macstories.net

Notify: Monitor Websites and RSS Feeds. Private. Simple. No Servers Required. [Sponsor]

Get Notify for instant alerts when any website changes, RSS feed updates, your scripts or devices need your attention – right from your iPhone or iPad. No accounts, servers, or technical setup needed.

Start Monitoring in Seconds

Add any website or RSS feed with a tap. Send notifications from any script or web app with a simple webhook. Your device does all the work – complete privacy, zero dependencies.

Stay Informed, Your Way

  • Visual Change Detection – See exactly what changed with side-by-side comparisons.
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Simple for Everyone

No coding required for website and RSS monitoring. Developers can send custom notifications with a single webhook call. Dark mode, light mode, and intuitive design make monitoring effortless.

Powerful for Pros

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Why Choose Notify?

Traditional monitoring requires servers, hosting, and complex setup. Notify works instantly – whether tracking prices, monitoring news, or receiving alerts from your own apps and scripts. Start simple, expand when ready.

Key Features

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  • Visual diff comparisons
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Perfect for anyone wanting powerful monitoring without the complexity. Download Notify from the App Store and start monitoring in seconds, or visit Notify’s website to learn more.

Jump Into the Liquid Glass Pool: A MacStories OS 26 App Roundup

Liquid Glass is the sort of change that takes some getting used to from the perspective of both users and developers. The design language shifted a lot over the course of the summer beta season, which made developers’ lives tougher than in some years. This has resulted in a variety of Liquid Glass implementations across our favorite apps, which is a fascinating study in the range of designs Liquid Glass encompasses.

Today, we wanted to share some of our favorite implementations of Liquid Glass and other features debuted this fall by indie developers. We’ll have more coverage in the weeks ahead, but let’s dive into some of the best OS 26 updates we’ve seen so far.

Devon

Art of Fauna

From developer Klemens Strasser, Art of Fauna is a unique jigsaw puzzle game with a focus on accessibility and animal conservation. Each puzzle features a gorgeous wildlife illustration from the 18th or 19th century and can be solved either by aligning pieces of the picture or by rearranging written descriptions of the animal pictured phrase by phrase. Everything about the app, from the font to the colors to the complexity of the puzzle phrases, can be adjusted to fit each user’s needs. With its beautiful artwork, intuitive gameplay, ambient sound design, and adaptability, it’s no wonder the app won an Apple Design Award for Inclusivity this year.

Version 1.8 of Art of Fauna came out alongside iOS 26 with Game Center integration and Liquid Glass design elements in its navigation buttons. But the most interesting new feature is integration with a new app from the team behind Structured called Awake. Put simply, Awake is an alarm clock app that helps you wake up by challenging you to accomplish a task before you can disable your alarm in the morning. With this integration, you can choose to make an Art of Fauna puzzle your morning mission, starting your day with some brain training and a beautiful puzzle. In Awake, you can select the difficulty level of the puzzle you’re presented with each morning, as well as whether you’d like the app to prefer unplayed puzzles over previously played ones.

Art of Fauna is available on iPhone and iPad. It can be downloaded from the App Store and includes ten puzzles for free. There are 100 other puzzles available from five different biomes that can be purchased all at once for $8.99 or in packs of 20 for $2.99 each. 20% of all proceeds from the app are donated to nature preservation causes, and you can learn more about the supported causes in the app’s Giving Back section.

Play

Marcos Tanaka’s watch later utility is a go-to for many – myself included – when it comes to saving, organizing, and watching YouTube videos. With its latest update, version 2.6, Play has added several features enabled by iOS 26.

First up is a Liquid Glass redesign. The sidebar, toolbar, and buttons are all elevated above the content and incorporate the transparent glass material. Buttons and view transitions now feature some fun animations, too, like when the ‘+’ button morphs into the Add Video popover once it’s tapped.

The on-device Apple Intelligence model has enabled Tanaka to add a couple of new AI features as well. Each video’s detail view now includes a ‘Generate’ button that will create and present a text summary of the video’s contents. For those who want to get an idea of what a video is about before watching it, or for those who want a quick refresh on a video they’ve watched before, this feature will come in handy, and it’s a clever application of the on-device model now available to developers. Also, when adding tags to a video, Play can now suggest tags based on a video’s contents, both existing tags and new tags that you can create.

Play is available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, and Apple TV and can be purchased from the App Store for $2.99. Additional features, like subscribing to channels within the app and searching video transcripts, require a subscription to Play Premium, which costs $2.99/month, $19.99/year, or $99.99 for a lifetime subscription.

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Gamery: A Sleek and Intuitive Game Library App for Casuals and Pros [Sponsor]

Gamery is the ultimate video game library app for iPhone and iPad—designed to look and feel right at home on Apple platforms.

With a simple, stunning design now refreshed for iOS 26 and a beautiful new app icon, Gamery makes managing your games as sleek and enjoyable as playing them. Everything is thoughtfully built to feel fast, fluid, and perfectly native across Apple devices.

Importing your games has never been easier. Gamery offers powerful importing options for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Epic Games Store, and more, so you can build your collection in seconds instead of hours. A brand-new Home tab keeps you updated with monthly PlayStation Plus titles, Xbox Game Pass releases, and Epic Games Store freebies, so you never miss what’s new.

Once your library is set up, Gamery helps you stay organized with powerful filters, collections, unified search, and widgets for quick access right from your Home Screen or Lock Screen. Whether you want to track your playthrough progress or just browse your collection in style, Gamery keeps everything in one beautifully designed place. And on iPad, use the power of multiple windows and keyboard shortcuts to move through your library with ease.

If you love great design, powerful features, and effortless importing, Gamery makes tracking your games simple, beautiful, and fun.

Download Gamery today for free and check out some limited-time discounts for the Gamery+ subscription by visiting gamery.app/sale.

Our thanks to Gamery for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Drafts, Tally, Terminology, Simple Scan: Quality Productivity & Utility Apps, Ready for OS 26, from Agile Tortoise [Sponsor]

Great indie apps that shine on OS 26. Try them free today:

  • Drafts: Quick capture notes taking with powerful actions to edit and export content.
  • Tally: Flexible, simple app for all your counting needs, from scorekeeping to habit tracking.
  • Terminology: Extensible dictionary and thesaurus.
  • Simple Scan: Breaks Apple’s scanning interface out of Notes, and provides easy, low-friction ways to route scans to email, messages, files, and more.

Download for free today at agiletortoise.com!

Our thanks to Agile Tortoise for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Quip: A Supercharged Clipboard Manager for Apple Devices with On-Device Intelligence, iCloud Sync, and Text Expansion [Sponsor]

Quip is a supercharged clipboard manager and text expander for Mac, iPhone, and iPad—built to feel perfectly native, fast, and private.

Most clipboard apps turn into junk drawers. Quip is different. You choose how items get saved: capture everything, or enable Only Copy on Shortcut so your archive stays intentional. Then Quip Intelligence (secure, on-device AI) cleans things up—fixing broken links, removing tracking parameters, normalizing messy text, keeping code formatting intact, avoiding duplicates, and more. It even learns from your behavior to automatically avoid items you likely wish to ignore. Quip OCR lets you copy text from anywhere on your Mac’s screen - even if it is not normally copyable.

Your history is beautiful and searchable, with filters for app, type, and date. Organize with Collections (including Smart Collections that auto-sort by rules). When you need to act, Super Shortcuts paste anything—signatures, links, snippets—just by typing a trigger, anywhere on your Mac.

Quip works across your devices with iCloud sync and includes Quip Keyboard on iOS so your items are always a tap away. It’s privacy-first, with granular content rules (ignore apps or keywords, or strip sensitive terms) and full control over retention.

If you live in copy/paste all day, Quip makes it fast, thoughtful, and actually enjoyable.

Try Quip free on the App Store or learn more on our site: bzgapps.com/quip

Our thanks to Quip from BZG Apps for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Direct Mail 7: Professional Email Marketing Built Just for Mac Users [Sponsor]

If you run a business, a side hustle, a podcast, or just want to stay in touch with a community, you know how important great email marketing can be. That’s where Direct Mail comes in — a native macOS app that makes it incredibly easy to design, send, and track email campaigns that get results. Unlike web-based alternatives, Direct Mail is designed specifically for macOS, with the speed, polish, and Mac-first integration you expect.

The brand-new Version 7 is a huge leap forward. This update brings a host of new features, including a reimagined user interface, smarter list management, powerful email signup forms, upgraded reporting, and all-new tools to help your emails stand out. Whether you’re sending to 10 people or 10,000, Direct Mail gives you the tools to do it professionally and painlessly.

If you’ve ever been frustrated with clunky, web-based email marketing tools, or just want something that feels right at home on your Mac, check out Direct Mail. It’s free to download and try, with flexible pricing plans to match every budget — including pay-as-you-go options. You can be up and running with your first campaign in just minutes. Our friendly customer support reps are available via live chat to help with any questions, ensuring you’re never stuck. Get started today and expand your reach with powerful, Mac-first email marketing tools.

Our thanks to Direct Mail for sponsoring MacStories this week.

TESSAN Universal Travel Adapter: The 140W GaN Charger That Will Power All Your Apple Gear [Sponsor]

If you’ve ever found yourself juggling multiple chargers for your iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and AirPods in a hotel room, you need to check out TESSAN’s 140W GaN Universal Travel Adapter. Its compact design replaces your entire charging setup with a single, intelligently designed adapter that works in over 200 countries, delivering the power you need.

The TESSAN adapter leverages GaN technology to deliver 140W of total power through three USB-C ports and one USB-A port, while maintaining a footprint smaller than most laptop chargers. The top USB-C port delivers up to 100W—enough to fast-charge a MacBook Pro while the remaining ports will intelligently distribute power to charge your other devices simultaneously. The universal plug design features slide-out prongs for U.S., UK, EU, and Australian outlets, eliminating the need to pack multiple regional adapters.

The TESSAN adapter also includes surge protection, over-current protection, and temperature control. Plus, the GaN semiconductor technology generates less heat than traditional silicon-based chargers, making it safer for extended use in cramped spaces.

MacStories readers can get the TESSAN Universal Travel Adapter now on Amazon.

Our thanks to TESSAN for sponsoring MacStories this week. This post includes affiliate links..

Rogue Amoeba: Powerful Audio Tools for Your Mac [Sponsor]

The folks at Rogue Amoeba are back to sponsor MacStories this week. If you’re not already familiar with them, they’ve been notable makers of powerful audio tools for your Mac since 2002. From professionals to hobbyists to everyday consumers, they’ve got tools to help you with audio.

It’s a cinch to make recordings with the flagship product Audio Hijack, which can now even transcribe audio.

Or, take advantage of SoundSource to gain volume control for each app playing audio on your Mac, as well as the power to apply audio effects and even redirect playback to different devices.

If you want to enhance your microphone’s capabilities, Loopback is the perfect tool. With its virtual audio devices, you can combine app audio and your microphone seamlessly, then bring it into Zoom or any other voice chat app. You can even pair Loopback with the Mac’s best soundboard app, Farrago, to add sound effects or background audio to calls and recordings.

Rogue Amoeba offers free trials for all their apps, and you can set them up in seconds. And if you’re running Apple’s beta OS, you’ll be happy to know Rogue Amoeba’s apps already work on Tahoe.

As a MacStories reader, you can save 20% on any purchase through the end of August by using discount code STORIES2508. Visit their store to get started.

Our thanks to the folks at Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring MacStories this week.