Remote Mouse & Keyboard: Control your Mac with All Your Devices [Sponsor]

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Remote Mouse & Keyboard is the perfect solution for controlling your Mac from other devices on your home network. The app works with the iPhone, iPad, another Mac, the Apple Watch, and even the Apple TV, enabling a wide variety of new uses for your Mac. Whether you’re running a Mac as a media center, want to launch or quit apps remotely, or control your Mac’s system settings while doing something else, Remote Control for Mac can handle it all.

Remote Mouse & Keyboard works with AirPlay for screen and sound mirroring and Siri so that you can control your Mac with your voice from anywhere on your network. The app’s AirPlay controls are a fantastic way to integrate your Mac with an Apple TV without having to sit down at your Mac to AirPlay its screen or audio. Instead, with Remote Mouse & Keyboard, you can use whichever device is available to you.

What’s more, Remote Mouse & Keyboard’s customizable keypads and keypad store let you benefit from its huge collection of keypads for controlling the most popular apps and make your own keypads. Paired with the app’s Shortcuts integration, the opportunities for automating your smart home and controlling and leveraging the power of your Mac alongside your other devices in new and unique ways are virtually limitless.

Remote Mouse & Keyboard has a special giveaway just for MacStories readers. The first 100 readers who visit this link will get a free copy of the app.

Take control of your Mac today. Download Remote Mouse & Keyboard from the App Store now.

Our thanks to Remote Mouse & Keyboard for sponsoring MacStories this week.

HiRise 3: Twelve South’s Space-Saving, Three-in-One Charging Solution

Source: Twelve South.

Source: Twelve South.

Not long ago, Twelve South introduced a new 3-in-1 charger for the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods Pro called the HiRise 3. I’ve used a Belkin 3-in-1 charger on my desk for a few years and love it, but it takes up quite a bit of space. So, when Twelve South recently offered to send me the HiRise 3 to test, I jumped at the chance to check out its more compact design. After using the HiRise 3 for the past few weeks, I’m happy with it overall and think it’s a great choice for most users, but it comes with a couple of limitations that you’ll want to consider before buying one yourself.

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AppStories, Episode 287 – 2022 OS Preview: The System Apps (Part 1)

This week on AppStories, we continue the MacStories Summer OS Preview Series with part one of our in-depth look at changes coming to Apple’s system apps on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, including Weather, Clock, Safari, Mail, Messages, and Photos.

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On AppStories+, John reports on his Stage Manager and Sidecar experiments on the Mac, Stage Manager’s bugginess on the iPad, Federico is itching to try Ventura, and a discussion of third-party iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets.

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Generating Markdown Links to Mail Messages with Shortcuts and AppleScript

One of the system app updates we covered on AppStories this week that I’m most excited about is Mail. The app will finally introduce several advanced features this fall, including:

  • Undo send, allowing you to recall a message for 10 seconds after sending a message
  • Message scheduling with suggested and fully-customizable future delivery times and dates
  • Follow Up, which surfaces requests you’ve made in messages for which you haven’t received a response
  • Remind Me, a snooze-like feature for scheduling messages to reappear in your inbox later
  • Missing recipient and attachment alerts
  • Improved search

For the first time in quite a while, that list makes Mail a much more attractive alternative to third-party apps. Mail won’t match every feature offered by third parties, but my needs for advanced email client features are fairly modest, which I expect puts me squarely in the demographic that Apple is targeting.

Mimestream offers Gmail's excellent search and other features in a native Mac package.

Mimestream offers Gmail’s excellent search and other features in a native Mac package.

Until recently, my email use was split between Mimestream, which is only available on the Mac, and Spark on iOS and iPadOS. The split wasn’t ideal, but because I handle most of my email on my Mac, I tolerated it.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been using Mail exclusively on all of my devices, which has been a refreshing change of pace. Still, it’s not perfect. Of the features I use most in third-party mail clients, the single biggest shortcoming of Mail is its clunky implementation of deep linking.

I drop links to email messages in my notes and tasks all the time as a way to quickly access important contextual information. Mimestream offers Gmail URLs, and Spark can create its own app-specific and web URLs right within those apps’ UIs.

I like the way drag and drop on the iPhone and iPad links a message to its subject, but having to use drag and drop is clunky.

I like the way drag and drop on the iPhone and iPad links a message to its subject, but having to use drag and drop is clunky.

In contrast, on iOS and iPadOS, you can only link to a Mail message by dragging it out of Mail into another app’s text field. I’ll take it, but I’d prefer if I could quickly generate a link from the share sheet or with Shortcuts instead. The situation on the Mac isn’t much better, requiring users to resort to AppleScript to construct a URL that links back to a Mail message.

With weeks of Ventura testing ahead of me, I decided to see what I could do to improve the situation. The result isn’t perfect: I still have no choice on iOS and iPadOS but to drag and drop messages. However, I’ve improved the experience on the Mac using a combination of AppleScript and a shortcut that I trigger using Raycast to link the subject of a Mail message to its URL. For added context, my shortcut adds the sender’s name too.

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Last Week, on Club MacStories: Using Messages as a Notification System, Processing Links with Shortcuts, and a Reader Setup

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:

MacStories Weekly: Issue 329

Organize Your Inbox (and Never Waste Time on Email Again) with SaneBox [Sponsor]

SaneBox is your personal email assistant that automatically organizes your inbox, saving you loads of valuable time. SaneBox works with your existing email service, so your most important messages always reach your inbox. The rest of your messages are carefully organized into designated folders like SaneLater and SaneNews for later. You can snooze emails, too, setting them aside to deal with when you have the time.

Better yet, if there’s something you never want to see again, drag in into the SaneBlackHole folder. It’s far easier than the hit or miss process of unsubscribing from email lists.

SaneBox has a built-in reminders system too. SaneReminders are a terrific way to stay on task. Send yourself a reminder to do something later, or get a reminder when someone hasn’t responded to one of your messages. For example, bcc: [email protected] and the message will show up back in your inbox only if the recipient doesn’t reply within three days. SaneReminders is perfect for making sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Also, because SaneBox works with your existing email setup, there’s no app to download or new email account to set up. You can use any email service and client you want.

Sign up today for a free 14-day SaneBox trial to take back control of your email. You’ll see big benefits immediately as the message count in your inbox drops, and you’ll be able to maintain control going forward with SaneBox’s help. MacStories readers can receive a special $25 credit automatically by using this link to sign up.

Our thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Music Sessions Kicks Off with Carrie Underwood and Tenille Townes

Today, Apple introduced new exclusive live sessions on Apple Music. The music streaming service kicked off Apple Music Sessions with performances by country music stars Carrie Underwood and Tenille Townes.

The sessions with Underwood and Townes, which include both audio-only and video components, were recorded in Spatial Audio at Apple’s Nashville, Tennessee studio. Apple has more coming from other country artists too:

Apple Music Sessions kicks off in Nashville with a host of incredible country artists already lined up, including Ronnie Dunn, Ingrid Andress, and many others.

According to Apple’s press release, the company will also expand the new Studio Sessions exclusives to other music genres in the future.

I’m looking forward to seeing where Apple takes Apple Music Sessions. With music libraries essentially being identical from one streaming service to another, it’s features like this that companies can use to set themselves apart.