Tag: macOS

FrugalMac: The Bloom is Off the Finder

The Finder.

It’s been around since the original Mac rolled off the assembly line in 1984. Ironically, my first exposure to the Finder was not on a Mac, but rather, on an Apple IIGS running GS/OS. (But that’s a story for another day…)

While the Finder has evolved with the Mac over the years, it still feels inefficient to work with, especially when it involves movings files around.

Let’s assume you have to copy or move a file from one location on your Mac to another location on your external storage device. To perform the task within macOS, two Finder windows are needed. One which shows the location of the source file, the other showing the intended destination.

We’re still moving files around like this in the year 2026.

Bananas.

While Apple seems content with making small, incremental features to the Finder, it’s not enough for me.

That’s where Bloom comes in. I’ve been using Bloom for many months now, and it truly delivers on its promise of providing a “refined Finder experience”.

Why do I like Bloom so much?

1) Flexibility.

Bloom includes many multi-panel layouts so that I can easily view, arrange and copy files and folders within one Bloom window pane. (I particularly like the 3-vertical stack option.)

2) Better Search.

Hit Command Shift Return and Bloom will bring up its search bar. Type what you want and get results at blazing speed. I know Apple will be overhauling search in macOS Golden Gate (macOS 27), but I can have it right now.

3) Convenience.

Superman has X-Ray vision. Bloom lets me see the contents within a compressed .zip file within its inspector. Bloom also works with Cloud storage like iCloud Drive, DropBox or OneDrive.

4) Customization.

Unlike the Finder, Bloom gives me the ability to change its appearance, including the color of the window, the type face for the main window and side bar, and so much more. The side bar can be completely customized to show only what you want. There’s also a handy rename feature to quickly change one or more filenames. It even supports RegEx!

Bloom is what the Finder wishes it could be when it grows up.

Boom isn’t free, but I think it’s well worth its reasonable purchase price ($16US). The alternative is to wait for Apple to make improvements. But I’m not holding my breath.

-Krishna

June 17, 2026
FrugalMac: EasyDMG Fixes a 25 year macOS Issue

There are three different methods of installing software on the Mac:

1) Via the Mac App Store.

2) Via homebrew.

3) Via DMG file.

The last option is, by far, the most popular delivery format for Mac applications that are available outside the Mac App Store.

One must first download the DMG file, open it, drag the application into the Applications folder, eject the DMG container, and then delete the DMG file. That’s five separate steps to install a Mac app. And it’s been this way since 2001, when Mac OS X was first introduced.

For an operating system that Apple touts as being easy to use, the aforementioned method is anything but.

But now there’s a better way.

It’s EasyDMG.

After setting it as the default for opening DMG files, installing a new application becomes as simple as opening its DMG file. EasyDMG takes care of the rest. (And that hamster wizard mascot is downright adorable!)

Not only will EasyDMG install the application, it will eject the DMG container and move the DMG file into the Trash.

Users who want more control can perfom the setup manually. Given the problem EasyDMG is solving for me, I opted for the former.

As EasyDMG performs the install, it can display a progress bar or a notification. Or neither.

EasyDMG is an excellent addition to my Mac setup because it works flawlessly while removing friction. It’s a completely native Mac app, written in Swift. And best of all, it’s free!

EasyDMG is what Apple should have included in macOS at least a decade ago. It’s baffling to me that nothing has been done on that front, even in macOS Golden Gate.

-Krishna

June 15, 2026
FrugalMac: Apple Mail settings

In my last post, I prepared my G-mail accounts for use with Apple Mail. Today, as promised, I’m sharing my Apple Mail settings along with some accompanying rationale.

In the General tab, I’ve made three changes.

1) Fetch new email every 30 minutes from both G-mail accounts. For me, any value less than 30 minutes feels masochistic.

2) Downloadable content will appear on my Desktop. This saves me a trip to the Downloads folder.

3) Follow-up suggestions are checked ON so I can be reminded when I haven’t received a response.

Moving to the Junk Mail tab, I have Junk Mail filtering ON with all default settings. It seems to work OK.

For Fonts and Colors, I prefer Rubik Light Regular as my message list font. It’s a clean sans serif typeface that’s easy on my eyes. And speaking of eyes, I’ve bumped the point sizes to 18 to minimize eye strain.

For Viewing, I prefer 3 preview lines for each email. I’ve also turned on Smart Addresses.

Below is a visual example of what the above settings look like when an email arrives in my InBox.

In the Composing tab, I’ve set the message format to Rich Text, keeping all other settings at their defaults.

Within the Signatures tab, I have custom text signatures set for each of my accounts, and the signature is placed above the quoted text, because I’m not an animal. I have yet to configure the Rules tab with custom settings, but I did delete the Apple provided rule.

As a footnote, it took several hours to import my email into Apple Mail, even with the task utilizing five full cores of my laptop’s M5 Pro CPU.

-Krishna

June 11, 2026
Ghostty is the Mostty

For those who are interested, my latest post for OWC Rocket Yard shares more detail about Ghostty, a modern terminal replacement for macOS. I have Ghostty installed on all three of my Macs, and working within its environment has been a delight. So much so that I can’t fathom the thought of using Apple’s staid Terminal app.

The image below shows a comparison between Ghostty (top) vs Apple’s Terminal (bottom). Notice how sharp and crisp the text appears in Ghostty, compared to Terminal. Unlike the Terminal, Ghostty does a great job of displaying content within smaller window sizes.

-Krishna

June 9, 2026
FrugalMac: Screenshots and Screen Recording

One of my main goals with setting up a new Mac is to be more intentional with my software selections. I want to choose the best software that suits my needs.

This involves reevaluating what I currently use to see if my selections are still valid. Although what I have currently works – I’m always curious to know if better options are present, both in terms of features and value.

Today we’ll look at two tasks that I perform on a daily basis: making and annotating screenshots and screen recording. My main go-to for both tasks has been CleanShot X. It’s a reliable and intuitive app that I’ve come to rely on for almost three years. My chief complaint is its expensive per Mac subscription fee. (I currently pay $49US for the privelege of running CleanShot X on two Macs.)

To that end, I wanted to see if there were other, better options for screen capture and screen recording. It turns out there are!

macShot has been my go to for screenshots over the past two weeks. Feature-wise, macShot appears to do almost everything CleanShot X does, and it’s free and open source. Like CleanShot X, macShot provides intuitive tools for annotating, redacting, and editing screenshots. It’s also a native Mac app that is highly performant and light on resource usage. (It takes up a mere 8MB of memory on idle). macShot also performs screen recording with a built-in trim editor.

The only issue I have with macShot is key casting; a useful option to display keystrokes when screen recording. This feature is crucial for me when creating instructional demos.

(For key casting, I am currently using the free and open source KeyCastr.)

But, it turns out there’s an even better screen recording tool available, that blows both macShot and CleanShot X out of the water. It’s Recordly.

Recordly is a screen recorder on steroids, tailored specifically for folks like me. Recordly goes one step above other Mac screen recording apps by adding cursor animations, automatic zooms (with a dynamic webcam bubble overlay) and custom backgrounds. I used Recordly for my latest YouTube video and the results were impressive. Recordly has saved me so much editing time; it’s an absolute game-changer. With it, I no longer need to make multiple, tedious edits within Premiere. And did I mention that it’s also free and open source? Huzzah!

Recordly is so close to perfect for my use case, but it’s not there just yet. Like macShot, Recordly does not include any option to key cast my keystrokes as I demo. I also wish there were granular options for audio control.

I have a dedicated Rode microphone and an Insta360 Link 2 webcam with its own internal mic. It would be nice if I could tell Recordly to use the audio from the dedicated microphone, and mute the audio coming from the webcam mic.

Recordly and macShot are both excellent, well-designed applications. With them, I no longer need CleanShot X.

-Krishna

June 8, 2026
WWDC 2026 Predictions: macOS
WWDC 2026 is upon the world in less than a week. Amidst all of the usual kerfuffle that surrounds the event, I remain solely fixated on what Apple will bring to macOS. Like others, I’ve written about what I hope to see in macOS 27, but for this post, I’m going to share what I think Apple will actually announce.
1. A user option to set a cohesive visual appearance across all Apple devices from the Mac. For example, if I want every Apple device to have the same wallpaper, accent color, etc. I can set it once and it will apply itself across all Apple devices.
2. Related to the above, the ability to have the same wallpaper generatively scale and resize across Apple devices. Set once, see everywhere.
3. The ability to toggle Widgets and Desktop icons ON or OFF from the Control Center.
4. A built-in icon / wallpaper generator using Image Playground, that will feed into the above unified appearance prediction.
-Krishna
June 3, 2026
FrugalMac: Two Macs, One Keyboard and Mouse

This weekend, I rearranged my desk setup to accomodate both MacBook Pro laptops. On the left, in the image below is my M1 MacBook Pro connected to the left Dell 2515H display. On the right is my new M5 Pro MacBook Pro connected to the right Dell 2515H display. Two computers, with two separate keyboards and trackpads.

The external Nuphy keyboard, numpad and mouse are connected to my M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Moving between each Mac requires switching keyboards. Not ideal.

And then I remembered Synergy, from Symless, which allows multiple computers to share the same keyboard and mouse. I’ve been using Synergy on and off since 2015. It’s been a solid tool, for the most part. Several years ago, I ponied up extra funds to support its development. Fast forward to today. Synergy still works across Mac, Windows and Linux platforms – and there’s even a specific Apple silicon optimized version. I downloaded the update and installed it on both Macs.

Synergy’s on-boarding has greatly improved. After installing the software on both Macs, Synergy automatically found them and paired them up. To make Synergy work between two computers, one computer must act as the server, while the other is the client. In my case, the M1 Pro (Prometheus) is the server (denoted by the keyboard and mouse icons below), while the M5 Pro (BattleBeast) is the client. This means that I can share Prometheus’s keyboard and mouse between both my Macs.

The screen layout below coincides with the physical layout of both Macs’ displays. And speaking of which, Synergy supports multi-monitor setups, making it easy and natural to move between both computers. I can even copy and paste text between both Macs, making it a real convenience.

Synergy has come a long way since I started using it eleven years ago. It’s the perfect addition if you want to share your keyboard / mouse between two or more machines.

-Krishna

May 30, 2026
FrugalMac: Fixing the Finder Windows

Perhaps the title is a bit hyperbolic. I’m not fixing the Finder’s windows, I’m configuring them to work best for me. But first, let’s go to Finder Settings > Advanced and turn on Filename Extensions and Keep folders on top. I routinely share files between different platforms, so having visible file name extensions are a must. I also like to keep my Folders separated from my files.

Next, let’s go to View > Show View Options, where I will increase the text size and sort items by name.

Now let’s move to the Finder window settings. I have “Show Tab Bar”, “Show Path Bar” and “Show Status Bar” active. The first option will let me quickly move between two different Finder locations in one window. The second option will show a breadcrumb trail of where I’m at within the file structure. The third option gives me an item count and overall remaining space. Of the three options, I feel that “Show Path Bar” should be the default setting from Apple, because it makes the most sense.

To configure the Finder window’s toolbar, go to View > Customize Toolbar. I keep the default settings, with the exception of adding AirDrop. Dragging the AirDrop icon into the toolbar gives me quick access for sharing files and folders from each and every Finder window.

Finally, the Finder is somewhat useable.

One more thing… let’s configure useful hotkeys to make the window management experience less painful. In System Settings, search for Keyboard Shortcuts. Then, scroll down to Windows. Below are my custom hotkeys, replacing Apple’s defaults. These are the same hotkeys I’ve used when managing windows with Raycast. The Arrange section lets me switch / flip windows from left to right or vice versa.

(Alas, macOS does not include any built-in option for moving a window to a different display via hotkey. This is a hole that I will have to remedy with third party window management software.)

Incidentally, I have yet to add any new piece of software to this Mac. My FrugalMac approach is to work with what I have first. When I run into limitations that go beyond the scope of what the vanilla macOS experience provides, I will investigate appropriate third party solutions.

-Krishna

May 22, 2026
FrugalMac: Configuring the Dock and Desktop

The default macOS Dock is littered with application icons, many of which I don’t use. And most of which I don’t care to see. Below is the macOS Tahoe Dock in its default state:

Hideous, right?

Let’s remove the clutter.

Ahh! Much better.

Next, let’s tackle the Finder Desktop settings, under View > Show View Options. I prefer items sorted by Name, and keeping text to the right of the icon. Why? Because I use long file names and I want to see them in all their glory. Showing item info let’s me see image sizes, without having to guess.

Next, let’s turn our attention to the Desktop and Dock. To modify its settings, we must visit Settings > Desktop and Dock. I’ve turned off all defaults, leaving Show indicators for open applications. I also turned off Stage Manager. I absolutely despise Click Wallpaper to Show Desktop, so I’ve banished that option to Stage Manager, so I’ll never need to deal with it again. I understand what Stage Manager is supposed to do, but I find that it gets in the way of my work. In its current state, it feels half-baked.

Scrolling down, I’ve left most of the options ON for both Widgets and Windows. I rarely use Mission Control or Spaces, so those options were unchecked.

Over the last few posts, I’m acutely aware of certain areas of friction as I work with the default macOS Tahoe setup.

1) AirDrop is tucked away inside a nested context menu, visible only when I right-click on a file or folder. I use AirDrop constantly to move files between my Macs, and SuperCharge gives me the option to have AirDrop visible directly when I right-click.

2) Keyboard-based window management in macOS Tahoe is set up differently to what I’m used to with Raycast. (If I can modify the keyboard shortcuts within the OS, I may not need to have Raycast installed.)

-Krishna

May 21, 2026
FrugalMac: Sorting out the Finder Sidebar and more

The first stop in changing the default Finder experience is Finder > Settings….

In the General tab, I have Hard disks, External Disks, and Connected Servers checked to be visible on the macOS Desktop. I also prefer having new windows open to show the Desktop.

Next, let’s examine the standard Finder window sidebar. In its default configuration, it’s overwhelming.

I prefer to keep the sidebar as minimal as possible, only adding items that I absolutely need. Off to the Sidebar tab we go then.

Everyone has their specific preferences, so adjust accordingly. Here’s what my Sidebar settings look like.

My Sidebar favorites only includes the Desktop as a visible option. I have several Locations checked, mostly to facilitate file access and file transfer between other machines on my local network.

Here’s what my Sidebar looks like now:

Incidentally, at this point, I’ve given my new laptop a name: BattleBeast. I think the name fits its intended purpose.

-Krishna

May 20, 2026