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Get Powerful Document Management Tools with DEVONthink 3 (Sponsor)



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I’m pleased to welcome DEVONtechnologies as a MacSparky site sponsor. DEVONthink is the Mac’s power tool for documents. Just a few of the things I use DEVONthink for include:

  • A reliable repository of research documents. DEVONthink will hold as many documents as you can throw at it. It makes import (and export) easy so you can have all that power without feeling trapped.

  • A research assistant. DEVONthink uses artificial intelligence to analyze and connect your documents in ways that may not otherwise occur to you.

  • An OCR Tool. Everything you store in you DEVONthink Pro library gets OCR’d. It just happens.

  • An Automation Tool. DEVONthink lets you build powerful automation subroutines into your library to help tag, move, and organize documents.

One of my uses for DEVONthink is legal research. I dump legal cases, statutes, regulations, and law review articles in DEVONthink whenever I’m working on a thorny problem and let DEVONthink grind on the documents before I do.

DEVONthink supports multiple sync methods and lets you even use your own sync password so everything is encrypted. If you’ve got an iPad or an iPhone, you can access your DEVONthink data there too with DEVONthink to Go.

You can think of DEVONthink as your paperless office. You can automate your workflow from capture to filing, editing to publishing. It stores all your documents, helps you keep them organized, and presents you with what you need to get the job done.

Interested? MacSparky readers can get a 20% discount on DEVONthink. Use the code MACSPARKY2021 at checkout. This offer ends on March 31st, 2021.



Boxing in the News

I have always been pretty good about not letting social media get in the way of being productive. For whatever reason, I don’t easily fall into the Twitter infinity pool. I discovered in 2020, however, that this super-power does not apply when it comes to the news. Between COVID and everything else 2020 brought, I found myself spinning into multiple hours of reading and consuming news coverage too many times. I thought I had it licked by the end of the year, but last week relieved me of any such delusion.

The Trouble with the News
A certain amount of knowledge of current events is important and can be helpful. From watching the news, I have been inspired to donate money and time to worthwhile causes. I also think it is important, on a personal level, to understand what is going on in the world. When I was growing up, the news was typically a half-hour program viewed by networks as a civic duty more than a profit center.

That has changed however. Now there are fully 24/7 networks on whatever band of the political spectrum you want. These networks are built around the premises of sucking you in and keeping you there. It is very much a profit thing, and they are good at winding you up to stick around for that next segment/hour/day.

While some news is good, too much news is bad. There comes a point where you stop learning about current events and instead become zombified by them. Too much news can poison you.

So I’ve started taking steps. First, I put a box around the news. I try to keep news consumption down to 30 minutes a day. There are lots of ways to do this, but one way I’ve found useful is the Reuters app on the Apple TV. You can log into it and get the day’s news boiled down to as little as 10 minutes. It then gives you a summary of national and world news, and once it finishes, it finishes. It doesn’t ask you to stick around.
Another practice I’ve been working on when watching the news is to do a little internal check-in once I turn the news off. “How am I feeling right now?” “How agitated am I?” “If I’m wound up, is there anything I can do to make a difference?” I also try to disconnect after watching the news. I’ll go make some music, pull some weeds in the garden, or take the dog for a walk. Then I can get back to work with a clear head.

If you’re like me and susceptible to the news infinity pool, take some times to build your own box for the news.

Backup 2021


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Backups! The thing that us nerds love to talk about, right? Not really. I talk about backup so much because I often hear the horror stories from listeners and readers that compel me to remind everyone to keep backing up. The good news is that it is easier than ever. So how am I doing it in 2021?

Backing Up the Mac

My Mac, my precious, is the center of my computing world. This is the machine I spend the most time at every day. It has a 2TB internal SSD from which I do all active work on. That’s enough room to store my Photos Library, all client files, and all working files on whatever Field Guide I’m currently working on. It is my most important data. It is also too small for all my ones and zeros, so I have an attached external SSD that is in an OWC enclosure giving me an additional 4TB of data. I’m currently using about 3TB of that, making my working digital footprint just south of 5TB total, all on internal and external SSD.

I should mention that last year that number was closer to 7TB, but I did an audit of what files I actually still needed and ended up throwing out a lot of old files. When my kids were younger, I ripped a lot of DVDs. Small kids watch the same movies over and over again and frequently seem to have peanut butter on their fingers, which is not very DVD-friendly. They’re older now, and they are not quite as interested in the Barbie Princess movies as they used to be, so those and a lot of other files went to the digital graveyard. This saved a ton of space. I also did legal work on some disputes that had real data-heavy file storage. I contacted those clients, returned the data to them, and then removed it from my own system, again reducing my overall data footprint. I am not advocating throwing away files that you need but instead looking closely at those files that you keep to see if you really need them or not. The bigger your digital footprint is, the more complex the backup system gets. By thinning down my library, I substantially decreased the complexity of my backup system.

If you need 20TB of data, by all means keep it. But if you don’t, backing up can be a lot easier with a smaller load.

At any particular time, there is a curve for hard drive storage in price. Ideally, you want your backup to fit within that sweet spot where it can be contained on an affordable drive. If you have more data to back up than will fit on the current affordable drive capacity, you’ll need to split your data or look at a more complex NAS system. One of the reasons I spent time ditching files was so I could keep it simple. My data needs are just under 5TB right now, and there are several affordable 5TB storage options. I’ve bought three separate Seagate portable 5TB drives. They are small and light, and they are USB-powered. I also own a single 4TB version of the same drive. So what am I doing with these drives you may ask? The answer is, redundant backups.

Time Machine

Time Machine remains an excellent way to back up your data and recover individual files if things go wrong. I’ve got a single USB cable running under my desk to a powered USB hub, which in turn connects to the 4TB Seagate drive. With a Time Machine drive that doubles the capacity of my internal drive, I get everything backed up with some historical data as well in case of emergency. I need to pull a recovered file out of Time Machine only a few times a year, but am always grateful it’s there when needed.

Scarif (Attached Archive)

I also have one of the 5TB Seagate drives mounted under the desk. I back up data from both the Mac and attached SSD to this drive. These aren’t clones but instead just all of my user data. Everything ranging from iCloud and Dropbox data to the Photos Library and other non-cloudy bits. This includes all user data, all the working files for all Field Guides, all of my old ripped music, and everything else that made the cut but doesn’t need to be on internal storage. I use ChronoSync to copy all that data onto the Scarif drive using ChronoSync’s “Backup” feature. ChronoSync is able to back up the data as needed and always keeps Scarif current. With this done, I always have two copies of everything right at my desk.

About Mounting Drives Under the Desk

I’ve heard from some readers that mounting drives under the desk leads to unwanted vibration. I think I dodged this bullet because I mount them with attachable Velcro tape. The drives are so light that the Velcro is fine to hold them, and it offers a buffer. Either way, they are entirely unnoticeable when working on top of the desk.

Archive 1 and Archive 2

The two remaining Seagate drives are not attached to the desk. I keep one set aside in the house and the other one offsite. Once a month, I connect whichever one I am in possession of and make a backup of the entire Scarif backup onto it. Then, I leave it with a family member who lives nearby. Archives 1 and 2 are always in rotation this way, and I’ve always got a backup nearby if the earth swallows up my home. I keep meaning to give these drives Star Wars planet names, but I haven’t got around to it yet.

The Belt and Suspenders

I also pay $60 a year to Backblaze for an online backup of my Mac. Backblaze backups include connected drives, and I do have it back up both the internal drive and external SSD. I don’t have Backblaze back up the attached archive drive (Scarif), which seems silly.

So overall, that’s a lot of backup. At any time, I have copies of my data on the internal drive, the Time Machine drive, the attached archive drive, the two rotating monthly backup drives, and the Backblaze servers. Put simply, I don’t expect to lose data any time soon.

In addition, I’ve got a couple of older, smaller drives that are no longer in the rotation, but on which I’ve put some extra copies of my Photos Library and some other key data, because the drive is sitting here, and I can’t help myself.

Backing Up the Other Hardware

I am much less frantic with the rest of my technology. For me, the battle is won or lost with my Mac backups. For my laptop, I connect it to an external Time Machine every few weeks. For my iPad and iPhone, I just rely on Apple’s iCloud backups.

What About Clone Drives?

You may have noticed that I’m not running any regular clone drives of my machine. I don’t do that as part of my backup regimen. I do have a few extra drives that occasionally get a clone backup on them. I usually do this before installing operating system upgrades an
d betas, but I don’t really consider those part of a backup system.

For me, being able to keep the data footprint down to 5TB really simplifies things by allowing me to use the drives instead of a NAS. For the foreseeable future, my goal is to keep my data within those limits. I just hope manufacturers can grow the capacity of those smaller drives faster than I collect data, given the way every year these drives only get bigger.

Mac Power Users 570: Mac Security



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From the beginning, Mac OS X was designed with security and privacy in mind. But over the years, Apple has worked to make both the Mac’s software and hardware even more so. In this week’s episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and I cover what’s what when it comes to Mac security.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

  • Indeed: Get a free $75 credit to upgrade your job post.

Automate Time Tracking with Timing (Sponsor)


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This week MacSparky is sponsored by Sponsored by Timing. A great habit to pick up as we head into the new year is time tracking. Figuring out what you are doing while you sit at your Mac can give you a lot of insight about where you are doing well, and where you are not. But in order to be useful, that data needs to be accurate. Requiring our monkey brains to manually turn timers on and off every time we switch gears is anything but accurate. That’s where Timing comes in.

Timing tracks your time for you, instead of making you start and stop timers. You can track how much time you spend (or waste) on each app, document and website, showing you exactly when you were working on what, when you slacked off, and how productive you have been, so you know how to improve your productivity. You can track on the go from your iPhone, and to make time tracking even easier, there are Timing Shortcuts ready for you to use.

Just this week, Timing announced a brand-new teams feature. With the teams feature, you can invite team members, who can then see and edit all the team’s projects. Each team member can also record time entries towards the project. My favorite part is that only manual time entries are visible to the manager, so there’s no worry about managers being creepy or tracking which websites you visited.

Stop guessing how you spend your time, and instead focus on doing what you’re good at with Timing. Download the free 14-day trial today and get 10% off for the first year!

OmSave — OmniFocus Plugin for Safari

Recently, I discovered a clever Safari plugin for OmniFocus users called OmSave. You’ve always been able to create links to Safari pages in OmniFocus, but this plugin takes it a step further to a customizable template. I wasn’t sure at first whether it was a gimmick or useful. After spending a few weeks with it, however, I find it firmly in the useful category.



ScreenFlow for Apple Silicon



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Telestream released a ScreenFlow update for Apple silicon and I have a few observations:

First, good on Telestream for not making us wait for version 10 or charging an upgrade for the Apple silicon version. I could see software like ScreenFlow turning Apple silicon into a monetization event. They didn’t.

Second, ScreenFlow screams on an M1 Mac. The software is snappier. Navigating the timeline and making edits is faster and easier because everything is buttery smooth. Render times are faster than my iMac Pro. It’s just nuts that this little laptop is now my premier screencasting rig. This little laptop continues to stack up against my iMac Pro.

It’s crazy that Apple silicon is already so superior for production work just months after its release. I keep writing this, but it seems like every day I find out another reason why the Macintosh landscape is going to be a lot different once Apple finishes rolling out Apple silicon across the line.