I want to thank WinterFest for sponsoring MacSparky this week. WinterFest is a collection of some of the best Mac software for people that like to make things, all at a significant discount.

This year’s list is stellar:

Tinderbox ◆ Scrivener ◆ DEVONthink ◆ BBEdit ◆ Panorama ◆ Mellel ◆ Scapple ◆ Bookends ◆ Hook Pro ◆ HoudahGeo ◆ Nisus Writer Pro ◆ SmallCubed Mail Suite ◆ DEVONagent Pro ◆ Aeon Timeline 3 ◆ Easy Data Transform ◆ Trickster ◆ HoudahSpot ◆ The Tinderbox Way ◆ ImageFramer Pro ◆ HyperPlan ◆ Timing ◆ Marked

WinterFest features 22 great tools for writers, thinkers, planners. Many of these apps have features on the pages of MacSparky and the podcasts over the years. Just a few of my favorites from this list:

HookPro: Link anything on your Mac. This is a key player in my own contextual computing setup. 25% off.

Timing: The time tracker that doesn’t require you to throw switches 25% off first year.

DEVONthink: What more can I say about this one? 25% off.

If you are planning to get some work done in 2022, WinterFest 2021 is here for you. These are all full versions with complete support and upgrade privileges. Just great prices for great software, right at the workshop door. Get all the tools you need at a terrific price, for a very limited time with WinterFest 2021.

Winter is here. We have work to do. Many of us need to reimagine our workplaces and our workflows. We have kids to raise, degrees to pursue, new jobs to find, care to give, and care to take. This week’s sponsor, WinterFest 2021 is here for you.

WinterFest 2021 features 22 great tools for writers, thinkers, planners. So many of my favorite Mac app are part of WinterFest. Among this year’s bangers are:

Tinderbox ◆ Scrivener ◆ DEVONthink ◆ BBEdit ◆ Panorama ◆ Mellel ◆ Scapple ◆ Bookends ◆ Hook Pro ◆ HoudahGeo ◆ Nisus Writer Pro ◆ SmallCubed Mail Suite ◆ DEVONagent Pro ◆ Aeon Timeline 3 ◆ Easy Data Transform ◆ Trickster ◆ HoudahSpot ◆ The Tinderbox Way ◆ ImageFramer Pro ◆ HyperPlan ◆ Timing ◆ Marked

Now is the time for new plans and fresh projects and great new ideas. Whether you’re mapping out your next novel, finishing your dissertation, planning a product, or writing memories for your grandkids, these great tools will help.

These are all full versions with complete support and upgrade privileges. Just great prices for great software, right at the workshop door. Get all the tools you need at a terrific price, for a very limited time with WinterFest 2021.

Daylite is an award-winning CRM and productivity app made exclusively for your Mac, and it’s now Monterey ready! Daylite goes beyond the essential CRM experience or project management tool for small businesses. Daylite is the only Mac-focused CRM and productivity app that seamlessly integrates with Apple devices and most of the built-in Apple apps and features, like direct Apple Mail integration, so you and your team can capture all email communication in one place.

That means you can create opportunities, appointments, and tasks in Daylite right from your Apple Mail. Daylite empowers small businesses by improving team efficiency and making collaboration easy—everything is organized, searchable, and accessible (even offline). You and your team can easily access information and use smart lists to segment data tailored to your specific client story. You can manage and share everyone’s schedules, project status, and next steps, all done in Daylite. 

If you live by the mac, you’ll love Daylite. Start your free 30-day Daylite trial today!

Did you know that the snooze button isn’t only for your alarm clock? With SaneSnooze, you can snooze on your emails as well. SaneBox, this week’s sponsor at MacSparky, helps me prioritize my email with the SaneSnooze feature.

There are emails that you don’t have to act on right now, and that’s where SaneSnooze comes in handy. I can snooze the less important emails until I want to respond. The email disappears from my main inbox. Not delete disappear, but more of a I’ll-deal-with-it-later situation because SaneSnooze will hide the email until the time I say I’m ready for it to show back up in my inbox, and I can give it my attention when I’m ready to deal with these kinds of emails.

And SaneBox lets you choose how long you want to snooze. You can set your Snooze Folders to SaneTonight, SaneTomorrow, SaneNextWeek, SaneNextMonth, or whatever you think works best for you. When you move an email to your chosen SaneSnooze time, that email will disappear from your inbox, and then SaneBox will move that email back into your inbox at the time you’ve designated it. Want to deal with email on your terms? Click here to sign up for a free trial, and you can get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. 

A shoutout to TextExpander, MacSparky’s sponsor this week. I’ve been a user of TextExpander for a long time. It’s been a real difference-maker in my workflow by doing a lot of the work for me.

TextExpander supports a variety of macros, and one supported macro is the Tab key. What does that mean for you? TextExpander can insert some text, press Tab for you, then insert more text.

For instance, I regularly send my assistant emails with updates about the latest Field Guide I’m working on. TextExpander allows me to use just a couple of keystrokes and I can start the new email and then trigger a snippet.

The beauty of TextExpander is the snippet will automatically type my assistant’s email address, press tab, put in the the same email subject line, press tab, and fill in a general template for the body of the email. The cursor is ready for me and placed right where I need to start typing the new information for the week. That’s a more efficient use of time. And that’s what TextExpander can do for you: allow you to take your time back. Get 20% off your first year. Leave the boring, repetitive tasks in the past: get TextExpander and focus on what matters most.

My thanks to MacSparky’s sponsor this week, SaneBox. My plate is full enough as it is, but I’ve got SaneBox to help me clear my plate by managing my inbox. I’ve tried using rules before, but things would slip through that weren’t supposed to, so rules didn’t work for me. What works for me, what does the work for me, is SaneBox. It takes some training, but SaneBox manages the emails that I don’t need to read immediately and moves these distractions into folders like SaneLater, and moves the unwanted and annoying ones into SaneBlackHole.

If you’re looking to manage your workflow more productively, try SaneBox with a free trial. You’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Don’t waste your time on the clutter and unimportant emails. Spend time on working on what are actually your priority messages and what’s important to you. 

This week MacSparky is sponsored by the Timing App, the time tracking app that tracks time for you automatically. It’s that “automatic” part you should really pay attention to. Because I do so much work at my Mac these days, I’ve been using Timing and it is really nice being able to have the application keep track of exactly how long I spent in this Word document or on that Website. It makes my time tracking data so much easier (and more accurate).

Also, the app recently got a new “Activities” screen which gives you everything you need to know including App usage and project time spent. Other new improvements include the ability to start and stop timers right inside the app and growing support for automation. For instance, I’m working on a Shortcut that will call out to the Timing web API and automatically start and stop timers from my iPhone and iPad. (It’s still a bit ugly but I’ll share it here soon.) If you’re curious, you can get started with Timing’s  web app to track time from anywhere, and combine that with Timing’s sample Siri shortcuts to start and stop timers as quickly as possible. 

If you want simple, accurate time tracking data and you work on a Mac, look no further. You can download the free 14-day trial today and get 10% off for the first year.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Daylite, which also sponsored this week’s Focus Mode webinar. Daylite has been the definitive CRM solution on the Mac for a long time. While most CRMs these days rely on a boring, uninspired web interface, Daylite has native apps for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, taking full advantage of all the Apple APIs. At the same time, Daylite uses the latest cloud syncing technology to give you your data wherever you need it. It’s like combining peanut butter with chocolate.

Of course Daylite already has support for Apple’s Focus Mode, including setting up Daylite notifications as time-sensitive. You can learn more about Daylite and Focus Mode right here. There is no reason your CRM shouldn’t give you that native app feel and feature list. Just head over to Daylite and check it out.

My thanks to this week’s MacSparky sponsor, TextExpander. TextExpander works for you to take your time back by helping you work faster and smarter so you can focus your time on your most important work by instantly inserting your text snippets with just a few keystrokes. 

Think of all of the different kinds of links you share everyday with your friends, colleagues, or customers. You can turn all of these must-see links into TextExpander snippets in a way that won’t look like alphabet soup, but that will also save you time. Once you create a new Snippet Group for things you frequently link to, like “My GIFs” or “Work Links” or “Affiliate Sites”, you would just have to type the abbreviation you created for your link snippet, instead of copying and pasting an entire address. For example, you could set up a snippet “/twitter” or “/instagram” which will pop up your account URLs so you can share links to your social media accounts. Or a link snippet could save you time if you have to go to a recurring video conference room. If you’ve created a link snippet for this virtual meeting room, you don’t have to go searching for that URL or email that has it for you to join that meeting. Think of all the link snippets you could create. 

Just a couple of keystrokes can instantly expand your snippets with TextExpander. It’s an instant productivity booster. You can leave the boring, repetitive tasks in the past when you get TextExpander and focus on what matters most.

Excited about the macOS Monterey? So are we! Daylite is an award-winning CRM and productivity app made exclusively for your Mac, and it’s now Monterey ready! Daylite empowers small businesses by improving team efficiency and making collaboration easy—everything is organized, searchable, and accessible, with or without an internet connection. Daylite is the only Mac-focused CRM app that seamlessly integrates with Apple devices and most of the built-in Apple apps and features, like direct Apple Mail integration, so you and your team can capture all email communication in one place. That means you can create opportunities, appointments and tasks in Daylite right from your Apple Mail.

Daylite’s productivity-focused design helps you and your team get more done throughout the full customer lifecycle. From meeting prospects and winning business to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through to following up for referrals and repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite.

If you live by the Mac, you’ll love Daylite. Start your free 30-day Daylite trial today!