This week MacSparky is sponsored by SaneBox, the email service that can help you get control of your inbox. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox, you add a powerful set of email tools that can work in just about any email client. SaneBox allows you to:

• Wake up everyday to find that the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant.

• Defer email for hours, days, or weeks so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time.

• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email, SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

• Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

• Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services such as Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.

• Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

To me, getting the SaneBox account was the inflection point between when email controlled me and I started controlling email. If you are still on the other side of that equation, it’s time you joined us and stop letting email make you crazy. I’ve been a paying subscriber for years and can’t imagine getting by without it. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount off your subscription.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by HoudahGeo, the Mac application that simplifies adding geolocation data to your photos.

A lot of us have fancy cameras that, unlike the iPhone, don’t automatically add geolocation data to every photo. The thing is, I like having location data attached to my photos so I can look at all the pictures I took in Chicago or Hawaii, even those taken with the fancy camera.

HoudahGeo solves that problem. HoudahGeo can add locations to photos, whether they’re in a folder on your Mac or right in the photo library, making it Apple Photos compatible.

HoudahGeo does two things for photos in your library:

• Add location information to the photo in your library. This allows Apple Photos to organize and find your photos by location. Just the same as if you had made the effort to manually assign the locations in Apple Photos

• Geotag the original image files saved to your Photos library. This updates the JPEG or RAW files that came from your camera to include GPS tags, location names, etc.*

HoudahGeo is used by travelers and professionals alike. Some use location information to organize and find photos. Others need to add GPS coordinates to photo to assess roadwork damages, to record wildlife sightings or to document environmental damages, or even document the location of a really great looking tree. There is a cool blog entry where the developer used HoudahGeo to track an 8-day hike up Mount Kilimanjaro, which explains exactly how they used the app. Using HoudahGeo you can attach location data to photos with or without a geolocation log.

Using HoudahGeo, I’m quickly able to add location data to all of my photos. Moreover, this week you can get a discount using the links in this post.

* Caveat: iCloud Photos does not re-upload modified image files. Location information added to the library gets synched through iCloud. Geotagged image files are uploaded to iCloud only if the tags were added before iCloud Photos got to uploading the files. Thus users of iCloud Photos should geotag their photos before adding them to the Photos library. For this purpose, you can use HoudahGeo instead of the Photos app to download photos from your camera. Download, geotag, add to the Photos library, and let iCloud Photos do its job.

This week’s MacSparky sponsor is SaneBox, the email tool that everybody could use. You may have heard about some of the innovative new email features like inbox auto-sorting, deferred email, and reply tracking. The trouble is that early implementations of those features were all app-specific. You had to switch to a different email client that you didn’t necessarily like to get those features.

SaneBox fixes that. SaneBox has all of those cool new email tools (plus many more), and it works with just about any email client. Over the last few years, I have been jumping between iOS email clients trying to find the right app for me. Throughout this process, my one constant has been SaneBox because no matter which email client I’m using, I can still get auto inbox sorting, deferred email, reply tracking, and a pile of additional email tools via SaneBox. The service gives me the freedom to try and use any email client that tickles my fancy.

There is a lot more to SaneBox, but in addition to all of that, SaneBox gives you email client freedom. To learn more head over to SaneBox and sign up today. Using the links in this post, you’ll even get a sweet discount.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by OmniFocus 3. I’ve heard from lots of readers that are loving the new OmniFocus 3 features. I sure do.

The new version features a unique design that makes smart, useful changes without making change for the sake of change itself. Moreover, they’ve added several useful features of the application, my favorite of which is tags. Adding tags OmniFocus gives you the ability to have multiple vectors to get into your OmniFocus database and find exactly what you need precisely when you need it. I even wrote an article about how I’m using tags for the Omni Group’s website. Tags help you manage big things, but they also help you manage small things too. Lately, I’ve been tagging tasks related to bill payment with the additional “bills” tag. Then when I sit down to pay bills, I can press one button in OmniFocus and pay them all at once.

I use OmniFocus every day to keep my life together. There is no way I could run a law practice, video business, three podcasts, and be a dad without the powerful tools that OmniFocus gives me. Why not check it out for yourself? Head over to the OmniFocus website and download the free trial. Make sure to let them know you heard about it here at MacSparky.com.

This week I’m pleased to welcome back HoudahSpot as a sponsor. Apple’s Spotlight search is a powerful tool. But imagine if there were a group of engineers at Apple that wanted to turn up the Spotlight search a notch or two and had nobody in management to tell them “no”. That’s what you get with HoudahSpot. 

HoudahSpot is like Spotlight, but better in every way. It improves upon Spotlight to let you find files by multiple criteria, like name, text, content kind, author, recipient, and pixel count to name a few. You can combine these search criteria to drill in quickly and choose which locations HoudahSpot looks in and which locations it ignores. Need to find every file that includes the name “bumfuzzle” but also includes the word “cumquat” in the text and was written in 2017? HoudahSpot can do that for you. You can even set up templates for repeat searches.

I’ve used HoudahSpot for years and if you haven’t tried it yet, you should. The thing about HoudahSpot is that with all of that search criteria, it’s just faster. It’s faster than a Finder search, it’s faster than a Spotlight Search, and it’s faster than a Siri search. I’ve not found any easier way to laser in on just the files you want. With HoudahSpot you can find a needle in a haystack.

Anyway, don’t take my word for it, go try out the app. If you like it, you can get 20% off with the coupon code MACSPARKY2019 or purchase through this link. There’s no better way to search your Mac.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by OmniOutliner, the best outliner available for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. OmniOutliner combines powerful outlining tools plus a smart, simple interface to allow you to make beautiful outlines that can be as complex as you need them to be and no more than that. With smart columns, scriptability, custom styles, and templates, you can’t go wrong. You can share your data between all versions of OmniOutliner, so you always have your outlines available to you.

I use OmniOutliner to outline contracts and complex legal transactions for my day job. I also use it to outline all of my field guides. The combination of powerful outlining tools with synchronization across all of my devices is a winner for me. No matter where I am if I think of something I want to add to the next field guide, OmniOutliner is right there waiting for me to update it. I’ve heard from listeners and readers that use OmniOutliner for all sorts of things, like writing a novel, creating a family tree, or just collecting their thoughts.

To learn more, head over to the OmniOutliner website and download the free trial today.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by TextExpander. Copy and paste is an inefficient way to keep track of the things you type again and again. TextExpander makes you more productive by taking care of all those words and phrases for you. TextExpander works in all your apps so you can use it everywhere, like Microsoft Word and Excel, Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, and Apple’s Pages.

TextExpander does way more than that. With TextExpander you’ll see your snippets everywhere. It syncs between your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Windows PC instantly.

They’ve got free snippet groups for all sorts of folks including job recruiters, freelancers, airport codes, brand names, and more at the TextExpander website (or you can download some of mine).

TextExpander even lets you run AppleScripts. For example, I use TextExpander to auto address emails with Apple Mail.

Best of all, with TextExpander you don’t have to work alone: TextExpander for Teams lets you manage and share snippets with your coworkers or the entire company. Use this link to get 20% off. 

This week MacSparky is sponsored by BetterTouchTool, the powerful little app that lets you customize your Mac’s input devices to match and improve your workflow perfectly. Apple gave us these great trackpads and mice, but they’ve never really let us use them to their full potential.  BetterTouchTool does that. With BetterTouchTool, you can completely re-design your Touch Bar, configure various Magic Mouse and Trackpad gestures, define keyboard shortcuts, bind standard mouse buttons, use the Siri Remote with your Mac and do tons more.

BetterTouchTool offers many actions to automate various tasks on your Mac. These can be assigned to any input-device trigger you choose. Additionally, it contains some handy features like window snapping, a clipboard manager, a screenshot editor, and much more. It even includes a free iOS app to control your Mac and trigger actions remotely.

Recently, the BetterTouchTool Community was begun, which you can find at community.folivora.ai. Users have shared some amazing presets there, including some very advanced custom Touch Bar setups that you should check out.

BetterTouchTool comes with a 45-day trial after which you can choose between a license that includes all updates for two years and a lifetime license.

BetterTouchTool has been around for nine years, and I’ve been using it the entire time. With BetterTouchTool, I can make my Mac dance. You should too. To celebrate its 9th birthday, MacSparky readers can purchase BetterTouchTool for 15% off at checkout by using the coupon code MACSPARKYBTT for a limited time. So don’t delay. Go to folivora.ai to learn more and take advantage of the special limited-time, 15% discount on BetterTouchTool.

This week’s sponsor, SaneBox is the solution to so many of my email problems. SaneBox is the email service that adds a pile of productivity features to your email, regardless of what email client you use. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox at your back, you can:

• Wake up every day to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant. 

• Defer email for hours, days, or weeks, so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time. They’ve even added a new feature that can optionally auto-reply to snoozed email with something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m underwater right now. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

• Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

• Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.

• Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on, and MacSparky readers love this service.

The SaneBox team has been hard at work lately improving the SaneBox interface and releasing even more new tools. For instance, now you can have SaneBox send an auto-reply when you defer an email. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account today. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription. 

This week MacSparky is sponsored by TextExpander for teams. Did you know you can automate your entire team with a TextExpander for teams account?

When you have your teammates using TextExpander, the application becomes even more powerful. Just think about it. Because it is cloud-based, your snippets are always up to date and searchable by your entire team. Moreover, your snippets get written and edited by your best writers. If your workplace has multiple platforms, no problem. TextExpander works on macOS, iOS, Windows, and web. Best of all using TextExpander with your team will make you more productive, and leave more time for what you do best. For larger teams, TextExpander supports Single Sign-On (SSO) and grouping accounts to make onboarding a breeze.

To learn more, head over to TextExpander and let them know you heard about here at MacSparky.