The undercut-f1 is a command-line application (TUI) that displays Formula 1 race data — in real-time or replay sessions. It shows sector times with colors for personal and overall bests, tire types, gaps between drivers and the leader, and race information.
If you think mechanical keyboards with blue switches are annoying, get ready because things can always get worse: the free app Kwack (macOS) plays a “quack!” with every keystroke.
Pinta 3.0 is out. The new version of the lightweight image editor is built on the GTK 4 and Libadwaita, a much-welcomed modernization of the app.
While this alone brings a host of given improvements to Pinta, it’s not the only new feature. There are visible changes (new icons, menu, color picker, and smart layers) as well as under-the-hood enhancements (dynamic adjustments for different screen sizes and orientations, better gesture support, increased speed, and hopefully fewer crashes).
Support for add-ins, which was temporarily removed in the 2.x series, is back. For now, only two have been ported, but the developers say that “more are likely to be ported to the new release and future releases.”
Pinta’s origins trace back to being a multiplatform Windows’ Paint.NET alternative, meaning it aims to be a simple yet capable image editor; the missing link between Paint and Photoshop. The code is open source and the app is available on Linux, macOS (now with support for Apple Silicon), OpenBSD, and Windows.
With all eyes on the launch of Apple Intelligence in Brazil and other markets, an almost overlooked feature in iOS 18.4 emerged: ambient music buttons right in the Control Center.
There are four options: Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing. They join the background sounds introduced in iOS 15 back in 2021, bolstering the arsenal for those overwhelmed by the noise of modern life. Thank you, Apple! 🙏
My excitement soon turned to frustration when I discovered that the Music app had to be installed for the iOS 18.4 ambient music feature to work. At first, I assumed this meant you needed an active Apple Music subscription—which, for me, is not the case.
I set that thought aside until I read this post showcasing the feature without any reference to Apple Music. Could it be that you don’t need a paid subscription for it? I downloaded the Music app and… indeed, you don’t need a subscription to enjoy the ambient music on iOS 18.4.
This discovery led me to another “issue”: having duplicate apps. I listen to music from *.mp3 files using the Doppi app. When I first embraced this lifestyle (believe me, it’s a lifestyle), I did check out the Music app, but I dismissed it for various reasons I can’t fully recall, aside from the fact that it won’t play *.flac files.
Returning to that point, the Music app still can’t handle *.flac files, though it does support ALAC, Apple’s lossless music format. I only have a few albums in *.flac—and you can probably guess where this is going.
I discovered two apps that can convert these files: XLD (macOS only) and Audio Converter (available for both macOS and Windows). Before resorting to a new app, I checked if ffmpeg—a command-line tool for converting media formats—could do the trick. Naturally, it could.
Further research led me to this script that converts files to *.m4a (the ALAC file format), preserving all metadata and even embedding an album cover image in the newly generated files.
Simply download the flac-to-alac.sh file, then run it like so:
$ ./flac-to-alac.sh /path/to/original/album /path/to/output
The script’s creator warns not to add a trailing slash (/) at the end of any path. “This is a primitive script so treat it so.” In its simplicity and quirks, it works beautifully.
Once the conversion is complete, just drag the songs into the macOS Music app, connect your iPhone via cable, and sync your library through Finder.
One extra step I took was logging out and disabling everything related to Apple Music and the iTunes Store. I may have sacrificed some conveniences, like wireless syncing (although I suspect that depends on having an Apple Music subscription), but given all the horror stories about Apple messing with users’ music files, I think using a cable to transfer music is totally worth the extra effort — it’s a rare occurrence for me, anyway.
Here’s something you don’t see every day: a major update to apt, the default package manager for Debian and derivative Linux distributions. Apt 3.0.0, accepted into Debian Sid (unstable) last Friday (4th), has a special appeal thanks to its revamped UI, featuring columns, padding, and even colors (!) to make outputs easier to read.
Apt 3.0.0 will be available in Debian 13 “Trixie”, scheduled for mid-2025, and in Ubuntu 25.04, which is expected to be released later this April.
The launch of Tapestry in early February has solidified a new category of apps — ones that attempt to create a unified timeline from different sources that, by their very nature, are like oil and water.
Tapestry joins a handful of other recent apps1 — Feeeed, the new Reeder, and Flipboard’s Surf — in tackling the main issue of decentralized social platforms, which is… well, decentralization itself.
The idea is pretty cool: it doesn’t matter if the people you follow are on Bluesky or Mastodon. With one of these timeline apps, you can keep up with them all at once on a single interface. It’s like centralizing the new social internet, but it’s done at the individual level rather than the platform level.
The biggest (only?) issue with using a non-Apple mouse on macOS is losing that smooth scrolling, also known as kinetic scrolling.
It might seem like a silly detail, but it’s such a nice feature that I really miss when it’s not there.
A few years back, when I swapped out my MacBook’s trackpad for a cheap mouse, I found a solution in this quirky, free, open-source app called MOS.
MOS does one thing, and it does it well. It has a few options to add exceptions to its effect, which is sometimes necessary, and it lets you hide the menu bar icon. Awesome!
All this time, though, I’ve learned to live with (and accept) one major annoying flaw: it would “freeze” the scrolling when it got interrupted in some apps made with Catalyst (Apple’s tool for converting iPadOS apps to macOS) and Electron (web apps turned “native”). It’s hard to explain, but trust me, it’s super annoying.
There aren’t too many of them, but I use a few of those apps, like WhatsApp and Signal. Apple itself uses Catalyst in standard macOS apps like Maps, Messages, and Weather.
After almost two years of complete silence, MOS 3.5 just dropped the other day, bringing just one fix:
In Catalyst apps, scrolling is not properly responded to immediately after scrolling stops, including Maps/Messages/Weather, etc…
While it doesn’t mention it, the fix also applies to Electron apps.
After stumbling upon this update and sitting down to write this, that I realized there are alternatives to MOS, even if they come with their own issues (and I’m not sure if they’re immune to the glitch MOS had in Catalyst/Electron apps).
There’s magicScrollWheel (which hasn’t been updated since 2020) and SmoothScroll (proprietary and paid, a USD 10/year subscription). The latter even has a version for Windows. I’m not sure if Microsoft’s system offers smooth scrolling; if not, it’s worth a shot.
PS: SmoothScroll has a video that explains smooth/kinetic scrolling, which is tough to put into words, way easier to explain with moving images.
PSS: I’ve been using Latest to keep track of updates for apps that weren’t downloaded from the Mac App Store. That’s how I found out about MOS 3.5.
In May, a post by Neeraj Arora went viral on Twitter. In that thread, he told how he was duped by Mark Zuckerberg in 2014, when the then Facebook bought WhatsApp for USD 22 billion. Neeraj was the chief business officer of the messaging startup and was directly involved in the sale to Facebook.
The unfolding of that story is known by now: Zuckerberg violated some of the commitments he made in 2014 to WhatsApp’s founders, such as not cross-referencing WhatsApp users’ data with that of other properties, and the founders eventually left the company while WhatsApp continued to grow into one of humanity’s leading communication engines.
Neeraj hasn’t given up on his dream of creating a better app, however. In that Twitter thread, he said that WhatsApp has become “a shadow of the product we poured our hearts into, and wanted to build for the world.” Today, he is focused on HalloApp, a sort of “second act” — this time, proofed against multibillion-dollar takeovers by companies of questionable reputation.
The obscure, weird app that I had been using for five years to record my financial transactions failed to import data from the old phone to the new one. I took this as sign: it was time to move onto a better solution.
Personal finance doesn’t need to be complex, yet it’s only useful with a pinch of automated calculations, consolidations, and charts. I started researching for a new app with low requirements: something simple, that allowed me to enter my transactions (expenses and income) and review them at the end of each month or specific period.