degr° 
degr.app
A screensaver that displays, in giant numbers, the temperature and/or the hour against a black background. There are 30 fonts to choose from, many combinations, and an option that moves the pixels a little bit once in a while to avoid to “burn” OLED screens. Free, for macOS and Windows.
Add it to the list of trivial things macOS inexplicably can’t do: turn off the laptop display when it connects to an external monitor.
Until yesterday, what I did was use a utility — MonitorControl — to reduce the built-in display brightness to the minimum. It’s effectively off, but still active, meaning the mouse “wanders off” into the darkness and, depending on how the monitors are arranged, the Dock ends up hidden on the blacked-out display.
I happened to come across a tiny free app by Jeremy Kanter, suggestively named One Display, that turns off (really turns off) the built-in display as soon as the laptop is connected to an external screen.
To my surprise, it works!
There are only two options in One Display:
In an ideal world (or operating system), this functionality would be native. I know the KDE Plasma graphical environment does this. In macOS, to the dismay of people who prefer working with a single display, it apparently isn’t a priority.
Editor's note: Every week, I publish the phone's home screen from a blog reader. Want to participate? Fill out this form. Want more? Check out the archive. All app links go to the App Store, Play Store, or F-Droid.
My name is Edson, I’m 28 years old, I’m a clinical and educational psychologist, and I’m in the final stretch of my PhD in education (phew!). I first came across the Manual many years ago, landing from a Google search on one post or another, until it became one of my favorite corners of the web. Since then, it has never left my bookmarks.
Snail racing simulator
addy.zone
The races are long and overtaking, rare. Formula 1? No, I’m talking about the Snail racing simulator. Choose yours, cheer it, and hope for the best. (The website reports that the slug race is a “genuine sport” popular in Britain.)
Hardware Test
hardwaretest.org
A series of hardware tests that run directly from the web browser. It has for keyboard, mouse, screen, video game controls… For free.
This year, unlike 2025, I updated my computer as soon as macOS 27 Golden Gate was released. The positive feedback during the testing period was encouraging, and deep down I figured that the original Liquid Glass, from macOS 26 Tahoe, was so bad that it couldn’t get any worse.
No surprise: macOS 27 looks better. Aesthetically and in actual use: buttons look like buttons again, there are visible dividers in windows, the comically rounded windows’ corners, and the sidebar no longer floats around for… whatever reason it was floating.
This Wednesday (16th), the stable version of Gnome 51, the famous desktop environment for Linux, was released. (Announcement video.) The highlight is improvements in performance and graphics. I don’t know if it was already there, but I’m glad to see that Sushi is a default app and was ported to GTK4. It displays file content by pressing the Space key in the file manager — similar to the quick Look of macOS.
Unfortunately the new overlay of the search results, which was expected to land in Gnome 51, didn’t make the cut.
ReelSwap
reelswap.net
Browse and organize your physical media collection on this website. The standout feature is the display: a three-dimensional shelf. “Take down” (click on) a movie and examine the box from every angle. For free.
I’ve published more than a couple of pieces on this blog trying to raise awareness about the risks of viral photo-editing apps, like FaceApp back in 2019 [pt_BR].
We are curious beings. The promise of looking into a magic mirror that shows us old, as a different gender, or in another era is nearly irresistible — a force that makes many people ignore the warning signs, even the obvious ones.
Any human ever
anyhumanever.com
This site allows you to draw the life of a random person among all 100 billion who have ever lived on this planet, based on statistics and historical fragments of each period. I thought it was cool to analyze the lives of people who lived centuries or millennia ago and then trace my own profile.
At the end of August, I had the chance to fiddle with a Galaxy Z Fold8, Samsung’s passport-style foldable phone. It’s smaller than I expected. I found it somewhat curious. My time with the device was brief and I think I saw enough. It’s not for me.
This Wednesday (9th), Apple made its debut in the foldable phone segment with the announcement of the iPhone Duo. It looks a lot like the Galaxy Z Fold8. The biggest highlight from first impressions is the animation on the screens when opening and closing them. (It’s cool, indeed.)
myNoise
mynoise.net
Stéphane Pigeon, a signal processing engineer and passionate about sounds, keeps this site alone. He runs the world to record various noises with the highest possible quality. Why? The short answer, according to himself, is because he is crazy.
After several beta and RC versions, Jellyfin 12 was released this Monday (7th). This is the server application, which other devices access to display stored videos, music, and other digital media. It also comes with a client accessible via the web.
The versioning scheme has changed, and this new release comes with a handful of breaking changes and pre-installation precautions. It’s well worth reading the full release announcement — it’s in English, but an automatic translation should do the job.
All these hurdles will pay off in plenty of fixes and improvements. Among the visible ones, notable additions include support for multiple versions of the same episode, improvements to digital books and comics and their recommendations, support for plugins that expand search functionality, and the modern layout becoming the new default. The changelog is really long.
Wire Loop
keithcirkel.co.uk
From the most boring television game shows to your computer or phone, in the game Wire Loop you have to take the disc from one point to another without touching the wire, as fast as you can. Includes a level editor.
The Asahi Project, whose mission is to make Linux distributions viable on post-2020 Apple computers, announced on Sunday 6th support for the Apple Silicon M3 chip family. There are still important limitations, such as the lack of 3D acceleration and the inability to put the system to sleep, but it works. Because of these, support is hidden behind “expert mode.”