About a year ago, I wrote about the app spamming in the App Store. Though Apple has since updated the guidelines to block these copycats, it seems the damage has already been done. There are compromises after compromises, and fake AI assistants or LLMs make it particularly more vulnerable for the users as more data shared often means better tailored results.
From App-to
App to View USB in Trees on Windows
I’m still in the process of rewiring a standing desk, and it’s giving me enough nightmares on the Windows side of the business. On macOS, there is a similar tool already included inside the System Information. The app prints the tree hierarchy of USB devices to troubleshoot where the bottleneck is. It is paramount to understand where it could be, otherwise it is simply impossible to find which adapter, which cable, or which hub is the faulty one.
App to Add Subtitles to iTunes Store Purchased Movies
We moved past purchasing or renting digital media like we did with iTunes, but there are some movies I still own from iTunes era. The movies and TV shows are still available on the TV app for macOS and iTunes app on Windows. As a general rule, once purchased, purchased contents are often not updated with the new subtitles. While understandable, it is ironic buying a movie somehow has worse consequences than pirating a movie.
App to Convert Food Volume to Weight
My first ever baking experience was a bit nightmarish. I couldn’t get some of the ingredients I had hoped for, and most importantly, I couldn’t measure it in a way that makes sense for a complete novice. An old American recipe called for “a stick of butter” and left out how big the stick is. Nowadays, quick Google search will yield variety of results, but results nonetheless.
App to Find Electron-Bugged Apps on macOS
The Electron issue plaguing macOS 26 Tahoe isn’t something a user can fix. Aside from downgrading back to Sequoia, which is likely more trouble than its worth, it is better to keep Electron apps at arm’s length. If it is constantly running in the background, such as 1Password (fixed), it is best to voice your concern to the developers. For others, it is likely more practical to simply stop the an affected app from running longer than it is necessary until the fix is issued.
App to Test Stick Drift on Controllers
With major rumors hinting the new (e.g. PS6) console is set to release as early as Fall 2027, no doubt most console owners and players on controllers have heard of the stick drifts on controllers, on controllers of any platform. Current generation of consoles were released in 2020, so it wouldn’t be so surprising more controllers are facing the issue now than ever.
App to Track Unpatched GPU-Bugged Electron Apps
I thought to write this as a PSA piece, but there is also a great web app that could help along the way. Long story short, Electron framework, known to be used for desktop apps for cross-platform compatibility and web app likeliness, has a bug that causes GPU performances issues on macOS 26 Tahoe. The developers behind the Electron have already issued a patch on their end, now the balls are in the hands of app developers that used the framework.
App to Save Website into Single File
It’s been a long holiday week in South Korea, and with long holiday, I had some tinkering to do on all of my browsers. Safari on both macOS and iOS do support ‘read later’ feature with possible options to sync over cloud and save locally. It is a feature handy for short term usage, but with Apple’s “it just works” approach to the feature itself, it lacks reliability needed for long term storage and usage.
App to Replace Launchpad on macOS 26 Tahoe
macOS 26 Tahoe does not have Launchpad. If you were not using it, Launchpad is an iOS-like feature on the Mac side to arrange and view apps on pseudo Home Screen. Whether or not you use Launchpad is irrelevant I suppose; at least for Apple, the company has already decided it wasn’t a popular feature. It was introduced in Mac OS X Lion, but the feature hasn’t seen any updates either.
App to Convert PC Xbox App Saves for Different Platforms
I’m on the process of writing a similar themed op-ed that highlights the exact issue I am having with the Xbox App. One would imagine save files on all PC games would be platform-agnostic, so long as the platform in question has a Windows presence. That is simply not the case with the Xbox app for PC. Xbox uses its unique save file structure, possibly for cloud support.
App to Convert Lossless Audio on macOS
There are several tools out there, some of them professional and some of them only CLI-based, to convert lossless audio files on macOS. I was specifically looking for a convertor that is preferably free or more affordable and has a GUI support for casual uses. In my specific cases, I happen to have quite a bit of FLAC, ones that I ripped from old CDs, and Apple Music uses ALAC, once proprietary turned open source codec.
App to Find Tmux Key Shortcuts and Commands
Many CLI-based apps on Unix-like ecosystem tends to have long keyboard shortcuts list; it also means being an experienced user in these worlds come with some tall orders. Personally, I think vim and tmux are the prime examples of being useful if all the keys are etched to your muscle memory. For mere mortals like myself, they offer fascinating opportunity but with the most weird of key combinations at times.
App to Access exFAT on Raspberry Pi
For some odd reasons, Raspberry Pi OS does not include exFAT support out of the box. It was the most bizarre experience I had not expected; FAT32 is definitely not going to cut it in this day and age, and most commonly used platform-agnostic file system would be exFAT. It was quite reminiscent of the Steam glitch I had previously.
App to Add Incompatible Drives to Latest Synology NAS
Synology, as of April 2025, Synology announced newer models will have tighter restrictions on what drives can be used with NAS. It appears only the Synology branded drives are touted as “compatible”, albeit Synology, the company, does not manufacture any physical drives. The new policy will not retroactively affect older NAS, but seeing as Synology-branded NAS’ core strength was its streamlined experience regardless of drive compatibility, (i.e. even if a drive is not listed on the compatibility DB, it will still work on the unit) the new turn of the event ends on the rather sour note.
App to Test Drive Capacity Legitimacy on Windows
Though I tried to find a similar app for macOS and Linux, it wasn’t such a big surprise apps to test legitimacy of drive capacity is mostly reserved for Windows. For context, the idea behind the test is that there are customized illegitimate firmwares installed on drives to trick OS, thereby users, into thinking the drive is actually bigger than it is. The actual scheme goes like this: one. a user buys a cheap SSD (e.g. only $10 for 10TB), two. OS reports back the 10TB, three. but the files are getting corrupted after a while, four. closer inspection reveals…