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.
From App-to
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…
App to Create Bootable Disk
While it is possible to use dd command on Unix-like systems to make a bootable disk or installation disk, the method has flaws. And apparently I wasn’t the only one noticing the issue. With larger files, dd can inexplicably fail without much notice. Current USB drives are fast enough that few transferring gigabytes would take mere minutes, but it is an annoyance I would wish to avoid as much as possible.
App to Calculate PSU Requirement for PC Builds
As obvious as it sounds, having a bigger PSU is not always recommended. In fact, from my experience, PSU has changed as the “meta” behind the PC builds have changed. Back when I was shopping my last PSU for eGPU, I was interested in how many PCIe auxiliary it can support. Nowadays, both PCIe cards (or rather, graphics cards) and PSU use 16-pin 12VHPWR instead.
App to “Solve” Magic Eyes
I remember seeing a framed Magic Eye picture hanging in my grandmother’s, and that became my side Summer project — to be able to see what is “hidden” inside. Unfortunately, I was never able to see it for myself; but I was told the answer later. I remember thinking to myself, how is this TV-static looking image is supposed to morph into a 3D image?
App to Manage Python Versions
I know it’s a well known tool. But having introduced Python many times as go-to method to write codes to automate and for personal uses, I realize now that I didn’t mention the tool to manage Python. Unlike like programming languages, Python has gone through some major changes from versions to versions, most notably from Python 2 to 3.
App to Organize Recipes Across Devices
There are always free apps for the same job, but there are some kinds of apps I would strongly advise investing in, or at least don’t be too put off from buying. One such job is recipe keeping. It sounds like a simple job; just keep the text files on cloud, and text editors are freely available on almost all the platforms. But much like music and ebook library, you can only get so far with bare metal approach.
App to Customize External Monitor Settings on macOS
There are several external monitor control apps on macOS — some paid, some free. One thing I can say for sure is that not all features are overlapping with each other. It’s easy to imagine have one universal app fixing all the monitor needs, but I found out different apps focus on different areas. My focus were primarily the following:
App to Disable WordPress Native Functions
There are several native WordPress features that fell out of use naturally, or became loopholes bloggers would want to plug, or became the subject of privacy regulations. WordPress is a strong platform that enables much of the extra toppings that, in my opinion, at the time sounded like interesting social media features.
App to Measure Disk Read Write Speeds on macOS
Unlike spinning hard drives of old, SSDs, especially M.2 NVMe, have few more criteria to test throwing out the box. Firstly, the drive may not be capable to perform as the spec says. Secondly, your computer — or any device that will connect to the drive — may have unforeseen bottleneck somewhere. At any rate, you do need a testing software to get started.