Recommendation: Cheap Charts

Over the years I’ve been slowly adding to my digital movie collection. For films I love, I like to have them in 4K as part of my collection for easy rewatching. I’ve maintained a Plex server for years, but there are certain movies where I want the best quality, best sound, and don’t want to store them on a hard drive. (And yes, I know buying physical media would do this too, but Hannah may kill me if I buy more stuff to collect, she already puts up with my vinyl.) Like, I’ve seen Jaws so many times having it in 4K is just a no-brainer. However, who wants to spend more than they have to on this stuff? In this economy? Not me.

CheapCharts is an app I’ve been using for a while that helps. (App Store link.)

You go through, favorite the movies you want to watch, and it’ll let you know when the price drops. I’ve regularly found movies that were $19.99 go on sale for $4.99 and a few days later jump back to the regular price. I am not sure why, but I don’t really care.

Two Cool New Apps

Jason Tate Feb 28, 2025

Hyperspace, from John Siracusa:

Hyperspace finds files with identical contents and then reclaims the disk space taken by all but one of the identical files—without removing any of the files.

And Framous, from Charlie Chapman:

Framous is the fastest and easiest way to add device frames around your screenshots.

It’s what I used to make the images for my latest home screen blog post.

My iOS 18 Home Screen

Jason Tate Feb 28, 2025

The last time I posted about my iOS home screen was back in 2021. In some ways, not much has changed in how I set up my device, but in other ways, the entire philosophy is new. So, I figured now was a good time to share my current home screens. Yes, plural, because I’ve completely embraced the focus mode lifestyle. Let’s dive in.

Jason Tate Oct 4, 2020

I like keeping screenshots and documenting my iOS home screens over the years so I can look back on how I had everything set up and remembering what it was like. The release of iOS 14 brings even more customizable options with the new widgets and stacks. I decided to describe my current layout, my custom iOS 14 icons, and add a little commentary about the apps.

UPDATE • Feb 28, 2025

I’ve made a new post with my current home screen.

UPDATE • Oct 2, 2021

The Launch Center Pro way of making icons has been removed by Apple as of iOS 14.5. If you had made the profile/icons before, they still work, but now the best solution for custom icons is to use the Shortcut method.

UPDATE • Oct 23, 2020

I’ve made some changes, notably changing up how all my custom icons look. All the screen shots have been updated.

Jason Tate Sep 11, 2017

Favicongrapher:

Faviconographer asks Safari.app for a list of all visible tabs (and their positions) in the current window, and for the URLs of those tabs.
It then uses that information to fetch the corresponding icons from Safari’s Favicon cache (WebpageIcons.db), and draws them above the Safari window.
It’s a “hack” — the cleanest solution would be Apple implementing Favicons in Safari — but it works surprisingly well.
Note: Faviconographer does not “hack” your system. It does not inject code into other apps or manipulate system files. In fact, it doesn’t even require Administrator access!

I’ve gotten used to not having favicons in tabs, but I know a lot of people live by them.

Cool App: Streaks

Jason Tate Jul 31, 2017

After reading the MacStories review of the Streaks app, I decided to give it a shot:

Streaks helps you set personal goals and stick to them using a combination of reminders and tracking. One of the hallmarks of the app, and what undoubtedly won it an Apple Design Award in 2016, is its obsessive attention to ease-of-use. By the very nature of its mission, Streaks is an app in which you shouldn’t spend a lot of time. Whether it’s in the main app, widget, or Apple Watch app, Streaks is designed to remove the friction of turning goals into habits by tracking tasks in a way that doesn’t become tedious, which makes it important to be able to mark items as completed quickly and easily.

I’ve only been using it for three days so far, but I think this will be something I stick with for a while. I like the idea of having a few (currently only four) streaks set up to help form some habits I’ve been having trouble with.

Things 3: The To-Do Listing App I Recommend Most

Jason Tate Jun 15, 2017

Things 3 was recently released. MacStories has a good run-down:

An app’s visual design is, in many ways, a matter of preference. But as far as I’m concerned, you would be hard-pressed to find a better looking to-do app than Things. The first time I opened it on my iPad, I couldn’t help but pause a few moments to admire it. And while that initial sense of awe wore off after a few days of use, its residual impact can be judged by the way Things has ruined other apps for me. Things 2 looks archaic by comparison, and even more modern task managers like Todoist and 2Do appear dated after using Things 3. The only task manager I’ve come across that feels like it’s from the same design era is Microsoft’s successor to Wunderlist, To-Do.

This is the to-do/task manager app I most recommend. I, personally, still use Omnifocus, but that’s because I’m a crazy person and have pretty specific way I manage tasks. But, for most people … Things 3 is the way to go.

Call Blockers for iOS

Jason Tate Feb 4, 2017

Marco:

When I learned about Nomorobo from readers and saw how creepy it wasn’t, I deleted Truecaller immediately and subscribed to Nomorobo, and it works great.
A few days ago, after a 100% success rate for a couple of weeks — every spam call (and zero non-spam calls) identified before I answer — I enabled the option to send spam calls directly to voicemail.
Now, from my point of view, I just don’t get spam calls anymore.
To me, that’s $2/month very well spent.

I must have been put on some list somewhere because I’ve been getting one or two robocalls a day for the past month.1 I finally signed up for Nomorobo after hearing Marco talk about it on the latest episode of ATP and it’s been money well spent.

I love the fake “oh I was just putting my headset on” call the most.↩

Cool App: ToothFairy

Jason Tate Jan 22, 2017

Tooth Fairy is for macOS:

Single click away from your favorite bluetooth device. Tooth Fairy helps you to switch connection of a selected bluetooth device, for example, AirPods, directly from menu bar or even global hotkey. You can do it with the system bluetooth menu bar but Tooth Fairy can save you a few clicks.

Recommended: Control + ESC to quickly connect your AirPods.

Drafts Screencast Series

Jason Tate May 4, 2016

I’ve been a big fan of the iOS app Drafts for quite a while. Here’s the premise: open the app, get a blank screen to start typing, then after your thought is out — decide where to send it. One of my biggest uses is to type something and then append it to a file in Dropbox to keep a running list (movies to watch, gift ideas for friends and family, etc.). This video series by David Sparks is a great way to learn the ropes: highly recommended.

Helpful App: Chatology

Jason Tate Apr 14, 2016

Chatology is an app for OS X that allows you to search through your iMessage history. It’s one of those things you didn’t know you needed until you really need it.

If you use Messages, you probably know that searching messages to find important info from past chats can be frustrating. Perhaps you couldn’t find what you were looking for, or your Mac slowed down so much that you gave up.
Chatology helps you find exactly what you’re looking for without frustration.

Helpful App: Thunderspace 5K

Jason Tate Apr 10, 2016

The last few weeks have been just a tad stressful. Needless to say my sleep schedule has taken a massive punch in the balls. Over the past few days I’ve been using this app, Thunderspace 5K, at night as almost a white noise machine. It’s been a revelation. It might be growing up in Oregon, and having spent many a night falling asleep to the sound of rain on the wood deck outside the window of my youth, but this app has replaced podcasts when I finally find my way to bed.

Cool App: Fluid Browser

Jason Tate Feb 23, 2016

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

One of the better features to emerge in iOS 9 is support for picture-in-picture mode on the iPad. But when you’re trying to surf the web while watching Netflix on your Mac, it’s not as easy to do – you often end up moving separate windows around on the screen, or switching back and forth between the playing video and other browser tabs.
A new floating browser app for Mac called Fluid solves this problem by offering a way to view your work alongside your media content from places like YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo, Hulu and more.

As I’m writing this I have Plex running and playing The Social Network in the corner. Pretty great.

Favorite Software

Jason Tate Jan 20, 2016

One of the more frequent questions I’m asked is what software do I use for insert a task here. This post hopes to keep a running list of my favorite apps, programs, and tools that I use on a regular basis. I’ve tried to break up the list into helpful sections and linked out to the app store when appropriate. Everything listed here I personally use and recommend. I’ll try and update this post on a semi-regular basis.

Cool App: Next (Expense Tracking)

Jason Tate Dec 15, 2015

Federico Viticci, reviewing Next for MacStories:

Next is on my Home screen on my iPhone and iPad. I use the app every day, and I log every expense (whether it’s cash or an expense from my bank account) as soon as I can. My perspective of my spending habits has considerably changed since I started using Next, and I’m making more informed decisions thanks to the overview that this app offers and its elegant design combined with astounding ease of use.

I’ve been using Mint for quite a while to get a good overview of my finances (#adulting), but recently I realized I had two main categories that I wanted to better break down for budgetary purposes: food and shopping. I wanted to have a weekly food budget, and a monthly shopping budget, and make sure I could keep track of just those two things with relative ease. Enter: Next.

I’ve been using this system for the last month and am really impressed by how much it does help me make purchasing decisions. Being able to quickly glance at my week of food spending keeps me from buying that extra 6-pack of beer after my weekly store run. I like the simplicity of this system because instead of having to remember a variety of categories within my budget, I can keep two numbers in my head: food per week, shopping per month.

While I still like (not love) Mint for being able to give me a bigger overview of everything in my financial world, Next is the first budget app I’ve actually felt some delight in using each day.