All of the emails in your inbox want your attention. But do they all need it? And do they need it right now? No, and you can cut down on the noise with SaneBox, MacSparky’s sponsor this week. 

With SaneBox, you can reduce the volume. SaneBox creates folders and moves unimportant emails there.  A folder for distractions. A folder for newsletters. A folder for CC’d emails. Initially, you’ll train SaneBox and their powerful A.I. will filter these non-urgent emails out of your inbox. Cut down on the noise and focus on what you need to. SaneBox will summarize the emails that didn’t make it into your inbox into a digest and you can deal with those emails when you’re ready to.  

Interested in a quieter inbox? You can give it a spin by signing up for a free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Reduce the noise of your inbox, and be more productive every day with SaneBox.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Drafts, my favorite text tool. Drafts is a text capture app. You open the app, and you’ve got a blinking cursor. Anytime I need to write down something on my phone. I tap the Drafts icon and get to work.

Drafts is a fully customizable text editor that works on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. And by “fully customizable”, I mean that. You can not only change the way it looks but also the way it acts.

You can write, organize, fix, and share text in almost every way imaginable.

• Drafts also has a full suite of editing tools.
• Drafts can automate so your text gets sent to other places.
• Drafts lets you create actions right in the app.

The other thing is that Drafts keeps improving. With the release version 38 (yes. 38), Drafts added Mail Drop. Now you can use a secret email address to send text into Drafts from any email account. Are you stuck on somebody’s sad Dradfts-less computer? No worries. Write the text in an email and send it to your account. Like everything else in Drafts, it is already a fully developed feature.

Drafts is the Swiss army knife for text. I keep it on all my devices all the time. You should too. That’s not all. Drafts’ developer has a special deal for MacSparky readers. You can get 50% off your first year of a new Drafts Pro subscription with this link. To work, this must be redeemed on an iPhone or iPad.

I often hear from listeners/readers looking for a research solution in the Mac ecosystem. My favorite app for this, without a doubt, is DEVONthink. DEVONthink is the most professional document and information management application for the Mac. It’s the one place for storing all your documents, snippets, or bookmarks, and working with them.

The Integrated A.I. assists you with filing and searching, while the extensive search language with advanced Boolean operators.

DEVONthink features a Flexible sync system that supports many cloud services – or lets you synchronize over the local network too – with everything securely encrypted. This gives you the choice for however syncing works best for you!

It has Smart rules and flexible reminders that let you automate all parts of your workflow and delegate boring, repeating tasks. Let DEVONthink automatically organize your data with rules you define!

DEVONthink’s AppleScript dictionary is one of the largest on the Mac. There’s no part of DEVONthink that can’t be automated. Extend DEVONthink’s functionality with your own commands by adding them to its Scripts menu.

Even templates can have scripts inside and you can set up new documents with data from placeholders, or inserted by your own AppleScript code.

And, of course, there’s so much more, from an iOS companion app, email archiving, scanning, or even an embedded web server for sharing your data securely with your team.

Nothing else can hold a candle to DEVONthink when it comes to working with actual files. Also, whether your are a daily DEVONthink user or simply interested, I recommend checking out their blog, where they routinely post tips and workflows for getting more from DEVONthink.

I find DEVONthink’s combination of innovative features and automation support irresistible. Interested? MacSparky readers can get a 20% discount on DEVONthink..

B.S. and A.S., as in Before SaneBox (B.S.) and After SaneBox (A.S.). There’s life before SaneBox, when your email is managing you, and life and your productivity after SaneBox, when you are efficiently managing your time and email. 

SaneBox, this week’s sponsor at MacSparky, is an email management service that automatically sorts your email into folders based on each email’s importance. If you’re sill checking boxes and clicking on trash cans to deal with emails individually everyday … there’s a better way. With SaneBox, you will be able to see what you need to read now. The emails that you can deal with later are put in a folder called SaneLater, which has the distracting emails that can wait for you. Keep the disruptions out so you can focus on what what’s important to you. 

You can try this out for yourself. Sign up for a free trial, and get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Give SaneBox a try and compare for yourself how you managed your email B.S. (that’s before SaneBox). 

I’ve talked and written extensively over the years about the utility of time tracking. Yet, many of us don’t track our time. And the reason is usually simple: it’s cumbersome and way too easy to forget.

This week’s sponsor, Timing, gives you the benefit of time tracking without the inconvenience. Timing is an app for your Mac that automatically tracks your time. You don’t need to push buttons. Timing just does its job. It’s smart, it’s beautiful, and it’s easy to use.

Just download and install Timing, and it’ll start recording how much time you spend on each app, document, and website you use.

And with the latest update, Timing will now import your iPhone and iPad usage from Screen Time as well! This means you’ll get the complete picture of how you spend your time across all your devices.

One of my favorite features is how Timing learns to associate certain activities on your Mac with specific projects. For instance, I track MacSparky Labs Admin time when I’m on the Memberful admin panel in Safari. So I set up a rule to assign time spent in the Memberful admin panel to that project and now Timing automatically makes makes the connection for me. But on the flip side, if Timing isn’t sure what I’m working on, I can manually set and adjust project assignments with a few clicks. This gives me solid, actionable data about how I’m spending my time.

If you’ve tried time-tracking before and gave up on it, try Timing. It does the work for you. I’ve even made some videos showing how the app works.

We all have things that are important to us … things where we sweat the details. For this week’s sponsor, Hoban Cards and Stationery, that is letterpress printing. Hoban products are classy, tastefully designed letterpress cards and stationery that you can be proud of.

Your calling card represents you. Why not bring some intentionality to your game? This week, MacSparky is sponsored by Hoban Cards, where they use a 1902 letterpress machine to make cards that your colleagues, clients, and customers will never forget. I sure love mine.

Evan and the gang at Hoban Cards are masters at the craft of designing and making letterpress calling cards. They have some beautiful templates to choose from, or you can roll your own.

I love handing out letterpress cards. It is always a conversation starter. Hoban Cards is where I go to buy them, and it is where you should too. Throw out those ugly, conventional, mass-produced, soulless business cards and reach out to Hoban Cards. Best of all, use ‘MacSparky’ to get $10 off any order. Get yours today.

This week, MacSparky is sponsored by Drafts, where text always starts for me. Sometimes, apps need time to grow on me. With Drafts, it was love at first sight. First and foremost, Drafts is a text capture app. You open the app, and you’ve got a blinking cursor. Anytime I need to write down something on my phone. I tap the Drafts icon and get to work.

The thing is, my workflow on the Mac is the same. I keep Drafts in my menu bar. If I’m on a call and want to take notes or jot down a phone number, I click the Drafts icon and go.

But that isn’t all. Drafts is the poster child for third-party apps. You tap the complication, start speaking, and capture text that shows up on your phone and Mac.

In short, Drafts is the place to capture text. For some, that is enough. If you want more, Drafts has that too:

• Drafts also has a full suite of editing tools.
• Drafts can automate so your text gets sent to other places.
• Drafts lets you create actions right in the app.

Drafts is the Swiss army knife for text. I keep it on all my devices all the time. You should too.

That’s not all, Drafts’ developer has a special deal for MacSparky readers. You can get 50% off your first year of a new Drafts Pro subscription with this link. In order to work, this must be redeemed on an iPhone or iPad.

P.S. This post, like all others, began its life in Drafts. 🙂