This week MacSparky is sponsored by Making Light Candles, my favorite source for candles (both as gifts and for myself). There is something special about lighting a candle. It’s a ritual we humans have been doing for a long time, and I find it an excellent way to stay focused and in the moment.

Making Light Candles are great for this. It’s a small family business with over forty years of experimentation and a solid commitment to sustainability. They use all-natural soy waxes, cotton wicks, reusable and recyclable containers, and a carefully curated collection of beautiful fragrances.

With a Making Light subscription, you (or your loved one) will get a monthly delivery of several Making Light candles, matches, and a nice note.

And when you gift a Making Light subscription, you’re helping spread the idea of focus. The subscription is based on using the candle as a ritual to do something you love. I treat these candles as special and burn them only when working on my most important projects. The ritual of lighting the candle, the smell, and the entire process now triggers my brain into focus mode. It’s like a shortcut but for your brain. When I’m done, I blow out the candle, and it waits for the next time I need to engage in that project.

These rituals work on our brains. They help you stay focused and more in the moment for the most important things you do. When you give a Making Light subscription, tell your recipient about this idea and how this is your small way to help them with their essential work. They’ll appreciate that.

And while you’re doing it, you’ll know you are helping a small family-owned and operated company that focuses on making the best products and giving back. (One of my favorite things about the company is their focus on teaching kids to make candles and burn wax instead of their brains on social media.)

Best of all, use the code “Sparky” and get a $10 discount code on any new subscription. This offer is time-limited, and the holidays are approaching, so don’t miss out.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by a killer Mac utility, TextSniper. TextSniper is a Mac OCR app that can extract text anywhere on your Mac’s screen and automatically save it to your clipboard, so you can paste it anywhere you need it. It can even read the text to you. The whole thing works a lot like the built-in screen capture on the Mac, just way more powerful. You know those websites that won’t let you copy text? With TextSniper, you can. Do you know the pain of getting a phone number out of a document? It’s easy with Text Sniper.

That’s not all. With TextSniper, you can:

• Quickly get text from PDFs, Zoom calls, Presentations, and Videos.
• Read QR codes and barcodes.
• Get text out of just about any image format, including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.
• TextSniper also doubles as a QR code and barcode reader. It can even read the text back to you with its Text to Speech Engine.

I use this app often. It’s made by a developer who spends much time making it the best capture utility on the Mac. You can even use your iPhone or iPad camera to take a photo for TextSniper to perform its magic. Just last week I used TextSniper to pull text out of a paused YouTube video. Yup. You can do that.

Moreover, in an era where so much software is more about data mining than giving you a service, TextSniper doesn’t collect your data. The text recognition is processed on your Mac and does not require an internet connection.

TextSniper works with macOS Catalina and later and also works with Parallels Desktop

Get TextSniper now and enjoy the fastest way to copy uncopyable text, wherever you find it. Use promo code TSMS2023 to get an additional 25% off.

Here comes 2024! I’m beginning to sell sponsorship for the blog and newsletter for next year. If you’re interested, drop me a note.

When it comes to time tracking, it’s only as useful as the data is accurate. Setting manual timers often leads to bad data. As humans, we’re not very good at throwing switches every time we mode shift.

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 now Timing will 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.

If you haven’t tried Timing lately, you should. They added a new vertical timeline that is really nice. It’s easy to read and easy to edit. Time tracking gives me a lot of insight about where I am really putting my efforts. Timing is a great way to do it.

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.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by DEVONthink. There are a lot of ways to manage a database on your Mac, but in my opinion, there is no better tool than DEVONthink. Just a few of the things I use DEVONthink for include:

A reliable repository of research documents. DEVONthink will hold as many documents as you can throw at it. In addition, it makes import (and export) easy, so you can have all that power without feeling trapped.

A research assistant. DEVONthink uses artificial intelligence to analyze and connect your documents in ways that may not otherwise occur to you. This isn’t that new-fangled-kinda-dumb AI. This is search AI that finds shockingly relevant documents. It’s spooky.

An OCR Tool. Everything you store in your DEVONthink Pro library gets OCR’d. It just happens.

An Automation Tool. DEVONthink lets you build powerful automation subroutines into your library to help tag, move, and organize documents.

DEVONthink supports multiple sync methods and lets you even use your own sync password, so everything is encrypted. If you’ve got an iPad or an iPhone, you can access your DEVONthink data there, too, with DEVONthink To Go.

It is this combination of power and security that makes DEVONthink the clear winner. You can think of DEVONthink as your paperless office. You can automate your workflow from capture to filing, editing to publishing. It stores all your documents, helps you keep them organized, and presents you with what you need to get the job done.

And of course the DEVONthink team never stops making improvements. The latest update (3.9.3) improves quoting, working with custom metadata, viewing computer code in Markdown, and preserving image quality when running PDFs through OCR. (There’s a bunch more)

Interested? MacSparky readers can get a 20% discount on DEVONthink. Use the code MACSPARKY2023 at checkout. This is a limited-time offer (and about to run out!), so check it out now.

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 and stationery. 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.

If you’re set on calling cards, I also recommend going to Hoban for your stationery. I bought stationery from them years ago, and I love sending it to friends and family. In a world full of text messages and email, personal stationery sends a whole different message altogether.

Best of all, use ‘MacSparky’ to get $10 off any order. Get yours today.