My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 366 👋

After publishing my first iOS app on the App Store last week, I managed to shift my time and focus back to other stuff, like writing,. Therefore, I am happy to share a new part of my Tiny macOS utility apps I love blog post series with you today. There are so many lovely and simply apps out there, and writing about all of them would not be manageable, as I am still writing Creativerly on the side, for fun and joy. But with my Tiny macOS utility apps I love blog post series, I still get to enjoy what I love doing, writing about apps, but in a simpler and more streamlined way, compared to the deep dives I usually write.

Besides that, it also felt great to get back to multiple posts I have been drafting throughout the past months, and I am looking forward to continue writing them. More on that soon, but for now, enjoy this week's issue of Creativerly.

Tiny macOS utility apps I love – Part 7

You know what I love? Tiny macOS utility apps that are simple, straightforward, fun, and joyful to use, but still powerful because they don’t try to do everything and instead focus on a handful of features they’re really good at. And since I found three new apps that fit those categories, it was time to write part 7 of “Tiny macOS utility apps I love,” my blog post series in which I write about ... well ... tiny macOS utility apps I love.

At the very beginnings of my weekly newsletter, I used to feature and write about a lot of apps. After a certain time, I felt burned out about that. There are so many apps out there, and an increasing number of new ones launch every day. I took a step back and became more intentional about what apps I actually want to feature and write about. Instead of packing three or four new apps into my newsletter each week, I started to look into writing long-form posts and deep dives. While I deeply enjoy exploring new apps in detail, writing those type of posts is time-consuming. I would love to be able to fully focus on writing, but as life goes, I still have spend the majority of my day increasing someone else's net worth, while owning a small piece of the cake too, which leaves me with a couple of hours per week to do some actual creative writing.

Therefore, I am really happy with my blog post series "Tiny macOS utility apps I love", since I can still do what I enjoy most, which is writing about apps, but at a higher volume, as I am just providing a glimpse into a couple of apps through this blog post series, instead of doing a full deep dive.

Enough yapping, and now enjoy part 7 of Tiny macOS utility apps I love.

Read the whole post here:

Tiny macOS utility apps I love – Part 7
In the seven part of my series Tiny macOS utility apps I love, I am featuring a simple and powerful note app, and two apps to keep track of system activity.
CreativerlyPhilipp Temmel
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Fresh Updates & News

Offprint is a publishing infrastructure for the open web →

Offprint is an interesting new project I recently stumbled across while browsing through my Bluesky timeline. I have written a lot about the fact that Substack is simply an internet-hellhole, and guess what, after several years, it still has a massive nazi problem about which its founders do not care. Therefore, I am always excited when I stumble across a new alternative, that makes it easy to switch, especially when it is an alternative built in the realm of the open web. Offprint is such an alternative. Currently in early development, Offprint focuses on providing a publishing infrastructure for the open web, to easily build your audience, monetize your work, and take it all with you if you ever move.

It set out with the vision to create a platform where creators can truly own their work and build sustainable creative careers. It is built on the AT Protocol, a protocol and set of open standards for decentralized publishing and distribution of self-authenticating data within the social web.

A super interesting project I will definitely keep my eyes on.

Mental Wealth

❯ The Psychology of Holding On to Beliefs – “You don't have to go far to see how pervasive the conflicts surrounding elections, public health, climate, war, identity, and even basic facts have become. Look at the news apps, scroll through social media, or listen in on your family while they are having dinner. You will see the common thread throughout these topics and how they frequently spill over from governmental settings and boundary lines into personal relationships, workplaces, and homes. Increasingly, what drives these conflicts isn't just disagreement over information, but deeper clashes in belief. The way people interpret the same headline can feel like they're living in entirely different realities.”

❯ Bespoke Personal Software – “So… I wrote an RSS Reader. Why not? Everyone else seems to be doing it lately. I actually did it for the same reasons that I see other’s had written theirs. There wasn’t an RSS Reader out there that fit me perfectly. In my case I wanted something like Tapestry with its plugin connectors. What I didn’t want was the almost infinite timeline. I wanted a traditional 3 column RSS Reader like the OG of the group NetNewsWire. So I wrote Anthology.”

❯ My colleague Julius – “Do you know Julius? You certainly know who I’m talking about! I met Julius at university. A measured, friendly young man. He always wore a smile on his face. What struck me about Julius, aside from his always perfectly ironed clothes, was his ability to listen. He never interrupted me. He accepted gratefully when he was wrong. He answered questions without hesitation.”

❯ Magic Words – “Skills are the newest hype commodity in the world of agentic AI. Skills are text files that optionally get stapled onto the context window by the agent. You can have skills like “frontend design” or “design tokens” and if the LLM “thinks” it needs more context about that topic, it can import the contents of those files into the context to help generate a response.”

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Appendix

❯ ICYMI

Discover the rise of decentralized social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky as traditional platforms increasingly face criticism. In my post about "The tools for decentralized social networks – How to interact with Mastodon and Bluesky" you can learn about essential third-party tools enhancing these networks, from clients like Ivory and Ice Cubes to cross-posting apps like Croissant.

❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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