AFFiNE: Fusing notes and whiteboards, another innovation in note-taking tools
Ever since Notion developed the Block-type note-taking format, there has been a proliferation of similar note-taking tools. These imitators can be roughly categorized into 2 types: first, localization, which focuses on “localization differences” and claims to be more suitable for local users; and second, innovation, which focuses on “the unexpected” and makes everyone wonder how it can be played. AFFiNE belongs to the third category, which integrates block notes and whiteboards together, and can be switched with each other, combining the functions of text editing and free display. After opening the AFFiNE client, you can see that the whole editing interface and functions are basically similar to Notion, so I won’t expand on it here, let’s take a look at its whiteboard function.
Moving our eyes to the top of the editing interface, we can see the switching area between the text editing and whiteboard interface, and clicking on the corresponding button will take us to the corresponding interface. After converting to whiteboard, the original graphic part will appear in the whiteboard as a card. Below the whiteboard there is a toolbar where you can expand the text with pen, eraser, insert text, insert picture, insert shape, insert link, etc. This whiteboard function of AFFiNE is different from the normal whiteboard tool because it provides a lot of auxiliary functions on top of the free play, for example, it can insert a fixed scale border, and it will show the alignment line when you move the part, AFFiNE can be downloaded from the official website for free, and provides clients for macOS, Windows, Linux, etc. However, it is a web shell application, and its performance is still to be optimized.
BatteryBoi: Fun battery gadget for Mac
The battery level on MacBook computers has always been something I’ve found very uninteresting. There’s an icon with a battery percentage in the top notification bar, and then there’s no other information. While I often don’t care how my device’s battery is behaving, it’s still slightly inconvenient to have to go into the settings whenever I want to know how long my battery will last.
The open source project BatteryBoi is an interesting and handy battery widget in my opinion. Not only can I see the battery level of my own devices in this module, but I can also see the current battery status of my wirelessly connected devices, such as my Magic Mouse, which has 13% battery left in the picture. In addition to being able to look at the battery level of different devices, you can also choose the status of the notification bar icon after tapping Settings. A total of four modes, respectively, the remaining time, the percentage of power, hidden and the first two cycle display. Generally raise your eyes and wait a second or two to see the status of the power, the remaining time, very convenient, suitable for going out and need to control the use of this book time. However, there are bugs in the program at this stage. I’m currently using an M2 MacBook Air, which is more than enough for daily use, but clicking on the notification bar icon still triggers a bug that says “clicking on it doesn’t show the full status”, which is often just a small black circle that flashes up and then disappears immediately. But since it’s an open source project, it’s understandable that this bug exists, and most of the time it still works fine.
Percento 4.0: New theme color scheme, new chart design
Percento, the asset management app, received its 4.0 update last week, which adds a new theme color scheme. The new Mathis theme, with purple and green as the main colors, is milder than the original one, and can better support darker color modes. The app also provides icons for the corresponding colors, which can be changed at the same time as the theme to make the visual effect more unified.
The biggest change in the new version is the optimized presentation of most of the charts. In the trend charts, the app has added liquidity and investment charts, so you can get a clear picture of the changes in your money over a certain period of time. The new version of Trend Chart allows you to check the capital status on a specific date by touching it, and swiping left and right allows you to check the before and after situation for comparison, which helps you make better investment decisions.
The app’s asset allocation and income/expense statistics charts have also been optimized. In the Asset Allocation page, the app will sort the accounts by amount from high to low, and show the amount and percentage by bar chart. And in the income and expenditure status charts, the app helps you clarify the account movement and position gain/loss by stacking bar charts with different color blocks.
Percento is subscription-based. Paying for the subscription unlocks important features such as unlimited account support, automatic exchange rate conversion, automatic stock price updates, and visual charts, so if you think Percento fits your asset management habits, we recommend paying for it. You can download Percento for free on the App Store.
Cleanshot 4.6: QR code scanning support, new audio recording engine
I’m more used to Cleanshot than the native macOS screenshot/recording tools. On the one hand, it preserves your usage habits by mapping the shortcuts to the original native screenshot tools. On the other hand, it greatly expands the usage scenarios and becomes an all-in-one toolset based on screen recording/screenshotting.
The recent update of Cleanshot 4.6 has further improved the experience. First of all, a new audio engine is now provided for screen recording. In the previous version, recording system sound required a separate driver to be installed, which led to additional system operations, but now it can be realized without a driver when you record the screen and click Record System Sound.
Cleanshot 4.6 also updates the video recording engine, for example, when you click on the Record Video button you will now see that the recording starts immediately, whereas in previous versions there was a pause. The recording toolbar can also be dragged around the recording area so that it doesn’t interfere with the recording and allows you to perform normal desktop system operations.
Before recording, we can also set up a countdown timer before recording, so that we can prepare in advance. You can check Show countdown in Recoding settings to enable it, so that the countdown button will be displayed at the beginning of recording when you turn on the recording. If you don’t want to start recording, you can cancel the recording during the countdown, and you can also set the recording audio to mono when recording.
Back to the basic screenshot/recording tools, Cleanshot’s editing tool has added a background editing function, you can set the background color, window size, shadow size and so on, and then click Done to save the “background-optimized” screenshot. Of course, if you need to set the same background every time, you can also save the background settings as a preset in the editor, and then use the “preset” to reuse it after the next screenshot. In addition, there is a new way to adjust the size of annotation text in the editing tool, when you click the Add Text button on the top, use the cursor to drag the dot on the bottom right of the text editing box to adjust the size of the annotation text at will.
If you have a QR code image on your desktop, in Cleanshot 4.6 you can take a screenshot of the area as usual, then click OCR in the screenshot tool to recognize the QR code, and if it is a QR code you will be prompted to open a browser to access it.
In addition to these new features, Cleanshot 4.6 also includes the option to open MP4 files from the clipboard, more FPS options, and support for adjusting the transparency of the screenshot preview box fixed to the screen via the two-finger scroll gesture on the trackpad.
You can buy Cleanshot on the official website for $29 for a buyout version with a year’s worth of free updates, and the app also offers a subscription version with unlimited cloud storage and other features for $8 a month.Setapp users can use Cleanshot for free with most of the subscription plan’s features, and 10 GB of cloud storage.
