Our Favorite Apps of the Month for July 2018
Every week on Lifehacker, we highlight four different apps and browser extensions that can do something different for your devices (or life): one for each platform or main browser. If you’ve taken a sabbatical without the internet or taken a week off vacation, you’ve probably missed out on a few gems.
Head home early today, put your burger on the grill , open for a refreshing drink, and kick off the weekend with some of the incredible weekly loads we’ve unveiled this month:
Window
Synchronize games and smart lighting: Hue Sync
“… I love Philips Hue Sync , a free utility for Windows or Mac that lets you match music, movies or games to your lighting settings. First, it’s practical: when I play my fifth Starcraft II co-op match of the day, I love the things that amuse me. Having lights that match the general atmosphere of the cards I rotate adds a fun degree of immersion. “
Easier to install and update apps with Package Manager: Chocolatey
“If you need another helping hand to ensure your favorite apps are kept up to date – or a much larger catalog of user-supported packages (apps) to choose from – consider Chocolatey . No, no goodies, no command line app installer. Well. It seems, as it were, something like. The Chocolate GUI is what you want to check out because it gives you a wonderful graphical interface for installing and managing applications that are much easier to navigate than a lot of the command line typing “.
Turn your favorite websites into “desktop applications”: Web2Desk
“Nevertheless, for a one-time use, Web2Desk is certainly convenient (even if this service is not so unique ). While I wouldn’t use it for any web services that already have an offline app – Trello, Twitter, or Whatsapp, for example, using the three Web2Desk examples featured on his site – it’s certainly useful if you want, for example, to let your favorite user sit idle. the clicker game works in a window no matter what you do in your browser. “
Get Apple Quick Look Preview on Your Windows PC: QuickLook
“The smartly named QuickLook Windows app is completely free. Install it, run it, and you’ll be able to preview “certain file types” – the developer doesn’t specify – by highlighting them in Explorer and hitting the spacebar to open the preview. (Don’t hold it; tap it.) And tap the space bar again to close the preview. It is so simple. The application is automatically launched every time Windows starts, which is necessary for its main function to work. “
Mac
Before we start our Mac review, I wanted to say that this month we’ve updated our giant Lifehacker Pack for Mac . This is a great resource if you want to know about the best-in-class Mac apps you should install on your Mac desktop or laptop right now. (And we’ll be updating all of our other Lifehacker packages over the next few months.)
Turn your favorite websites into “desktop applications”: Web2Desk
While we just mentioned this in the Windows section, it’s worth noting that this tool can also help you create Mac “desktop applications” for your favorite websites.
“Nevertheless, for a one-time use, Web2Desk is certainly convenient (even if this service is not so unique ). While I wouldn’t use it for any web services that already have an offline app – Trello, Twitter, or Whatsapp, for example, using the three Web2Desk examples featured on his site – it’s certainly useful if you want, for example, to let your favorite user sit idle. the clicker game works in a window no matter what you do in your browser. “
Switch between day and night Mojave modes with one click: NightOwl
“ Install it on your system [macOS Mojave] and launch it every time you start macOS, and you’ll get a little icon – an owl, of course – that you can click to switch between light and dark modes. You can even set it up to make a cute little owl sound every time you switch. “
This versatile clipboard is even better than Apple’s: Paste 2
“Despite the fact that there are many applications for managing the clipboard, which keep records of everything that you copied, and Apple’s own function Continuity allows you to access the contents of your clipboard across all your devices, the Paste 2 brings these and many other features in one roof. “
Synchronize games and smart lighting: Hue Sync
As stated below, Hue Sync works great on Mac too!
“… I love Philips Hue Sync , a free utility for Windows or Mac that lets you match music, movies or games to your lighting settings. First, it’s practical: when I play my fifth Starcraft II co-op match of the day, I love the things that amuse me. Having lights that match the general atmosphere of the cards I rotate adds a fun degree of immersion. “
Remove all traces of unwanted apps from your Mac: CleanApp
“If you want your Mac to be as free of junk and random files as possible, I recommend giving it a try before installing anything else from our Mac Pack. Here’s why: The app starts a background process that keeps track of whatever the app uploads to your system when you install it. When it’s time to uninstall said application, it will ensure that CleanApp removes everything from your system that shouldn’t be there. “
Android / iOS
You Can Finally Get YouTube Dark Mode on Android: YouTube Vanced
“[Ad Blocking] itself makes YouTube Vanced a great download. Turn on dark mode, background playback and some useful playback settings, and I see no reason not to use this great YouTube alternative for Android. “
Print out a book about everything you’ve done in a year: Gyroscope
“The premise of Gyroscope is simple: you plug in a bunch of services and enable all kinds of tracking functionality on your device, and the app automatically pulls that data to create interesting graphs of everything you’ve been doing. ( Android , iOS ) “
Copy and paste Firefox passwords from your iPhone: Firefox Lockbox
“If you use Firefox heavily and don’t use a separate password management extension — just store passwords in your browser — you’re the perfect candidate to try Lockbox. Install it on your iPhone or iPad , open it and sign in using your Firefox account. Once you do this, you will see all your saved logins and passwords in the big old list. “
Automatically save money after shopping at Walmart: Savings Catcher
“You might think the Walmart app for Android and iOS is essentially nothing special , but it actually contains one tricky little trick that can save you a decent amount of money over time on your purchases.”
Chrome / Firefox
Save Gmail attachments to Dropbox on any device: Dropbox add-on for Gmail
“Google and Dropbox are now collaborating on a brand new ‘ Dropbox add-on for Gmail’ that will make it easy to share your Dropbox content right into Gmail. If you go the other way, it will also be much easier to upload files directly to your Dropbox, saving you the hassle of opening your Downloads folder and manually dragging and dropping the file onto you. “
Browse history Firefox and Chrome on Windows 10 timeline: support timeline Windows
Get the free Windows Timeline Support extension for Chrome or Firefox and you can now view your browsing history in the Windows Timeline. (To access the Timeline, press Windows + Tab on your keyboard or click the Task View button on the taskbar.) “
Stop annoying trailers the Netflix : the Netflix Tweaked
“… The Netflix Tweaked extension for Chrome and Firefox blocks the automatic playback of service trailers in your browser. And that’s not all. As an added bonus, the extension also places your Continue Watching and My List feeds in the first and second positions below the service’s Popular Content at the top. You don’t have to flip through any Netflix promotions to find shows you’ve watched or want to watch. “
As always, if you have great apps or browser extensions that you think we should enable , please let us know in the comments below or send an email to david.murphy@lifehacker.com .