●Notes from building things

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What I learn making small apps — the problems that started them, and the ones I still haven't solved.

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Mac Menu Bar Clock: Show Seconds, Date, and 24-Hour Time

Show seconds, the date, the day of the week, or 24-hour time in your Mac menu bar clock, where Clock Options moved in macOS 26 and 27, and which apps fill the gaps.

Nov 9, 2026
Mac Menu Bar Clock: Show Seconds, Date, and 24-Hour Time

All posts

31 posts
Nov 5, 2026
Clocklet Is Out: A Mac Menu Bar Clock You Get to Pick
Clocklet is now on the Mac App Store. A menu bar clock with 9 faces and 12 themes, free to use, with a one-time $6.99 Pro upgrade and no subscription.
Nov 5, 2026
My Reactive Mac Widget Barely Reacted, So I Rebuilt It
GlowLight's widget was built to react to your Mac, and it barely did. The obvious repair had a trap of its own, and the way out was one small number.
Nov 5, 2026
Mac Auto Arrange: Keep Desktop and Finder Icons in Order
Stacks, Sort By and Use as Defaults keep your Mac Desktop and Finder windows in order without moving a single file. Here is which setting to turn on and why.
Oct 17, 2026
How to Get Ambient Light While Watching YouTube on Mac
YouTube already has a free Ambient mode that spills the video's colors past the frame. Here is how to turn it on, where it stops working, and what to use instead when you want the glow in fullscreen or on the wall behind your Mac.
Sep 29, 2026
I Built 47 Color Presets for a Mac Clock App. Then I Deleted Them All.
Neon Cyan and Digital Cyan were the same color, defined twice, in two unrelated places. That is how a menu bar clock ends up with 47 presets and a picker where the swatch does not match what lands in your menu bar. Here is what I replaced it with.
Sep 25, 2026
4 Product Hunt Analytics Tools in 2026 (They All Read the Same API)
Four Product Hunt analytics tools, opened and checked in September 2026. They all pull from the same public API under the same rate limit, so the thing that separates them is not what they know. It is what they compute.
Sep 1, 2026
How to Reduce Eye Strain on Mac: Screen Settings and Apps That Actually Help (2026)
Your Mac screen is too harsh after sunset. Night Shift helps, but it's not enough. Here are the built-in settings, third-party tools, and one ambient lighting trick that changed how I work at night.
Aug 24, 2026
How to Use Stir: A Mac Wake-Up App, as Friend, Assistant, or Offline
The setups I actually use: Stir as a friendly nudge, as a sharp full-screen wake-up, and offline with no AI at all. Three settings decide everything.
Aug 17, 2026
Monitor Light Strip vs Mac App: What $30-150 Buys You (2026)
LED bias lighting strips cost $30-150 and light up the wall behind your monitor. GlowLight costs nothing and creates ambient light on the screen itself. They solve the same problem differently. Here's when you need hardware, when software is enough, and when you want both.

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Built an app out of most of these.

Every post here started as a problem I hit. Some of them turned into apps you can download.

See the apps →