Tidbits

It's impossible to keep up with all the happenings in the AI world. However, that's fine. For the most part, the latest announcements, pronouncements, and breathless coverage won't make a significant difference in what we users experience. Yet another new model, governmental meddling, even Apple filing a lawsuit against OpenAI for theft of hardware secrets -none of it is likely to make much of a difference in your everyday usage.

A while back, a question on TidBITS Talk sparked a lengthy discussion about YouTube downloaders: apps, utilities, and services that let you download YouTube videos to standalone files on your Mac. My initial reaction to the enthusiasm for YouTube downloaders was puzzlement. I'm not sure I've ever wanted to download a YouTube video. In the rare event that I've wanted to rewatch something, finding and streaming it again has been trivial.

Eastgate Systems has issued Tinderbox 11.8 with AI updates for the note-taking assistant. The Tinderbox-AI bridge has been rejiggered to provide better reliability with a broader range of models, and it allows you to provide Resources and Prompts to AI models directly from Tinderbox notes in your Hints folder.

Ulysses has updated its eponymous writing app to version 40.1 with a few bug fixes. The release addresses a problem that prevented users from pasting certain HTML code into Ulysses, resolves an issue where the app got stuck in a non-functional storefront after subscribing, and prevents the backspace button from accidentally deleting a goal during goal editing. ($5.99/$39.99 monthly/yearly subscription from the Mac App Store, in Setapp, free update, 63.3 MB, release notes, macOS 14+)

Houdah Software has updated its HoudahGeo geotagging app to version 7.2, with improved reverse geocoding that converts GPS coordinates into a city, region, or country name. The update brings support for BigDataCloud as a reverse geocoding service, which is more reliable in areas with no nearby towns, such as open water, mountains, and deserts. BigDataCloud requires an API key, but it offers a generous free tier with 50,000 requests per month.

Houdah Software has released Photos Workbench 1.7 with language localizations and a smattering of improvements. The organization and management companion utility for Apple's Photos adds French and German, enables you to re-arrange albums between Photos library folders via drag and drop, adds Sentry for crash reporting, and now requires macOS 12 Monterey or later (with full support for macOS 26 Tahoe). Version 1.7.1 followed to fix a bug that could cause update checking to hang.

A few months ago, I took my first long trip in our Hyundai IONIQ 5; see " My First 700-Mile EV Road Trip-What Worked and What I'd Change," 24 April 2026. Working through what I needed to do and seeing how well it worked was eye-opening, and I enjoyed the lengthy discussion in the comments. Given how well things went during the trip-there was only one unplanned stop caused by poor preparation-I was surprised how many commenters took the story as evidence against ever buying an electric vehicle.

It pains me to share this, but I'm not an audiophile. I enjoy listening to music a great deal, and I know what I like, but beyond some basic level of quality-FM radio? Low-end stereos? HomePods?-I can't be bothered to seek out ways of making music sound better.

Mimestream released version 1.10.3 of its Gmail-specific email app with improved throughput of Gmail API queries.

Mellel has released version 6.7 of its eponymous word processor, featuring a new color picker and improved layout for palettes and windows. The new Mellel Color Picker makes setting colors easier with a new table layout (replacing the color well control). It also includes attributes such as fill type, stroke type, dash, and line width, and allows adding, moving, and deleting colors in the table.