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Mac Geek Gab — Apple Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting

Cool Stuff Found Marathon: 20+ Must-Know Mac Tools, Gadgets & AI Hacks

Mac Geek Gab — Apple Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting

Dave Hamilton, Pilot Pete & Adam Christianson

Tech News, Technology, How To, News, Education

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2026

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cool Stuff Found Marathon: 20+ Must-Know Mac Tools, Gadgets & AI Hacks – Mac Geek Gab 1139 episode image

This week’s episode is a Cool Stuff Found marathon, packed with gems you need to bookmark. You’ll get a launcher upgrade with TinyStart, a slick dual-pane file manager in VoidCommander, T-Mobile router control via HINTControl, and a borescope camera Pilot Pete can’t stop talking about. Dave hauls in a clamp-on desk power strip, the Levoit EverestAir-P purifier, and the Airversa AP2, while Adam fires up his Pit Boss combo grill. You’ll also hear about AirPod foam tips that actually stay put, a surprising detour into the evolution of lifetime warranties, and why LTT’s TrueSpec USB cables might finally end your “does this cable do everything?” guessing game.

On the AI front, you’ll dig into building SKILLS.md files for your agents, a HomeAssistant MCP server, and the Plaud NotePin S for capturing ideas on the go. Round it out with the Audigo pocket recording studio, a new Steve Jobs biography covering the NeXT years, leather DavisCase iPhone cases, the Smartlet One dual watchband, and Akko Insurance for when things go sideways. Don’t Get Caught missing a single tip. Hit play, take notes, and grab your chance at a free year of Plex Pass in this month’s giveaway.

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's time for Mac Geekab and Lister Dan brings us our cool stuff found of the week with

0:06.9

I have to rave about this fun little app Tiny Start.

0:11.3

It's an app launcher that can do a whole bunch of handy and well-fout actions.

0:16.1

A, you can set up a default search engine with a custom keyword.

0:19.6

For example, I used exclamation point

0:21.7

W for Wikipedia, the same as the duct to go keyword. So I use exclamation point W, and that puts me

0:30.9

at the site I want to go to immediately. Launching apps is a given, but it creates a list of

0:36.3

commonly open to apps. And from that list, you can use Command Q and it quits that app.

0:41.0

The emoji picker has a separate keyboard function, and it seems to have a lot of smarts relative to looking up emojis.

0:47.6

It finds options so well.

0:50.4

The website has an intro video showing the capabilities.

0:54.3

Cost is five euros, but it's not in the app store.

0:56.8

The download is a zip file since the developer doesn't limit use at all,

1:02.2

and I knew I'd use this on a couple of Macs.

1:04.9

I felt good about doubling that for the how much would you like to pay prompt that he offers.

1:11.9

This does most of what LaunchBarr does for $35 does for me,

1:16.6

and with one exception that it doesn't have a clipboard manager,

1:20.5

which launcher is easier and flips back and forth to my eye,

1:24.8

but the emoji picker is hands down better in tiny start.

1:29.6

More cool stuff found like this, plus your questions answered today on MacGeekab 1139 for Monday,

1:36.2

the 27th of April 2026.

1:38.8

Music Greetings, folks, and welcome to Matt Geekab, the show where you send in cool stuff found like that.

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