https://papermint.studio/blog Plain guides to the things our apps do, from Papermint Studio. en Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://papermint.studio/blog/why-is-my-mac-slow https://papermint.studio/blog/why-is-my-mac-slow Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Almanac Open Activity Monitor, sort the CPU tab by % CPU and the Memory tab by Memory, and look at the Memory Pressure graph. One app near the top for minutes at a time is usually the cause; quit it or restart it. Names like mds_stores (Spotlight), photoanalysisd (Photos) or bird (iCloud Drive) are macOS catching up and settle on their own; kernel_task high means the Mac is hot. If the slowdown is gone before you look, use a monitor that keeps history, such as Almanac (free), to see which app was busy at that moment. https://papermint.studio/blog/voice-memo-to-text-iphone https://papermint.studio/blog/voice-memo-to-text-iphone Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Whittle Since iOS 18, Voice Memos shows a transcript of a recording: open the recording and tap the speech-bubble button. Audio you record inside a note in the Notes app gets a transcript too. If you want the words on screen while you talk, to fix mistakes, get tidy notes and search everything you have ever said, use an app built for it, such as Whittle, which transcribes on the iPhone itself and is free for 25 notes. https://papermint.studio/blog/track-expenses-without-bank-login https://papermint.studio/blog/track-expenses-without-bank-login Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT PennyBook Use a manual expense tracker and keep the habit small: one wallet for each real place your money sits (cash, each bank account, each card), log every expense at the moment you pay, correct each wallet to your bank's balance once a week, and look at where the money went once a month. An app like PennyBook makes each entry about three seconds, keeps everything on your phone, and never asks for a bank login. https://papermint.studio/blog/localhost-custom-domain-mac https://papermint.studio/blog/localhost-custom-domain-mac Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Porter Point a name at 127.0.0.1 and put a reverse proxy on ports 80 and 443 that forwards each name to its dev server's port. Editing /etc/hosts does the first half but needs sudo, keeps the port in the URL and gives you no HTTPS. On a Mac, .local names resolve on the machine itself, so a tool like Porter (free) can answer shop.local, forward it to localhost:5173 with WebSockets intact, and serve trusted HTTPS from a certificate authority limited to .local, without an admin password for the names. https://papermint.studio/blog/clean-up-iphone-photo-library https://papermint.studio/blog/clean-up-iphone-photo-library Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Keepers Start with the easy wins built into Photos: merge the Duplicates album and clear old screenshots. Then sweep the junk (blurry shots, receipts, accidental videos) and keep one photo from each burst. Sort what is left a few minutes a day, swiping each photo to keep, delete or file it into an album, and empty Recently Deleted at the end to get the space back. Keepers does the sweeping and swiping on the device and costs $8.99 once. https://papermint.studio/blog/cull-photos-mac https://papermint.studio/blog/cull-photos-mac Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lumen Copy the card to a folder, open the folder in a fast viewer and go through it three times: first press X on every photo that is clearly unusable, then P on the ones worth editing, then star the picks from 1 to 5. Compare near-identical frames side by side instead of flicking between them. Use an app that saves marks as XMP sidecar files, such as Lumen, so the ratings are still there when you open the folder in Lightroom, Capture One or Bridge. https://papermint.studio/blog/name-coloring-page https://papermint.studio/blog/name-coloring-page Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sketchy By hand: write the name lightly in pencil, draw a rounded outline around each letter, ink the outline, erase the pencil and add a few doodles around it. On an iPhone or iPad: open Sketchy, go to Studio › Name Pages, type the name, pick a letter style and a theme, and print it on Letter or A4. Name Pages are drawn on the device, so the name never leaves it. https://papermint.studio/blog/compress-pdf-mac-without-uploading https://papermint.studio/blog/compress-pdf-mac-without-uploading Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Sheaf Open the PDF in Preview, choose File › Export, set Quartz Filter to Reduce File Size and save a copy. It is free but often makes photos blurry, because it shrinks every image the same way. For more control, make a custom filter in ColorSync Utility, or use an on-device PDF app such as Sheaf, which lets you pick Smallest, Balanced or Light, compare before and after up close, and keeps the text selectable. None of these upload the file.