6 new macOS and iOS tools for April 2025

6 new macOS and iOS tools for April 2025

Welcome to a new newsletter/post/radar/term-yet-to-be-defined from me that I have been planning for ages. I intend it to be something of a round up of tools and services i’ve been trying recently, plus also industry analysis and trends. To begin with it’s just the tools and service round up as the analysis part requires more thought that I haven’t had time for yet.

Tools and services

Moving forward, I will always try to have a more in-depth video or post on the tools where you can find out more.

Cotypist: Ai-powered autocomplete

Autocomplete is nothing new, but it’s never been that smart, and depending on the platform, it is often sporadic when it decides to offer assistance.

From the developer of the time tracker app, Timing, comes Cotypist. It’s early days and is a little noisy at times with a few UI quirks, but in principle, it is an interesting idea.

Aqua Voice: AI-powered dictation and control

Even before the latest AI tools and services boom, dictation and transcription were big industries, and recent advances have improved their speed and accuracy. Results are still inconsistent, especially with industry-specific terms or oddly pronounced words (The number of times I have to correct “Chris Chinchilla”…). The transcription quality of Aqua Voice is far better than anything else I’ve tried. It’s in real-time and has features for correcting what you’re dictating, understanding context, and more.

adoc Studio: The Asciidoc IDE

I reach a broad audience, but a certain subset of it are tech writers, who probably recognise Asciidoc as a more specialised and standardised alternative to markdown (which I think more of you recognise).

A lot of tools support markdown, either natively or via plugins, but while asciidoc has always had an excellent toolchain in the form of asciidoctor, its support inside of writing tools has never been as comprehensive as markdown.

adoc studio, from the same developers as the Merlin project management tool has just reached version 3, bringing a plethora of new features that many asciidoc users expect such as a bibliography, project dictionary, and a CLI tool. It’s a niche product, but for those of you who know what I’m talking about, it’s a compelling one.

Opera: 30 years old and still innovating

I recently attended Opera Days, where the company showed off new features and browser releases. When I told many about the event, the response was generally, “Are they still going?” Actually, Opera still has a 2-3% share of the browser market, which, when you consider that it consists of 5 billion people, is still a few 100 million. Nothing to be sniffed at!

Opera was the first browser to introduce many now standard features from tabs to ad blockers, and now it’s introducing an AI operator mode. I witnessed it in action, ordering a bunch of flowers, which arrived the next day. It also has the option to connect to local models, which is especially compelling.

  • Cost: Free
  • More detail: Coming soon from me, opera.com

Hide my email shortcuts

I love the hide my email feature in Apple’s iCloud+. This feature quickly creates alias email addresses for forms as you fill them in, preserving your privacy and allowing you to delete an address to stop spam. The main problem is that it only works with Apple tools like Safari. Some clever sounds made macOS shortcuts that automate searching and creating addresses no matter which application you’re in.

Openvibe: Consolidate the social web

Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, LinkedIn, Twitter/Twix/X… And more! When did the social web get so complicated?!

At least for interacting with Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads, all of which use a form of the same decentralised protocol, the wonderful Openvibe makes life easier. It was a little unstable a couple of months ago, but since recent updates, it’s now a fantastic way of keeping on top of multiple social networks.