Things at Apple work great until the day they don’t. A silly example that really bugs me is “stuck” iCloud tabs on Safari — a glitch in Apple’s tab syncing feature that lets me access tabs from one device on others.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!
My favorite mouse costs less than USD 10. Who needs a MX Master?
Ductts. A diary for crying and tears. For iOS.
Baseline. A nice theme for Obsidian.
Just Buy Nothing. A fake online store to scratch that shopping itch. According to the creator of the site, “this is either the dumbest idea of all time or something that will actually help people stop giving their money to these corporations that are actively trying to make their sites as addicting as possible while the quality goes down and prices go up…” Tip from Rafael.
Compare Small Form Factor PC Cases. Shows the size and volume of various computers.
“Break glass in case of emergency,” Liquid glass edition. If you enable some accessibility options, macOS 26 “Tahoe” looks like a 1990s OS.
Windows XP-themed Crocs, The Verge. The missing merch from Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebrations. As expensive (USD 80) as it is ugly.
Term-Shdw. A small application that creates a “comet effect” for the mouse cursor inside the terminal.
Subtitle Edit. Video subtitle editor. Free, for Windows.
I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display. Through the kiloxp.com site you can interact with the display and there’s a live stream of it changing on YouTube.
Threadbare. “Story-driven, collaborative game where players don’t just explore a world—they co-create it.” Still in development, Linux only.
NextDNS gains feature to bypass age verification, r/nextdns.
“Meta AI, what app do you recommend for private messaging?”
A friendly introduction to SVG. Drawing on web pages with code. Who would have thought?
A partial comparison of window management interactions in iPadOS 18 and 26. Maybe it was harder to discover these gestures in iPadOS 18, but it seems like a better thought-out thing (and better overall) than the version 26 implementation.
F-Droid Search Metrics. Statistics from F-Droid, the Android app store from an ideal world.
Cheat Sheets. Repository of quick references for various technologies. Tip from Alexandre.
Known bug in NetBSD’s sleep command, via @ayke@hachyderm.io. The command can’t handle durations longer than 250 billion years. If necessary, put the command in a loop, with each command limited to about 200 billion years.
— UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The absurd guidance is part of a list published by the UK government to mitigate the severe drought affecting England, alongside useless classics (“take shorter showers”) and other nonsense (“use water from the kitchen to water your plants”).
As David Gerard pointed out, the document makes no mention of the inefficiencies of (privatized) water companies nor the thirsty data centers focused on artificial intelligence. (The great irony is that the suggestion to delete emails to save water may have come from generative AI. Is this how AI will end humanity?)
Anyone looking for a new mouse usually stumble upon the Logitech MX Master at the top of recommendation lists (MSRP: USD 99). The one I use daily costs a fraction of that, or 1/10 to be exact. Are they worth what they cost?
Old people on the internet probably remember phpBB, a discussion board software that was very popular in the early 2000s. I discovered, by chance, that it still exists and has active development, albeit slow: the phpBB3 series was released in December 2007 and the last major update (3.3), in January 2020. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…?
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!
Web browsers with AI assistants built-in are coming. Are they the future of browsing the web?
Vibechart. Did OpenAI use ChatGPT to create the charts used on GPT-5 announcement?
Rumicat. A newsletter service “for small audiences.” The free plan supports up to 300 subscribers.
Letter Club. A kind of “email club,” where participants commit to writing about a theme and, on the scheduled day, everyone receives everyone’s writings. As far as I can tell, it’s free.
DSEG Font. A font that simulates those from monochromatic LCD screens, like calculators. Free and open source.
Inter Mental. Possible tech-induced cognitive-behavioral disorders. Don’t take it (too) seriously.
PixiEditor 2.0. New version of the “universal 2D graphics editor.” This video shows the new features and capabilities. For Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Openvibe gets RSS support. For Android and iOS.
Fonts for wireframing, Frontend Masters. I didn’t know fonts like these existed, that look like scribbles (or “doctor’s handwriting”).
If the Moon were only 1 pixel. Beautiful presentation of the Solar System’s scale. Try accessing from a computer/large screen.
Siará+. Free platform from the Ceará government, a Brazilian northeast state, that offers audiovisual pieces by local artists for free.
KittenTTS. An open source and tiny synthetic speech model (TTS, or text-to-speech): it’s less than 25 MB and “works on literally everything,” according to the developers. Demo of available voices. Still in “developer preview.”
Killed by Mozilla. A list of all Mozilla products and services that have been discontinued.
Tiny Awards 2025 opens voting. Runs until September 1st.
eightyeightthirty. A site that collects links from those 88×31 pixel badges and puts them in a web visualization. (Site is a bit heavy.)
permacomputing. “Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in computer and network technology inspired by permaculture.”
High quality, low filesize GIFs, Christian Selig. A Bash script to resize and optimize *.gif files.
AirSync. Various “continuity” features between iPhone and Mac, but with Android instead. Still in beta.
Abode. An app for groups of friends that revolves around widgets. iOS only.
Apple: The First 50 Years. American journalist David Pogue tells Apple’s story in this new book. Coming out March 17th, 2026.
CloudGazing. Draw and see drawings in clouds.
“It must be AI”. Ewerton Assunção, from the hit “I’m going to delete you from my Orkut,” strikes again. (The video was made with AI, as expected.) Song lyrics in Portuguese.
Podcast Details. Enter a podcast feed and see detailed show statistics.
“linux” on DuckDuckGo. DDG’s mascot, a duck, becomes a penguin when you search for “linux.”
Time Flies. “A little adventure
about our limited time in this world.” For PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Windows and macOS.
Just as the US justice decides whether Google will have to divest its web browser, Chrome, a new generation of rivals emerges, bringing built-in artificial intelligence “assistants” as their differentiator.
It’s quite likely a coincidence, but it’s still curious. There are several asterisks to this story, starting with the fact that these new rivals are built on top of Chrome’s foundation, Chromium. I’ll set those asterisks aside, though, because the more important question is whether these assistants are here to stay.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!
Draw a fish. Then watch it in an aquarium with other fish. (Important: the fish’s face should point to the right!)
FinTech Dystopia. A web-published book by Hilary Allen about “Silicon Valley ruining things.”
SEENDA MOU-302 Mouse. How about this vertical mouse with a volume dial on top?
Nothing to watch…. Best viewed on large screens. And even then, be careful: heavy website.
Skywriter. A site that “unrolls” threads posted on Bluesky.
Monotype. Text editor for macOS that simulates a typewriter.
New rules for .in domains. Effective from August 1st. Will I lose mine? ☹️
Translating Pagecord. The nice blog service got translations, and the Brazilian Portuguese one is well underway.
Libera.Chat web. IRC servers still exist. Libera is one of the biggest (the biggest?) and offers this web client.
Optician Sans. A font (free!) based on those eye chart tests from optometrists.
When brand fonts are open source. A long post on Google’s quirky design blog to announce the company’s new font, Google Sans Code.
Face it, you’re a crazy person, Experimental History. Applying “unpacking” to figure out what to do with your life.
Chemicals on the seafloor sustain an extreme-depth ecosystem (video). Life exists at almost 10 km deep.
Wplace. The world is a coloring canvas. Reminds me of those Reddit events.
StoryTerra. Explore movies, series, books and games by location and/or date on a big map. Behind the scenes.
Instaloader. A command-line tool to download Instagram content, even stories (requires logging in with an account, though).
It’s almost impossible to escape WhatsApp and very difficult to get rid of Instagram. For many, it’s also undesirable. Friends, relatives, loved ones, and the entire presence of many businesses are only available on one or the other (or both).
In 2022, when I wrote about a “more affectionate approach” to technology (pt_BR), I had recently returned to using these and other commercial platforms. I lowered my defenses in an attempt to be more present, to participate more.
The problem with companies like Meta is that every concession on our part is exploited to the fullest.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!
This option disables Meta AI and increases privacy in WhatsApp conversations.
TrackWeight. An app (FOSS) that turns the MacBook trackpad into a scale.
Moe Counter. The old web 1.0 visitor counters persist.
A medieval king’s daily life. Kind of an ancestor to Instagram’s “morning routine” videos.
elle’s homepage. elle’s website is a room in isometric perspective “decorated” with HTML.
Social media specifications. Always useful to have a page like this handy.
Blip. A new app for transferring files over the internet. Free for non-commercial use.
Tooooools. A handful of crazy and super flexible filters for editing images.
Inside China’s mini PC production: How tiny computers are made (video). Fascinating.
Font comparison and review: Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono, anthesis. Beauty is in the details.
Fruit Ninja Classic+ developer gives up to 2 months free of Apple Arcade.
DuckDuckGo’s new browser. A purely aesthetic update. Looks pretty nice.
VSCO Capture. New camera app from the VSCO social network. iOS only.
Tender. Tinder for the committed: the app only shows photos of your loved one and the only option is to swipe right. For now, iOS only.
LookAway Mirror. LookAway, the nice macOS app that reminds you to take breaks during the day, got an iOS companion that blocks sites and apps when the computer is also locked.
Pebble is called Pebble again. They got the trademark back.
Spiral Getty. A Wikipedia-based visual search tool.
Remember when WhatsApp was just a lightweight messaging app? I miss those days. Today there are so many features, so many announcements of new stuff that sometimes useful ones slip by unnoticed.
By chance, the other day I came across “Advanced chat privacy,” available in group and individual conversations. It was released in April.
When activated, three things happen:
@meta in a conversation.Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), there isn’t a global button to activate advanced privacy in all conversations; only within each conversation’s options.
Given the impossibility of using a better app, like Signal, it’s a good option to activate when sensitive topics are being discussed.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!
What’s on my phone. I started a series on the Portuguese version of the blog where readers and friends show what they have on their phones. The first one is mine.
Don’t publish your podcast only on Spotify. I’ve been coming across small or personal podcasts that can only be listened to on Spotify. Intrigued by this trend, I created a new podcast on Spotify to find out what’s happening.
The new emojis in Unicode 17.0. They arrive in the second half of the year.
Where’s Firefox going next? You tell us. The Mozilla folks want to hear from Firefox users to define Firefox’s future.
Macrowave. A service for listening to music together. The broadcaster needs an app (available for iOS and macOS). To listen, the website is enough. Developer’s report.
Station: a social network for Gemini. A microblog, Twitter-style, running on the Gemini protocol.
Centaur slider. Just HTML and CSS!
Transfer.zip. Open source service for sending files through the cloud. (Alternative to WeTransfer.)
Lettervoxd. Rare words (~1 in 1 billion) in a corpus of subtitles from 25,000 movies. Developer’s explanation.
Scribe. An alternative, much lighter interface for Medium articles. Just replace medium.com with scribe.rip in the URL of the article you want to read. (Example.)
MeTube. Graphical interface for yt-dlp, a command-line application for downloading videos from YouTube and other platforms. Unfortunately, the installation is a bit annoying (a little less if you know Docker).
Folio. From ex-Mozilla employees involved in the late Pocket, this new app presents itself as “a new kind of read-it-later app.” It looks a lot like Pocket from the good old days.
DOGWALK. A free game made by the Blender folks to explore integration with the Godot language. For Linux, macOS and Windows.
No days off. This guy has been running every day for ten years. Ok, good for him. The cool thing is this website where he compiled the data from this decade of running into beautiful charts.
FFmpeg in plain english. An “AI” that converts natural language descriptions into an FFmpeg command.
Rodrigo Ghedin. I learned to make websites in the early 2000s, got into journalism a while later, and ended up here, at Manual do Usuário.
I use an iPhone SE (2022) running iOS 18.5.
My wallpaper is the iOS 18 default. I always use the current OS version’s default. I like this one because it’s beautiful and changes colors throughout the day. (Though some patterns, like the morning one, make it hard to read the status bar at the top of the screen.)
My home screen is a mix of practicality and good incentives. Practicality to keep apps I need at key moments always at hand, like transportation/mobility ones. The good incentives consist of removing from my view those I try to use less on my phone, like email and the web browser.
I arrange the icons in the bottom row to reach them with my thumb. My phone is one of the last that can be used with just one hand. (I also use that feature that brings the screen down by double-tapping the home button a lot.)
I keep some widgets on the screen to the left of the main one: monthly calendar, battery level (because of AirPods), and bad habits I’m trying to quit and migraine episodes, which I monitor with Days Since. One cool thing about this app is that it shows the average interval between events, which is useful for tracking progress.
The apps I use most on my phone are messaging apps (Signal and WhatsApp). Others worth highlighting are task apps (Reminders) and calendar (Calendar), though my approach with them is more “reactive” (I deal with notifications/alerts).
I don’t keep many apps installed on my phone and prioritize the default ones, which I think are good enough and usually have better integration with the (eco)system.
That said, my favorite is NetNewsWire, a feed aggregator (RSS, Atom, JSON). It’s very well made, lightweight, pleasant to use. If all the apps I use daily were as well made as NetNewsWire, I think I’d use my phone more. (Maybe that’s not a good idea!)
The Meu Condomínio app might catch your attention. It’s (by far) the worst app on my phone and a side effect of writing Manual: it’s the price I pay for refusing to give up my facial biometrics to enter and exit my condo building.
I’ve been coming across small or personal podcasts that can only be heard on Spotify. Intrigued by this phenomenon, I created a new podcast on Spotify Creator platform to find out what’s happening.
Spotify, among other services, offers podcast hosting. It’s a similar arrangement to what Substack has for newsletters: generous resources at no cost to create and maintain the newsletter (or, in Spotify’s case, the podcast).
There’s a fundamental difference, though. A newsletter created on Substack can be followed by any email client — Gmail, Outlook, Fastmail, your own domain. Spotify podcasts, however, are limited to Spotify and, worse, have their RSS feed disabled by default.
