Start here tonight

start with three triggers Trending toolXDA Developers, Oct 4

Type a short trigger and Espanso writes the whole paragraph, free on Windows, macOS and Linux

The sentences you retype every week can be reduced to four keystrokes, in whatever window you are already in.

Espanso describes itself as a privacy-first, cross-platform text expander: it detects a keyword you have defined and replaces it while you are still typing, system-wide across most applications. The project is free and open source under the GPL-3 license, runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and supports templates that pull in the date, the clipboard or the output of a shell command, a search window on Alt+Space, forms, and community-made packages. Writing on October 4, XDA's Patrick Hearn sets a trigger of :nrev that expands into a complete rejection email, and describes templated expansions that fill in variable information such as dates, times and clipboard contents. His caution is the honest one: the payoff only arrives after you spend the time writing and maintaining the snippets, and someone whose typing is mostly messages to friends will not get much back.

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The tool shelf new tonight

Espanso

Free, GPL-3Windows, macOS, LinuxXDA Developers, Oct 4

Watches for a keyword as you type it and replaces it system-wide with a saved block of text, with templates for the date, the clipboard, emoji and shell output, a search window on Alt+Space and community packages, though XDA's Patrick Hearn warns that the time saved comes only after the time spent writing and maintaining the snippets, and that a casual texter will see little return.

UniGetUI

Free, MITWindows, macOS, Linux desktopMakeUseOf, Oct 4

One window over WinGet, Scoop, Chocolatey, npm, pip and a dozen other package managers, so finding, installing, updating and removing software stops meaning a dozen separate downloads, and it can save a selection of installed apps as a small bundle file you reopen on the next machine, with the project's own disclaimer that it is not affiliated with those package managers and that packages come from third parties whose sources and publishers you should review first.

Aegis Authenticator

Free, no adsAndroid, Play Store or F-DroidAndroid Police, Oct 5

Keeps your two-step verification tokens in an encrypted vault with optional biometric unlock, imports from Google Authenticator and a wide range of other 2FA apps, and supports automatic backups, with the two limits Android Police's Akshay Bhalla names: there is no iOS version, and the backups are yours to look after, because syncing is left to a separate tool.

Reactive Resume

Free, no paid tierBrowser, or self-host in DockerProduct Hunt, 98 upvotes

Writes and formats a resume across 17 templates with PDF, Word, Markdown and JSON exports, imports from PDF, LinkedIn or Word, and adds a readability checker for applicant tracking systems, a cover letter generator and a job tracker, all free under the MIT license with no ads and no paid tier, with the one gap being the optional AI writing assistant, which works only if you supply your own API key.

Every shelf item is available today; no waitlists, no vaporware.

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The workflows follow along at home

One key, three jobs: F4 locks a cell reference, repeats your last action, and walks the search results

Five minutes to learnMicrosoft Excel on the desktopHow-To Geek front, Oct 5

Press F4 inside the formula How-To Geek's Tony Phillips puts the cursor on a reference and cycles E2 to $E$2, then E$2, then $E2 instead of typing dollar signs by hand, presses F4 on a fresh selection to repeat the last action, including a whole dialog box such as setting a column width, and after closing the Find box with Escape uses Shift+F4 to jump to the next match and Ctrl+Shift+F4 to walk back, noting that F4 repeats only the exact action performed, unlike Format Painter, and that named ranges remain the better answer for constants.

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Ten gigabytes of Google storage came back from four cleanups, starting with one Gmail search

About an hourA Google accountMakeUseOf front, Oct 5

has:attachment larger:10MB MakeUseOf's Pankil Shah runs that search in Gmail and clears old mail out of Promotions, Social, Updates and Drafts for about 2GB, trims WhatsApp from 5GB to 3GB under Settings, Storage and data, Manage storage before switching video out of its backup, deletes outdated device backups from previous phones in Drive, then lets Google One's Clean up space suggestions in Drive and Photos find roughly 6GB more; his two warnings are that anything removed through those suggestions is deleted permanently right away, while files you delete by hand only free space once you also empty the Bin.

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Your browser has its own task manager, and it names the tab that is eating the memory

Two minutesChrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox or VivaldiXDA front page, Oct 5

More tools, task manager XDA's Mahnoor Faisal opens it from the three-dot menu in Edge under More tools and Browser task manager, from Menu and More tools in Brave and Firefox, Tools in Vivaldi, Developer in Opera, the Window menu in Chrome on macOS, or by typing about:processes into Firefox, and on an 8GB MacBook Air found LinkedIn holding 1.2GB while Google Meet ran at 39 to 49 percent of the CPU on roughly 490MB; Safari has no equivalent, the heaviest tab changed with the day's work rather than staying fixed, and the reading is only useful next to Chrome's Memory Saver, Edge's Sleeping Tabs or Vivaldi's hibernation, since it adds no RAM by itself.

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Three layers inside Google Keep: labels for the category, search for the detail, pins for what is live

20 minutes to set upGoogle Keep on phone or webAndroid Police front, Oct 5

Labels, search, then pins Android Police's Dhruv Bhutani keeps a long list of hyper-specific labels for work, ideas, personal tasks and videos, then searches inside a label for the one note he needs, including text the app has read out of a photograph, and pins only what is active so a finished note drops back into the pile, with checklists, reminders, color coding and shared notes filling in around the three layers; his own condition is the catch, because the system holds up only when every thought is captured in Keep first.

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Mary of Nazareth

Keep and Ponder

The useful work is finished. Keep what is true, ponder what matters, and entrust the rest to God.

Keep

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28, KJV

Ponder

Set down the burden you were never meant to carry alone.

Entrust

Jesus, meet me in my weariness and teach my heart to rest in you. Amen.

A practice shaped by Luke 2:19Guided by the biblical witness of Mary of Nazareth.

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