Download this photo-realistic Paper Bag PSD from MrMockup. Simply double-click the smart object in the PSD to add your logo or artwork.

But $15 may be a bit much for some people, particularly those who simply want to hide a few of the menubar icons and don’t need the other features found in Bartender.

Enter Dozer, a free and open source utility that does only one thing—it allows you to choose which icons are hidden behind a dot in the menubar. You can set a keyboard shortcut to unhide/hide the icons as well, making it easier to keep your menubar uncluttered.

That’s it. It really doesn’t do anything else, and that’s why I love it. There are other apps out there, such as Vanilla, that do the same thing, but I’ve found that all of them are either buggy or try to be too much or too clever.

Grab Dozer for free and runs on macOS 10.13 or higher.

I’m not sure if it’s easier than using the Dock or not, but it’s worth trying for yourself.

TouchSwitcher is free, however tips are happily accepted.

Buying a house? Need legal documentation of communication? Fax machines are about your only option for immediate delivery of a document. Still. In 2018.  

Back in the hey-day of Internet faxing, there were tons of free services out there that would send faxes online… saving you the audio pollution and expense of sending faxes of documents you already had on your computer.

Today, there is one. Well, one that I know of anyway. FaxZero appears to be sole-survivor of the free Internet faxing wars of the 90s. 

FaxZero allows you to send five faxes per day (limit 3 pages + cover sheet each). That’s a pretty low limit, but probably more than most anyone needs.

Today, RSS feeds have fallen out of grace with most consumers, most likely due to the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other sharing apps. But RSS readers are still popular among tech enthusiasts.

The developers of Reeder have graciously dropped the price of Reeder for Mac to zero, as in FREE — up until the release of version 4.0  at some point later this year.

Athens is free for personal and commercial use.

Here are just a few examples:

For starters, Agenda is a date-focused note taking app for both planning and documenting your projects. This is not a “grocery list” type of notes app. As the name implies, this app is more for project or meeting-based note taking. If you don’t know what that means, check out the site. If you still don’t know, then the app probably isn’t for you.

Agenda offers some pretty nice styling options, and allows you to convert your notes to Markdown or even HTML. You can share notes and projects created in Agenda with other users, or export as PDF, RTF, etc. Because Agenda is synced via iCloud, your notes appear on all your devices immediately upon entering them.

The non-subscription subscription

To me, the most interesting aspect of Agenda is the way the developer chose to price the app to make money. The app itself is free, and isn’t limited in any way. There are premium features you can permanently unlock all at once with an in-app purchase. Once you unlock the features, they’re unlocked forever. Plus you receive any new premium features the developers add in the next year for free. Again, those features stay unlocked forever.

At this point, you’re done paying for Agenda. Over time the developer will add new features, but you aren’t required to pay for them until such time that you feel it’s worth paying for. At that point, you’re receive all the premium features made available since your original purchase.

If that doesn’t make sense, check out the blog post explaining business model in detail.

In case you’re wondering, the iOS app works exactly the same way, and once you purchase premium features for one platform, you get them on both. So your Mac and iOS versions of Agenda will be identical with one purchase.

Agenda is free to use out of the box, and requires macOS 10.12 and/or iOS11 or higher. Premium features are available as an in-app purchase.

ThoughtTrain is a solution to this problem. Sort of. ThoughtTrain only does one thing. It scrolls whatever you type in the menubar—much like the news ticker you see at the bottom of the screen on CNN or other news channels (see image above). The app has no preferences and no superfluous screens or settings. There is a text entry box hiding under the menubar icon. Whatever you type into that box gets shown in the menubar. You can also archive or delete notes. That’s it. The notes and reminders are displayed one after the other, scrolling right to left.

The only problem (if you actually consider it one) is that it only offers a limited amount of scrollable space in the menubar, so your notes and reminders must be kept short and sweet to be useful. But to me, that’s the best feature. I don’t see ThoughtTrain as a replacement for a full notes/reminders app… it’s more of a replacement for sticky notes (both real and digital versions) that cover your screen a little too much and require you to switch away from the app you’re currently working in.

ThoughtTrain is free, but donations are encouraged.