I migrated my writing and cloud document storage from iCloud to Dropbox last year. iCloud works fine, but it’s not a great fit when your primary computer runs Linux.

Dropbox, in contrast, has a pretty good Linux client that has been reliable throughout my time with the service. But Dropbox was always going to be a temporary solution. There’s no way I was ever going to pay for their Plus plan. $10 per month, billed yearly, for 2TB of storage doesn’t make sense for me. It offers way more storage than I need and the price is just too steep.

And that’s not to mention that using Dropbox means my data is stored on someone else’s hardware, which I’m not too fond of.

Besides, I have a collective 64+TB of storage between my two home servers — a 2018 Mac Mini and an Umbrel Home — it makes far more sense for me to utilize that storage to fill the role of Dropbox and take control of my own data to boot. So that’s what I did.

The obvious choice was to replace Dropbox with Nextcloud. I’ve been aware of it for years and have even had it installed a time or two. But, that was back when I was entirely in the Apple ecosystem and the need for something else wasn’t a high priority. Hence why it didn’t stick before.

I now have Nextcloud installed on my Umbrel Home. UmbrelOS makes for such a slick self-hosting experience. It’s easy to use, reliable, and approachable. If you’d like to dip your toes into self-hosting, Umbrel would be my recommendation. Nextcloud is available in the UmbrelOS app store and I had it up and running in just a minute or two.

Next, I needed a way to access it outside of my home network. There are a few options for this on UmbrelOS — including the ever-popular Tailscale — but I chose to use Cloudflare Tunnel.

I had to do some manual adjustments to Nextcloud’s configuration file to get everything working without errors — since I’m accessing the app through a domain name using SSL instead of through the umbrel.local hostname. But that only took a few web searches to figure out, which wasn’t too bad.

Now I have hundreds of gigabytes of storage available to me through a file sync service that I can access from any network on my iPhone, iPad, and my Ubuntu install. No meaningful storage limitations, no limit on the number of devices I can sync with it (like Dropbox has on its free plan), and so on.

The only major hitch for me was my writing setup. Unfortunately, the Nextcloud app doesn’t support all of iOS’ FilesProvider APIs that are needed for iA Writer to use it as a library source.

But luckily, I have another option. Rather than store my writing in Nextcloud, I migrated it to a private git repository on my Gitea server — also running on my Umbrel. With that, I use Working Copy on my iPhone/iPad to perform all of my git actions and edit from iA Writer.

On my Framework 13, I’m using GitFiend for managing the repo and Apostrophe for writing.

This means the sync for my writing is manual, but I get a bit more control if there are ever conflicts.

I’m pretty happy with the setup now. And for the future, I may take advantage of Nextcloud’s other functionality. It’s not just for File sync, there are a number of “apps” you can install that give you access to additional features — like notes, an rss reader, calendars, contacts, and more.

Moving my contacts from Fastmail to Nextcloud and my calendars from iCloud to Nextcloud are on my shortlist of migrations to consider. I’ll wait a bit longer before I implement that, though — once I’ve seen how reliable the file sync system long-term. But so far, so good.

In short, you can install Apple’s HomeKit Accessory Simulator app and add a Mac’s webcam as a HomeKit accessory.

➝ Source: reddit.com

From the Beeper weblog:

It’s easy to get overwhelmed in Beeper once you add all your accounts and channels from different parts of life. With Labels, you can finally create separate spaces for these chats, so they (optionally) don’t show up in your inbox.

Create a separate label for work, your closest friends, family, or people who shouldn’t have the ability to occupy your attention instantly.

This is actually pretty slick. I setup a “Favorites” label for all of the people I message frequently and I live in that view. If I need to contact someone that isn’t in Favorites, the Inbox view is just a tap away.

(Via Matt Mullenweg.)

➝ Source: blog.beeper.com

Marcin Wichary:

Mac’s operating system has a peculiar way to install apps. An app typically arrives in a file with a .dmg extension (it stands for “disk image”; my brain always reads it as “damage”), which upon double clicking becomes a kind of a drive. You go inside the drive, and there is the app icon.

But the journey isn’t over. While you can run the app from the virtual drive, the drive will eventually disappear after the reboot – or if you eject it – so it’s in the app’s interest to suggest a more permanent home for itself.

(Via Clemens Lang.)

➝ Source: unsung.aresluna.org

From the project’s readme:

Apple’s AirPort Utility is not guaranteed to run on macOS 27 and newer, so I reverse engineered the application and have reimplemented it for macOS 27 and newer with Swift (front-end code) and Python (backend protocol code).

I love that this exists.

(Via Rui Carmo.)

➝ Source: github.com

I write from my iPhone all the time. Almost everything I publish here starts as a draft on my iPhone.

Most of my link entries are written entirely from my iPhone. My longer articles are generally written on my iPad, but I will occasionally write from my Framework 13 as well.

In terms of my iPhone writing workflow, I run a shortcut that creates a new markdown file in iA Writer — either a blank template if I’m writing a feature article or with the title, link, and optional quote if I’m writing a link entry.

Once I’m in iA Writer, I write out my thoughts, add any other relevant links, update the title, file name, URL slug, and tags.

When it’s ready to publish, I send it to another shortcut using the Share Sheet that will schedule it to publish here on Initial Charge.

➝ Source: brennan.day

From the overview:

Coax turns your home media server into a linear cable channel guide. It scans your library, then automatically generates a schedule full of channels that you can flip through at your leisure.

Point the app at your Plex, Jellyfin, or Emby server and it generates a channel guide based on genres, playlists, collections, and more. It will even display over-the-air channels if you’ve configured a compatible TV tuner — with Plex DVR, for example.

It’s an excellent app and has earned its spot next to Plex in my Apple TV’s top row.

➝ Source: coaxtheapp.com

Rick Findlay, writing for Reclaim the Net:

Brave shipped Containers this week. Version 1.92 of the browser lets you wall off tabs from one another so that cookies and site data stay locked inside whichever container you opened them in, even when two tabs point at the same website.

You can now hold several identities at once without the browser blending them together.

Firefox has had this feature available for years through its first-party Multi-Account Containers extension. But I stopped using Firefox a while back because it lacked an ad blocker on iOS.

One of the features I missed from Firefox was containers, though. And now they’re available on Brave.

And this is convenient timing for me — I just started a project at work where containers make things significantly easier. I can log in to a work-specific account within a container and remain logged in to my personal account in normal browser tabs, ensuring I don’t accidentally do anything on the work account because I forgot to log out.

➝ Source: reclaimthenet.org

From the readme:

PaperWM is a GNOME Shell extension which provides scrollable tiling of windows and per monitor workspaces. It’s inspired by paper notebooks and tiling window managers.

I haven’t spent much time with window managers, but I often read or hear about how great they are. I’m going to give PaperWM a try to see if it sticks

➝ Source: github.com

The Pocket Casts design and development team has been working on an Apple TV version for months. They’ve done an excellent job with this release. The app is slick and I’m so happy that the team is finally ready to share it.

I wrote the public facing documentation for this release. If you notice anything is amiss, have questions, comments, or what have you, please reach out to support.

In short, it’s Pocket Casts on the Apple TV. It connects with your account to keep your podcasts, playlists, playback position, and more in sync with Pocket Casts on all of your other devices. It’s great for throwing on an episode while you clean the house, play a board game with the kids, or just about any other scenario.

And while it’s a great audio podcast player, it really shines with video episodes. Here are some podcasts that publish video episodes that I’ve been watching lately:

• Retro Game Corps on Odysee
• IGN.com – Daily Fix
• Daily Tech News Show
• The Culinary Institute of America
• TechHut on Odysee

I’m sure there are many more that I’m missing. If you have any recommendations of video podcasts that publish using an open RSS feed, I’d love to hear about them.

There are some features that are missing in this initial launch compared to Pocket Casts on other platforms. The one I’m hoping to see added in the future is Files support. I frequently add video files to Pocket Casts using this feature and while I can AirPlay from the mobile app, it would be clutch if I could play them right from within the app on tvOS.

Chapters is another feature that has become an important part of my podcast app experience and is missing in this first release. But I’m hopeful that additional features like this will come in time now that the core feature set is out the door.

I think there’s a bright future ahead for podcasting and I love that I get to be a part of it through documentation and support for Pocket Casts. The team has been shipping some excellent features recently — highlighted transcripts, the tasteful Liquid Glass design refresh, and Dynamic Type support to name a few. Pocket Casts is better than it’s ever been and improving with every release.

Speaking more broadly about the podcasting ecosystem, though, helping to build and maintain that is what keeps me excited about work. Podcasting is a free, open distribution mechanism for media that anyone can utilize.

You don’t have to rely on a single vendor to host and distribute your show. You can pick from a myriad of dedicated podcast hosting companies or host it yourself. As long as you can serve an RSS feed and a media file, you can publish a podcast.

And your listeners aren’t forced to obtain your show from a specific vendor either. They can use Pocket Casts, Castro, Overcast, or choose from hundreds of other clients.

Podcasters get a more direct relationship with their audience and so many people get to build their livelihoods creating software, building hosting companies, and more. It’s a beautiful thing.