Though OS X includes a default screenshot application, as a writer and blogger I use more than a few different programs, including Snagit, Snappyapp, and Clarify, for various purposes. But in the ever shifting world of digital applications, a new program can often trump and replace one or more similar programs.

This may be the case for Fliplab’s new screenshot application, Share Bucket, a free download from the Mac App Store, and another program called popShot (donationware). As screen capture applications, their features are pretty common, but they do include some rather useful sharing and file type options not easily available in the OS X’s image capture functionality.

Share Bucket

Share Bucket is similar to the paid application Snagit, and Evernote’s Skitch (Free) in that it allows you to both capture and annotate image captures. Its image editor also includes a drawing, arrow, line, box, text, and even a blur tool.

Share Bucket also allows you to crop images. But what makes it even more productive than Snagit is that it enables you to edit the default “Screen Shot…” file name and select a different output file type (.PNG, .JPG, .TIFF, and .PDF) right from within the editor.

Share Bucket includes other handy features for automatically uploading screenshots to Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive. So even if you already use one or more screen capture programs, Share Bucket could also be useful for quickly taking shots related to a special project where you want to store image captures in a particular place.

Share Bucket can be accessed from the menu bar, and as you might expect, it includes keyboard shortcuts for when you want to either capture and annotate a file in the editor, upload a file to a designated folder, or simply open the image editor. When you choose the Capture and Annotate option, Share Bucket will ask you upon importing a new file into the editor if you want to discard the previous capture. Some users may find this warning a little annoying, especially if using the editor multiple times a day.

You can also drag and drop an image file onto the Share Bucket menu bar icon where it will be copied to your designated cloud service. If enabled, the application’s auto upload feature will even upload image captures taken by other applications. If you have a Retina display, you can select to have Share Bucket automatically scale those images. And you can also choose to have your saved files automatically deleted after a specified period of days.

Share Bucket doesn’t include many of the other annotation features of Snagit, nor does it include video capture. But for a free application, it offers sufficient tools and features for most users.

popShot

popShot is a clean, easy to use screen capture application that you also access from the menu bar or activate using assigned hotkeys. I keep popShot in my menu bar for when I want to shoot captures in .JPG, instead of the default .PNG file type of the OS X image capture application.

You can not only preselect the filetype output for screenshots using popShot, but you can also select to have a shot open directly in an external application, like Photoshop or Preview. And if you want, you can actually name and label a screenshot before it is taken.

popShot makes it easy to change the path to where you want to save screenshots, which again is convenient for when working on a project where you may not want your screen captures to go directly to the desktop.

If you often need or want to share screenshots online, popShot can take and upload shots to its server, and then you select to share the URL or send the capture directly to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, or more than three hundred other sites. It would be nice, however, if you could share a screenshot to a designated account or stream without having to first open it in popShot.

popShot doesn’t include annotation tools or a built-in image editor, but if you take multiple screenshots per day for various purposes, it’s an app that you may want to have in your arsenal.

Final Thoughts

As someone who takes more than a dozen screenshots a day, I would suggest it really doesn’t hurt to have and use more than one screen capture application, especially if they can help you to be more productive. If you really want to take faster shots, I recommend using the finger gesture application BetterTouchTool to activate the hotkey of your favorite screen capture application, so you don’t have to remove your hand from the mouse or trackpad.

Download: Share Bucket (Free) / popShot (Free, donationware)

What do you use to take screenshots? Have you tried Share Bucket or popShot? Let us know what you think, in the comments below.

I started using BetterTouchTool back in 2011, and since then it has become one of the top three Mac applications (the other two are Keyboard Maestro and TextExpander) for boosting my productivity and streamlining my workflow.

BetterTouchTool is a free application that allows you to use finger gestures with your Magic Mouse, MacBook Trackpad and Magic Trackpad to activate keyboard shortcuts, move and resize windows, launch applications and URLs, select windows, and add functions to applications.

I’ve written an overview of BetterTouchTool’s main features and how to get started using it. Though BTT can be used by any Mac user, it does require some time to setup and configure gestures that you can remember and are not awkward to use. The following tips will help users who are familiar with the app get more out of some of its more advanced features.

How I Use It

I use dozens of BetterTouchTool actions in my everyday workflow. Some actions are global and most others are specific to individual applications. I use the app along with finger gestures to play and pause iTunes, hide the frontmost application, close Safari tabs, post a tweet in TweetBot, adjust the volume control, delete files on my desktop, and much more.

If you’re a current user of the app, you’re probably already familiar with the basic automations, so now let’s explore some more advanced features, actions, and ways to use BTT.

Predefined Actions

If you want to get an idea of what the type of actions you can perform using BTT, just click on the Predefined Actions button on the bottom-right. It includes over a hundred actions that you can apply finger gestures to. Some of the more practical ones include Hide All Windows, Open Application/File, Open URL, Sleep Computer, Mute Sound, Trigger menu bar item and Enter Full Screen.

Check out the list and see which actions you manually perform on a regular basis, and instead assign finger gestures to perform those actions using BTT.

Two Or More Actions

A later update to the app added way to include additional actions for a single gesture. For example, you probably experience applications that require to you use the Command+Delete keys to delete a file. And typically you also have to confirm the deletion by activating the Delete key before the action is fully complete. With BTT you can perform two or more actions with a single gesture.

Here’s an example of how to use this feature with an application called NoteSuite. To create the action, I started off with a Two Finger TipTap Left gesture that activates the Command+Delete keyboard shortcut. I then clicked on the Attach Additional Action button.

Next I assigned another action to the same gesture. In this case I added the Return key action. With this setup I perform two keyboard shortcut actions with single finger gesture. This is especially useful for an application like NoteSuite that only allows you to delete one file at a time, and it’s definitely tedious to activate the two keyboard shortcuts each time to delete files.

Resize Windows

If you click on the Advanced button in the menu bar then click Action Settings, there are whole set of actions for moving and resizing windows, and for dragging and snapping them to different parts of your screen. The developer’s other application, BetterSnapTool, provides even more control for quickly resizing windows.

If you prefer to keep all your gesture controls within one application, BTT will suffice.

Adjust Gesture Sensitivity

If you find yourself becoming a BTT power user, you might want to take a look at the various settings for adjusting the speed and pressure sensitivity of finger taps. The developer says you shouldn’t have to fiddle with the settings much, but if you find that your gestures are a little slow to activate actions, or if they set things off too quickly, try making some adjustments to those settings.

You can always click the Reset ALL button to get back to the default settings.

BTT Remote

There’s also now BTT Remote ($1.99) app that allows you to perform actions you set up on your Mac using BTT. It goes well beyond Apple’s own Remote app in that you can remotely activate virtually any action in your BTT library.

I use it for playing and pausing iTunes or Rdio, taking an application full screen, adjusting the sound volume, putting my display to sleep, assigning a 5 star rating to a currently playing song—all from my office recliner. Warning: an app like this can make you pretty lazy.

BetterTouchTool is definitely for Mac geeks and power users, but if you work at your Mac throughout the day and you’re not especially good at remembering and using keyboard shortcuts, BTT is an awesome alternative tool for navigating your Mac.

How Do You Use BetterTouchTool?

I’ve told you how I use this fantastic piece of productivity software, so now it’s your turn – what do you think of these advanced features? How does BTT integrate into your workflow? Let us know what you think in the comments, below.

 

AirPlay is Apple’s way of wirelessly streaming audio and video to supported devices on your local network. If you have one of Apple’s more recent Airport base stations, an Apple TV or a Boxee box at home, you should already be able to stream music from your computer to your entertainment system, wirelessly.

Originally, only iTunes was outfitted with AirPlay capabilities. Later, the option was added for you to route all system audio to an AirPlay device, like an audio counterpart to AirPlay screen mirroring. These AirPlay devices should simply show up in your sound output settings, though Apple has made it notably more difficult to use AirPlay with third-party apps like Spotify or Rdio instead of iTunes.

For that, you’ll need something like Airfoil.

Airfoil ($25)

If Apple doesn’t do it, someone else often will. Airfoil is a third-party application that aims to bridge this rather serious gap in usability. Apart from extending AirPlay audio functionality on Mac OS X computers, the PC version also makes Windows computers capable of this feat. If you’re a Windows user in an Apple hardware household, this is great news. Alternatively, Windows users should take a look at Shairport4w.

Airfoil is developed by Rogue Amoeba, who you might know from other high quality sound applications like Audio Hijack Pro. Together with AirParrot, which gives older computers (and PCs) access to AirPlay mirroring, Airfoil is an essential component of the AirPlay toolbox.

After installing Airfoil, the application pops up both in the Dock and Menu Bar—or, if you’re using Windows, as a regular application in the task bar. Both provide access to pretty much the same settings, so if you want to limit the application to one of these two views, you can do this in the preferences.

Source and Destination

Alas, Airfoil can’t automagically add AirPlay buttons to all the interesting applications on your computer. As such, you’ll manage these things inside Airfoil. To start streaming, you just need two things: a source and a transmit destination. As a destination, just select your AirPlay device. You can even select multiple targets at once. This is great to play your music in multiple rooms, on different AirPlay devices.

Pressing the source button shows you a whole list of options, as illustrated above, and often the better choice is to select a single application. In theory, you can select almost any application as a source for audio. Spotify transmission works flawlessly and the rest of your system’s audio is still played back locally. This means you won’t miss any important notifications while sitting in front of your computer, and that the music that comes out of your remote speakers is just that – music only.

In Airfoil’s options you can further link AirPlay volume to your system volume. If supported, this will immediately adjust the volume on the AirPlay device when you use the volume keys on your keyboard.

Airfoil Video Player & Speakers

It may sound like a great idea to watch a video on your computer while rerouting the audio through your big AirPlay-connected sound system. The only thing standing in your way is a serious lag in the audio. Airfoil Video Player, which is included with Airfoil for Mac, solves this problem by similarly delaying the video.

Use Airfoil Video Player to open local files and DVDs, or play web videos using the embedded delayed web browser. Browsing isn’t as smooth as you’re probably used to, but once the video is playing that won’t matter anyway.

Even if you don’t think you have any AirPlay-compatible devices, you can use Airfoil. The free Airfoil Speakers application, which is available for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Android and iOS turns almost any device into an Airplay-enabled speaker (though the mobile apps work exclusively with Airfoil).

Just download and install the application on any one of your devices (or all of them!) and you can subsequently use Airfoil to play audio on it. If you plug that device in, you’ll get an Airplay-enabled sound system.

The Bottom Line

Airfoil is available for both Mac OS X and Windows. However, these two applications aren’t usually sold as the same package. $25 gets you Airfoil on only one operating system. Alternatively, you can buy a package bundle, which includes both versions for $40.

Cheap? By no means. But depending on how often you use AirPlay and switch between operating systems, it might be worth it. Luckily, you can download a free trial from the website to find out. It’s an unlimited trial, but noise is overlaid on transmissions longer than ten minutes.

Download: Airfoil for Mac or PC

Do you use AirPlay in your home? Have you tried Airfoil? Add your thoughts to the comments below!

Image credit: Shutterstock.

With my head held low with shame, I publicly admitted last week that I’m a digital hoarder. My once blazingly fast Mac is now left with just 100GB of a 1TB drive left. I’ve already shifted all my downloads onto a NAS, but now I’m left with a legacy of nearly 20,000 photos and MP3s, which together add up to at least 200GB of space.

I’m hoping to upgrade to an SSD, but at this rate it’s looking quite difficult. Today, I’ll see whether it’s possible to shift these completely off to a network drive – my Synology NAS should be perfect for this, but you can also use an external hard drive if you lack network storage.

 

Before we begin: Backup

I can’t promise this is going to work for you and not completely screw up your libraries – so before you even attempt this today, do a full, complete and bootable backup of your drive. If you have Time Machine setup and working you shouldn’t lose any data, but it’s often easier when you’ve made a huge error to just clone your Mac back to how it was before.

If you’re not already backing up, now would be a great time to get started with the ultimate triple backup system.

I’d also suggest not shifting your iTunes and iPhoto libraries to a network unless your NAS device has backup capabilities itself – the Synology DS413j I’ll be using has a hybrid RAID with one disk redundancy, so I’m trusting it not lose all my data.

 

Locate Libraries and Check Size

Your iTunes library can found under Music > iTunes. Right click the folder and give it a moment to count the file sizes – mine totalled nearly 125GB – but bear in mind this will include any downloaded apps for your iOS devices too. Don’t manually edit anything within the folder structure – always let the native apps manage these libraries.

The iPhoto/Aperture library – now unified – can be found in your Mac’s Pictures folder. This folder is a little special – you can’t “open” it to view the underlying structure (well you can, but just don’t, mmmkay?). Click on the folder once and the total size should be shown on the right information panel.

 

Moving iPhoto Library

Assuming you want to keep using iPhoto or Aperture as your photo management solution, you’ll be moving the entire iPhoto Library “file” as is. Make sure iPhoto and Aperture are closed, make an appropriate shared folder if you haven’t already, then simply drag and drop the library to your NAS or external drive.

Once it’s complete, you can double click to open the library in iPhoto ’08 or later and it will remember the location for future. For older versions, hold down the option key while launching iPhoto to open the library selection dialog, then navigate and choose your newly moved library.

No more changes needed for iPhoto, you’re all set – provided your NAS is present and functional on your network or the external drive you used is connected, iPhoto should function as normal.

Moving iTunes Library

There’s a number of ways to go about moving the iTunes library.

1. The simplest way is simply to move the entire library content and let iTunes manage as before. This is what we’ll be doing today, so as to keep all that juicy metadata and artwork intact.
2. You may also choose to only copy the raw files, then re-add them to a new iTunes library with the option to leave them in their original location (by default, iTunes will attempt to copy them back into it’s own library again, defeating the entire point of our exercise today). This would be best if you have other apps accessing your library and would like to maintain your own folder structure, but bear in mind you will lose all the metadata if you do this – play count, ratings etc.
3. Your NAS may also have it’s own iTunes server, which will create an iTunes compatible network share as well as extra features it might offer (like remote playback over the internet). You will need to let your NAS handle the library though, and iTunes will merely stream it.

Start by reorganizing your library – especially if you’ve kept the same library for many years now and possibly even moved between operating systems. Choose File > Library > Organize > Re-Organize (not Consolidate) and allow it to sort out your files.

 

Update Library Location

Create an iTunes folder on your NAS or external drive, and update the iTunes preferences for your existing library to that new location by going to iTunes > Preferences > Advanced and clicking Change.

Next, select File > Library > Organise > Consolidate.

This will begin the process of copying your music to the new library location. If you have a lot of files, this is going to take a very long time.

When you’re done, you can safely delete the iTunes Media folder on your local machine. At this point, you may also choose to move your library files (.ITL and .XML) to the NAS or external drive too, but I don’t suggest doing so as these are far smaller and keeping them locally will improve performance since they contain the actual index of files.

You may also face some issues when copying to a NAS. EXT3 filesystems are case sensitive, and filenames have 255 character limit. Unfortunately, there’s not an awful lot you can do other than manually fixing these and trying again. If you are using an external drive, a HFS+ file system will provide best results.

 

Map the Network Share So It Mounts on Boot (NAS method)

Assuming you moved your libraries to a NAS and that the drive is already mounted (which it should be if you’ve been copying things to it) you’ll want to make sure your newly networked media boots with your Mac. Open up the Users & Groups panel from System Preferences, click Login Items and add a new login item for your own user, and select the network drive.

This should now cause your Mac to mount the network share automatically on restart so your library doesn’t break. If you used an external drive, you’ll need to ensure the drive is physically connected each time instead.

Done!

That’s it, all done. Now – I really suggest you don’t go filling up all that space again, but instead consider swapping out your drive for a smaller SSD for much improved performance. Here’s how I added one to an old Macbook Pro.

Got any more tips for freeing up space? Let me know in the comments, and share if you appreciate this tutorial!