Everyone knows electronics manufacturers love their LEDs – why not slap a blue or red LED on the front so you know it’s turned on? The worst part is that they are often incredibly bright, casting light across the room, especially at night – and some can’t be turned off at all. Thankfully, my former cohost Mikah Sargent mentioned a solution1 I’ve been using for years – these LightsOut light blocking LED covers—stickers, basically—that come in a large sheet in different sizes:
The sheet is under $5, which both feels dumb to order online and also absolutely worth the peace of mind you get from the stickers – a single hour of lost sleep in a hotel room is worth the tradeoff. Plus, I ordered mine five years ago and have yet to use half, so $1/year so far is good enough for me.
I’ve primarily used mine on the Belkin MagSafe Stand that I use on my bedside table, plus on hotel TVs – I keep half the sheet in my travel bag, then just peel them off and put them back on when I leave.
Elgato’s early Black Friday deals are live now, a week ahead of additional sales on Black Friday itself on November 28. Deals vary by region, so check out the dropdown on their site to see for your location (shown below):
As of writing, both the Stream Deck Mk. 2 and Stream Deck + are on sale for me for 20% off – I personally love both models, but I do think the Stream Deck + is more versatile because of its dials, display, and accessories like the XLR Dock, USB Dock, or Network Dock.
Today, my standing desk started to make a clicking sound and only showed zeroes on the display. It wouldn’t raise, but it would move down – there was clearly nothing wrong with the motor, but I didn’t want to continue lowering it in case it wouldn’t raise back up. While looking for replacements, I thankfully found this video that explains what to do – reset the motors:
If your desk loses power, it also loses its memory – which means it no longer remembers which position it is in. Therefore, your desk needs to find a reference point – that being the lowest position.
Pretty simple, but something I hadn’t run into before – I was not happy with the idea that I’d have to replace the entire controller for ~$400.
The video also highlights the importance of moving anything out of the way too – standing desk motors are powerful and won’t stop if something is in the way. I’ve had my desk lift itself off the ground because it caught on the drawers nearby, which could have been more serious if my desk was fully automated1.
If you’re looking to pick up some Elgato gear as part of your Black Friday shopping, make sure to check out their deals starting Thursday, November 20 with additional sales on Black Friday itself on November 28.
These accessories are my favorite add-ons for the Mac, which I use to run shortcuts many, many times a day, every day (that I’m at my desk setup).
Elgato has an email form on their website where you can sign up to be notified when deals go live. These are usually the best deals of the year, especially for bundles – specific deals are currently under wraps, but you’ll be able to save up to 30%.
If you’re not sure what to get, check out the Elgato gear that I use under my Elgato tag – I have a bunch of posts from the past few years.
Modeled after the iPod Sock, the AirPods Beanies are a set of 4 cloth sleeves for your AirPods, one in each color – my partner and I have been sharing them for the last four years. Designed to slide over the AirPods case, the sleeve protects them in your pocket from scratches or dings, plus gives it a bit of grip to avoid sliding out of your pocket when sitting back in a chair.
On the actual iPhone Pocket itself – I am not immediately in love with the price, or the aesthetics, or reality of what it’s like to use this product. But that’s not really the point – it’s a collaboration with a designer, and an exploration of a product.
The Crossbody Strap is designed to attach to select Apple cases for a convenient and hands-free way to wear iPhone.
Beautifully crafted from 100 percent recycled PET yarns, the smooth, narrow woven straps drape comfortably across the body.
Embedded flexible magnets with stainless steel sliding mechanisms allow you to effortlessly adjust the length for the perfect fit, while keeping both straps securely and neatly aligned.
Perhaps we’ll see something similar from Apple themselves in response to the iPhone Pocket? AirPods Socks?
“iPhone Pocket is a collaboration between Apple and ISSEY MIYAKE. Based upon a mutual respect and shared approach to design, it’s inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth” and features a singular 3D-knitted construction designed to fully enclose iPhone, while expanding to fit your everyday items.
Featuring a ribbed mesh structure with the qualities of the original pleats patented by ISSEY MIYAKE, iPhone Pocket is a beautiful way to wear and carry iPhone. When stretched, the open textile subtly reveals its contents and allows you to peek at your iPhone display. Born out of the idea of creating an additional pocket, while also being playful and versatile, iPhone Pocket is available in a short strap length (in eight colors), and a long strap length (in three colors), suitable for a variety of wearing styles – handholding, tying onto bags, or wearing directly on your body.” ↩
The 3D Marvel films on the AVP look better than anyone has ever seen them before. The capabilities of the VisionPro are really unique and we remastered all the films for this format.
And:
Our goal was to match the color and brightness of the 2D HDR versions but for 3D. The Vision Pro delivers basically perfect stereo contrast so no ghosting, HDR color, UHD resolution and we did some work on the older titles as well.
With 3D movies, Disney’s storytelling will also leap off the screen like never before with remarkable depth and clarity for an unprecedented in-home 3D experience on Disney+ with Apple Vision Pro.
Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now streaming on Disney+ and watching it in 4K 3D with Spatial Audio on Apple Vision Pro is just awesome 🤩
Feels like sitting in a private cinema with a giant screen and insane clarity. Add AirPods and you’re fully immersed 🍿 pic.twitter.com/s4k7DKbpyb
Use visual intelligence to quickly learn more about what’s in front of you, whether in your physical surroundings or on your iPhone screen.
To learn more about your physical surroundings using your iPhone camera on models that have the Camera Control, just click and hold it to do things like look up details about a restaurant or business; have text translated, summarized, or read aloud; identify plants and animals; search visually for objects around you; ask questions; and more. […You can also] access visual intelligence by customizing the Action button or Lock Screen, or opening Control Center. See Alternate options to using the Camera Control.
To learn more about the content on your iPhone screen across your apps, simply press the same buttons you use to take a screenshot. You can search visually, ask questions, and take action, like turning a flyer or invite into a calendar event.
On iPhone 17 models, Apple has added new hardware and software updates for advanced Camera features like Dual Capture and Center Stage, which allow capturing footage in more dynamic ways than ever.
Quickly accessing new features like this and forming muscle memory is critical to user adoption & long-term habits, which is why Apple should expand the Camera app’s Shortcuts support to everything new – something I’ve requested directly via the Feedback app in issue FB20772988 (Add Dual Capture and Selfie Video to Camera actions in Shortcuts).
Dual Capture and Selfie Rotate on iPhone 17
With any iPhone 17, you’re now able to capture both front-facing and rear-facing footage at the same time in a Dual Capture experience. This an awesome merging of hardware and software that creates a personal capturing experience I’ve loved since the Frontback days – a memory that says “here’s where I am”, but also “here’s who I am” (and “here’s who I’m with” too).
Plus, the selfie sensor has been expanded to a square size to allow both portrait and landscape capture, enabling features like a Selfie Rotate button to shoot in landscape while holding the phone vertically,1 as well as Center Stage functionality that automatically expands the shot depending on how many people are paying attention in-frame.
On The Stalman Podcast, Apple iPhone Product Manager Megan Nash specifically mentioned that holding the phone vertically created better eye gaze, which is otherwise awkward and often prevents people like me from filming themselves:
“You’ll notice people in the photos have better eye gaze because the camera preview is centered with the front camera, rather than being off to the side when you rotate iPhone to horizontal.”
These are incredible additions to the lineup and the primary reason I was excited to upgrade this year, both of which will make everyday content creation easier and also more dynamic.
Expand Camera’s App Shortcuts Support
I’m proposing that Apple add these features into the Camera app’s Shortcuts support, either in the form of expanded App Shortcuts or an overhaul to the Camera actions.
Currently, in Shortcuts, the Camera app has a single action, Open Camera, that opens the camera in a specified mode. As of writing, you’re able to choose from Selfie, Video, Portrait, Portrait Selfie, Photo, Cinematic, Slo-Mo, Time-Lapse, Pano, Spatial Video, and Spatial Photo.
Crude rendering by yours truly.
The simplest update would be to include options for Dual Capture and Landscape Selfies, allowing a quick addition to existing functionality. This would build upon the curated App Shortcuts experience, and make these new features immediately available via Siri, on the Lock Screen, in Control Center, and on the Action button nicely – the simplest and most likely outcome.
Overhaul Camera’s App Intents Support
However, I propose Apple give the Camera app a deeper App Intents review and consider splitting up the Open Camera action in alignment with the Camera app redesign, building out the longstanding Take Video and Take Photo actions from Workflow and including additional functionality as parameters.
Take Video could include modes (and App Shortcuts) for Video, Cinematic, Slo-Mo, and Timelapse, each with dependent parameters for front-/rear-facing cameras, zoom levels and rotate options, extra features, and video formats. Take Photo could include modes (and App Shortcuts) for Photo, Selfie, Portrait, Spatial, Pano, with the same additional functionality as parameters for each mode2
Adding both options as separate actions would deliver add long-desired functionality to the Camera apps’ existing actions and enable a wide array of creator-focused shortcuts based on hyper-specific shooting modes. Plus, these actions could still be turned into App Shortcuts, enabling everyday users to quickly access Dual Capture or landscape-in-portrait selfies on their new iPhone 17 as needed.
Apple – please make it easier to take landscape selfies!3
If you want to see this update, please duplicate my report4 in the Feedback app to signal to Apple that multiple users want this changed.
FYI according to the Alt Text on the Apple Support website, it is officially called “the Selfie Rotate button.” ↩
There may need to be some slight fudging of “modes” to make a pleasant App Shortcuts experience here, otherwise having both “normal,” “Selfie,” and “Landscape Selfie” versions of each as additional options might be too much – I can see why they might’ve chosen to avoid this route originally. That being said, they should go further with more actions rather than pulling back. ↩︎
There’s got to be a better way to say “enabling landscape selfies while holding iPhone vertically” (from 3:35) – I propose “landscape selfie” as the generic term. ↩︎
On iPhone 17, new Camera modes like Dual Capture and Selfie Rotate let users record from both cameras or film landscape selfies while holding iPhone vertically. These features aren’t available in Shortcuts or App Shortcuts, making them harder to access quickly.The simplest improvement would be adding Dual Capture and Selfie Video options to the existing Open Camera action. Longer term, Camera could gain full App Intents support by splitting Open Camera into Take Photo and Take Video actions with parameters for mode, camera, and format.Results Expected:I am expecting to find all Camera functionality, including Dual Capture, Selfie Video, and future modes, available in the Shortcuts app or App Shortcuts experiences for use from the Lock Screen, Control Center, or Action button. ↩
My friends at Elgato have updated the Stream Deck app for Mac for version 7.0 with new features for creating virtual Stream Decks on your computer, key logic so each key have multi-tap abilities, weather updates in a new plugin, and quality-of-life features like showing whether an app is currently open.
Here’s how they describe the updates:
🎛️ Virtual Stream Deck — your on-screen workspace controller
Create unlimited virtual keys, customize actions and layouts, then pin them in place or summon to your cursor. It’s your OS sidekick, making every workflow fast and effortless. It’s Stream Deck on your computer, anywhere you go.
[…]
👇 Key Logic — multi-tap abilities
Assign up to three different actions to a single key using Key Logic. Perform a unique action based on how the key is pressed:
Press
Double press
Press and hold
For example, press to play/pause music, double press to skip tracks, or press and hold to go to the previous track.
[…]
⛅ Weather plugin – stay ahead of the forecast
The new Weather Plugin for Stream Deck puts live weather updates and forecasts at your fingertips, with minimal setup and configuration. Instantly see the sky’s latest mood and plan your day without ever picking up your phone or opening a browser.
[…]
🛠️ Improvements and bug fixes
The Open Application action now displays a green dot when the selected app is running.
You can now configure the Open Application action to either do nothing, close, or force quit the selected app when long-pressed.[…]
Elgato has shared a helpful guide for ensuring your internet is fast enough for streaming:
Streaming your content live online is more accessible than ever and also can be equally data hungry. From streaming right from your phone to your followers on TikTok to streaming a professional event in 4K 60fps with High Dynamic Range on YouTube, these all require some amount of bandwidth to get your live content to where it needs to be.
And:
In short, here’s the maximum bitrates supported by the services.
Twitch: 6Mbps (up to 1080p)
YouTube: 40Mbps (Up to 4K)
Also, these are upload speeds – and if you’re using both, it can take even more. I use High Quality Audio and High Quality Video in Ecamm Live, which also add to the network load.
Elgato has shared a handy guide for making sure you always have a copy of your livestream for later – something that tripped me up when I first started on Twitch:
You just finished a stream full of funny moments, interesting discussion, or a great final stand in a battle royale. But what happened to all that content? Did it just end up in the void or did you make sure to save it for later?
Some streaming services like Twitch.TV have time limits for how long they’ll hold onto your past livestream. If you want those moments to live on, you’ll need to archive them somehow. And in some cases, videos are simply unavailable after the stream due to copyright reasons. If you don’t enable storage of those past streams, it’s been too long, or you listened to some music on stream by accident, those moments could just be history.
If you stream right onto YouTube, and you’re already set as those will automatically be archived as a regular video, as long as you weren’t doing a subathon for over 12 hours. If all you want is for your streams to live on, you’re good to go.
My friends at Elgato have updated the Stream Deck app for Mac for version 6.9 with new features for launching and closing an app from the same key, paste from clipboard in Text actions, the ability to choose your browser when opening URLs, and quality-of-life improvements specifically to make the app more Mac-like.
Here’s how they describe the updates:
🆕 Open App – From launch to close, all on one key
Launching your favorite apps just got easier. The new Open Application action shows a searchable list of installed programs—no file path hunting required.
And it now works with Windows Store (UWP) apps like Discord, Spotify, and Microsoft Teams.
✨ Pro tip: Press and hold the key to close the app. Quick in, quick out.
[…]
📝 Text Action – Now with Clipboard Paste Mode
The Text action now includes paste mode selection with options for simulating typing or pasting from clipboard. Simulate typing is exactly that—its as if you’re typing the text. Paste from Clipboard is new and text is pasted as if you’ve pressed CTRL/CMD+V. The default mode has been changed to Paste from Clipboard.
Simulate Typing is useful for programs that need inputs, like typing out commands in sim games
Paste from Clipboard is useful for chat applications, when you want to paste a block of text as a single message
[…]
🌐 Website Action – Choose Your Browser
Now you can choose exactly where your Website actions open. Chrome for work, Firefox for dev, Safari for testing—it’s all up to you.
Just pick from your installed browsers in the dropdown. The old “GET request in background” toggle now lives here too, tucked away for power users.
[…]
⬇️ Profiles just got smarter
Importing profiles from Marketplace? Stream Deck 6.9 now helps you hit the ground running. If a profile uses actions from plugins you don’t have, you’ll be prompted to install them automatically—no guesswork, no more question marks.
[…]
🪄 Quality of life improvements
A few small touches make a big difference:
Option to launch Stream Deck on startup
Option to disable automatic update checks
macOS only: Stream Deck now appears in the Dock when open
macOS only: You can now maximize the app using the green button
Apple today announced the new Mac Studio, the most powerful Mac ever made, featuring M4 Max and the new M3 Ultra chip. The ultimate pro desktop delivers groundbreaking pro performance, extensive connectivity now with Thunderbolt 5, and new capabilities in its compact and quiet design that can live right on a desk. Mac Studio can tackle the most intense workloads with its powerful CPU, Apple’s advanced graphics architecture, higher unified memory capacity, ultrafast SSD storage, and a faster and more efficient Neural Engine.
My M1 Mac mini from 2020 is also way overdue for an upgrade…
Apple today announced the new MacBook Air, featuring the blazing-fast performance of the M4 chip, up to 18 hours of battery life, a new 12MP Center Stage camera, and a lower starting price. It also offers support for up to two external displays in addition to the built-in display, 16GB of starting unified memory, and the incredible capabilities of macOS Sequoia with Apple Intelligence — all packed into its strikingly thin and light design that’s built to last.
I’ve been rocking the M1 MacBook Air from 2020, but it’s beyond time I upgraded…
I’ve added two more products to my desk setup today thanks to my Elgato partnership – a pair of the CamLink 4K, the HDMI-to-USB converter for dedicated cameras.
A few years ago, I bought a second Panasonic GH-5 to go with my first camera, allowing me to have both a dedicated A-Roll and top-down camera set up at all times. For the longest time since then, I’ve relied on the USB-C port and the LUMIX Tether app to bring in the feeds for both cameras – however, it required launching the tether app, doing a special combination of previewing and minimizing the app to get the full-quality feed, and then using that footage for my streams.
In the end, the setup process was too finicky, the frame rate wasn’t ideal once I started loading more devices onto the USB chain, and, at some point, macOS decided to stop recognizing the cameras as two separate devices and thought they were the same camera, leading to more errors and making it impossible to actually pull both feeds in at high quality.
So I started back where I began, with a CamLink 4K – the first Elgato product I bought back in the day, for this exact purpose (at some point I accidentally bent the port…).
Now, with one for each camera, I can speak to the camera while showing what I’m doing on my iPad, iPhone, or other devices at the same time. When I had just one camera, I recorded YouTube videos by speaking the camera, then recording the top-down footage timed to what I’d said; when I had two, I could record it all, but not preview it in real time while still using my Mac – now I can do everything at once.
If you watched my livestream yesterday evening, you caught me putting together a lovely gift from the folks at Elgato: a LEGO set designed like a Stream Deck, complete with unique icons and an angled surface.
Shot with Obscura so I could get the white balance and 2:1 aspect ratio.
The set is 215 pieces and 48 steps – I put it together in a little under an hour. What a lovely little accessory for my favorite accessory – it’s definitely going on my display shelf.
If you’ve ever been interested in customizable keys for your Mac, boom arms for your streaming or podcasting mics, a teleprompter for video calls and recording, or high-quality lights you can control from an app (plus much more), Elgato’s Black Friday sale is your chance to invest in new gear at a more-affordable price.
With sales of 15% up to 30% on select products, you can get the Stream Deck, Wave Mic Arm, and Prompter, plus everything below on sale for this weekend only. Here’s what’s newly on sale, not including all the discounts from their early Black Friday pre-sale1 – I use all of these except the Pro mic arm (because I already gave the LP version):
I’m also happy to answer any questions on social media if you’re unsure of anything – nobody wants to buy something they won’t use, so I can always help assess what’s right for your setup.
I’ve also been sharing posts on my site throughout this year as an Elgato Partner, so check out these stories from today’s products on sale:
For anyone in the US, the folks at Elgato have their pre-Black Friday sale live starting today – you can get discounts from 13% up to 30% on products like the Wave Mic and Arm, Key Light, or Stream Deck Mk. 2.
Here’s a full list of discounts – I have tried and utilize everything here in my setup in one color or another, except the Video Capture cable (only because I simply haven’t needed it):
Even if you’re not using the new Action Sharing, backing up your Stream Deck profiles is just good practice – I will back up my entire setup regularly, plus individual profiles as I finish or update them.
I’ve also long used my shortcut “Open Stream Deck Backups” to quickly access the folder on macOS as well, since I found myself not remembering the location of the default destination where these are saved.
Action Sharing is a game-changer for my Shortcuts Catalog. I’ve never been able to nail down the workflow for updating shortcuts that I’ve added while also sharing them with members, since it required updating at the folder/profile level.
Now, I can attach Stream Deck actions directly to each shortcut!
I’ll have to spend some time updating my workflow, but this may make the difference so I can finally release everything in full.
