Larry Magid: A Toolbox full of handy Windows and Mac utilities - The Mercury News
Around 1983, I started using a program called Sidekick, which was a bundle of handy utilities that popped up as a "TSR" (terminate and stay resident) program within MS-DOS. What was cool about it is that it worked at the same time and alongside whatever other software you were running back in the day when operating systems could run only one program at a time.
The days of TSRs are long gone, but a handy utility called Parallels Toolbox, reminds me of them in the way it provides useful functionality that you can use alongside whatever other programs you use.
The product, which works on both Macs and Windows machines, costs $20 per year after a 7-day free trial. I'm testing the Windows version, but I've also used the Mac version, which is very similar.
The specific features vary slightly depending on whether you have a Mac or Windows machine, but, in both cases, include the ability to generate and read barcodes, archive files into zip files, be reminded when it's time for a break, capture all or part of your screen into a graphic file, clean unnecessary files from your hard drive, convert video into different formats, do not disturb, prevent your machine from sleeping, hide your desktop, launch multiple apps with one click, lock your screen, mute microphone, record audio from PC or Mac system or microphone and resize images. A sleep timer puts your machine to sleep after a specified number of minutes or hours. Mac specific tools include airplane mode, an alarm, clipboard history, freeing up memory and making gifs. Windows-only functions are close apps and measure color of anything on the screen.
I have to admit that I rarely, if ever, use most of Toolbox's functions, but there are some I use nearly every day including recording audio, when I want to capture audio coming out of my machine's speaker as a high quality MP3 or Wav file. I also use the screen capture feature pretty often, though I sometimes use the built-in Windows or Mac app for that function. I also sometimes use the download video tool to capture a YouTube or other video to my PC's drive.
You already have some equivalent tools
Some of the functions in Toolbox are available through built-in Windows or Mac apps or third party apps that you can download, but it's handy having them all in one place and some of the Toolbox apps are easier to use than most alternatives.
For example, there are other ways to record system audio when you want to grab sound from a podcast or other audio program or the sound track from a video, but some of these solutions are cumbersome. With Toolbox it's as simple as clicking on an icon.
Both Windows PCs and Macs come with software to grab screenshots, and frankly, both are about as easy to use as the features in Toolbox. But Toolbox does have the advantage of simultaneously saving the screenshot as a file and putting it in the clipboard so you can paste it into another program. If you're using Windows and do a lot of screenshots, I recommend that you re-assign the Print Screen button to invoke the free snipping tool that comes with Windows 10 and 11. This makes it a lot easier to invoke. You reassign it by clicking the Start menu, typing "accessibility keyboard settings" and selecting "use the Print screen button to open screen snipping."
Macs have keyboard commands for taking screenshots that you can learn about by Googling "take a screenshot on Mac."
There are also built-in tools for some of the other Toolbox utilities. For voice recording, Macs come with QuickTime and Voice Memos, which can both be used for that purpose. Windows comes with Voice Recorder. If you're looking for a sophisticated recorder and audio editor, I recommend the free open-source Audacity app, though it does come with a small learning curve.
Having your machine automatically go to sleep after a specified time is a great way to save energy, and I highly recommend you use Mac or Windows built-in tools to configure it. But sometimes you want to turn that feature off temporarily. You don't need Toolbox to do that as long as you remember to reconfigure it later, but Toolbox's temporary Do Not Sleep tool is a safer way to do it because you don't have to remember to as long as you configure the tool to turn off in, say, one hour or however long you want to keep your machine awake. The sleep timer does the opposite, by letting you specify a time to have the machine automatically go into sleep mode.
Toolbox's disk cleaning tool is redundant with tools built into Windows and Macs. On Windows, you click on Start and type Disk Cleanup for a tool that will delete unnecessary files such as program download files and temporary internet files. On the Mac, you start from the Apple menu, click on About This Mac and then Storage to see how much space you have and option to free up space.
But some of the tools in Toolbox are not available for free, and if you use them often, are worth the $20-a-year price tag.
Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist.
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