Time machine is a godsend when you need to get back a missing file. You can almost blindly root around through the available dates until it shows up – and count yourself lucky. The rooting around becomes exceedingly more difficult when you’re after a previous version of a particular document though. I’ve just come across an amazingly useful utility that makes this revision search easier, FileGoBack. You can use it like a regular application, but it’s also just a right-click away in your services menu where it really shines. My only annoyance is that this utility has been around for quite some time without me being aware.

Jerry Krinock, the man behind Sheep Systems, also makes some really useful bookmark utilities if you happen to use more than one browser. I like Synkmark for the control it offers in organizing and verifying bookmarks in addition to the main feature of keeping your favorites up to date across Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. It lets me choose a primary browser as the standard and helps to avoid the very evil looping situation it’s so easy to get into when you also use iCloud and Google sync services. I have used the more readily advertised Xmarks in the past, but gave up when the end result was too frequently a universally in sync corruption. I just want the sync to happen when I want it to rather than attempt to trust software to trigger on every seeming change everywhere.

While thinking about browser tools this week I also re-discovered HistoryHound. If you’ve ever tried to find something you remember having seen on some webpage somewhere, this will really help you out. It configurably indexes your cache of things browsed to increase your chances of finding what was found (and omitting what ought not be). This goes well beyond the dated list of URLs available in your History menu since it lets you search your actual recent content ordered by relevance. Bravo to St. Clair Software, who also make the more well-known Default Folder X.

(Since this post may seem overly complementary, I’ll make it clear that the only relationship with any entity mentioned is having bought the software at regular price.)

I was going over updating various statements and photos for the new year. Many of the files had an unhelpful naming convention which did not sort logically in list view. Additionally, while filenames such as IMG_002342 sort well enough, they don’t convey much to jog your memory of any event. To fix this, I was going to go for a shell script or the Better Finder Rename application. Before going that route, I idly highlighted the files and right clicked, to get quite a shock.

There is now a context menu option to Rename X Items. This is not just a simple find and replace operation, either; You can prefix or suffix names, and even conform them to an incremental or dated format. This will allow you to have more meaningful names than IMG_002342. Try replacing IMG_ with Christmas2014_ and you’ll immediately see how clarifying and convenient this is.

For more complex situations, Better Finder Rename is a professional powerhouse, but for occasional quick renaming needs, this Yosemite (Mac OS X 10.10) capability is a fantastic time saver.