For years, I wanted a way to launch my most-used apps with single-key shortcuts. While I knew tools like Hammerspoon could make this possible, I never found a key combination that felt right. I’d always end up disabling the setup, missing the functionality of keys like right control, caps lock, or escape. Everything changed when I discovered Karabiner Elements’ ability to create distinct mappings for different key events, such as short presses and long presses. The setup I’m about to share lets you launch any mapped app by pressing caps lock plus a specific letter. The best part? You don’t lose the caps lock functionality—it still works as normal when pressed on its own. ...

Setting up AdGuard Home as a Docker Container on Synology NAS In this guide, I’ll walk you through the steps to set up AdGuard Home (AGH) as a Docker container on a Synology NAS. This setup will allow you to use AGH both inside and outside of your home network. AdGuard Home is a network-wide DNS server that blocks ads and trackers for all devices on your network. It filters unwanted content before it reaches your devices, eliminating the need for individual ad blockers. With customizable rules and open-source flexibility, it offers comprehensive protection and can be installed on various platforms, including Raspberry Pi. ...

tl;dr: If your custom DNS does not work in Safari, you might want to try disabling Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection. A few weeks back, I set up AdGuard Home on my Synology NAS. I’ve been using it without any issues inside and outside of my home network thanks to Tailscale. There was one issue with this setup though: battery drainage on all of my mobile devices. I noticed that my battery usage went up by 25% on my phone. ...

In this article, I’ll describe how to set up your Plex server so you can access it remotely through Tailscale, with Remote Access completely disabled in Plex server settings. Prerequisites Have a Plex server running as a Docker container using this guide. When you’re done, you should have a docker-compose.yml and a .env file with all your environment variables. Have Tailscale set up and running on your Synology. You can use this guide. Make sure to disable the expiry for the IP address assigned to your Synology NAS in the Tailscale dashboard. ...

When adding a local Swift package to your Xcode project, you might encounter the following error: Missing package product `PACKAGE_NAME` The issue often occurs when the package you’re trying to add is already open in Xcode. To resolve: Close the package in Xcode. Close your main project. Reopen your main project. I’m not sure what might be causing this issue or why reopening the project is required (a clean build won’t do). ...

tldr: In order to keep the current Safari window open when you close the last tab, use tab groups. Last month, I once again switched my default web browser to Safari. It has its quirks, but I missed it in a weird way. I initially switched to Firefox because of its stellar support for vim keybindings and some other extensions I started to enjoy. Even with all those improvements, I began to miss some niceties that Safari has built-in. ...

In my current role, we have around 30 projects distributed across roughly 20 different repositories. Most of them are Swift packages for various features used in our apps. This setup requires me to frequently switch between multiple projects. Just a few days ago, I was working on the login flow. This involved modifying two Swift packages and one Xcode project. Remembering whether a given project is a Swift package, a workspace (.xcworkspace), or a standard project (.xcodeproj) is exhausting. This adds unnecessary complexity and slows down the workflow. It would be better if we had a single command to open all of them at once. Here’s a script that does just that: ...

I’ve noticed that I’ve been wasting a lot of time watching Instagram Reels lately. This would not be a problem if I actually enjoyed the time spent doing it. However, this was not the case. I’m not only angry at myself after the fact, but I also usually feel miserable while mindlessly scrolling. It’s just that sometimes I lack the discipline to avoid it altogether. Ideally, I’d completely delete it from my phone, but I still need it for texting. It’s borderline impossible to convince some of my friends to switch to a different platform. Also, some of Instagram’s messaging features are just nice to have. ...

Imagine you’re working on Project A, which relies on Package B, a remote Swift package. To incorporate modifications in B and assess their impact on A, the standard approach requires committing and pushing the changes in B, updating B’s version in A, and then rebuilding A to observe the outcomes. This method is slow and cumbersome. There must be a better way! Project A | └──> Swift Package B To speed up and improve the workflow, you can convert the remote dependency B to a local one. This method works whether Project A is a Swift package or an Xcode project (xcodeproj or xcworkspace). ...

This website uses the PaperMod theme for Hugo. The default setup offers a primary RSS feed for all posts at yoursite.com/index.xml. However, I needed more granularity—specifically, RSS feeds for posts tagged with certain keywords. After some exploration and experimentation, I discovered that Hugo automatically generates RSS feeds for each tag. TIL! Here’s how you can access these tag-specific RSS feeds: iOS Tag Feed: https://kunat.dev/tags/ios/index.xml Swift Tag Feed: https://kunat.dev/tags/swift/index.xml Utils Tag Feed: https://kunat.dev/tags/utils/index.xml

A few months ago, I wrote about Alfred Snippets on iOS. In that article, I described the manual process of converting Alfred text snippets into macOS text replacements. Since then, I’ve had time to refine this project and add some new features. You can download the final Command Line Interface (CLI) or the macOS app from this link. Next on my list is the complete automation of the process of synchronizing Alfred text snippets with macOS text replacements. I’m not sure if it’s even possible, but there’s only one way to find out. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will take me less time than it did before. ...

How to automate adding plugins to all of your existing (and future) targets in a Swift package TL;DR package.targets = package.targets.map { target in var plugins = target.plugins ?? [] plugins.append(.plugin(name: "SwiftLintPlugin", package: "SwiftLint")) target.plugins = plugins return target } The Problem Last month, I was tasked with adding SwiftFormat and SwiftLint to one of the projects my team maintains. The project is medium-sized and uses Swift Package Manager (SPM) for modularization. It has a separate SPM package for each module. For example: ...

tl;dr this is currently not possible. See Solution. Last week, I was working on extracting functionality responsible for handling Live Activities into a separate Swift Package Manager (SPM) package. Apple introduced Live Activities with the release of iOS 16.1. My project’s deployment target is currently set to iOS 13. As you can imagine, this feature had lots of #if available checks. To make my life a bit easier, I’ve decided to set my package’s deployment target to iOS 16.1. On paper, this (in combination with #if canImport()) would allow me to get rid of all the availability checks spread around my codebase. ...

My story begins with a quest for a reliable ad blocker for Safari. I used Wipr for years, but it started performing poorly. I tried AdGuard, but it required a root certificate for HTTPS traffic, which was a dealbreaker. PiHole seemed complex to configure, so I found NextDNS, a DNS-level content blocker promising effective ad and tracker filtering. I decided to try it. NextDNS: The Game Changer NextDNS turned out to be a game-changer for several reasons. First of all, it’s fairly cheap. The pro plan costs around $2 a month and the free plan is more than enough to try out this product. The setup couldn’t be easier. They offer a few different ways to set it up on all of your devices. The final thing is reliability. I’ve been using NextDNS on all of my personal devices for the past six months without encountering any issues. It almost sounds too good to be true. ...

Last updated: 13/08/23 I’ve relied on Alfred as my daily driver for boosting productivity for years. However, I didn’t switch from Apple’s Spotlight overnight. It took three attempts before I truly embraced its capabilities. In this article I’ll share my Alfred setup and explain my most frequent workflows. Let’s dive in! The Initial Setup I’ve already described the initial setup in detail in New Mac Setup article, so be sure to check it if you’re interested. ...

How to use GitLab’s built-in test coverage report tool for pure Swift packages? Some test coverage report generation tools do not support “pure” Swift packages. One example is Slather. By pure, I’m referring to packages that contain only the Package.swift file, without any .xcodeproj or .xcworkspace files. One solution to this problem was to generate a project file for a Swift package on the fly using Fastlane. This solution has one limitation: it’s not possible to generate a project file for a Swift package that contains any resources. When you try doing so, you’ll see Type 'Bundle' has no member “module” error when building. ...

I’ve been putting off this project for the past ~18 months. Most resources I’ve found focus primarily on US-based investors. Sadly, most of the assets listed in those resources are unavailable to investors located in other parts of the world. What came to my rescue was the Banker on Wheels blog. I did not find any other resource that came even close to this one. It was a one-stop shop for my use case. In less than a month, I’ve collected more than enough knowledge to create a portfolio based on my current needs and risk profile. ...

Last updated: 20/05/25 This note describes the steps I take when setting up a new Mac. This process could be mostly automated, but I can’t get myself to do it. It takes me around 90 minutes to go through all the steps. Let’s get started! I. Prerequisite Files to Import Before diving into installations, I make sure to have these configuration files ready: .gitconfig .zshrc II. Software Installation Apps marked with “🌕” emoji are optional (it depends if it’s a work or a private Mac). ...

Development Assets in Xcode that allow developers to provide test data to use within SwiftUI previews and other code during development. Assets marked for development will only be included in debug builds and removed once you create an archive of your app. This solution is preferred to having larger assets in the production binary size. Developers can add different types of data as Development Assets, such as JSON files for mocked network requests, images to use in SwiftUI previews, Core Data sample databases, and Swift files representing mocked or sample data. Swift files are added differently because they use the dead code stripper to avoid the compiler from failing during archiving. ...

After installing macOS Ventura, I began experiencing connectivity issues when using MX Keys keyboard through Bluetooth. The keyboard would disconnect from my Mac whenever it was inactive for a few minutes. What made this issue especially frustrating was that it didn’t happen every time, and the time it took for the keyboard to reconnect varied widely. It drove me insane. I’ve been following several threads in r/logitech, reaching out to Logitech support multiple times, and submitting bug reports through the Logi Options+ app. However, none of these attempts at resolution have been successful. ...

After SPM asset support has been added to Xcode 12, there is no reason not to use modularization in your iOS projects. It brings value no matter the project and team size. However, after some time, you might encounter problems like increased complexity, difficulty with integration testing, or code duplication. Today we’ll focus on the last one, specifically, testing doubles duplication. Let’s jump in! Introduction When saying “module” I’m always referring to a group of related targets. One example would be DomainModels and DomainModelsTests. The DomainModels target stores the implementation, while DomainModelsTests has unit tests code. ...

“Kill It with Fire” exceeded my expectations. I initially anticipated a boots-on-the-ground review of technical debt handling. What I’ve got instead was almost everything but that. The book has changed the way I think about technical debt and how to communicate it upwards. It provides sound advice on various topics, including how to fight tech debt, schedule maintenance work, and communicate with stakeholders. I have not come across any other book that provides this much credible advice on the topic of technical debt without exclusively catering to a particular audience. ...

Swift Package Manager (SPM) is a powerful tool for modularizing your code and managing dependencies in your projects. If you’re working on a project that uses SPM for modularization, you may need to add internal dependencies to connect different parts of your codebase. In this article, we’ll go over how to add internal dependencies in SPM and configure your Package.swift file to properly connect them. Assumptions Before we get started, let’s make a few assumptions about your project and its structure: ...

How to Recover a Corrupted APFS Encrypted Drive As a Mac user, I have always felt secure knowing that my data is protected with APFS encryption. However, that sense of security was shattered when I was unable to mount a disk and Disk Utility reported it as corrupted. I couldn’t use Disk Utility’s First Aid as it failed to repair the disk. Here is the story of how I recovered a corrupted encrypted APFS drive. ...

Today, I wanted to give you a high-level look at what tools I use to organize my work and life and how I use them. The setup I’m about to show you is a product of 5 years of refinement. I still tweak some things, so there’s a high chance it will evolve further in the coming months. Before we start, I wanted to mention that I’m deep into the Apple ecosystem. Some of the tools I’ll discuss might be Apple-specific, but I’m sure there are alternatives on other platforms. With that out of our way, let’s jump in! ...