The professor sent me an email one day explaining how emacs is a way of life and I found it intriguing as it was well written and made sense. He seems to be an emacs enthusiast and also seems to be using macOS, so I want to know more about the way he uses his workflow.

So far all I know about the professor is that his name is Daniel, and this is his blogpost:
https://turingmachine.org

This video comes out of this livestream:
https://youtube.com/live/hsPHmIMURqw

I know, audio is not leveled but we had technical difficulties the day of the recording and not much I can or want to do about it at this point.

Monthly call with the YouTube members that have the "CEO" level in which we'll discuss several interesting topics.

This is transmitted live with everyone, so you can join and chat with us during the call

What is this podcast about, why, and where to find it?
https://linkarzu.com/about/#whats-the-linkarzu-ceos-monthly-hangout-podcast

If you're not a YouTube member yet, you can join here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSIvbFncPSlK6AdwE2QboA/join

• I wanna organize the next furryconf livestream only with discord members
• The idea is that anyone can join and show their setup, OS, editor, tools, workflow, etc, etc.
• You don't have to show your face. The rule is, if you don't show it, you will be replaced by a furry.
• It's me and 4 other guests
• I'll try to do this at least 1 a month or every couple of months
• Will prioritize people that have not participated in the past
• If you're in let me know in discord, will schedule it in the next couple of weeks
• In case you wanna see the playlist with the previous events:
  • https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZWMav2s1MZSKO3uLD5-gB5tK_8lH_rAz
• Discord is only for YouTube members, link to it is here
  • https://discord.gg/D7CZMzw3rM

I need someone to reality-check me on this.

I have 12,000 notes. Meticulously tagged. Linked. Organized into a graph that looks beautiful. I've spent hundreds of hours on this vault.

Yesterday I needed to find my notes on pricing strategy for a project I'm working on. I knew I'd written about it. I searched for it. Found 47 notes that mentioned pricing. Read through seven of them. None had the insight I was looking for because I hadn't written it down, I'd linked to someone else's article about it.

And that's when it hit me. My vault isn't a knowledge system. It's a reference graveyard. I've been filing information instead of processing it. The links look like understanding but they're just proximity. Two notes being connected doesn't mean I've synthesized them.

I'm genuinely questioning whether private knowledge management works at all, or whether the act of organizing for only yourself removes the pressure that forces real understanding.

Has anyone moved away from PKM and found something better? Or am I just using it wrong?

Trying Vanilla Emacs as a Neovim user continues with Day 3, and this time I actually follow the built-in Emacs tutorial.

In this livestream, I keep testing Emacs from the perspective of someone who normally lives inside Neovim, Kitty, macOS, and a keyboard-driven workflow. I go through the basic Emacs movement commands, try to understand Ctrl-F, Ctrl-B, Ctrl-N, Ctrl-P, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, Meta key movement, sentence navigation, undo, and the general Emacs way of thinking.

The unexpected part is how much of this also works in macOS. Emacs-style keybindings are available in many macOS text fields, including apps like TextEdit, browser address bars, and other places where text input exists. So this became more than just “trying Emacs.” It turned into discovering how Emacs, macOS, and text navigation are weirdly connected.

I also compare the Emacs learning curve with learning Vim motions for the first time. At the beginning, everything feels painful, slow, and mentally exhausting, but I already went through that with Vim and Neovim, so I know the friction is part of the process.

This is not me switching to Emacs. I am still a Neovim user. But I want to actually try Emacs properly before saying whether I like it or hate it.

Livestream this came from:
https://youtube.com/live/iXCDQlGM_j4

Interview with Prot:
Deep-Dive with Prot: Emacs, Philosophy, Debian, Life & Open-Source Ethics
https://youtu.be/b4nV0jCHwGQ

Members:
If you want your message read out loud during livestreams, include !say

Example:
!say I have a small pp

Donations of $10 or more on Ko-fi, preferred, or YouTube Super Chats will show up on screen and be read aloud by a computer voice.

Support me:
Buy me the Switch 2:
https://ko-fi.com/linkarzu

Join the YouTube Members:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSIvbFncPSlK6AdwE2QboA/join

My Merch Store:
https://merch.linkarzu.com

My Dotfiles:
https://github.com/linkarzu/dotfiles-latest

Follow me on X:
https://x.com/link_arzu

I finally installed Emacs on macOS as a Neovim user, and brother, this was a completely different world.

Yesterday was a complete fail because I didn’t even manage to install Emacs during the stream, so this time we actually got it installed, opened it, broke it, fixed it, and started figuring out where everything lives.

In this video I install Emacs using Homebrew on macOS, try to understand why there are two Emacs apps, what the client, server, daemon, and “start at login” options mean, and then start building the most basic init.el setup from scratch.

Since I’m coming from Neovim, a lot of the stream is me trying to understand the Emacs way of doing things instead of immediately turning it into Neovim with Evil Mode. We talk about default Emacs keybinds, whether home row mods make Emacs easier, how to open files, how to quit buffers, where the init.el file goes, how to symlink the Emacs config into my dotfiles, how to fix the lexical-binding cookie warning, and how to load the config without restarting Emacs every 30 seconds like a caveman.

We also follow some System Crafters guidance, talk about Prot’s Emacs approach, and slowly start figuring out whether this thing is actually a text editor, an operating system, a cult, or all of the above.

Livestream this came from:
https://youtube.com/live/ooyn60c5UbA

Members:
If you want your message read out loud during livestreams, include !say

Example:
!say I have a small pp

Donations of $10 or more on Ko-fi, preferred, or YouTube Super Chats will show up on screen and be read aloud by a computer voice.

Support me:
Buy me the Switch 2:
https://ko-fi.com/linkarzu

Join the YouTube Members:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSIvbFncPSlK6AdwE2QboA/join

My Merch Store:
https://merch.linkarzu.com

My Dotfiles:
https://github.com/linkarzu/dotfiles-latest

Follow me on X:
https://x.com/link_arzu

macshot keeps getting closer to becoming a real CleanShot X replacement on macOS.

In this video I test the latest macshot updates after giving feedback in a previous livestream. The developer already added freeform screenshots, locked aspect ratio screenshots, custom aspect ratios, one finger swipe to dismiss the floating thumbnail, and fixes for several editing bugs I found before.

I go through what works now, what still feels different compared to CleanShot X, and which features still need improvement. This includes custom screenshot sizes for things like Reddit banners, saving edits without extra prompts, clearing screenshot history before livestreams, AVIF export support, modified-time sorting in the history panel, and a remaining issue with the Vivid filter.

I also test macshot with real screenshot editing workflows, beautify settings, recent captures, floating thumbnail behavior, and multi-monitor screenshots on macOS. The app is still not perfect, but seeing the developer listen to feedback and ship fixes this quickly makes macshot one of the most interesting open source screenshot tools for macOS right now.

He also joined us during the livestream https://youtube.com/live/e73MKa3ILKw

macshot: https://github.com/sw33tLie/macshot

Ghostty is getting a lot of attention, but there are still Kitty features that keep me from switching.

In this video I show one of the big ones: Kitty terminal scrollback opened directly inside Neovim 0.12, with colors, clipboard copy, normal Neovim motions, Flash.nvim jumps, and no extra Kitty scrollback plugin.

The important Neovim 0.12 part is that Kitty can send the scrollback into Neovim using the built-in terminal buffer behavior, while preserving the terminal colors. In my Kitty config, I map kitty_mod + z to open the current scrollback in Neovim, start at the bottom of the output, make it read-only, and let me press q to quit back to Kitty.

That means I can open terminal history, navigate command output, search scrollback, jump around with Flash.nvim, select text, yank it to the clipboard, and return to the terminal cleanly. No tmux needed for this, and no separate Kitty scrollback plugin needed.

I also compare this with why Ghostty and WezTerm do not fully replace Kitty for my workflow right now. Kitty gives me sessions, floating windows, bookmark workflows, smooth pixel scrolling / partial scrolling, terminal progress support, and a lot of extensibility. Ghostty is still installed on my machine as a backup terminal, but Kitty is still the terminal that fits my workflow best.

The main topic is Kitty scrollback with Neovim 0.12, but I also talk about Kitty sessions, why I moved away from tmux, how I open groups of terminal bookmarks, how Kitty handles scrollback colors, and why features like pixel scrolling make the terminal feel smoother.

This is useful if you are configuring Kitty, Neovim 0.12, Ghostty, WezTerm, terminal scrollback, scrollback pager, terminal history, terminal colors, clipboard copy, Kitty sessions, tmux alternatives, Ghostty vs Kitty, WezTerm vs Kitty, kitty.conf, pixel scrolling, partial scrolling, or a keyboard-focused terminal workflow on macOS or Linux.

Link to full livestream: https://youtube.com/live/SVT9F_5vogA

Links mentioned:

Clear data on exit issue: https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/108

My dotfiles: https://github.com/linkarzu/dotfiles-latest

Official website: https://linkarzu.com

Podcast / interviews playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZWMav2s1MZRr93uiz6vjEWCdXL93QzGz

Support the channel:

YouTube Members: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSIvbFncPSlK6AdwE2QboA/join

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/linkarzu

Merch: https://merch.linkarzu.com/

I enabled text-to-speech on my livestream and it was way more fun than expected.

What started as a simple test of Helium Browser, browser privacy, and clearing data on exit turned into complete chat chaos. We tested TTS, chat destroyed the pronunciation, memberships got gifted, Ko-fi donations started coming in, Rumen got competition as the channel sugar daddy, and somehow we ended up talking about Helium, vibe-coded apps, Markdown Oxide, Obsidian, Neovim notes, Emacs, YouTube, and the Nintendo Switch fund.

This is basically what happens when you give livestream chat a voice.

Link to full livestream https://youtube.com/live/SVT9F_5vogA

Links mentioned:

Clear data on exit issue https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/108

Support the channel: YouTube Members https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSIvbFncPSlK6AdwE2QboA/join

Ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/linkarzu

Merch https://merch.linkarzu.com/

My dotfiles https://github.com/linkarzu/dotfiles-latest

Official website https://linkarzu.com

Podcast / interviews playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZWMav2s1MZRr93uiz6vjEWCdXL93QzGz

I tried Helium Browser to see if it could replace Brave on macOS.

The main thing I wanted was a Chromium-based browser that still works well with PWAs / web apps, because I use a lot of them every day: YouTube Studio, WhatsApp, and other pinned web apps. Brave has worked well for me, but there are a few UI things that still annoy me, especially around vertical tabs and hiding browser chrome.

I installed Helium for the first time during a livestream and honestly, I loved it. The frameless mode with vertical tabs is exactly the kind of browser layout I wanted, and one small thing that really impressed me is that Helium shows a notification when I copy the current URL with a keyboard shortcut. I could not get Brave to behave like that, and in Vivaldi I had to hack around it with custom commands.

The only real problem I found is with clearing browser data on exit.

When I livestream, I like clearing my browsing history and download history when I close the browser, because I do not want to accidentally show private history or downloads when I reopen it on stream. But I do not want to clear cookies and site data, because then I would have to log into every site again every time I reopen the browser.

In Brave, I can choose exactly what gets cleared on exit. In Helium, I tested the helium://flags/#clear-data-on-exit option, but it clears everything, including cookies. For my use case, I need more control over what gets cleared.

Related Helium issue:
https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/108

Related livestream: Trying Browsers, can Helium Replace Brave? https://youtube.com/live/SyIveywcOpo

Things covered:

• Installing Helium Browser on macOS
• Why I need a Chromium-based browser
• Brave vs Helium for vertical tabs
• PWAs and web apps
• Compact layout and frameless mode
• Hiding the browser UI
• Custom browser shortcuts
• Duplicating tabs
• Copying the current URL
• Clearing history on exit
• The problem with clearing cookies on exit
• Using Helium as the default browser
• My first impressions after switching from Brave

I’ve been looking for a good CleanShot X replacement on macOS, preferably something open source, and the whole search has honestly been kind of depressing.

There are new apps for everything now, every single day, and a lot of them look great from the website, screenshots, or README. But once I actually install them and try to use them in a real workflow, many of them feel unfinished, fragile, or like they were thrown together very quickly. I tested a few screenshot apps that gave me that exact feeling, and it made me feel pretty disappointed with the current state of macOS utility apps.

I even skipped macshot in my first attempt, but I decided to give it a try.

It is still not perfect, and I found bugs and missing features, but it is the first open-source screenshot app I’ve tested that actually feels close enough to my CleanShot X workflow to be worth following.

I made a video going through what works, what still breaks, and what I think would make it a real CleanShot X replacement.

macshot:
https://github.com/sw33tLie/macshot

The main things I liked:

• Screenshot history
  • You can go back to previous screenshots
  • You can reopen them and edit them again
• Editable annotations
  • This is a big one for me
  • I don’t want arrows, numbers, and drawings burned into the image immediately
• Quick capture
  • Works well for my normal screenshot workflow
  • Screenshot goes straight to clipboard
• Scrolling screenshots
  • I tested this and it worked better than I expected
• WebP export
  • Useful for smaller files

The missing features I would really like to see:

• Fixed aspect ratio screenshots
  • Square screenshots
  • 16:9 screenshots for thumbnails
  • Custom ratios for things like Reddit banners
• AVIF export
  • I use AVIF a lot for blog posts and images in my workflow
• A way to clear screenshot history from a shortcut or URL scheme
  • Very useful for streaming or recording
  • Sometimes screenshot history can include work-related or private stuff
• A toggle to save edits without asking every time
• A toggle to save from the floating thumbnail without asking for location and filename
• One-finger swipe to dismiss the floating thumbnail, like CleanShot X

Bugs I found while testing:

• Moving existing annotations did not always trigger a save prompt
• Beautify did not always ask to save after quitting
• Beautify seems to become destructive after saving
• The Vivid filter can break the image preview when switching between filters

Overall, I’m not saying macshot fully replaces CleanShot X yet, but it is the closest open-source option I’ve tried so far for my actual daily screenshot workflow.

Curious if anyone here is already using macshot, or if there are other OPEN SOURCE macOS screenshot

This tool seems to cover the requirements I have for screenshots, and it's open source too, which is great! I'll be daily driving it for a few days and will be reporting any issues/problems I find here!

Finding a real CleanShot X replacement on macOS is harder than just installing another screenshot app.

In this video I test whether free, open-source, or cheaper screenshot tools can replace the parts of CleanShot X I actually use every day: screenshot history, editable annotations, capture previous area, fixed aspect ratios for thumbnails and posts, scrolling screenshots, OCR, opening images from the clipboard, and quick screen recording.

I discuss a few tools like BetterShot, Shottr, the built-in macOS screenshot app, macshot, Capso, and Flameshot to see which ones get close and which features are missing. Some of them are decent, some are more limited, and some do not fit the workflow I need for making videos, thumbnails, posts, and quick screenshots at work.

This is not a full benchmark or a polished review. It is a practical test of whether I can stop using CleanShot X without breaking the screenshot workflow I rely on