The Week in Mac Apps: Speed up your typing with TypeIt4Me

From file management to secure online backups, this week’s roundup of new Mac apps has it all.

Devotion8’s $2 AppGenome ( Mac App Store Link) lets you create a desktop app that links to a specific website—a bit like the “Add to Home Screen” feature you find in iOS’s version of Safari.

AppGenome automatically sizes the app window to fit your screen, and shows you a handy floating menu for additional control over its behavior. You can also set whether you want to load the full desktop or mobile version of each website to better suit your needs.

If you are a TV aficionado, Patrick Dinger’s $8 Episodes ( Mac App Store Link) can help you organize all your favorite shows in an intuitive dashboard where you can sort, play, and categorize the episodes of each series.

You can import videos from multiple sources, including ripped DVDs and video files that reside all over your Mac, and Episodes automatically groups them according to series and season. When you’re ready to watch a show, the app launches it directly in your favorite video player.

Shiny Frog’s Image2icon ( Mac App Store Link) spruces up your folders and files by helping you decorate them with custom images and icon templates.

The app can import and export icons in a variety of formats (though some require a small in-app purchase). If you don’t like your end results, Image2icon even lets you undo your work, returning files and folders to their original look.

Pen and paper may be a thing of the past with Pomegranate Apps’s $100 MathStudio ( Mac App Store Link), which helps you solve complicated math problems—from basic calculations to college-level scientific challenges.

MathStudio understands all kinds of expressions, and can even plot different type of graphs based on complicated algebra problems. It fully integrates with Time Machine, and syncs across multiple devices using iCloud. You can also access an online version of the app through your web browser.

Oktoid’s $4 OneWaySync ( Mac App Store Link) makes quick work of creating mirror copies of existing folders for backup and archival purposes.

The app’s intuitive interface allows you to configure as many sync operations as you need, gives you the option to avoid deleting copied files if they no longer exist at the source, and supports running multiple jobs at the same time.

When Time Machine is not enough, Serpico Investment’s Shadow Stream Pro ( Mac App Store Link) offers advanced backup capabilities for your most sensitive data.

The app automatically detects changes to your documents, and immediately generates encrypted incremental backups in a location of your choice, such as an external hard drive, your iCloud Drive account, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft’s OneDrive. Naturally, you get to choose which files are earmarked for safekeeping, decide how often your backups run, and safely recover your files whenever you need.

With 64 readily available languages, BUDDAx2’s $3 Troga ( Mac App Store Link) helps you when you are having trouble getting your message across.

The app lets you set up favorite words or sentences you use often, supports handy shortcuts to quickly switch between languages, and can be synced over iCloud to keep your preferences up to date everywhere.

Maximize your productivity with Riccardo Ettore’s $5 TypeIt4Me ( Mac App Store Link), which lets you create a library of abbreviations and type up frequently-used words and sentences with just a few keystrokes.

The app automatically corrects typos, capitalizes new sentences, and comes with built-in support for rich-text formatting—including the ability to insert pictures. For the curious mind, TypeIt4Me even generates statistics that tell you how much time you save by not having to type everything.

If you ever need to access Windows or Linux software, you can use Veertu Labs’s Veertu ( Mac App Store Link) to create and run virtual machines right on your Mac.

Vertuu, which needs a mere 20MB of hard drive space to run, is completely integrated with OS X’s Hyper-V features, giving your virtual machine control over everything from power management to external hardware. It supports full-screen mode, allows you to copy and paste data between OS X and Windows, and can even share folders between OS X and your virtual operating system to keep your files easily accessible everywhere you need them.