My Mac is essentially always on, because I always have apps running and browser tabs open. If I shutdown my laptop, that means all of that gets closed, which I’m okay with. What I’m not okay with is having to open all of it back up again. It took me ages to find all of those panda cam video screenshots; am I just supposed to do all of that “research” again? No thanks!
What I need is an app that will save all of my open windows, tabs and applications and open them back up for me when I’m ready. Cupcloud says it can do just that, so I gave the beta a try. I’ll let you know how it goes and whether it’s worth a download.
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Pick Up Where You Left Off
Essentially, Cupcloud saves just where I am and what I’m doing on my Mac so I can pick back up in the same place at a later time. Hit Cup, and Cupcloud will remember what I’ve got going on, including what websites I have open and any files or folders I’m looking at. When I clicked Uncup, all of that opened back up, just where I had left off in the appropriate applications, which is the important part. I don’t want to just look at my Word documents in Finder, I want them to open up in Microsoft Word, and Cupcloud will make that happen.
Save your open windows and come back to them later.
I use my computer for work and everything personal, too, so I ended up with a lot of unrelated cups. Luckily, I could create a bunch of folders to organize all of that. I made some for work, sure, but I’m planning a huge holiday party, and that got its own folder, too. All of my cups were private by default, but I could share them, and all of those showed up in the Shared folder.
Let’s just be honest and admit we all get distracted and often find ourselves with extra open windows that don’t have anything to do with the task at hand. Yeah, Cupcloud saved everything I had open, including my thirteen Pinterest tabs and all of my searches for early Black Friday ads. It probably would have been in my best interest to clean some of that up before I cupped my session, but when I forgot, Cupcloud let me edit a cup. Everything in a cup is listed on the right, and I just deleted anything that wasn’t relevant.
Save as many cups as you need or want, with as many windows as you require.
Cupcloud is a pretty simple service, but it’s going to fill a pretty large gap for some people. It is certainly a service, though, and not just an app; I had to sign up before I could get going and then sign in again each time I used Cupcloud. There’s an automatic login, though, and Cupcloud remembered my password information for me.
App Compatibility
I certainly liked being able to save everything I was doing and come back to it later. There are already some pretty banging extensions that will do this in Chrome, my browser of choice. My favorite flavor saves sessions automatically, so I can usually go back and find anything really important, lost forever in the sands of time thought it may seem. While that’s pretty great, it only saves browser sessions and not everything I’m working on outside of Chrome. Though I’m pretty browser dependent, it’s great to have those Finder sessions saved, too.
With a premium account, you can share your cups.
Unfortunately, the list of compatible apps is pretty limited. Cupcloud seems to work with all of the major browsers, so if your favorite doesn’t have a nifty extension like mine to save your sessions, Cupcloud can handle that for you. The app is worth the download if only just for that, but there is more compatibility, don’t worry. Cupcloud also works with Microsoft Word, et. al., iWork, Acrobat, and Finder. That’s it for now, but the developer plans to add more apps to the list.
Final Thoughts
Still in beta, Cupcloud is a neat little app for sort of bookmarking where I am in a project and returning to the same spot, but I could always just pop all of my favorite apps on the Dock or set everything I need to open on login. Cupcloud certainly makes the process easier, but it’s not exactly revolutionary. The real value comes from sharing cups with coworkers or project collaborators. Shared cups makes it easy for fellows to hop in and out and pick up where I’ve left off.
There are a few options, but there’s not much customization to this beta.
Shared cups are part of the premium Cupcloud service, though, and are only available for an additional fee. The number of uncups is limited with the free app, too, so there’s more to the premium service than just sharing. The ingenuity of Cupcloud lies in sharing those cups, though, and the free version of Cupcloud, unfortunately, wasn’t a lot to write home about.
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