CLEVER CALCULATOR

Play with numbers using an app that’s part notepad, part calculator

Use Soulver 3 to make everything add up

IT wILL TAKE

15 minutes

yOu wILL LEARn

How to get to grips with Soulver 3’s best new features

yOu’LL nEEd

macOS 10.14 or later, Soulver 3 Traditional calculators lack context. Spreadsheets add context – but also complexity. Soulver has always been a halfway point between these extremes. It’s the digital equivalent of jotting down sums on the back of an envelope – a magical envelope that tots up the answers for you.

Because of its natural language smarts, this means you can type something like ‘3 nights at £149’ and Souvler will extract the important bits, placing £447 in the totals column. Totals from answers can then be used as dynamic tokens in subsequent lines, creating living documents that can be updated as and when you need to.

Souvler’s creator likens it to a playground for numbers – and that seems about right. The app’s a great option for playing with figures, with text alongside for reference and a greater understanding of what those figures mean. As you can see from the annotated screenshot above, it’s a more natural way to work with numbers.

New features

With version 3, Soulver adds plenty of new features. For example, there’s support for Dark Mode, and handy new keyboard shortcuts: ç+å+…/ae keys now bump lines; ç+L followed by a number enables you to insert an answer token without your hands leaving the keyboard. Several more of these new additions are explored in our walkthrough.

You can download a free 30-day trial of Soulver 3 from soulver.app. Thereafter, it’s a one-time $29.95 (about £24) purchase.

Soulver is like a playground for numbers; it’s a great option for playing with figures

3 4 1 Souvler sheets Documents live in the sheets sidebar, which is turned on and off using the View menu. 2 Blank canvas The main workspace in Souvler starts off empty. Interact with it as you would a basic text editor. The totals bar As you write sums, running totals appear here. You can get an optional grand total at the bottom. Preferences The app’s prefs define how sheets are ordered, and the behaviour and styling of the main editor.

Not keen on Soulver’s theme? Use the Styling section of the preferences to adjust the font, font size, and colours for things like numbers, operators and variables.