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thealanberman/mac_recommendations.md

Last active August 8, 2023 16:25
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My Mac Recommendations
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mac_recommendations.md

macOS Recommendations

General Utilities

  • Rectangle — a free option for window snapping/arrangement stuff.
  • AltTab — an improved window switcher with some decent customizability
  • Shifty — a macOS "night shift" slider
  • Raycast — Spotlight replacement, somewhat like Alfred, but free and more customizable
  • Better Touch Tool — not free, but worth every penny. Pretty awesome window snapping/arrangement capabilties (like Rectangle but MOAR), and lets you create shortcuts for keyboard/mouse/touchpad/touchbar/etc.
  • Keka — compression utility that handles 7zip, rar, and some other archive formats that don't work natively in macOS.
  • NameChanger — batch file-renamer with a handy intuitive UI
  • Choosy — not free, but if you have more than one browser or if you plan to juggle multiple browser profiles on a work machine, this can be configured to do things like "always open twitter in my personal profile" and "always open mycompany.com in the work profile"
  • Caffeine — prevents the screensaver. Depending on your company's policies, this may come in handy on occasion.
  • GrandPerspective — visually inspect your HDD to see what's taking up all the space.
  • TinkerTool — tweak a lot of under-the-hood settings in macOS
  • RCDefaultApp — change the default app for opening various types of links
  • Tailscale — dead simple VPN solution. Allows you to connect between your devices with pretty close to no configuration needed. Not just for macOS.
  • Syncthing — P2P continuous file synchronization program. Like Dropbox, but without the middleman.
  • iTerm2 — wayyy better than the built in Terminal. A must have if you do a fair bit of command line activity.
  • LaunchControl — handy GUI for managing launchd services. (launchd is the service manager for macOS.)
  • Hammerspoon — automate macOS with lua scripts, because Applescript is annoying.

Security

I'm not a fan of traditional anti-virus software, but these 2 utilities make it fairly painless to avoid most bad stuff.

  • LuLu — firewall that aims to block unknown outgoing connections
  • KnockKnock — shows persistently installed software (a.k.a. what runs on startup)

Messaging

  • Signal — free, fully encrypted open source messenger service. Not just for macOS.

Media Players / Readers

  • Hermes — super minimal menubar Pandora music client. Mysteriously removes ads even if you only have a free account. :mind-blown:
  • IINA — slick media player that plays just about every file type (mkv, mp4, mp3, flac, ogg, etc)
  • YACReader — Yet Another Comic Reader (reads .cbr and .cbz formats)

Graphics Editors

  • Pixelmator Pro — a damn fine Photoshop alternative for about 1/10th the price. This is my go-to these days, as I'm not big on the new Adobe subscription model. :\
  • Vectornator — free vector graphics app. An Adobe Illustrator competitor.
  • LICECap — screen capture to a GIF. Good for simple "click here then here" type stuff.

Video Utilities

Audio

Ebooks

  • Sigil — .epub (ebook) editor
  • Calibre - ebook utility for converting formats, editing, organizing, etc.

Markdown Editors / Local Notes

Huh? Don't know what Markdown is?

Command Line things

All these apps can be installed via Homebrew.

  • bat - an improved cat
  • choose - human-friendly alternative to cut and awk
  • croc - share files between computers easily
  • dc3dd - an improved dd with progress bars, etc
  • dockutil - manipulate the macOS dock from the CLI
  • duf - an improved df
  • dust - an improved du
  • fd - a simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to find
  • ffmpeg - a very fast video and audio converter
  • fzy - a fuzzy text selector menu
  • git-delta - syntax-highlighting pager for git and diff output
  • git-interactive-rebase-tool - does what it says on the tin
  • gron - converts JSON to a grep-able format (and back)
  • ijq - interactive jq, like jqplay, but in your terminal
  • jq - a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor
  • jless - a CLI JSON viewer (though I think I like ijq more)
  • lazydocker - a terminal UI for managing Docker
  • lazygit - simple terminal UI for git commands
  • mcfly - improved ctrl-r shell history search
  • mtr - traceroute and ping in a single tool
  • navi - Interactive cheatsheet tool for the command-line
  • ncdu - ncurses du replacement/improvement
  • pipenv - Python dependency management tool
  • pipx - execute binaries from Python packages in isolated environments
  • procs - modern replacement for ps
  • progress - progress viewer for cp, mv, and more
  • pv - monitor data's progress through a pipe
  • ripgrep - blazingly fast replacement for grep
  • sd - an intuitive find & replace utility. sed for humans.
  • shellcheck - static analysis and lint tool for bash scripts
  • tealdeer - fast implementation of tldr in Rust
  • tfenv - much like pyenv or rbenv, lets you manage terraform versions
  • thefuck - programmatically correct mistyped console commands
  • tig - Text interface for Git repositories
  • tmux - Terminal multiplexer like screen but better
  • tree - Display directories as trees (with optional color/HTML output)
  • xh - Friendly and fast tool for sending HTTP requests (HTTPie alternative)
  • yt-dlp - download youtube videos or audio. Also works on many other sites.
  • yq - like jq but for YAML
  • z - Tracks most-used directories to make cd smarter
  • zenith - a top replacement with fancier output. Also see bottom.

Non-Homebrew CLI things

  • bottom (not available via brew)
  • marker (not available via brew)
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