Updated: 17th October 2023
GUI Software
Name | Price | in use by me | Description |
---|---|---|---|
aldente | Free/ 23.80€ | ✅ | A battery charge limiter (The service life of Li-Ion batteries is significantly extended by charging them to no more than 80% on a daily basis). https://apphousekitchen.com/ or “brew install --cask aldente” |
amethyst | Free | ✅ | Tiling Window Manager for macOS - handy if you prefer this a tiling workflow, like I do. https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst or “brew install --cask amethyst” |
Amphetamine | Free | ✅ | Powerful keep-awake utility. Prevents the Mac from going into sleep mode. Useful if you want to keep an app visible (filming a clock for camera sync or watching movies with e.g. iPad apps) or if you just want the Mac to keep computing your R scripts when you are on your lunch break. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704 or “mas install 937984704” |
Bartender 4 | Trial/ 18€ | ❌ | Menu Bar Manager. The Bartender Bar is a way solution to not lose access to status bar icons that disappear behind the notch. See iBar for a less feature rich but free alternative. https://www.macbartender.com/ or “brew install bartender” |
blackhole-2ch | Free | ✅ | ❗ OBS has native support for sound recording on macOS 13 “Ventura” or later ❗ Enables sound recording from output devices with software like OBS. https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole or “brew install blackhole-2ch” |
Celluloid | Free | ✅ | IINA alternative for linux https://github.com/celluloid-player/celluloid/ |
cyberduck | Free | ❌ | SFTP Client. https://cyberduck.io/ or “brew install --cask cyberduck” |
disk-inventory-x | Free | ✅ | WinDirStat Style hard disk space usage analysis tool “brew install --cask disk-inventory-x” |
Dropover | Free | ❌ | Create a temporary floating and shareable space to collect files, links, clipboards, and more with a simple drag and drop. https://dropoverapp.com/ |
handbrake | Free | ✅ | Free and open source video converter “brew install --cask handbrake” |
hiddenbar | Free | ❌ | Menu Bar Manager. Hide elements from the menu bar - otherwise, some icons might disappear behind the notch. Who thought that this is a good behavior apple? “brew install --cask hiddenbar” |
iBar | Free | ✅ | Menu Bar Manager. Provides the ability to add icons to an overflow menu that would otherwise be hidden by the notch. I can’t believe this is necessary when macOS should have handled this natively. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ibar-menubar-icon-control-tool/id6443843900 or “mas install 6443843900” |
IINA | Free | ✅ | MPV video player front-end for macOS - MPV is in my opinion the best video player available. “brew install --cask IINA”; https://github.com/IINA/IINA |
iterm2 | Free | ✅ | I’m a Powerline10k user, and macOS’s default terminal can’t display my font/themes correctly. 😕 “brew install --cask iterm2” |
keka | Free | ✅ | Free tool for compressing files. “brew install --cask keka” |
krita | Free | ✅ | Free and open source image editor (Supports Photoshop files) “brew install --cask krita” |
Later | Free | ❌ | Manually safe a current session of open programs and reopen them later. Useful for example if you need a clean desktop for a presentation. https://getlater.app/ |
maccy | Free | ✅ | Clipboard history manager. Paste without formatting (WIN/LINUX SHIFT+CMD+V) is apparently missing in OSX. Maccy allows removing formatting from the clipboard and also provides a very handy history for it. “brew install --cask maccy” |
macfuse | Free | ✅ | Mount SSHFS, NTFS and EXT (Windows/Linux External hard disks and USB sticks) file systems on MAC. Requires the installation of kernel modules. |
MacTeX | Free | ✅ | Easiest way to install a working LaTeX runtime on your Mac, since it comes with all necessary dependencies. Make sure to open the bundled “TeX Live Utility” before first use and every once in a while to “Update all packages” to their newest version. This may avoid issues with incompatibilities, bugs or other annoyances. https://www.tug.org/mactex/ or “brew install --cask mactex” |
Magnet | Free | ✅ | Must-have for most people, adds window management similar to what you find windows (drag windows to screen edges to make the full screen or use the right/left side of your screen). Alternative: Rectangle ⬇️ https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/index.html or “mas install 441258766” |
mpv.net | Free | ✅ | IINA alternative for windows https://github.com/mpvnet-player/mpv.net |
obs | Free | ✅ | The Go-To Tool for Screen Recordings |
onlyoffice | Free | ✅ | Great MS Office alternative |
Orion Browser | Free | ✅ | Orion Browser by Kagi- a Safari clone, that supports Firefox and Chrome Extensions! |
Rectangle | Free/ 9.99€ | ❔ | Must-have for most people, adds window management similar to what you find windows (drag widows to screen edges to make the full screen or use the right/left side of your screen). Easier to use alternative to amethyst, highly recommended. Another alternative: Magnet ⬆️ https://rectangleapp.com/ |
skim | Free | ❌ | PDF Viewer with focus on annotating work |
stats | Free | ✅ | Displays system information in the top menu bar. |
synergy | 29€/ 59€ | ✅ | Software KVM tool to control multiple PCs with a single mouse/keyboard combination. https://symless.com/synergy / Like Universal Control, but works with Windows/Linux too |
tigervnc-viewer | Free | ❌ | VNC Remote desktop tool |
Velja | Free | ❌ | By service browser/app selector. For example: open YouTube links in Firefox, Netflix in Safari, and any other link in something else; and more. |
visual-studio-code | Free | ✅ | Very good text and code editor. |
zotero | Free | ✅ | Great citation tool |
Recommended resource for more:
- Awesome Mac (https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac)
CLI Software
Name | Price | in use by me | Description |
---|---|---|---|
aria2 | Free | ✅ | Very powerful download manager |
brew | Free | ✅ | Package manager for MAC. You don’t have to search the web for Software anymore!!! Just type e.g. “brew install firefox” into your terminal, and you are ready to go! Also works with almost every recommended software in this document. Highly recommended! See https://brew.sh/ |
btop | Free | ✅ | A powerful and good-looking activity monitor for use in the terminal |
docker | Free | ✅ | Running Linux Docker container under in Mac |
ffmpeg | Free | ✅ | FFmpeg is a free and open source software for processing video, audio and other multimedia files and streams. |
ImageMagick | Free | ✅ | Very powerful tool for converting files (e.g. “convert image.png image.jpg” or mp4, PDF, mp3, etc.) |
Mac App Store CLI | Free | ✅ | A simple command line interface for the Mac App Store. Designed for scripting and automation. https://github.com/mas-cli/mas or “brew install mas” |
neofetch | Free | ✅ | Display information about your system in a fancy way within your terminal |
pv | Free | ✅ | Measure terminal “pipe” speeds |
scrcpy | Free | ✅ | View and remotely control Android devices on Mac |
speedtest-cli | Free | ✅ | Test internet speed |
tree | Free | ✅ | Display directory structures in the terminal |
Quick look extensions
Name | Price | in use by me | Description |
---|---|---|---|
QLMarkdown | Free | ✅ | Renders Markdown files - https://github.com/sbarex/QLMarkdown |
QLVideo | Free | ✅ | Previews more video types - https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo |
SourceCodeSyntaxHighlighting | Free | ✅ | Colors source code - https://github.com/sbarex/SourceCodeSyntaxHighlight |
Recommended resource for more:
- Quick Look plugins (https://github.com/sindresorhus/quick-look-plugins)
Browser extensions (Firefox/Chrome/Orion Browser)
Name | Price | in use by me | Description |
---|---|---|---|
ClearURLs | Free | ✅ | Removes trackers from URLs, hence makes them shorter and easier to share. |
Decentraleyes | Free | ✅ | Intelligent local (offline) caching of shared website content to reduce tracking and speed up website loading times. |
SponsorBlock for YouTube | Free | ✅ | Automatically skips intros and things. |
uBlock Origin | Free | ✅ | THE one and only best ad blocker, please don’t use anything else. (It’s important to note that not all ads are malicious. If you want to ensure that the websites you like continue to exist, consider adding them to your ad-blocker’s whitelist.) |
uMatrix | Free | ✅ | Advanced script and content blocker, for those for whom uBlock Origin is not enough. Warning: Can be confusing to new users! |
Visual Studio Code extensions
Name | Price | in use by me | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Code Spell Checker | Free | ✅ | Useful especially if you use VS Code for latex and other documents. |
Format in context menus | Free | ✅ | If you want to batch process multiple files to run a formatter. |
GitLens | Free | ✅ | The one best UI-Tool for git. |
LaTeX Workshop | Free | ✅ | Visual Studio Code extension for creating and editing latex documents. In my opinion, the best way to use latex. |
LTeX | Free | ✅ | Very highly recommended spellchecker that is more specific for Latex, Markdown and others. It also catches grammar and other high level mistakes |
PlatformIO IDE | Free | ✅ | Makes Visual Studio Code one of the best development environments for any microcontroller I’ve encountered so far. |
Rainbow CSV | Free | ✅ | Handy if you want to edit CSV files. It can align columns, search with SQL queries and color individual columns to better distinguish them. |
Remote (- SSH) | Free | ✅ | Allows you to work on projects on other computers, environments, or in containers from your personal machine remotely via SSH. |
Sort lines | Free | ✅ | Very useful for Markdown tables like this one. In fact, I used it to sort all the tables in this document! |
todo Tree | Free | ✅ | Leave To do tags in code comments and come back to them later. |
Trailing Spaces | Free | ✅ | I personally hate it when files have trailing spaces. At worst, they can cause problems and at best they are just ugly. Use this to keep your files clean. |
vscode-mwel | Free | ✅ | This extension adds language support for mWorks Experiment Language (MWEL) to Visual Studio Code. It’s maintained by me 😃 |
Worth mentioning
Name | Price | in use by me | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Bitwarden | Free | ✅ | A password manager I use. I highly recommend using a password manager in general! However, there are some security implications to storing all your passwords in one place. I would like you to do your own research, therefore this is not a recommendation for Bitwarden! |
Ventoy | Free | ✅ | Creates USB sticks from which you can boot any ISO you have previously copied to it (very handy if you regularly install different operating systems) |