I have a few favourites
ControlPlane https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane
Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
21–30 of 232 posts
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#22There are better tools than a hex editor or system monitor (why do you want to constantly be bothered how well your hardware is performing?).
Unclutter - This gives you a nice non intrusive "memo zone" as well as manage your clipboard, so that copying password won't lose your user name into limbo.
BetterTouchTools - Who'll live without this one? Just give "three fingers swipe down" mapped to cmd-w and your life will be quite that much better. No more click at the upper corner tiny button to close a window which is an insanely dumb usability. Add several more to your likings and your life is even rosier.
And use a password manager, so that a new login made from your phone will be on your mac without effort and nothing gets lost on clean install even if you forget to export them if they're saved in the cloud, not to mention you can have randomized password for every site, but make sure to secure the master password with 2fa.
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#23There are better tools than a hex editor or system monitor (why do you want to constantly be bothered how well your hardware is performing?). Unclutter - This gives you a nice non intrusive "memo zone" as well as manage your clipboard, so that copying password won't lose your user name into limbo. BetterTouchTools - Who'll live without this one? Just give "three fingers swipe down" mapped to cmd-w and your life will…
A free alternative to BTT trackpad gestures is jitouch2 (https://www.jitouch.com). It's not as versatile and no longer maintained, but works well for most use cases even in the latest version of MacOS.
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#24There are better tools than a hex editor or system monitor (why do you want to constantly be bothered how well your hardware is performing?). Unclutter - This gives you a nice non intrusive "memo zone" as well as manage your clipboard, so that copying password won't lose your user name into limbo. BetterTouchTools - Who'll live without this one? Just give "three fingers swipe down" mapped to cmd-w and your life will…
A free alternative to BTT trackpad gestures is jitouch2 ( https://www.jitouch.com ). It's not as versatile and no longer maintained, but works well for most use cases even in the latest version of MacOS.
I just don't get why custom gesture mapping isn't implemented in macOS itself.
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#25There are better tools than a hex editor or system monitor (why do you want to constantly be bothered how well your hardware is performing?). Unclutter - This gives you a nice non intrusive "memo zone" as well as manage your clipboard, so that copying password won't lose your user name into limbo. BetterTouchTools - Who'll live without this one? Just give "three fingers swipe down" mapped to cmd-w and your life will…
A free alternative to BTT trackpad gestures is jitouch2 ( https://www.jitouch.com ). It's not as versatile and no longer maintained, but works well for most use cases even in the latest version of MacOS.
Thanks for the recommendation. I paid for BTT, and find it very unstable. More often than not the custom snap windows function just doesn't work. That's the only reason I bought it.
I used to be able to restart BTT and snapping would work again, but that is no longer effective in the latest version. I guess the fact that it even has a "restart" option in its drop-down menu should have been a hint.
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few tips for Spotlight that made me stop using apps like Quicksilver and Alfred: 1. Typing something and pressing CMD+B will open a browser and do a Google search for that 2. Typing math works now 3. You can change your Spotlight preferences to not include files you don't wanna search on, essentially always showing apps (if you just want it do be an app launcher) Alfred does a lot more than this, but for me these w…
I just don't see the need when I can just open a new browser tab and type to search or launch the calculator app?
Because you don't need to open a new browser window or launch a calculator app. You just press a hot key and it's there.
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#27There are better tools than a hex editor or system monitor (why do you want to constantly be bothered how well your hardware is performing?). Unclutter - This gives you a nice non intrusive "memo zone" as well as manage your clipboard, so that copying password won't lose your user name into limbo. BetterTouchTools - Who'll live without this one? Just give "three fingers swipe down" mapped to cmd-w and your life will…
It's a list of macOS-only (with one exception) apps that I use with a bias towards lesser-known things. I use 1Password but it's not fully macOS-only and is widely known. I also use BetterTouchTool and it's nice, but the stuff I use all the time is mostly in Hammerspoon. Having a power meter is how I find out when stuff is tanking my battery life, and like I said I use the weather widget a lot. I use Hex Fiend more than lots of other apps since I like implementing binary formats and doing CTF reverse-engineering contests.
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#28> cmd+backtick is like cmd+tab but between windows of the same app. Well, I wish that were completely true, because cmd+backtick only cycles through the windows of the application, while cmd+tab lets you select the application you want. From Ubuntu (or maybe rather Ubuntu's default desktop environment?) I am used to cmd+backtick allowing me to select the window - I did find an application that does enable this behavi…
Wow Contexts looks incredibly well designed. I'm not sure I'll actually use it over my current Hammerspoon setup, but they combine all my favorite quick selection techniques like smart ordering, fuzzy matching, providing two-character hints which will definitely select a certain item, persisting things to keep hints consistent, shortcuts where you press a modifier type and then release to activate ... What I really w…
It seems to be unmaintained.
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#29My tips: 1. Forget Finder, it is just bad for any power user scenario, and IMO worst part of Mac OS. Use Forklift or other similar app for all GUI file management operations. 2. Never drag and drop (this applies to any OS). Early release can cause all kinds of issues. 3. Make sure that you have fast access to Activity Monitor, since some GUI applications do not show any reasonable progress indicators when they start…
1. This. The only thing I miss from Windows is Explorer. I just can't understand how macOS dev feels Finder would work like that for 20 years without much change. It resets the config and the window size for a folder at every random occasion, creates .DS_Store garbage all over, you cannot even cut files and just feels uneasy. I even enable "Quit Finder" menu and get it out of my app cycle list but it randomly resurre…
creates .DS_Store garbage all over
Has Windows stopped polluting the world with Thumbs_db files? I hate when I see those things on a server.
Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
#30> cmd+shift+4 pops up a crosshair to take a screenshot of a region.
If you hit space at after invoking the crosshairs then you can take full window screenshots. This mode is nice for marketing material as it also captures the drop shadow and rounded corners rendered properly as a transparent png.