Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 265 posts

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#221

Post by orhanerday »

Most Important Apps

- Amphetamine: A powerful tool to prevent your Mac from sleeping or going into standby mode, useful for extended work sessions.

- Rectangle: A window management app that helps you organize and snap windows to predefined areas on your screen. (Note: This functionality will be built-in with MacOS Sequoia.)

- Appcleaner: A utility for thoroughly uninstalling unwanted apps and cleaning up residual files, ensuring your Mac stays clutter-free.

- Datagrip: A robust database manager by JetBrains, providing advanced tools and support for various database systems.

- Oh My Zsh: A delightful, open-source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration, and enhancing your terminal experience with themes and plugins.

Nice To Have Apps

- Anydesk: A remote desktop application that allows you to access and control your Mac from anywhere.

- ChatGPT Official App: The official app for OpenAI's ChatGPT, providing convenient access to AI-powered conversations.

- Goodnotes: A digital note-taking app that's great for iPad users, offering seamless cross-device support for handwritten and typed notes.

- Notion: A versatile workspace app for note-taking, task management, and project collaboration.

- OpeninTerminal: A handy utility to open your terminal directly from Finder, saving time for developers and power users.

- Postman: An essential tool for API development, testing, and documentation.

- Termius: A secure and versatile SSH client that supports remote access to servers and network devices.

- Grammar Desktop: An application to enhance your writing by checking grammar and style.

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#222

Post by orhanerday »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #104

- LittleSnitch per-application firewall, mostly for selectively granting outbound access but also controls inbound access (In general, you also need the built-in firewall setup and running correctly too.) - BlockBlock, KnockKnock, and RansomWhere, but not LuLu because it caused TCP connections to drop nondeterministically - ScrollReverser to fix standalone mouse scrolling behavior because macOS only has one mouse and…

Freeware replacement for AppZapper: https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#224

Post by 8fingerlouie »

rswail wrote: post #220
8fingerlouie wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do pretty much the same thing, though i backup locally to a NAS via TM, and remote to OneDrive using Arq. Like you, i've also never had to restore, but i somewhat frequently (every 30 days) verify my backups, and i've never encountered a problem with Arq. TimeMachine also appears to have become a whole lot better at not corrupting your backups every n days, but i guess that's APFS at work for you. The one remaining…

I actually broke down and I'm paying the exorbitant Apple tax for the extra iCloud storage for photos etc to deal with syncing between phone/mac/ipad etc.

Oh i'm paying that as well, i'm talking about backing up the photos stored in iCloud, and preferably in an automated way.

Apple's official documentation[1] simply says to login manually to icloud.com, select the photos you want to backup, and download a ZIP file. I have 3.5TB photos in iCloud...

It's enough that i can't even purchase a Mac that has the needed amount of storage, nor should it be necessary to mirror all data locally before backing it up. All i want is a way to backup my iCloud Photos locally without storing them twice (locally). It works for Documents in iCloud, and Arq handles those well, but because Photos is "special", when it stores "optimized versions" of your photos, it actually replaces your local versions with lower resolution images, so even if you backup your iCloud photo library, you still don't have all the data.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/108306

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#225

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

kcartlidge wrote: post #28

Loads of little things, but you specifically asked for daily use so: - Rectangle for window management (I appreciate you have Magnet and tastes differ) - MarkEdit is an excellent (free) Markdown editor - Highland 2 (not free) for more long-form Markdown writing as it can handle normal Markdown files and feels more polished than similar tools (especially the document map) - VLC as I watch a lot of box sets and it's be…

Using Authy on desktop kinda kills it's 2fa purpose.

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#226

Post by lycopodiopsida »

aosaigh wrote: post #185
afloatboat wrote: post #22

Raycast - Replaces Spotlight for opening applications - Replaces Magnet for window management, same features but don’t have to run a separate app now. - keeps a clipboard history - allows me to convert colours and units - integrates with my calendar to show me upcoming meetings, shows them in my menu bar and lets me join them with one click - allows me to prevent my Mac from sleeping (for certain durations) with caff…

Is Raycast better than Alfred? Or mostly the same?

IMO No. Raycast:

- Took VC money and pushes for subscription instead of a clear payment model.

- Rides the AI Hype train.

- Is still not able to handle file workflows properly.

- Alfred workflows are easier to write and to debug due to workflow editor, you have to be a web developer to find the proposition of writing what is basically a small react app a good one.

- Also, IMO, not very fast, consumes a lot of resources and has a clumsy UX due to using stateful multistep apps.

I would always prefer Alfred to Raycast, but I am stuck with Launchbar which is still the Launcher with most smooth workflow for me. The whole paradigm is just so fast - select something, tab, match an app with 2 keystrokes-enter -> Opens in app. Works on text, files, whatever.

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#227

Post by emidln »

junon wrote: post #136
emidln wrote: post #128

Besides the usual Firefox/Chrome, Spotify, etc I use the following: - Karabiner-Elements[0] for key remapping, specifically, for making caps lock into ctrl/esc. I don't know of anything else that does this job. Everyone who remaps keys seems to use this. - Kitty[1] as my terminal of choice. I spend most of my time logged in remotely to a server via ssh where I attach to a tmux session. Kitty was easy enough to config…

Latest MacOS allows rebinding caps lock now BTW. Actually might be the last two or three.

It only allows simple rebinds, although maybe this makes Karaviner-Elements not necessary for most people.

MacOS can do caps lock to control or caps lock to escape. I bind caps lock to escape if pressed alone or control if pressed together with another key.

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#228

Post by swah »

Justsignedup wrote: post #37

Can't use Mac without rectangle. You don't need magnet. Owly is my fav for anti sleeping at certain times. Though critical to disable the ads via startup features. I haven't found abetter one. Though it has quirks. Also some commands in the cli for like key repeat. Like wtf why can't I turn off accent hold when I want to repeat letters.

Next MacOS version got some tiling window management built in ...

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#229

Post by whoareyou24 »

themadturk wrote: post #94
T3OU-736 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(No horse in this race) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40584606 seems to strongly suggest that Bartender's no longer trustworthy.

I saw that as well, but haven't had time to think much about it or explore alternatives. Thanks for reminding me.

ICE https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice is an amazing alternative for Bartender.

Re: Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

#230

Post by tra3 »

salzig wrote: post #127
schmeichel wrote: post #9

If your into the tiling window manager experience, I would highly recommend looking into yabai + skhd + Sketchybar - https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai - https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd - https://github.com/FelixKratz/SketchyBar Some honorable mentions: Hammerspoon - Unlock insane levels of configuration/automation ( https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon ) Raycast - Spotlight search replacement ( https://w…

yabal requires quite some privileges. Did you check out https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace ?

Elevated privileges for yabai are optional, it works just fine without disabling SIP.
Post reply on HN