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Ask HN: What are your "Must Have" utility apps on macOS?

by Nilrem404 on 10/25/23, 5:54 PM with 6 comments

I finally bought in to the apple m-series hype and picked up an M1 Pro Macbook Pro refurbished.

It seems like everyone has a load of different utility and QOL apps that they use to help make MacOS more usable for them.

What are your go-tos, and how do you make use of third party MacOS apps and tweaks day to day?

  • by nathanredblur on 10/25/23, 6:28 PM

    I use and recommend this:

    - Iterm2 - Better terminal

    - Fig - terminal setup

    - Raycast - better Alfred

    - Rectangle - windows organizer

    - Bartender - if you don’t have much space for apps in your top bar

    - KeyCue - keyboard shortcut hints that you can configure

    - Aldente - To protect your battery life

    - Adgurad - add blocker in DNS level

    - Reflex - fix annoying behavior with media keys

    - Visual Code - Nice IDE with cool plugins and awesome community behind

    - In Your Face - to never miss a meeting

    - time-out - to remember take brakes in a cool way

    - Cleanshot - to take perfect screenshots and screen gifs

    https://github.com/nathanredblur/nathanredblur/blob/main/mac...

  • by oblib on 10/25/23, 6:47 PM

    I don't have many QOL apps.

    I like Pixelmator. Photoshop is way to expensive and Pixelmator is both affordable and feature rich.

    I also have Alfred set up so I can monitor what's going on outside. Doesn't always work well for me, but the phones I use for cameras are really old.

    Aside from that I have quite a few web browsers I use to test my apps.

    I mostly use BBEdit and Fetch, and those are about the only apps I pay to keep updated, but that's pretty rare.

    I will take a look at the apps "is_taken" has listed here though.

  • by is_taken on 10/25/23, 6:07 PM

    I use

      - Alfred
  - Cheatsheet
  - Bartender
  - 1Password
  - iTerm2
  - Moom (you could also check Rectangle)
  - Some IDEs from Jetbrains

  • by chrism238 on 10/26/23, 3:11 AM

    Well one used to be Dropbox, until it became completely disfunctional under Sonoma.

  • by gaoryrt on 10/26/23, 6:23 AM

    Since no one else has mentioned it, I propose the Dash the documentation program.

  • by fjarlq on 10/26/23, 12:04 AM

    A recent thread with some good ideas: https://lobste.rs/s/d5qwzs/what_is_your_mac_os_setup