Which OS X Applications do you find indispensable?

Question

Please Search Prior To Posting!

There are many applications already listed. In all likelihood, this includes the one you are thinking of. Please check the existing answers to avoid duplicates, and the resulting cleanup it necessitates.

To search, use the search box in the upper-right corner. To search the answers of the current question, use inquestion:this. For example:

inquestion:this Evernote

If it hasn't already been posted, please follow a few simple rules when adding it as an answer.

Rules

Limit to one application per answer.
Add a short description of the application.
Add a link to the website in the name of the application if possible (no direct downloads).
Use ## [appName](link) for citing the application name.
Only Mac OS X (not iOS, OS 9, compatible, etc) applications. All versions of OS X are accepted, but if the application requires a specific version please note.

Voted to close — a good question, but we really should avoid subjective ones here. — apostlion, Aug 17 '10 at 20:19
@Apostlion: Simply because it's subjective does not mean it can't be answered. There are (community defined) "good" applications that are useful on a daily basis. — Josh K, Aug 17 '10 at 20:22
@Josh K — true, but it's a StackExchange policy not to allow them — as you see, [subjective] is now disallowed as a tag across SO-family websites due to the consensus being that the questions only add clutter to the Q&A site. — apostlion, Aug 17 '10 at 20:24
@Josh K: I disagree... I think that questions should always be able to be "answered". I realize that many questions can have multiple right answers, but when a question is this subjective, every single answer from ever single user could theoretically be correct. — Robert S Ciaccio, Aug 17 '10 at 20:25
@calavera: You must concede that it is not always the case. Simply because there are many "theoretically" correct answers does not preclude it from being good question. We want good questions. — Josh K, Aug 17 '10 at 20:27
This discussion should be continued on meta, but I think it is the subjective tag that was banned, not subjective questions. The feeling was that the tag didn't add anything. — KeithB, Aug 17 '10 at 20:44
Voted to reopen - it is subjective, but a popular and useful style of question, if kept as a wiki and not repeated too much. These questions are mostly accepted on gadgets.stackexhange.com for example. — Jon Hadley, Aug 17 '10 at 21:08
The problem with subjective questions is they lose relevance much more readily. The answer to a specific problem generally remains the same as the days go on. The answers to a subjective question such as this generally become less relevant in the face of time. A new user coming across an un-pruned thread may be lead astray because a once revered piece of software has fallen in disgrace or otherwise been supplanted by a superior tool, but the only way they would know this is if they read all X number of pages to the thread. — , Aug 19 '10 at 18:01
Can we make this Community Wiki? And also 1 app per answer? Much easier to check if something has already been said and to edit to add information about said app. Thank you. — Loïc Wolff, Aug 19 '10 at 20:39
I did a lot of cleanup. Changed all the app names to ## (because it was the most commonly used in the existing answers. Moved links so that they were within the app names. Removed some first-person descriptors. — Robert S Ciaccio, Aug 23 '10 at 03:18
@muddybulldog, what makes you think this would be "un-pruned"? A poll like this can very much be dynamic and "alive", because we have 1) the voting system, 2) ability to edit posts, and 3) possibility to add new answers when new great apps appear! — Jonik, Aug 27 '10 at 09:14
There's now a question on meta dealing with this: http://meta.apple.stackexchange.com/questions/90/list-of-x-poll-style-questions-what-to-do — Chealion, Sep 08 '10 at 22:54
Is there a way to "search prior to posting" through all pages at once? - nevermind just found a way: searching on the question feed! :) — cregox, Dec 23 '10 at 13:27
This is an exemplary community wiki. Thanks to everyone involved. — edgerunner, Jan 18 '11 at 15:26
@Cawas: i added another way to search the answers into the question. It involves using inquestion:this in the search field. — Robert S Ciaccio, Jan 30 '11 at 21:35
@calavera woot! (I think) I wish I could just add features like that. :D — cregox, Jan 31 '11 at 13:36
@Calavera inquestion:this search is case sensitive. for example try this, inquestion:this iterm, you won't get any results, but if you try inquestion:this iTerm you will find one entry. Is this expected behavior or can I create a Bug/ Feature req on Meta ? — garikapati, Feb 03 '11 at 18:18
@garikapat: i would create a bug on meta... feel free to edit the question with a note about this as well — Robert S Ciaccio, Feb 04 '11 at 02:10
i don't have the time or motivation to go through and remove all the entries that have had some sort of price notation added to the heading. did the first page, please help if you can. adding price into the heading is ridiculous... prices are fluid and easily become out of date. i'm not opposed to mentioning price in the body, but in the heading it makes this list look amateur hour. — Robert S Ciaccio, Sep 19 '11 at 00:19
@MatthewRead The difference is we close hardware shopping questions in almost all cases and we don't close software recommendation questions in almost all cases. There have been some [meta] discussions about either locking or closing or deleting questions like this that fail to be maintained and become stale / out dated. — bmike, Dec 28 '12 at 16:26

score 230 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

230

Dropbox

Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they'll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you've installed Dropbox on.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 21 '10 at 14:46

Loïc Wolff

14,706

Not just Mac though. – Moshe Sep 12 '10 at 17:44
9

@Moshe: Sure, many of the apps mentioned (VLC, Chrome, Skype, Evernote, ...) aren't only available for Mac. That doesn't matter. – Jonik Sep 16 '10 at 20:31
1

I find it surprising dropbox comes up first... This would never happen with a "Windows Programs you can't live without" in a windows community. – cregox Dec 23 '10 at 13:09
2

@Cawas - Maybe because Dropbox has Mac spirit: it just works. – mouviciel Jul 28 '11 at 15:31
4

It is of note that Dropbox has had a sordid history with security and underhanded practices that involve dealing with authorities: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20072755-281/dropbox-confirms-security-glitch-no-password-required/ and http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/04/how-dropbox-sacrifices-user-privacy-for.html – Sep 19 '11 at 02:20
Dropbox is also the number one in data leak from within enterprise networks. I wouldn't advise a friend to use Dropbox for important data. – dan Jan 27 '13 at 22:31
I cant live without Dropbox and Logmein for that matter. The best 1 2 punch in the Biz – Drewdin Mar 06 '13 at 14:47

score 220 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 06 '13 at 10:56

220

Terminal

Terminal.app opens a UNIX terminal and allows you to access many power-user tools and features, just as you would on a machine running Linux or BSD.

edited Jul 06 '13 at 10:56

Saaru Lindestøkke

5,821

answered Aug 20 '10 at 17:15

intlect

396

7

Ditto. Open permanently and the main reason I moved from PC's - a decent unix access point. – Jon Hadley Aug 23 '10 at 07:24
7

iTerm is even better. – neoneye Aug 28 '10 at 12:02
21

What about iTerm2 ? – Studer Aug 30 '10 at 18:45
4

Visor is a great addition--a keystroke slides your terminal in from the top of the screen. – Dan Ray Dec 02 '10 at 14:32
@Studer - iTerm2 is about the most excellent Terminal I've ever used. (except perhaps GLTerminal ;) ) – ocodo Jan 31 '11 at 00:12
6

Forget terminal + visor. iTerm 2 offers visor plus much much more... Switched to few weeks ago, will never go back. – Vincent Apr 24 '11 at 15:42
1

Thanks for the heads-up - iTerm2 looks like a great alternative! – Darren Oster Aug 16 '11 at 04:57

score 182 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 24 '10 at 20:11

182

Preview

A lot of people (especially newcomers) completely overlook what the humble built-in Preview app can do. Apart from handling PDFs (including printing them in various layouts etc), you can join PDF files together with it (open the sidebar and start dragging pdf files into it, rearrange pages etc).

You can crop & resize images, adjust colour & saturation (etc), save as different image format and even add text & simple diagrammatical annotations to pictures.

Like a lot of the built-in software, there's an awful lot of flexibility that you simply don't appreciate at first because it's hidden in the GUI - as opposed to huge nested menus of functions, you have to try things with the mouse - often things just work!

edited Aug 24 '10 at 20:11

Carmine Paolino

2,052

answered Aug 20 '10 at 08:48

robsoft

2,130

1

@robsoft: I didn't know about the joining of PDFs. Can you explain how this happens? (Or am I misunderstanding you?) IE: document1.pdf and document2.pdf and then save it out as a merged document.pdf?
I've tried the obvious stuff and it doesn't seem to work.
– Cameron Conner Aug 20 '10 at 20:25
6

@Cameron - sure, I didn't get this at first. It's not totally intuitive. First, open a PDF document. Press Shift-Cmd-D (or select View Sidebar from View menu). Now drag another PDF file (from Finder, Desktop etc) onto the PDF file you can see in the sidebar (drop your 2nd doc on top of the 1st, not into blank area of sidebar). Preview will join the documents together (you can revert, or save, save as, etc). All of the pdf stuff seems to be driven through the sidebar. Let me know if you get it, otherwise I'll try make a little online tutorial. :-) – robsoft Aug 21 '10 at 14:15
That's brilliant! No longer do I have to wait for bloated Acrobat to open do merge documents.
My issue was I opened both PDFs up at once, which stuck them both in the sidebar as separate PDFs, and wouldn't let me do it. Trick is to just open the one, and then do the dragging.

Thanks much!
– Cameron Conner Aug 21 '10 at 20:48
awesome! I didn't know either about the merging. Why would they hide it that much? – Stephane Aug 24 '10 at 21:17
I remember how much I hated preview back in 10.4 days! Now, thanks to the fact that Quicklook took over some of his duties, I love it :) – Agos Sep 10 '10 at 17:09
4

Also worth noting... you can annotate pdfs using Preview. This is useful for all sorts of things; adding simple shapes to highlight/emphasize things, adding (colored) text for note-taking, etc. – eykanal Sep 12 '10 at 22:17
Merging - oh, nice! And here I was just a java program ("PDFSAM" for "PDF Split And Merge") for that! – Michael H. Oct 16 '10 at 03:21
I like JustLooking (http://chipmunkninja.com/JustLooking). Navigates more easily through a directory of files, and actually shows animations! – Chris Serra Apr 09 '11 at 04:05
And for the adventurous one, you can use Automator to script some tasks. – Lloeki Jul 28 '11 at 16:33
A shortcut that many people seem to have missed is Print Selected Page, option-cmd-P, in 10.6 and later. – da4 Sep 19 '11 at 15:07

score 158 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

158

Growl

Growl is a well-known 'notification' system for the Mac; many different programs support Growl and will pass notifications to it. You have a surprising degree of control over how the notifications appear, how they group themselves together, how they are dismissed from the screen etc. This can be configured universally or on an app-by-app basis, so it's very flexible.

One of the most useful features for me has been the way you can configure it to send notifications to selected other Macs on the network - I can leave one of my Macs doing something (such as downloading a large file) while I'm using my other Mac, and when the first Mac has finished doing its stuff the notification will pop-up on the Mac I'm in front of.

Growl is free, though you can donate to the cause!

Programs that can use Growl include Coda, Dropbox, Firefox, Handbrake, NetNewsWire, SuperDuper!, Transmit, and also Mail & Safari (via helper plugins).

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 23 '10 at 06:12

robsoft

2,130

10

Ugh, I can not express to you how much I loath Growl. It's even worse that tons of apps (like Dropbox) install it silently without asking, or simply crash and burn (like Max) if it isn't installed without giving you any error messages or means of troubleshooting. – Bryson Jun 03 '11 at 17:07
Cannot live without Growl! – daviesgeek Sep 05 '11 at 18:20
1

@Bryson what I like about Growl is that it gives a central place where I can control all notifications for apps, whether I want them to pop up or just "shut up about it". I'm surprised that Apple didn't add a standard Notification system to Lion, it seems like centralizing this should be the role of the OS. – Andrew Vit Sep 07 '11 at 01:56
@Bryson Both of those issues are the fault of the apps in question, there's not a lot Growl can do about apps not using it properly. – calum_b Nov 13 '11 at 13:27
And Growl is no longer free, it costs $1.99 now at App Store. – derekhh Dec 24 '11 at 10:49
1

Apps no longer need to have Growl installed in order to use Growl notifications, so users would only need to purchase it if they want to customize their notifications. This also means apps no longer need to secretly install Growl. More info on their note to developers. Growl is still open source, too, and there's a link to the source code on that page as well. – joelseph Feb 09 '12 at 21:08

score 139 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 23 '22 at 19:36

139

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a lightweight, minimalistic web browser based off the open source project, Chromium.

edited Jul 23 '22 at 19:36

Glorfindel

4,057

answered Aug 21 '10 at 14:10

gsharp

1,010
1
13
19

4

Though some Firefox features still aren't matched in Chrome, I nowadays find myself mostly using Chrome on OS X because it's just so much faster. – Jonik Aug 28 '10 at 09:42
4

before firefox4 i had moved almost completely to chrome, but yay for ff4 (esp. tab grouping) – Rohan Monga Oct 31 '10 at 15:55
19

Quote of the day: "I just ditched Firefox for Chrome. I feel like I just left my wife and kids for a 19 year old cheerleader." – Jonik Nov 07 '10 at 12:31
After switching to chrome a while ago, I've noticed it still has trouble with two things: CPU usage with HD flash video, and ASP driven interfaces (and other Microsoft languages). – Josh Hibschman Jan 18 '11 at 20:28
1

Chrome has also had a lot of trouble with caching (specifically clearing cache) in the recent releases. As a web developer, it's a huge problem. I'm on the verge of moving back to FF. – EmmyS Jun 23 '11 at 16:28
3

After Lion came out, I switched to Safari because Chrome is way too slow at adapting the goodness. – Dan Sep 09 '11 at 23:22
As "lightweight" as the interface may lead you to believe, Chrome is VERY resource intensive. – Alexander Aug 28 '13 at 04:01
"lightweight" is not the word I used. It hase been edited by someone else ;-) @XAleXOwnZX – gsharp Aug 28 '13 at 07:11

score 133 · Answer 6 · edited May 08 '22 at 13:30

133

Homebrew

"The missing package manager for OS X". Like MacPorts and Fink, but simpler to use and easy to contribute to.

edited May 08 '22 at 13:30

Glorfindel

4,057

answered Oct 15 '10 at 10:36

LennyAskDifferent

121

Beats MacPorts and Fink right out the water! – bastibe Nov 01 '10 at 20:10
3

I love homebrew. Much better than MacPorts. Uses existing libraries that come with OS X to cut down compile times. – Jack Chu Nov 02 '10 at 22:29
Soon to be not so missing when the Mac app store comes out... :-P – Ricket Nov 18 '10 at 00:12
5

@Ricket: I think those are orthogonal. Homebrew is for CLI Open Source programs. – LennyAskDifferent Nov 18 '10 at 08:39
@Ricket - It will never make the app store. It has too much functionality that significantly violates the (ridiculous) app store guidelines. – Fake Name Sep 20 '11 at 19:27
@FakeName, yep. But I wrote that November of last year, when the app store had been announced but I don't believe details had really been released. I was probably of the naive impression that the app store might actually be good and not as policed as it turned out to be. Also I had just bought my first Mac probably a week or two before that comment (though I was consuming Apple and OS X information at an incredible rate) so that might have something to do with it. – Ricket Sep 21 '11 at 15:54
The install script does not seem to work under lion? – chris Aug 01 '12 at 07:09

score 131 · Answer 7 · edited Oct 09 '13 at 02:39

131

Xcode

A good IDE for cocoa developers. Xcode 5 is now available on the Mac App Store.

edited Oct 09 '13 at 02:39

Garrett Fogerlie

223

answered Aug 31 '10 at 19:46

It's a great IDE, and it's FREE. – Warren P Sep 17 '10 at 01:35
@Warren P: Well, Xcode 4 isn’t free. – Mathias Bynens Mar 14 '11 at 12:02
@Mathias Well.. They say that if you pay up the developer's licence it is? (not that I would call that free, but still) – Zolomon Mar 17 '11 at 21:39
Xcode4 is free again. – mouviciel Jul 28 '11 at 15:32
Give AppCode a try - lots of refactoring and editing conveniences – nevster May 09 '12 at 01:40
1

Xcode is great. It is the reason I got a Mac. – Josiah Oct 14 '12 at 22:44
Xcode includes a lot of other stuff, like a .plist editor and command line tools. Instruments app (that uses dtrace) is an awesome tool for peeping into your Mac. And it's free from the App Store. – geoO Mar 06 '13 at 15:09
That's the only reason I bought a Mac. Though after buying I got to know how good a mac can be. – noob May 26 '13 at 19:57

score 130 · Answer 8 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

130

VLC media player

At its simplest, it's a video player that'll play nearly anything. File extensions supported include: mov, mkv, flv, wmv.

It's actually considerably more powerful than that in terms of streaming and converting, but even as a straight up video player, it's impressive.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 19:30

Fishtoaster

1,052

8

I really can't stand VLC. Buggy, extremely difficult to configure, ugly as hades... the only thing it has going for it is the sheer number of different formats it will play. Why should I have to be an expert in video and audio codecs to configure my player? Movist beats this one by far. – Robert S Ciaccio Sep 12 '10 at 22:51
1

I've never had luck with VLC. It is constantly crashing, and terribly buggy. Seconding Movist a hundred times. – Bryson Sep 15 '10 at 22:20
I always loved VLC... but try MPlayer guys. It's listed here already and it's awesome! – cregox Dec 23 '10 at 13:10
4

Never configured anything on VLC, it works for me out of the box, with flv, wmv, mkv, mp4, avi, mov, mpeg. Unexpected crashes do happen, you have to deal with it, but other than that, it's great. – Petruza Feb 04 '11 at 14:10
4

Use MplayerX for Mac, it's free on Mac App Store. Although i prefer the command line version mplayer – Lamnk Apr 06 '11 at 13:43
Agree with Petruza, I've installed VLC on OSX multiple times, zero problems. – mindless.panda Apr 18 '11 at 13:10
VLC is ugly. MPlayerX is so much more Mac-spirited. – Dan Oct 13 '11 at 12:26
VLC is ugly since the version 2 update – Hawken Apr 23 '12 at 21:47
@Lamnk Even MplayerOSX Extended regarded as the future of MPlayerX available at http://www.mplayerosx.ch/ – Simon Mar 08 '13 at 12:49

score 126 · Answer 9 · edited Sep 19 '11 at 00:15

126

1Password

1Password can create strong, unique passwords for you, remember them, and restore them, all directly in your web browser.

edited Sep 19 '11 at 00:15

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
52

answered Aug 17 '10 at 20:24

Jacob Gorban

1,652
2
15
16

3

+100 I can't even remember my password now – nanda Aug 31 '10 at 12:37
I use PasswordWallet for the same thing, but either seems crucial. – Michael H. Oct 16 '10 at 03:21
5

LastPass does the same thing for a lot less money, and it's available cross-platform (including Linux) so you can keep your passwords synced regardless of where you are and what system you're on. – EmmyS Jun 23 '11 at 16:24

score 116 · Answer 10 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

116

TextMate

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

If you’re looking for a good editor, Sublime Text 2 is quite good too by now!

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 17 '10 at 20:22

Studer

8,779
5
38
38

30

TextMate 2.0 is the new Duke Nukem Forever ;-) – Chealion Aug 21 '10 at 15:19
It's funny, Textmate, along with a browser and Terminal is open almost all the time on my desktop, but whilst it's a great text editor I could 'live' with the alternatives. – Jon Hadley Aug 23 '10 at 07:23
1

The CMD T shortcut would be hard for me to live without. – neoneye Aug 30 '10 at 17:18
@neoneye, that's why I use the Command-T (Mac)VIM extension :) – Lloeki Jul 28 '11 at 16:35
6

If you're into TextMate, have a look at Sublime Text 2. You won't be disappointed. – Dan Oct 13 '11 at 12:30
Sublime Text 2 is extremely fast. It's actively developed too. – Tuan Anh Tran May 14 '12 at 08:12

score 109 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 08 '10 at 09:52

109

Alfred

Alfred is a productivity application for Mac OS X, which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web. Whether it's maps, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, you can feed your web addiction quicker than ever before.

It's a wonderful piece because it enables you to:

Increase your productivity by launching apps with shortcuts
Instant access to web searches, bookmarks & more
Browse and play music from your iTunes library quickly
Perform actions – copy, move & email files & folders
Ward off RSI – skip using the mouse with easy shortcuts

answered Sep 08 '10 at 09:52

vitorhsb

247

9

Buy the 'PowerPack' for this - it adds even more functionality. Alfred is a really nice little utility - replaced QuickSilver for me. – robsoft Sep 14 '10 at 17:12
@robsoft I'd love to buy the PowerPack to support Alfred, but I'm afraid that if I do this, it'll get too complicated. (File control, iTunes, ...) I like Alfred the way it is right now. – JFW Nov 20 '10 at 15:12
1

Best powerpack feature: clipboard history. I can now "copy up" three things, then paste them back out in whatever order I like. Brillig! – Dan Ray Dec 02 '10 at 14:52
My best friend. – Mattias Mar 01 '11 at 10:46
I love Alfred. I switched from Quicksilver, though I'm admittedly not a QS poweruser. – D. Simpson Sep 07 '11 at 01:33
Alfred is pretty sweet – Drewdin Mar 06 '13 at 14:49

score 106 · Answer 12 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

106

Handbrake

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 03:43

Jaydles

5,205

Although it still doesn't support drag-and-drop, which is incredibly frustrating. I usually end up using the now-unsupported VisualHub. – Jowie May 09 '11 at 09:22
Handbrake is awesome, I use it with mythbuntu – Drewdin Mar 06 '13 at 14:49

score 105 · Answer 13 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

105

Adium

Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more. It provides enhanced security by supporting the OTR messaging protocol out of the box.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 13:59

Loïc Wolff

14,706

2

Adium is not needed anymore starting with Lion :) – sorin Jul 02 '11 at 14:14
@Sorin Why is that? I don't think iChat will be able to connect to all those accounts cl.ly/87Ii – Loïc Wolff Jul 04 '11 at 11:34
2

It can do many! Even Facebook. Yeah not all of them but some of those are pretty obscure. I must say the iChat updates in Lion made me ditch Adium. – Paul Eccles Aug 01 '11 at 17:34

score 98 · Answer 14 · answered Aug 20 '10 at 07:34

98

Perian

Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.

answered Aug 20 '10 at 07:34

Studer

8,779
5
38
38

3

Perian developers decided to cease any further development on Perian. There won't be any new releases or fixes for MKV support if nobody stakes over. – Jul 18 '12 at 14:26

score 95 · Answer 15 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

95

Transmission

Transmission is a cross-platform BitTorrent client that is: Free and Community-Driven. Easy. Lean. Native. Powerful.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 23 '10 at 02:49

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
52

2

+1, Transmission rocks. For those with servers there is even a slick web-ui. – Josh K Aug 26 '10 at 04:04
Great simple app. – boehj Jun 16 '11 at 10:53

score 92 · Answer 16 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

92

The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for "BOMArchiveHelper.app", the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than BOMArchiveHelper, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems.

Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, RAR, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more and less obscure formats.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 16 '10 at 21:34

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
52

4

The Unarchiver team also provide a command line utility urar that uses the same compression library, so you can extract all those obscure formats from a script. – ocodo Jan 31 '11 at 00:24
Can't handle everything I've thrown at it (sometimes chokes on password protected zips/rars, or split rars that may have been created on Windows(?), but I have a few backups in case. This is my default archive extract utility. – Chris Serra Apr 09 '11 at 04:09

score 88 · Answer 17 · edited Sep 19 '11 at 09:44

88

Caffeine

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Right-click (or ^-click) the icon to show the menu.

edited Sep 19 '11 at 09:44

Jari Keinänen

8,210

answered Aug 20 '10 at 07:24

Studer

8,779
5
38
38

2

I use InsomniaX - any idea how it compares to Caffeine? – Kyle Cronin Sep 08 '10 at 23:59
I've never really understood these. When do you want this? – Michael H. Oct 16 '10 at 03:22
@khedron: it's useful for long-running unattended tasks e.g. download program, compiler, video encoding, some long computation, ... anything that doesn't require interaction but takes long enough time that your Mac would sleep otherwise. – Peter Štibraný Oct 31 '10 at 18:20
@khedron I got Caffeine so that I could watch videos on my computer without the screen dimming. I had had enough of wiggling the mouse every few minutes. – joshdick Nov 01 '10 at 14:47
2

@joshdick: I use Jiggler for that. – Josh K Nov 30 '10 at 14:04
It's ⌃-click, not ⌘-click. – Feb 22 '11 at 17:13
1

I up-voted the comment about InsomniaX but actually wanted to recommend InsomniaX 2.0 – Built for Lion from the same developer - makes it easy to run clamshell mode on Snow-Leopard with external display – iolsmit Dec 22 '11 at 00:52

score 83 · Answer 18 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

83

Transmit

FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 and WebDav client.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 13:02

stefanlindbohm

323
1
5
10

Transmit 4 is awesome. I used Cyberduck for a long time, but I recently checked out Transmit 4 and was quite impressed. – mipadi Aug 26 '10 at 14:51
Transmit + Textmate are two apps I really can't do without. If Panic could ever get their act together and make Coda a serious contender for Textmate AND make the FTP as good as Transmit (why not, it's a Transmit app) then Coda would rule them all. But not today. – D. Simpson Sep 07 '11 at 01:32

score 82 · Answer 19 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

82

Cyberduck

for Upload, Download and Sync of FTP, SFTP, WebDav, iCloud, S3, ...

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 13:08

Thomas

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open-source and great – r00fus Sep 15 '10 at 04:13
honestly i got really frustrated with cyberduck due to little but important details (for example your bookmarks aren't sortable, no sidebyside view local/remote, ...) and switched to Transmit. Haven't looked back since ... – ChrisR Sep 15 '10 at 20:59
At first i loved it, but from time to time SFTP synchronization fails with "nothing to do" even when there are modified files. – LennyAskDifferent Oct 15 '10 at 10:52
CyberDuck even supports Amazon S3 (cloud storage). – Wadih M. Dec 23 '10 at 14:17
I'm frustated with CyberDuck, it delays to be updated when Goole Docs change some API. – John John Pichler Jun 26 '11 at 17:04

score 82 · Answer 20 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

82

Skype

With skype, you can make

Voice and video calls to anyone else on Skype
Conference calls with three or more people
Instant messaging, file transfer and screen sharing

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 24 '10 at 09:30

Loïc Wolff

14,706

Yahoo Messenger, AIM and iChat don't support Voice/Video chat with Windows clients. For me, the only choice for Video/Voice is Skype.

fardjad

Nov 29 '10 at 21:28

3

Sadly, Beta 5 is as awful as a UI can get. – Martin Marconcini Nov 30 '10 at 14:44

2

The problem with skype now is that was bought from Microsoft. I don't think they will be keeping good. I'm waiting for some Google response offered in Brazil. – John John Pichler Jun 26 '11 at 17:05

score 81 · Answer 21 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

81

MacPorts

The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system. To that end we provide the command-line driven MacPorts software package under a BSD License, and through it easy access to thousands of ports that greatly simplify the task of compiling and installing open-source software on your Mac.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 07:25

Studer

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2

what about homebrew and fink? – Jason Sundram Jan 16 '11 at 06:55
20

I would recommend Homebrew over MacPorts by a long way. https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew – Dave Verwer Feb 14 '11 at 14:43
Giving this a down-vote because there's an answer about Homebrew and I want it bubbled up to the top. If others think the same, please up- and down-vote accordingly. – Bryson Jun 03 '11 at 17:08
Homebrew will kick macport's ass anyday – romeovs Aug 15 '11 at 20:41
I down-voted MacPorts and up-voted Homebrew. Homebrew is a lifesaver. – Nate Bird Sep 08 '11 at 02:08

score 81 · Answer 22 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

81

MacVim

A very good port of Vim. I used both Emacs and TextMate for quite some time, but finally became a Vim user. I think I'll have a look at TextMate 2, if it will actually be released some time…

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 31 '10 at 17:51

jbeigel

567

2

I also recently discovered the GUI port of vim for the Mac, and I must say I really love editing C and C++ code in it. It also helps to better edit makefiles, since Xcode hasn't really got any support for makefiles. I only write Objective-C code in my Xcode editor, since Xcode has phenomenal text completion for Cocoa and the vim editor lacks this. – v1Axvw Jan 30 '11 at 18:07
I cannot believe that TextMate is above MacVim. Keep voting people. Hopefully this question does not get closed soon. – Deesbek Oct 13 '13 at 03:49

score 77 · Answer 23 · edited Sep 29 '11 at 11:21

77

Quicksilver

More then just an application launcher, Quicksilver is an intuitive, self learning, application launcher and system manipulator.

It can also assign global hotkeys to actions, store clipboard history, show the current iTunes song and much more.

edited Sep 29 '11 at 11:21

w00t

291

answered Aug 17 '10 at 20:21

Josh K

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what quicksilver does? – alexus Aug 19 '10 at 16:56
Quicksilver is an intuitive, self learning, application launcher and system manipulator. Best I can phrase it. – Josh K Aug 19 '10 at 17:02
@josh could make your answer community wiki, please? – Loïc Wolff Aug 20 '10 at 12:14
@josh I removed TextMate since there's already an answer with it and made Adium a separate one. – Loïc Wolff Aug 20 '10 at 14:01
@Loic: That's fine. – Josh K Aug 20 '10 at 14:37
For similar options, also look at Google Quick Search Box. Apple's Spotlight now has many of the more interesting Quicksilver features as well. – John M. P. Knox Aug 24 '10 at 21:09
if spotlight would appear in the middle of my screen, I'd be almost happy, but Quicksilver is still way much better for launching apps – Stephane Aug 24 '10 at 21:19
@John: Quicksilver is still faster (on all machines I've tried) then Spotlight. – Josh K Aug 26 '10 at 04:04
11

“I’m inclined to encourage users to move over to the more stable and well supported alternatives like LaunchBar” – Nicholas Jitkoff, Developer of Quicksilver – Carmine Paolino Aug 28 '10 at 16:42
@Carmine: I say no to LB. Quicksilver is free, and does much more. Besides, where's the fun without a little application instability? – Josh K Aug 28 '10 at 17:11
I was used to Launchy from Windows world, and found Quicksilver. But after few days, I found that Spotlight works just fine for me and I never use Quicksilver. It was also pretty hard to find shortcut that didn't collide with some other program that I use. – Peter Štibraný Sep 12 '10 at 12:07
3

I used Quicksilver for a long time, but I think Launchbar has the edge at this point. – Bryan Schuetz Sep 19 '10 at 14:35
9

Never understood why I should use an app to do what Spotlight already does. I understand people using Quicksilver from before Spotlight existed, but I don't see any reason to switch for new users. Is there one? – IlDan Oct 14 '10 at 23:55
Quicksilver has some scripts built into it--it's more than just a Search tool, from what I recall. I think there were some iTunes plugins, and other application extensions. Where Spotlight is great for searching and launching files/applications (what I use it for), Quicksilver can do more automations I believe. – Chris Serra Apr 09 '11 at 04:08
I LOVE Quicksilver. I use it all the time!!!!!! Not only for Spotlight-like capabilities, but many other things. – daviesgeek Aug 07 '11 at 00:00
There are some unique things that Quicksilver does, where you can chain things together to create a subject-verb-object kind of construct in one command, like "upload X to Y using Z". That said, it's been years since I used it and I prefer using the terminal for stuff like that. – Andrew Vit Sep 07 '11 at 02:02
QS can even open new Control/Observe sessions for remote computers from Apple Remote Desktop. It's not just an app launcher, it's an anything launcher. – da4 Sep 19 '11 at 15:05
I use this so much every day. One of the things I love is the easy hotkeying. For example I have a hotkey that runs an applescript that opens a new tab in Chrome so I can do websearches or visit websites with autocompletion. – w00t Sep 29 '11 at 11:22
1

Spotlight and Quicksilver are two different beasts. Quicksilver allows you to match entries in your catalog with a few keystrokes, and spotlight allows you to search your computer for words. If you type "sp" in Quicksilver you might get "System Preferences" if you use that a lot, or "Steve Porter" if you send him a lot of mails/IMs. Spotlight will just show you all things with "sp" in their name or contents – w00t Sep 29 '11 at 11:26
An example subject-verb-object action: moving files. Select a few files, hit ⌘-⎋ (escape), Tab, type "move", Tab, then type a few chars of the destination and Return. Quicksilver moves the files then redisplays with the moved files in the subject, so you can open them or 'reveal' them in Finder (or any other supported verb). Way faster than dragging through nested Finder windows. – duozmo Sep 26 '12 at 02:35

score 71 · Answer 24 · answered Aug 25 '10 at 12:50

71

iWork

Pages is both a streamlined word processor and an easy-to-use page layout tool. It allows you to be a writer one minute and a designer the next, always with a perfect document in the works.

With great-looking templates, easy-to-create formulas, and dynamic tables and charts, spreadsheets suddenly make perfect sense.

Create your presentation in Keynote, and you’ll be a hard act to follow. Powerful yet easy-to-use tools and dazzling effects put the show in slideshow.

I use iWork constantly. Both on my Mac and iPad. It's just great :D

answered Aug 25 '10 at 12:50

1

At work I have use Word, however I write my text in Pages and then export to Word. Pages is a well crafted product. – neoneye Aug 28 '10 at 12:07
I love Pages to make beautiful cards! You can't beat the simple yet effective layouting that's possible with this software. – Marc Sep 14 '10 at 21:30
1

Personally I think Excel is more powerful than Numbers, or at least the power is not hidden. – Jonathan. Nov 01 '10 at 19:32
Excel is hugely more powerful (Pivot tables for a start), but it, and it's output, is nowhere near as pretty as Numbers. – JBRWilkinson Jan 18 '11 at 22:47
And it is much cheaper than MS Office! – Arne Burmeister Feb 22 '11 at 09:17
Also now available on the iPhone 4 as well. Very handy. – Bryson Jun 03 '11 at 17:10
@Bryson indeed, and I'm already using it. :) – Jun 03 '11 at 18:24
1

I really tried to use iWork, but I just can't. The support for more advanced features - like multiple Tables of Contents - just isn't there. It's a slick piece of software for more uses though. – Fomite Sep 19 '11 at 20:53
To me, iWork is the Fisher Price of Office. I tried making a simple graph in Numbers, and I soon found it to be impossible. It's decent for the iPad and others, though. – JavaAndCSharp Mar 28 '12 at 02:42
Should really separate this into its components. I find Keynote is superior to PowerPoint (except when you need to interchange with Windows folks), but that's just about it. Numbers doesn't hold a candle against Excel whereas Pages is so-so. – adib May 31 '13 at 14:54

score 70 · Answer 25 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

70

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 19 '10 at 16:57

alexus

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VirtualBox is just plain awesome. – Robert S Ciaccio Aug 20 '10 at 03:18
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could make your answer community wiki, please? – Loïc Wolff Aug 20 '10 at 12:05
Especially as it is the only solution to virtualize Mac OS X (although restricted to Mac hardware only). – raimue Sep 06 '10 at 00:05

score 67 · Answer 26 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

67

Evernote

Evernote is an app for note taking that features online syncing, much like Dropbox. Install Evernote on your desktop, laptop, iPhone and iPad and have access to all your notes, and if you've left all them all at home, access them on the web.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 03:45

Jaydles

5,205

Evernote is amazing. +10 – JFW Nov 18 '10 at 07:11
1

Evernote is now available on the Mac App Store. (Which, by the way, has resulted in a huge influx of new users.) – Jonik Jan 12 '11 at 10:51

score 66 · Answer 27 · edited Sep 13 '10 at 10:45

66

Safari

While I adore Chrome, but Chrome on Mac is not on the same level as Chrome on Windows yet.

edited Sep 13 '10 at 10:45

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
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answered Aug 31 '10 at 12:40

nanda

1,527

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It's getting there! – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jan 31 '11 at 17:21
The Dev tools in Safari (some say the same) are just not there yet so I stick with Chrome for Dev. If Apple update Safari in the next release then we will see. – ChuckJHardy Apr 17 '11 at 14:14
Safari get stuck sometimes =[ – John John Pichler Jun 26 '11 at 17:07
1

Safari integrates better with the whole OS X Lion experience – Sam Spencer May 03 '12 at 01:53

score 63 · Answer 28 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

63

Firefox

Firefox is an open-source web browser from Mozilla, based off Netscape.

With a few OS X specific tweaks it can be made to behave like a OS X browser should, including font rendering, Keychain Access and Retina display support.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 17 '10 at 20:19

Am1rr3zA

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@am1 could make your answer community wiki, please? – Loïc Wolff Aug 20 '10 at 12:14
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@Loïc Wolff I make it. – Am1rr3zA Aug 20 '10 at 12:16
2

Firefox and Mac OS X just don't mix :( Safari also has add-ons :) – Aug 25 '10 at 12:46
9

Some things still put Firefox above competition: intelligent (learning) address bar autocomplete; huge selection of good add-ons (Safari or Chrome don't even come close). Too bad Firefox is slower than Chrome... – Jonik Aug 28 '10 at 09:41
5

Firefox is sssllllooowww. – Jonathan. Nov 01 '10 at 19:32
1

@Jonik Yes, the intelligent awesome bar is excellent. I switched to Chrome and really miss being able to type in some arbitrary parts of the URL in order to find a page in my history. – styfle May 09 '11 at 03:19
1

I hate Firefox UI on Mac. I can't explain why, toolbar and shades and colors feel very, very wrong. – Dan Oct 13 '11 at 12:33
@Jonathan. Ditto! – daviesgeek Oct 20 '11 at 03:22
Still my favorite developer tools of all browsers. – jalynn2 Jan 10 '13 at 16:03
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TXJcM3hUhjs/S7ApfoG3xHI/AAAAAAAAJPE/f5j_hhXiD-k/s1600/browses-and-transportation-10548-1269487647-48.jpg (look top left) – Alexander Aug 28 '13 at 03:58

score 61 · Answer 29 · edited Sep 19 '11 at 00:17

61

OmniGraffle

The only diagramming application worth using.

edited Sep 19 '11 at 00:17

Robert S Ciaccio

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answered Aug 27 '10 at 03:53

Nippysaurus

3,820

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I can't say enough good things about OmniGraffle. – Michael H. Oct 16 '10 at 03:22
@khedron: Disagreed. It's the easiest diagramming application that I use. I can use Illustrator to draw diagrams, but OmniGraffle decreases the amount of time I need to do this, and has minimal quality loss. – JFW Nov 20 '10 at 15:10
3

@JFW: I think there was a parsing problem somewhere -- I think OmniGraffle is fantastic. Maybe do a search on "can't say enough good things" to see how I was using this? – Michael H. Nov 23 '10 at 17:32
I tried using it for UML stuff and found it really lacking and difficult to use – willcodejavaforfood Nov 30 '10 at 13:12
@willcodejava: Can you explain more where you found it lacking? – Josh K Nov 30 '10 at 14:05
@Josk K - Sure. I used it straight out of the box. It seemed really clumsy the way you had to choose the right class type, one was just for name, different one for operations, and then one with name, operations and attributes. The connections were also little lines that you had to manually select with the boxes and very difficult to attach correctly. – willcodejavaforfood Nov 30 '10 at 14:54
Sorry, "can't say any good things" about OmniGraffle. – ocodo Jan 31 '11 at 00:18

score 54 · Answer 30 · answered Sep 05 '10 at 17:19

54

VMware Fusion

Yet another virtual machine product. I have tried Parallels and am using VirtualBox on and off, but VMware's Fusion is what I find to be most efficient and feature-full. Unity view is quite efficient when you want to run something side-by-side, while full screen or windowed modes are good for when you need a focus or are just testing out something.

answered Sep 05 '10 at 17:19

Ceesaxp

21
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3

VMWare Fusion is great! I can share my VMs with VMWare Player for Windows and Fusion can even boot my Bootcamp installation as a VM. – Marc Sep 14 '10 at 21:34
3

Fusion's strength is definitely compatibility with it's bigger siblings (ie, Server-class). I can play around with an appliance, configure and demo it, then migrate the image straight to our server fabric if it fits our usage patterns. Amazing for small companies or departments. – r00fus Sep 15 '10 at 04:17
Fantastic app... – John John Pichler Jun 26 '11 at 17:06

score 53 · Answer 31 · edited May 02 '12 at 20:43

53

iTerm2

iTerm2 is a full featured terminal emulation program written for OS X using Cocoa. We are aiming at providing users with best command line experience under OS X. The letter i represents a native apple look and feel of the program interface, and an emphasis on complete international support.

Note: iTerm2 is based on the old iTerm and is supported by the original author.

edited May 02 '12 at 20:43

sorin

29,875

answered Aug 26 '10 at 12:28

Pierre Spring

361

Cut is just select text – mmmmmm Sep 05 '10 at 12:24
3

iTerm 2 kicks it's ass (not from the same developer) – ocodo Jan 31 '11 at 00:16
Little to slow for me. Look forward to future releases. – ChuckJHardy Apr 17 '11 at 14:16

score 50 · Answer 32 · edited Oct 13 '11 at 11:56

Reeder for Mac

Reeder

A gorgeous RSS reader based on the iOS app.

Syncs with Google Reader
Can manage Google Reader subscriptions
Has full Readability integration
Supports multi-touch gestures
Switches between reader and webpage view in a swipe
Has customizable interface and shortcuts
Supports Lion fullscreen mode
Offers quick access to services (including Twitter, Readability, Instapaper, ReadItLater and Evernote)

Reeder for Mac

score 49 · Answer 33 · answered Aug 25 '10 at 21:48

49

Sequel Pro

Sequel Pro is a fast, easy-to-use Mac database management application for working with MySQL databases.

Sequel Pro gives you direct access to your MySQL databases on local and remote servers.

Whether you are a Mac Web Developer, Programmer or Software Developer your workflow will be streamlined with a native Mac OS X application!

answered Aug 25 '10 at 21:48

I never liked the app :( I installed http://www.phpmyadmin.net and use it from localhost. – balexandre Aug 25 '10 at 22:00
+1 I think this app is awesome. Much better than the MySQL GUI Tools. Prefer it over phpMyAdmin any day. – bummzack Sep 14 '10 at 21:32

Jonik · Answer 34 · 2011-09-20T12:03:08.657

47

Things

Task management tool with an that UI strikes a nice balance between simplicity and functionality. Can be synced with iPhone and iPad versions.

It's a commercial app, and not even very cheap (40€ / $53 currently), but I've come to rely on it a lot.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 12:03

answered Aug 24 '10 at 22:18

Jonik

6,673

1

One thing Things is desperately missing is proper cloud sync. (Current wifi sync is kinda ok, but it doesn't let you use Things on many computers, for example.) Cultured Code says it's in the works, but then they've said that for 1-2 years and nothing seems to be happening. :/ I've used Things for a long time and I like it a lot, but lack of this feature, and of communication, makes me consider switching to Evernote or something. – Jonik Dec 12 '10 at 18:25
2

Evernote looks like such a good alternative, but it doesn't seem to have specific To Do functions and the iPhone version is a bit Fisher Price. Things does exactly what it says it does, reliably and professionally, but cloud sync is waaaaay overdue. – JBRWilkinson Jan 18 '11 at 22:49
@JBRW: Agreed. Now that I've started using Evernote too, I'd say it's great, but not really a Things replacement for me. – Jonik Jan 19 '11 at 12:38
I love things but switched to omnifocus for its syncing features – Vincent Apr 24 '11 at 15:44
1

Evernote is not geared for task management. I love Things interface, but I will like it much more when cloud sync finally debuts this fall. – Jamie Aug 15 '11 at 18:39
3

I'd be a lot more interested in things if it were not 50 freaking dollars. Considering what it contains, I think it's enormously over priced. $10 would be a no-brainer. $20, and I'd probably still buy it. – Fake Name Sep 19 '11 at 03:07

score 46 · Answer 35 · edited Aug 23 '10 at 03:09

46

BetterTouchTool

Take your Magic Mouse and add some more magic to it. Lets you do tons more gestures than OS X alone.

Works for the new trackpad and the multitouch trackpads in laptops too. It's still a bit buggy, but really, really cool.

edited Aug 23 '10 at 03:09

Robert S Ciaccio

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answered Aug 20 '10 at 20:29

Cameron Conner

201

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Technically just a utility, but I love it so much. – r00fus Sep 15 '10 at 04:22
1

It would be awesome if not so buggy and heavy. – cregox Dec 23 '10 at 13:05
It has improved over the last six months or so. – cftarnas Sep 21 '11 at 06:04

score 45 · Answer 36 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

45

MacTeX

-- TeXLive distribution and assorted goodies for the Mac.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 08:56

José Figueroa-O'Farrill

241

I wish I could upvote this twice. I originally switched to a Mac because of TeXShop and LaTeXit! – Ross Churchley Jul 28 '11 at 18:34

score 44 · Answer 37 · edited Oct 13 '11 at 12:04

44

Sublime Text 2

Sublime Text has grown to become my favorite GUI code editor. It feels like a spiritual successor to TextMate (even allowing support for some TextMate bundles like snippets and themes), and has many original+natural features like fully independent text cursors, a very nice search feature, and a rapidly-growing plugin API and surrounding community.

I liked it so much I wrote an inline lint plugin.

enter image description here

edited Oct 13 '11 at 12:04

Dan

4,998

answered Apr 09 '11 at 19:21

lunixbochs

101

4

If I could upvote this ten times. The most awesome, the most underrated editor. Actually it's the first code editor I fell in love with on Mac. I also suggest checking out Will Bond's page of Sublime Text 2 plugins. – Dan Oct 13 '11 at 12:07
I also would like to upvote multiple times, this is a fantastic piece of software. Finally I get the power of VIM without the clunk! – Chris Blackwell May 16 '12 at 17:18

score 41 · Answer 38 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:51

41

Skitch

Skitch allows you to take screenshots on your Mac, edit them and share them with others. It makes the sharing process seamless by making it a natural workflow to send the image (with edited arrows and other highlights helpful to your client) to them via email or automatic website uploads. It is especially popular with the designer community, as they show their clients rough drafts of their work in a nearly automated process. It makes it simple to work remotely with someone and pass on work revisions and get feedback quickly. Other uses include:

Snap a website
Capture a chat moment
Screenshot an application
iSight snap your bad hair day
Quickly sketch an idea
Tap into your iPhoto Library
Re-open images from your Skitch History

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:51

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Aug 24 '10 at 21:42

Carmine Paolino

2,052

I use Jing for that as it can be used for screencasts up to 5 minutes as well and not only pics :) – balexandre Aug 25 '10 at 21:46
Skitch is the reason I switched from Windows to Mac over a year ago (although I continue to be unsure if I'm happy about the switch or not.) – MikeSchinkel Sep 04 '10 at 20:49

score 40 · Answer 39 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:51

40

Coda

Coda is the only web-language-text-editor I like. It does everything you really need for web applications. It remember some common part of code in clips that you can load just by typing their tag name, it completes your html tags, it shows you the list of functions with related variables and autocomplete, it has the powerful Transmit ftp engine built in, it has a great visual CSS editor, it allows you to personalize the text colors and it has HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP doumentation maulaus available from within the application.

Never seen all these features in just one application!

From the developer's website:

So, we code web sites by hand. And one day, it hit us: our web workflow was wonky. We’d have our text editor open, with Transmit open to save files to the server. We’d be previewing in Safari, adjusting SQL in a Terminal, using a CSS editor and reading references on the web. “This could be easier,” we declared. “And much cooler.”

Screen Capture

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:51

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Nov 01 '10 at 13:11

Shoe

1,776

3

Looks awesome - you should maybe mention that it costs $100. – Jason Sundram Jan 16 '11 at 07:26
Is it like Kod? I liked Kod... – John John Pichler Jun 26 '11 at 17:10
I use this 8 hours a day, everyday. Essential – Chris Jul 28 '11 at 15:21
Sublime text totally mops the floor with every other text editor. – Fake Name Mar 04 '13 at 08:06

score 39 · Answer 40 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

39

LaunchBar

LaunchBar is a smart and powerful, keyboard driven productivity utility that lets you access and control every aspect of your digital life. Whatever you want to get done on your Mac – with LaunchBar it’s only a few keystrokes away.

Indespensible as a keyboard utility to launch applications, open websites, search the web and a million other things.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

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answered Aug 20 '10 at 03:51

Chealion

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It's also a great clipboard manager, giving access to history via a keystroke. One of the most feature-rich apps I've used. – evanmcd Aug 21 '10 at 23:58
Just like quicksilver .) – Eimantas Aug 27 '10 at 15:10
I've become a total LaunchBar convert. It's well-supported (unlike Quicksilver) and does things that Alfred does not. I quite literally have an extra 30-60 minutes available every day due to LaunchBar. – Matthew Frederick Sep 19 '11 at 14:25

score 38 · Answer 41 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

38

TextWrangler

TextWrangler is the (free) powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool. It is a powerful and richly featured tool for composing, modifying, and transforming text stored in plain-text files.

Among other things, it can open files from (and save them) to remote FTP and SFTP servers, offers a powerful grep engine, supports multi-byte and non-Roman text files, can perform Find Differences on pairs of files or folders, and can be invoked from the Unix command line.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 06 '10 at 18:02

vitorhsb

247

1

+1 if you don't want to fork over the cash for BBEdit, TextWrangler is a fantastic alternative, with all of the basic (yet extremely powerful) text editing tools you'll need. – Dave DeLong Mar 09 '11 at 08:06
I use it everyday for any text edit on the go. – noob May 26 '13 at 20:12

score 38 · Answer 42 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

38

F.lux

f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you're in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.

Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. F.lux will do the rest, automatically.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 03:18

Robert S Ciaccio

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It's cool and all, but what's the point? – Alexander Aug 28 '13 at 03:59

score 38 · Answer 43 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:50

38

TotalFinder

Improves the finder by adding a tabbed view, as well as other less interesting features. I didn't realize how addicted to this I was until I got a new Mac and couldn't figure out why I couldn't open another finder tab. :-)

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:50

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Aug 22 '10 at 01:33

Tim Sullivan

353
2
7
14

Now supporting CUT-Paste for files! :) – Martin Marconcini Nov 30 '10 at 14:45
1

The only thing missing is more shortcuts like a shortcut to move files around in the dual pane mode – Julien Grenier Feb 01 '11 at 04:10
1

It's worth noting that you can use it indefinitely for free. The only difference between paid and free is a little banner on the title-bar, and the warm fuzzies you get from supporting a great project. – Fake Name Sep 20 '11 at 19:21
@FakeName how is this possible? They mention 14-days-trial? – hhh Mar 04 '13 at 00:46
@hhh - When the "trial" expires, the only change is a little banner at the top of every window saying "unregistered". – Fake Name Mar 04 '13 at 08:05
XtraFinder does almost the same and is free – Richard May 12 '13 at 21:23
I would rather pay money for things that I rely on and work well, in order to ensure they don't disappear in the future. – Tim Sullivan May 12 '13 at 22:50

score 38 · Answer 44 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

38

CloudApp

alt text

What a fantastic little App... it makes easy to share allmost any file instantly and when you create a screenshot it automatically uploads it to the web and you have the short URL ready to be pasted anywhere.

a simple Cmd + SHIFT + 4 and ... Paste the url :)

...and you have RainDrops to share other content as photos from iPhoto directly and more

alt text

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 25 '10 at 21:51

balexandre

2,783

score 37 · Answer 45 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

37

iTunes

quote from Thilo:

I absolutely hate this app, but at the same time I (or rather my iPods) cannot live without it.

Please, Steve, make iTunes optional for iPods and iPads.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Dec 03 '10 at 02:54

Thilo

5,508

3

I actually really like iTunes in Mac OSX. The Windows version, not so much; but Mediamonkey (a Windows-only app) can manage music on iPods and iPads, and multiple Linux apps can also manage them. – Ricket Dec 10 '10 at 01:50
I agree that iTunes is a ***** and I hate like most people the fact that we have no other choice. But that's still a great syncing tool for music and backuping devices. I doubt any alternatives offer that features for free. – Vincent Apr 24 '11 at 15:52
1

Maybe Apple will transition the iOS App Store into the App Store app on Lion, and open up the APIs for backup/sync so developers can make third party replacements for iTunes! But probably not. – Bryson Jun 03 '11 at 17:25
2

My love/hate for iTunes is that it tries to do everything in one app. (What does organizing apps on your iPhone have to do with "Tunes"?) – Andrew Vit Sep 07 '11 at 02:06
2

Now you don't need iTunes for a lot of things (OTA updates, Setup, etc.) – Martin Marconcini Feb 10 '12 at 01:39

score 35 · Answer 46 · edited Apr 09 '12 at 11:50

35

iStat Menus

Displays customizable system monitoring information like CPU, memory and network usage and hardware temperatures in the menu bar. So like MenuMeters but a bit nicer in my opinion.

iStat Menus 3 by Bjango

edited Apr 09 '12 at 11:50

Marc Edwards

393

answered Jan 27 '11 at 22:08

hasseg

101

Personally, I like the widget (iStat Pro) that the developers create a bit better. Free and unobtrusive! :) http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatpro/ – Jamie Aug 15 '11 at 18:46
Just couldn't live without this. A quick and simple way to see my CPU usage, memory usage, etc. etc. – binarybob Feb 08 '12 at 20:47

score 33 · Answer 47 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

33

BBEdit

Hands down the best plain-text editor I've ever used.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 26 '10 at 16:07

Dave DeLong

2,915

Probably also the most expensive. – Josh K Aug 26 '10 at 18:11
5

You get what you pay for. – Philip Regan Aug 31 '10 at 20:35
I prefer KomodoEdit. Free and better than BBEdit. I used BBEdit for maybe ten years and swore by it, but then I started using Komodo and never looked back. – Robusto Apr 06 '11 at 16:28
BBEdit is great for web development, but not so great for development in non-web languages. (Case in point: syntax highlighting.) – titaniumdecoy Apr 09 '11 at 08:13
1

@titaniumdecoy say what? it has built-in syntax highlighting for dozens of languages. Down in the bottom left of every window, there's a thing that says "(none)". click that to show a popup menu of all the built-in languages. you can add even more via plugins. i've been using it for bash and ruby scripting all week, and the syntax highlighting has been just fine. – Dave DeLong Apr 09 '11 at 17:12
The last version I used was BBEdit 8.5 (maybe it's changed in version 9) but in my experience there are only 3 syntax highlights for non-HTML languages: keywords, text, and numbers. – titaniumdecoy Apr 10 '11 at 19:15
7

It doesn't suck. – Sherm Pendley Apr 17 '11 at 19:32
@ShermPendley, and it supports ponies since version 9. – CousinCocaine Sep 12 '13 at 15:03

score 33 · Answer 48 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

33

Notational Velocity

is an application that stores and retrieves notes.

It is an attempt to loosen the mental blockages to recording information and to scrape away the tartar of convention that handicaps its retrieval. The solution is by nature nonconformist.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 17 '10 at 20:23

pgb

1,455
1
16
24

1

could make your answer community wiki, please? – Loïc Wolff Aug 20 '10 at 12:13
3

+1, and I'll add nvALT, a fork of Notational Velocity that adds support for Markdown, Textile and MultiMarkdown in Preview and a bunch more: http://brettterpstra.com/project/nvalt/ – Matthew Frederick Feb 20 '11 at 03:52
I'll second the usefulness of this app with Simplenote syncing, especially the fork which Matthew Frederick lists above. :) – Jamie Aug 15 '11 at 18:41
I quit using Evernote and transitioned completely to NVAlt. It's totally killer. – Zrb0529 Feb 26 '12 at 23:13

score 33 · Answer 49 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

33

Sparrow

Sparrow's hallmark is a simplified user interface reminiscent of Twitter clients such as Tweetie or iOS apps, as opposed to a more traditional e-mail style such as Apple's Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird.

Sparrow currently supports all IMAP email accounts. It also includes features such as drag-and-drop attachments, Growl support, and keyboard shortcuts, as well as threaded replies and easy switching between Gmail accounts.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Mar 01 '11 at 10:54

Mattias

111

Sparrow has replaced Mailplane for me, for one reason: super-fast account switching. The UI is ok. Still needs some usability polish. – Ian C. Apr 30 '11 at 23:17
POP accounts have been added too. – latusaki Jul 04 '12 at 17:42
Too bad it doesn't work behind a proxy with non-default ports... – daefu Nov 27 '12 at 13:02

score 32 · Answer 50 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

32

Microsoft Office

Office for Mac 2011 is the best option for Mac users who share documents at home, work, or at school.
It comes packed with powerful features for creating artful documents, dynamic spreadsheets, and effective presentations. Plus it’s compatible. You can be confident that your documents will open correctly on Mac or PC.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 24 '10 at 21:36

Pablo Santa Cruz

276

@pablo if you really can't live without it, maybe you should put more time in specifying why, no? – Loïc Wolff Aug 24 '10 at 22:29
12

I think iWork pwns :) – Aug 25 '10 at 12:48
3

+1 just because I don't get the down votes. I don't particularly enjoy using MS Office, but there are some things it does really well when you get MS Office documents from others. If you're an academic, a lawyer, a project manager, or a sales person, it is a pretty useful piece of software. – Jarret Hardie Aug 25 '10 at 23:02
10

academics use TeX (pronounced 'tech' please! :D) – Carmine Paolino Aug 28 '10 at 16:39
1

+1 because even though I think Office as a whole is an absolute beast of bloatware, Excel has a place in a lot of my processes. Numbers tries a little too hard to be different, I think. – Philip Regan Aug 31 '10 at 20:37
3

@Carmine That's quite an assumption you make there. I'm an academic and enjoy using TeX myself, but the majority of my colleagues are very uncomfortable with it, both in concept and in practice. – Daniel Standage Jan 18 '11 at 14:24
@Carmine, comparing \TeX to Word is not fair to either. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jan 31 '11 at 17:21
@Daniel, probably my view are biased since I come from Computer Science, but I rarely saw papers that didn't look like they were written using TeX. In my department it's recommended for every academic writing. – Carmine Paolino Mar 02 '11 at 10:53
I prefer online solutions. My office problems are simple. – John John Pichler Jun 26 '11 at 17:08

score 32 · Answer 51 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:51

32

Parallels Desktop

Gives almost(!) seamless Windows OS and apps integration.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:51

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Aug 28 '10 at 10:10

This application has saved me several times while taking college courses. Apparently the college I attend thinks Microsoft products are the only products available. – Chris Delph Sep 09 '10 at 18:01
I can't believe this hasn't been voted higher. – alastairs Sep 14 '10 at 17:22
6

Although I’m a VMware and Parallels user, Parallels has the tendency to charge you 49€/year for the “50% faster” newer versions. At the rate Parallels has advertised the speed increase, the virtualized version should be faster than native these days… – Martin Marconcini Nov 30 '10 at 14:50
Parallels is much better than vmware. Bought both, only using vmware when I need to share vms with windows users. – Vincent Apr 24 '11 at 15:47

score 30 · Answer 52 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

30

Skim

PDF reader and note-taker.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 08:57

José Figueroa-O'Farrill

241

1

It's a great application to present slides in PDF format. Preview.app always has this irritating overlay you can't disable. – raimue Sep 06 '10 at 03:56
Great for annotating PDFs. Notes, highlights, underlines, even freehand drawings. – Nathan Grigg Jun 24 '11 at 21:57
The highlighting and annotation features make me prefer Skim even to iBooks. – incandescentman Nov 14 '13 at 09:34

score 29 · Answer 53 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

29

Carbon Copy Cloner

Clone, synchronize, backup.

CCC 3 features an interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure very intuitive. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. CCC's block-level copy offers the absolute fastest performance and highest fidelity in the industry!

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 12 '10 at 22:55

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
52

Can't believe this one wasn't mentioned already. This is indispensable to me with all the crap I put my Macs through :) – Robert S Ciaccio Sep 12 '10 at 22:55
1

Yep, this is an app of the highest quality. Another 'must have'. – boehj Apr 10 '11 at 09:08

Jonik · Answer 54 · 2012-11-06T21:34:36.013

29

Spotify

For listening to music off the internet. This definitely has become one of the pieces of software I would first install (on a Mac or any other computer).

Note: Spotify is available only in some countries; currently:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The Wikipedia article has details.

edited Nov 06 '12 at 21:34

answered Aug 24 '10 at 22:29

Jonik

6,673

:( Unfortunately not available outside of European countries. – JFW Nov 20 '10 at 15:11
@JFW: Yeah. Wikipedia notes, however, that according to the company, "Spotify will be launched in the United States before the end of 2010" – Jonik Nov 20 '10 at 15:21
1

Yeah, the spotify launch in the US has been just months away for over a year... – Jason Sundram Jan 16 '11 at 07:04
It is now available in the US. And it's easy to create a fake account. – neoneye Sep 19 '11 at 14:35

score 27 · Answer 55 · answered Oct 19 '10 at 12:42

27

Acorn

I have Photoshop, but Acorn is an amazing, lightweight and cheap alternative I go to way, way more often.

answered Oct 19 '10 at 12:42

Tim Sullivan

353
2
7
14

score 26 · Answer 56 · answered Sep 06 '10 at 17:20

26

µTorrent

One of the best light weight BitTorrent clients.

answered Sep 06 '10 at 17:20

2

Vuze is better :) – balexandre Sep 08 '10 at 13:39
24

transmission is better :) – Robert S Ciaccio Sep 09 '10 at 05:50
1

@calavera rather than better I’d say transmission is lighter (by far) ;) (note: I use transmission) – Martin Marconcini Nov 30 '10 at 14:53
why is transmission so much better? – Richard May 12 '13 at 21:31
@Richard Transmission was build with being lightweight as a goal. – CyberSkull Sep 03 '13 at 05:37
I used to use it exclusively but it has become slow to start slow to download torrents. Not sure about better but Vuze is faster which makes it "better". – Deesbek Oct 13 '13 at 03:54

score 26 · Answer 57 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

26

TotalTerminal (formerly Visor)

"A system-wide terminal on a hot-key." I press ctrl-T (the hot key I chose), and a tab-able terminal window slides down from the top of my screen. This invaluable for anyone who, like me, is constantly between the terminal and other apps.

This great little tool was originally by Blacktree, who made Quicksilver.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 19:24

Fishtoaster

1,052

I keep going for Visor to Window and have now stuck with Visor. Great App. – ChuckJHardy Apr 17 '11 at 14:17
I've since switched to http://www.iterm2.com/ which has visor-styel functionality built-in. – Fishtoaster Nov 28 '11 at 00:43
Note: its now called TotalTerminal -- you may want to update the name/link. – Retief May 09 '12 at 04:05
Updated. Note that this is a community wiki- you can edit it too. – Fishtoaster May 14 '12 at 04:59
As a side note, this functionality is built into iTerm2, which I now use in favor of TotalTerminal. – Fishtoaster May 14 '12 at 04:59

score 26 · Answer 58 · answered Aug 27 '10 at 15:02

OmniFocus

OmniFocus is designed to quickly capture your thoughts and allow you to store, manage, and process them into actionable to-do items. Perfect for the Getting Things Done® system, but flexible enough for any task management style, OmniFocus helps you work smarter by giving you powerful tools for staying on top of all the things you need to do.

score 25 · Answer 59 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:52

25

Hyperdock

Brilliant.

HyperDock adds long awaited features to your Dock: Select single application windows just by moving the mouse on a dock item, use mouse clicks to quickly open new windows and many more. alt text

Control iTunes. Hover the mouse over the iTunes dock item to view information about the current song, You can pause or skip songs and even adjust volume just by scrolling on the itunes icon. alt text

And many more...

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:52

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Oct 15 '10 at 10:23

vitorhsb

247

1

This will be really great when the iron out the bugs. – Robert S Ciaccio Oct 16 '10 at 14:17
This is such an integrated part of my daily workflow. The previews are just eye candy. The shortcuts on dock items, and the resizing of windows are slick and extremely efficient. – Ryan Gibbons Apr 10 '11 at 04:32
this is one application I actually bought, because it is incredibly handy – Richard May 12 '13 at 21:33

score 24 · Answer 60 · edited Mar 09 '17 at 18:04

24

Cinch

I literally couldn't stand to use the Mac without this software. When I want to full screen an app I just drag the app's title bar to the menu bar and it "cinches" itself to full screen. A must have for Mac.

Edit: Cinch also allows making a window fill the left/right/upper/lower half of your screen (similar to Windows Snap). Very useful for copy-pasting and comparing.

Screenshot of Cinch Preferences Screenshot of Cinch About

edited Mar 09 '17 at 18:04

Community

1

answered Sep 04 '10 at 20:52

MikeSchinkel

473
5
19

2

+1, it's a very useful utility. Though my iMac 27" is so big that I rarely use it :-) – Marc Sep 14 '10 at 21:35
6

As an aside, bettertouchtool now has the same functionality, so if you're using both you can save a little bit of resources. – Alex Larzelere Sep 17 '10 at 12:03
2

I actually got used to not have everything maximized, unlike when I was a maximizor freak on windows, once I started using OSX. but nice app! :P – cregox Dec 23 '10 at 13:03
3

You can always click + maximize button (green button) and you'll get the same functionality. For free... – CarlosZ Mar 13 '11 at 00:41
@CarlosZ Thank you! I knew there was a way to do it but I forgot. But I'm like @Cawas at this point: I rarely maximize anymore after switching from Windows (where it seems like everyone maximizes). – styfle May 28 '11 at 09:42
Yeah I'm the same @styfle but it is still useful sometimes – CarlosZ May 30 '11 at 18:20
Maybe useful to mention that SizeUp (also suggested as a separate answer) is its supplementary application from the same developer that provides keyboard shortcuts to do the same. – Rabarberski Jul 28 '11 at 14:26
1

@CarlosZ - Sorry but + green button doesn't do the same. Many apps maximum in the vertical dimension but not in the horizontal dimension. Thankfully Apple has (mostly) fixed it with "Full Screen Apps" but even it doesn't get it 100% right IMO, so I will continue to use my Cinch. – MikeSchinkel Jul 29 '11 at 08:32
3

Actually BetterTouchTool does this...for free! – daviesgeek Nov 12 '11 at 18:19
I used to use Cinch, but I switched to Moom for greater functionality and customization. – pasawaya Jul 01 '12 at 23:03
divvy is also a good option – Richard May 12 '13 at 21:36

score 24 · Answer 61 · answered Nov 28 '10 at 14:53

Daisy Disk

DaisyDisk scans your disks and presents their content as interactive maps where you can easily spot unusually large files and remove them to get more free space. The map gives you an overview of your data, so you always know what your hard disks are filled with.

score 23 · Answer 62 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

23

Calibre

calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories:

Library Management

E-book conversion

Syncing to e-book reader devices

Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form

Comprehensive e-book viewer

Content server for online access to your book collection

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Nov 19 '10 at 06:00

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
52

If you have an ebook reader, this app is pretty much essential. – Robert S Ciaccio Nov 19 '10 at 06:00

score 23 · Answer 63 · edited Sep 07 '11 at 05:10

23

Eclipse IDE (free)

Awesome, open source, well-featured IDE primarily for Java, but also supports C++, PHP, and Python, among others. Also has a wealth of third-party plugins.

edited Sep 07 '11 at 05:10

ocodo

1,673

answered Aug 24 '10 at 23:25

swilliams

101

5

Why downvoted? If you can live without Eclipse, perhaps just abstain from upvoting this? – Jonik Aug 25 '10 at 08:27
9

Maybe they hate Eclipse as much as me. – Josh K Aug 30 '10 at 11:39
Amazing for some (not for me). – r00fus Sep 15 '10 at 04:21
Blech. I bailed out of Eclipse in favor of TextMate in my last project. – Dan Ray Dec 02 '10 at 14:49
1

Yeah, definitely not a fan. Very un-Mac-like. – mummey Jan 30 '11 at 18:19
Eclipse has always sucked. I used it since first version. There are so much better alternatives. Look at intellij for java, you will regret the time you wasted on eclipse. – Vincent Apr 24 '11 at 15:55
4

Eclipse is a fine example of a product designed by committee. It tries to do everything, only to fail miserably at all of them. – edgerunner May 09 '11 at 07:58
I'm going to have to agree with @edgerunner. In my opinion, the UI is horrible, and it's too bulky on workstations with smaller screens. Aside from that, you honestly can't compare it with other apps since there aren't many IDE's to compare it with in the first place. For those who develop PHP applications, Eclipse PDT + Xdebug is heaven-sent. Oh and TextMate is a text editor, not an IDE :) – VicePrez Nov 17 '11 at 05:04
1

Well, for windows migrants like me, Eclipse feels like being at home. I agree that it's UI is not at par with mac, but still I use it for my android development. – noob Nov 10 '12 at 12:56

score 23 · Answer 64 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:54

23

Lastpass

Yet another password manager (actually, probably the first one online, I believe prior to 1pass) that integrates well with every browser (well, at least Safari, Chrome and Firefox). You have even an option to use yubikeys with it. I use it for long time and it's just amazing. It does everything I would expect and little more. It monitors when you change password, have a KB of websites and really gets almost all of them, while allow you to configure whenever field with login and password you want. And it's multiplatform.

Back in 2010 it bought Xmarks and must integrate with that as well.

It's completely free to use but it does offer a premium subscription for extra (and unnecessary) features. I personally paid for it as a donation, since I really never use the features.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:54

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Dec 23 '10 at 13:40

cregox

3,544

I like LastPass a lot, I just wish it had a more polished UI like 1Password. – Ryan Sharp Jan 18 '11 at 18:58
1Password's UI is slow and clunky, but I can't argue with the app's effectiveness. Didn't Lastpass recently have a security breach? I prefer 1Password as it leaves me in control of my password file with Dropbox. – Bryson Jun 03 '11 at 17:26
@Bryson Nope, no security breach. Lastpass recently had a supsect of anomalous behavior on their network and they took preventive measures about it. Nobody ever complained on losing anything stored on lastpass as far as I know, and that measure was very well seem and documented on the web. Just look for it. You can't arguee with this app's effectiveness, UI or service, but I can arguee against a lack of offering backup from my point of view - which reminds me of Crashplan vs Carbonite, the later being the pop-pretty one, but the former being the rock-solid-actually-much-better solution. – cregox Jun 03 '11 at 17:59
I've used last pass for more than a year now, and I still like it. I never thought of trying any other password manager like 1password. I do not need to ;) – noob Nov 10 '12 at 12:58

score 23 · Answer 65 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

23

Versions

GUI Subversion client. From their website:

Versions provides a pleasant way to work with Subversion on your Mac. Whether you're a hardcore Subversion user or new to version control systems, Versions will help streamline your workflow.

I will say up front that it doesn't inherently support all of Subversion's features, but it does make managing source code and important document for solo developers and small groups much, much easier than dealing with the command line. It's one of the three apps that gets opened with my "AM" script.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 26 '10 at 13:54

Philip Regan

6,251

I like it for browsing the repository (logs, blame, etc). I tend to use the command line for commits & updates, though. Faster & easier. Maybe some day they'll implement my request to search through the "blame" window or display more than one line in logs... – Michael H. Oct 16 '10 at 03:12
I like cornerstone better. – romeovs Aug 15 '11 at 20:47

score 22 · Answer 66 · answered Sep 02 '10 at 14:23

22

Divvy

Application for moving and resizing windows using a "grid" approach.

answered Sep 02 '10 at 14:23

Daisy Sophia Hollman

383

score 22 · Answer 67 · answered Aug 24 '10 at 20:49

iChat

I know a lot of people use Adium, and I did too for a long time. But iChat just does what I want and does it slightly more elegantly, so I switched.

I personally can't live without:

audio and Video calls;
it can stay in the menu bar without launching the application, and log in at startup (if you are familiar with UNIX, it's like a daemon mode);
support for Jabber.

I also use it for MSN via a Jabber transport, which basically lets me connect to MSN through a jabber server, integrating the two seamlessly. Since there are a lot of transport-enabled servers – for ICQ and AIM (which, by the way, are also supported natively in iChat), IRC, Gadu-Gadu, QQ and of course MSN – you can benefit from iChat's simple interface with whatever IM service you use.

score 21 · Answer 68 · edited Jan 27 '11 at 21:23

21

AppCleaner

It's small and powerful tool for remove/ uninstalling your applications on OS X.

I use it frequently, it even helps you to remove Cache created the the application from your Mac.

edited Jan 27 '11 at 21:23

Vebjorn Ljosa

548

answered Jan 18 '11 at 18:01

garikapati

627

What a great tool! I didn't know it... – John John Pichler Jun 26 '11 at 17:14
Link os broken, use http://freemacsoft.net instead. – molgar Sep 15 '11 at 15:35
def. +1 for mentioning AppCleaner. It's really a great app – Zrb0529 Feb 26 '12 at 23:17

score 20 · Answer 69 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Activity Monitor

A task manager, a utility for performing different tasks to a computer processes, in the Mac OS X operating system. Some of its functions include:

Quitting or "killing" a computer process
Viewing the computer's CPU load
Checking the amount of random access memory in use or swapped out
Checking the amount of hard disk read-ins and write-outs
Checking the capacity of storage devices
Monitoring the computer's network usage
Inspecting running computer processes
Viewing a process identifier number
Viewing information about a particular process

score 20 · Answer 70 · answered Aug 30 '10 at 17:24

20

Colloquy

Excellent IRC client that is open source.

answered Aug 30 '10 at 17:24

neoneye

3,172

score 19 · Answer 71 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

19

SizeUp

Allows you to set keyboard shortcuts for moving windows to certain halves and quarters of the desktop, as well as between desktops when using multiple monitors.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 02 '10 at 14:14

Daisy Sophia Hollman

383

score 19 · Answer 72 · edited Sep 02 '10 at 13:56

19

TextExpander

Simply the best. Save keystroke even if you just use it to write your email address.

edited Sep 02 '10 at 13:56

Jonik

6,673

answered Aug 31 '10 at 12:42

nanda

1,527

anyone know of a Free or Open Source alternative to textexpander? – Robert S Ciaccio Aug 31 '10 at 15:06

score 18 · Answer 73 · edited Mar 06 '13 at 14:25

18

Path Finder

Path Finder = Finder + Automatic viewer + Shell + Screen Capture + Almost everything you need

edited Mar 06 '13 at 14:25

Ɱark Ƭ

9,566

answered Sep 07 '10 at 22:57

prosseek

5,694

Really great tool! – Peter Štibraný Oct 31 '10 at 18:27

score 18 · Answer 74 · answered Aug 26 '10 at 12:24

18

Jumpcut

Minimalist Clipboard Buffering for OS X

Jumpcut is an application that provides "clipboard buffering" — that is, access to text that you've cut or copied, even if you've subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut's interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard's history.

answered Aug 26 '10 at 12:24

Pierre Spring

361

As a programmer I cannot live without this! – Josh Dec 01 '10 at 13:55
Seriously, this is the first app I install on any fresh system, it's that useful. A 'must have' app. – boehj Apr 10 '11 at 09:03
I used to use the clipboard in QuickSilver but that was unstable. Jumpcut is very stable but it only stores the text, not the formatting. – w00t Sep 29 '11 at 10:58

score 18 · Answer 75 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

18

NetNewsWire

Easy-to-use RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader (but it doesn't have to). I think my favorite part is that the UI can be completely and logically navigated with the arrow keys even the action of opening a feed entry in your default browser.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 26 '10 at 13:57

Philip Regan

6,251

I prefer Helvetireader (with fluid), but I think both will be trumped by the upcoming Reeder for Mac... – Tom H Sep 02 '10 at 17:30

score 18 · Answer 76 · answered Jan 18 '11 at 16:20

18

Twitter

The best Twitter client there is. In perfect sync with the web app itself.

answered Jan 18 '11 at 16:20

edgerunner

129

score 17 · Answer 77 · edited Mar 09 '17 at 18:04

17

Air Video Server (Free)

Air Video Server screenshot

Associate to an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, through their 2.99 App this is the best solution to see all your downloaded movies in your devices.

There is a Windows version as well.

Added

Since iOS 4.3, iTunes Home Sharing is now available for all iDevices, and there is no need of having Air Video, though, you wil need to import all your movies into iTunes in order to be accessible cross network.

For me, I will still stick with Air Video for a long time :o)

edited Mar 09 '17 at 18:04

Community

1

answered Sep 12 '10 at 19:00

balexandre

2,783

I think that through Home Sharing, you may only stream iTunes compatible videos. So Air Video Server is still needed for all other video formats! – nuc Mar 14 '11 at 09:45
This app doesn't seem to be available in my country, Denmark. – neoneye Sep 19 '11 at 14:39
@neoneye Im in Denmark and I can assure you that is available as I use it every day. Just click in the link in my answer or throughout their website. – balexandre Sep 19 '11 at 15:25

score 17 · Answer 78 · answered Sep 17 '10 at 11:44

17

Thunderbird

On the whole, still the best email app I know for any platform.

answered Sep 17 '10 at 11:44

Jonik

6,673

1

Thunderbird works great with imap to my gmail account. Microsoft Entourage is somewhat buggy with imap and crashes all the time. Apple Mail is incredibly slow with imap. Thankfully there is Thunderbird. Besides Thunderbird has plugins similar to Firefox. – neoneye Apr 09 '11 at 13:58
1

Thunderbird is not without its quirks, but I like it better than Mac Mail. – D. Simpson Sep 07 '11 at 01:35
Lion's new Mail.app now beats the pants off Thunderbird, IMO. – ocodo Sep 08 '11 at 00:14
-1 cannot see a reason to use Thunderbird over the Mail.app. At least in Ubuntu, Evolution beated Thunderbird 1-10. Now in OS X, Mail.app is very good, enough simple. – hhh Mar 04 '13 at 00:51

score 17 · Answer 79 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

17

Little Snitch - Firewall

rule based traffic filtering
connection alert for undefined rules
network monitor

also see: Hands Off!

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jan 10 '12 at 11:26

gentmatt

49,722

score 17 · Answer 80 · answered Nov 22 '10 at 01:28

gfxCardStatus

gfxCardStatus is an open-source menu bar application that keeps track of which graphics card your dual-GPU MacBook Pro is using at any given time, and allows you to switch between them on demand. (free, donationware)

If you have a dual-GPU MBP, you absolutely NEED this program! Did you know that some common applications such as Skype enable your high-powered Nvidia graphics card the entire time they're running? I use it to force my MBP to switch to the power-saving Intel graphics chip when I'm on battery. It adds an extra hour or so of battery life which would otherwise be wasted just because I keep Skype online for chatting.

this is absolutely essential for me – Robert S Ciaccio Nov 22 '10 at 01:49 — Robert S Ciaccio, Nov 22 '10 at 01:49

score 16 · Answer 81 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

16

Aquamacs

emacs on the Mac.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 08:54

José Figueroa-O'Farrill

241

1

Not just emacs, but emacs that feels like a Mac app -- at least, as much as you want it to. (Very configurable.) – Michael H. Oct 16 '10 at 03:13
May be good if you're a mac user trying to become an emacs user, but not good if you're an emacs user new to a mac. Use native Emacs built for mac instead. – Doug Harris Jan 30 '11 at 18:58
@Doug - I agree, Cocoa Emacs is a much better way to go. Even if you're a Emacs noob, you shouldn't really get a non-emacs Emacs, it defeats the purpose of learning a cross platform editor. – ocodo Jan 31 '11 at 00:10
-1 on Anti-Aquamacs sentiment. I use Emacs on 3 platforms and when I'm on my Mac it's always Aquamacs. I had to undo some of Aquamacs attempts to fit in the MacOS world ( mainly WRT system keyboard shortcuts ). After that small tweak, it works just like Emacs on my other OSes. – ephsmith Jul 11 '12 at 04:24

score 16 · Answer 82 · answered Oct 16 '10 at 03:18

MenuMeters

I have a hard time using a Mac without it these days. How does anyone -- especially a programmer -- work without having the pulse of their Mac at their fingertips? How else do you tell when your browser is stuck or is really downloading something, if you can't see the network traffic? When the computer pauses, and you want to know if it's working, just look at the menu to see that the CPU gauges are pegged at 100% -- and much of that is in the kernel. At a glance, I can instantly see that memory consumption has rocketed up, and with a click I can see that I'm heavily into swap space. It's just so useful.

score 16 · Answer 83 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

16

Filezilla

No matter what OS, Filezilla had been everywhere I go, and when you start to use it, you can never really get rid off it.

The interface is simple and intuitive, with bookmarks, tree sync, multiple connections on tabs, etc.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 24 '10 at 19:54

balexandre

2,783

I use FZ too and I like it. I have experienced that Cyberduck and Transmit is having difficulties uploading lots of files via FTP. Then I found Filezilla which has uploaded everything I have thrown at it. – neoneye Apr 09 '11 at 13:47
Transmit wins by a long shot regarding UI, but Filezilla works every time :) – balexandre Apr 09 '11 at 18:23
Filezilla is a lifesaver for quick and easy FTP – Zrb0529 Feb 26 '12 at 23:18

score 16 · Answer 84 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:53

16

MacFuse

MacFUSE allows you to extend Mac OS X's native file handling capabilities via 3rd-party file systems. It is used as a software building block by dozens of products.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:53

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Aug 24 '10 at 21:46

Am1rr3zA

13,219
14
68
88

1

Awesome when combined with MacFusion. – neoneye Aug 28 '10 at 12:10
yep, MacFusion is must have. – neoneye Apr 09 '11 at 13:41
This project is no longer being maintained. – Kendall Hopkins Oct 24 '12 at 18:13

score 16 · Answer 85 · answered Aug 28 '10 at 05:44

16

DTerm

A terminal window for every application. Press a hotkey (I have mine set to Cmd-Opt-Space), and a floating command line pops up over your current window, initialized to the current directory of that window.

Another hotkey allows you to easily paste the name of your current document or Finder selection.

answered Aug 28 '10 at 05:44

Evan Krall

282

DTerm does not require SIMBL like Visor does. It's great. – hasseg Jan 27 '11 at 22:11
Also note that DTerm is now in the Mac App Store. – styfle May 28 '11 at 09:48

score 15 · Answer 86 · answered Sep 14 '10 at 21:38

15

MAMP

(MAMP = Mac Apache MySQL PHP)

Apache Webserver, MySQL Database and PHP in one Package. Easy installation and easy to use for local development of Websites/Webapps.

answered Sep 14 '10 at 21:38

bummzack

762

1

Both Apache and PHP are preinstalled with Mac OS, and installing MySQL is a double-click away. – zneak Sep 16 '10 at 22:12

score 14 · Answer 87 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Garageband

This program is, in some ways, the embarrassing bastard child of the audio world. It's an underpowered, feature-crippled version of Logic, one of the best-regarded multitracking applications in the recording world.

Nonetheless, Gagareband is very powerful, and does what I need it to do. While I'd appreciate more flexibility (tempo matching would be nice, and the ability to change time signatures within a project), and the program doesn't handle multiple layers of effects as well as I'd like, it performs brilliantly at what it does do, and it's insanely easy to learn.

Garageband is one of the main reasons ~~I haven't ditched my G5 Mac for a Windows or Linux machine~~ I took so long to replace my G5 mac. (Now I use GB and Logic on a Macbook Pro.)

Go Garageband! I love using it! – daviesgeek Sep 19 '11 at 02:22 — daviesgeek, Sep 19 '11 at 02:22

score 14 · Answer 88 · edited Sep 13 '10 at 10:46

14

Movist

The best movie player for Mac OS X based on QuickTime & FFmpeg. Opens all types of video files and loads quicker than any other app for movies I've ever used.

Features I like:

file support - plays amazingly well .mkv not to mention all the rest
simple and minimal UI
excellent keyboard shortcuts support
switch from FFmpeg to Quicktime playback with a single click

edited Sep 13 '10 at 10:46

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
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answered Aug 31 '10 at 10:22

Chris Georgiev

196

praise spaghetti monster... finally an alternative to that pile of un-userfriendly crapola that is vlc! – Robert S Ciaccio Aug 31 '10 at 15:04
Really nice one. Can even play rmvb files ! – Studer Aug 31 '10 at 21:23
Been playing with this a lot and I really love it. I was beginning to think that I would be stuck with the cruel joke that is VLC forever. This app beats the crap out of VLC for ease of use. It even seems less buggy. I can play the same file in both apps and VLC skips and does all kinds of weird crap while Movist just plays the file perfectly. – Robert S Ciaccio Sep 12 '10 at 21:47
There's a lot of nice features... Shortcuts for seeking a custom number of seconds backward and forward. Restore playback position after closing. Open directly in full screen. Play over the desktop background. Slider for playback speed (no shortcuts though). – Lri Jun 07 '11 at 15:53

score 14 · Answer 89 · answered Mar 08 '11 at 22:16

14

SuperDuper!

I'm amazed it hasn't been mentioned as an answer already. It's saved my data on more than one occasion from catastrophic hard drive failure.

From its website: SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. It's the perfect complement to Time Machine under Leopard and Snow Leopard, allowing you to store a bootable backup alongside your Time Machine volume—and it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs!

answered Mar 08 '11 at 22:16

Alex Basson

687

I've been using this for many years now and it has saved my stuff on several occasions, plus it's great for when you upgrade that harddrive on your Mac. It's being updated whenever needed (and no more than that, which is also great). – Ingmar Hupp Oct 13 '11 at 09:41
One big drawback: the machine muse already be awake for scheduled backups to occur. – orome Dec 26 '11 at 20:10

score 13 · Answer 90 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:54

Audacity

A free software, cross-platform digital audio editor and recording application (from Wikipedia).

If you want to record plain old audio onto your computer, Audacity is a pretty easy way to do it.

(Apple's optical drives from the past several years have implemented region lockout DRM in firmware, rather than simply software, so I can't play back DVDs from multiple regions on my Mac. It's a laptop, so "just buy a second DVD drive" isn't really feasible, and I'm not brave enough to try flashing it with a third-party firmware. Plugging in my DVD player to my Mac is quick and easy, though!)

My it's ugly! I hate to see cross-platform software on Mac. Of course it does “the job” but I find applications like this degrading the whole experience. — Dan, Oct 13 '11 at 12:09

score 13 · Answer 91 · edited Sep 13 '10 at 10:44

13

Picasa

Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great.

edited Sep 13 '10 at 10:44

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
52

answered Sep 12 '10 at 12:18

Peter Štibraný

4,294

1

I wished they had Picasa Viewer inbuilt like windows version. – noob Nov 10 '12 at 13:01

score 13 · Answer 92 · answered Nov 08 '10 at 06:51

13

MPlayer OSX Extended

It is a media player. I like it more than VLC player.

answered Nov 08 '10 at 06:51

Willian Mitsuda

123

1

I like both, but I'm using mplayer more nowadays. It is great! – cregox Dec 23 '10 at 12:39
1

I tend to go with VLC or QuickTime Player with Perian in this case, I find MPlayer to be too buggy. – CyberSkull Jan 16 '12 at 05:37
For the last year, I moved from VLC to MPlayer X without regret. I like its interface a lot more than VLC's. I also have Perian installed for when I use Quicklook or play a video in Finder (the play button in the file icon). – lpacheco Feb 09 '12 at 10:16

score 12 · Answer 93 · answered Sep 06 '10 at 04:02

12

Xee

Xee is a lightweight, fast and convenient image viewer and browser. It is designed to be a serious tool for image viewing and management, with a sleek and powerful interface. Xee is useful as a more powerful replacement for Preview, or most any other image viewer available on Mac OS X.

answered Sep 06 '10 at 04:02

raimue

1,235

Xee's fullscreen mode is much better than Previews. – neoneye Jun 08 '11 at 12:17

score 12 · Answer 94 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

12

nvALT

Unbeatable note-taking app, featuring online syncing with the plain text notes web service, Simplenote, and the simplenote apps for iPhone and iPad.

nvAlt is a fork of the existing application, Notational Velocity.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 06 '11 at 07:03

plindsay

31

score 12 · Answer 95 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:58

Fantastical

Amazing background app for quickly accessing and adding events to your mac's calendar. Supports Caldev Sync to keep your mac's calendar always up to date, as well as natural writing event creation.

Bring up fantastical with a keyboard shortcut, and then type out your new event. Hit return and it's in. Quickly view all the upcoming events for the next month and beyond. Next time you open iCal, all of your data will remain intact as Fantastical works with your software in the background.

score 12 · Answer 96 · answered Jan 30 '11 at 20:27

Onyx

OnyX is a (free) multifunction utility for Mac OS X which allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, QuickTime, Safari, Mail, iTunes, Login window, Spotlight and many Apple’s applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more.

I've seen this utility majorly improve the performance of Mac OS X. I run it about once a month to automate maintenance scripts and it's helped identify problems like the need to repair a disk several times. A very useful and effective tool.

For the most part, these types of utilities actually SLOW system performance (cache files are a good thing, they're designed to store the result of repetitive actions so the same actions don't have to done over and over again). I'd advise only using OnyX is a troubleshooting utility for fixing glitches — Alexander, Aug 28 '13 at 04:10

score 11 · Answer 97 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Shift It

(Uses the same principles as SizeUp, but free)

This application will let you resize and move your windows without having to using a mouse. Here are some of things you can do with Shift It:

Shift the focused window to left/right/top/bottom half of the screen.
Resize the focused window to fill the whole screen.
Move the focused window to the center of the screen.

Shift It is a great tool that lets you organize your windows. Now you can read documents side-by-side without having the pain of manually resizing the windows.

score 11 · Answer 98 · answered Sep 10 '10 at 14:27

11

cdto

Fast mini application that opens a Terminal.app window cd'd to the front most finder window. This app is designed (including it's icon) to placed in the finder window's toolbar.

answered Sep 10 '10 at 14:27

Matthew Rankin

1,578

This is a great little app, though I don't think it's been updated to Lion, yet. – D. Simpson Sep 07 '11 at 01:35

score 11 · Answer 99 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:55

11

Geektool

Geektool allows you to put a tail of your syslog on the desktop, or the output of some command, or some graphic/chart/picture.

It's a bit like a more single-minded Dashboard for your desktop. You can make awesome clocks, or beautiful server monitoring, or just a fortune cookie (if you install fortune with HomeBrew).

It's not perfect (it would need sticky borders, continuous command output and sane multi-monitor behavior for that) but it's a lot of fun, using little resources.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:55

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Sep 05 '11 at 21:17

w00t

291

Geektool is awesome, but I do have to say that it does eat up memory. :-( – daviesgeek Sep 19 '11 at 02:24
@daviesgeek — How so? I've got it running 25 scripts currently for a total of 18.9 MB. In 1998 that would have been considered eating memory, but not today. – l'L'l Oct 13 '11 at 11:59
@ioi Hmm... It may just be the PPC computer I was running it on. :-) – daviesgeek Oct 13 '11 at 17:05

score 11 · Answer 100 · answered Jan 27 '11 at 23:22

11

Default Folder X

Augments the Open Folder and Save Folder dialogs from any application to allow you to immediately jump to any folder currently open by Finder. (Also works for folders open with Path Finder).

Once you start using this app, it's really hard to live without it.

answered Jan 27 '11 at 23:22

Lorin Hochstein

2,084

I used this back in Classic OS 9. There is no point to it that I know anymore, since the standard behavior for Open/Save dialogs is that you can drag any folder or file into them to navigate to that location. If there are other unique benefits, please add info. – Andrew Vit Sep 07 '11 at 02:10
Apple should have bought and integrated this app into the years ago. – Ɱark Ƭ Mar 06 '13 at 14:26
I don't see the point off this application – Richard May 12 '13 at 21:41

score 11 · Answer 101 · answered Feb 13 '11 at 17:00

11

Gitbox

Gitbox is a Git repository manager.

answered Feb 13 '11 at 17:00

apaderno

4,478

score 11 · Answer 102 · answered Feb 14 '11 at 11:15

Airfoil

Play any audio across your network to a whole host of devices, all in sync! Airfoil sends audio to remote speakers including iOS devices, other computers, and hardware devices like the Apple TV and AirPort Express. Airfoil for Mac gives you any audio, everywhere.

Basically, what previously only iTunes could do (send audio to an AirPort Express) you can now do with all applications.

score 10 · Answer 103 · answered Sep 10 '10 at 14:30

10

Tunnelblick

Tunnelblick is a free, open source Graphic User Interface (GUI) for OpenVPN on Mac OS X. It provides easy control of OpenVPN client and/or server connections.

answered Sep 10 '10 at 14:30

Matthew Rankin

1,578

score 9 · Answer 104 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

9

X Lossless Decoder

X Lossless Decoder(XLD) is a tool for Mac OS X that is able to decode/convert/play various 'lossless' audio files. Supported audio files can be split into tracks with a cue sheet when decoding. It works on Mac OS X 10.3 and later.

XLD is Universal Binary, so it runs natively on both Intel Macs and PPC Macs.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 14 '10 at 09:01

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
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I use this pretty much constantly for archiving my CD collection to lossless FLAC and then later into mp3. It's better than EAC (Windows only) in my opinion. Easier to set up, faster, and far less buggy. – Robert S Ciaccio Sep 20 '10 at 04:48

score 9 · Answer 105 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:58

9

Aperture

Aperture is a fine app for photo management and editing for professionals and advanced amateur photographers alike. It supports many file-formats and raw image file formats.

For a complete feature list see the link above.

One of my favorite features is having a full screen view while still having image control for editing via a HUD.

enter image description here

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:58

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Jul 28 '11 at 14:08

z4mba

941
1
11
8

score 9 · Answer 106 · answered Sep 16 '10 at 19:46

9

Unrar

This is a command line utility to unpack the .rar files on Mac OSX. You can't unpack the .rar files natively on OSX, where this small util is useful.

answered Sep 16 '10 at 19:46

garikapati

627

6

"The Unarchiver" does this in the GUI and can be set as your default so it acts like the native OS X archive utility. – Robert S Ciaccio Sep 16 '10 at 21:32

score 9 · Answer 107 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

9

Notify

Notify is an awesome email notifier for Mac OS X. It fits seamlessly into your menubar, only vying for your attention when you have new mail. Notify supports mutliple accounts, including Gmail, MobileMe, and Rackspace Email.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 21 '10 at 14:48

Loïc Wolff

14,706

score 9 · Answer 108 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

9

Echofon

A really simple, intuitive twitter client. This is the one that got me to switch from Tweetie.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 21 '10 at 17:58

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
52

Great because if you use it on your iPhone or iPad it will also sync read tweets in your timeline. – Ryan Sharp Jan 18 '11 at 18:54

score 8 · Answer 109 · answered Sep 05 '10 at 20:31

8

A Better Finder Rename

A Better Finder Rename has long been the file renamer of choice for tens of thousands of professionals, businesses and hobbyists across the world.

alt text

answered Sep 05 '10 at 20:31

Jurriaan

91
1
2
6

No offense anyone, but I do find it somewhat strange and hilarious that in the Mac world there are commercial applications for something as trivial as renaming files (or deleting them)... – Jonik Sep 06 '10 at 07:41
3

Windows have programs too for mass renaming. A free alternative to A Better Finder Rename is the program: NameChanger, it's not that advanced, but it's something. – neoneye Sep 06 '10 at 09:07
@Jonik: it's not about simple rename, but mass rename of many files :-) On Windows I use built-in tool in Total Commander for this. – Peter Štibraný Oct 31 '10 at 18:31
@Peter: Of course it's about mass rename; I still find it odd and funny, especially the price tag. (NB: my background is in the Unix world, where powerful command-line has always existed and people generally are adept at it, which might partly explain my reaction :-) – Jonik Oct 31 '10 at 18:45
2

I'd prefer to do these things in Terminal. Also Automator is really helpful! – fardjad Nov 29 '10 at 21:34
@fardjad - +1 for using the Terminal / Automator. – ocodo Jan 31 '11 at 00:21
@neoneye Got a link for NameChanger? – CyberSkull Jan 16 '12 at 05:39
@CyberSkull here is a link to NameChanger http://www.mrrsoftware.com/MRRSoftware/NameChanger.html – neoneye May 24 '12 at 18:08
I use Easy Rename for it's simple find and replace kinda UI – noob Nov 10 '12 at 13:02

score 8 · Answer 110 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

8

iMovie

iMovie is the best amateur video editing software out there. It has a very small learning curve, which makes it great for doing quick projects. I used iMovie for the longest time, then switched to FCE. I still use it for minor projects.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 05 '11 at 18:31

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
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score 8 · Answer 111 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

8

Mathematica

If I need to choose only one software to install on my Mac, I would install Mathematica by Wolfram.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Nov 01 '10 at 21:18

gdelfino

176

1

This is a great app, and really helped me understand my last Trig class better. – D. Simpson Sep 07 '11 at 01:36

score 8 · Answer 112 · answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:03

8

XBMC

XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for Linux, OSX, Windows, and the original Xbox.

answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:03

Yorgos Pagles

101

Runs beautifully on a Mac Mini under my TV... – binarybob Feb 08 '12 at 20:57

score 8 · Answer 113 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

8

Isolator

Isolator is a small menu bar application that helps you concentrate. When you're working on a document, and don't want to be distracted, turn on Isolator. It will cover up your desktop and all the icons on it, as well as the windows of all your other applications, so you can concentrate on the task in hand.

It's a small utility, but one that I find pretty indispensable. One of the first apps I install on new Mac.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 31 '10 at 22:38

Alex Koloskov

678

1

I try to keep my desktop empty so then I can achieve the same with Cmd-Shift-H to Hide Others and Cmd-Shift-D to hide the Dock. Fullscreen in Lion really helps too. – w00t Sep 29 '11 at 10:53
I mean Cmd-Option... Sigh – w00t Sep 30 '11 at 10:00

score 7 · Answer 114 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

7

MusicBrainz Picard

MusicBrainz is an audio file metadata (or "tag") editor. It has options for both automatic and manual modification of audio metadata.

It's cross-platform (Linux/Mac OS X/Windows) and written in Python and is the official MusicBrainz tagger.

Picard supports the majority of audio file formats, is capable of using audio fingerprints (PUIDs, similar to other fingerprinting apps like Shazam and SoundHound), performing CD lookups and disc ID submissions, and it has excellent Unicode support. Additionally, there are several plugins available that extend Picard's features.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 21 '10 at 15:29

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
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You need to give a better explanation of what benefit it gives to users. The only thing you've told them is that it is "cross-platform", not very useful at all. – mummey Jan 30 '11 at 18:22

score 7 · Answer 115 · answered Nov 28 '10 at 14:48

7

Clean My Mac

The world's easiest-to-use maintenance solution. This all-in-one tool includes everything you need to keep your Mac clean and healthy.

answered Nov 28 '10 at 14:48

AliBZ

644

1

I thought Mac OS X itself had everything I needed to keep my Mac clean and healthy... – Josh Dec 01 '10 at 14:05
1

Clean My Mac clears cache files, broken links and also it has an uninstaller to remove applications completely. – AliBZ Dec 01 '10 at 22:50
@Josh: Healthy yes, clean, no. – Ingmar Hupp Mar 28 '13 at 11:41
You don't need this! The use of these types of utilities is hyped by intense advertising, and it's generally a huge scam industry! – Alexander Aug 28 '13 at 04:07

score 7 · Answer 116 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Opera

Because it's still my favourite browser. After having used it on Windows for eight years, I took it with me when I "switched" four years ago.

Browsers are always subjective, but I like Opera because I rely on its single-key shortcuts, used its mouse gestures a lot before I moved over to a glass trackpad, I have dozens of tabs open at any time, it has session handling, bookmark syncing, and dozens of other neat, small things. And everything is built in and just works.

I could probably get Firefox to do everything Opera does for me, but it would be a hassle, and it would be even slower than it already is without any extensions. I could never get Safari to do everything I need.

score 7 · Answer 117 · answered Jan 18 '11 at 20:37

NTFS-3G (Tuxera)

We still need to learn how to play nice with windows systems (and filesystems). I use this to access my NTFS drives.

NTFS-3G is a stable, read/write NTFS driver for Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, QNX, Haiku, and other operating systems. It provides safe handling of the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 NTFS file systems. A high-performance driver is available commercially for embedded devices.

score 7 · Answer 118 · answered Jan 30 '11 at 20:45

CrashPlan

A very powerful backup application that allows you to backup to external drives, other computers, and/or their own cloud at a very reasonable price. It has an impressive compression rate and allows you to create multiple backup sets to backup different data to different locations. It has a well-designed interface and allows you to specify scheduled or continuous backups. It offers versioning and 448-bit encryption. For a home user the software is free to use if you choose not to backup to their cloud.

score 7 · Answer 119 · answered Jan 31 '11 at 22:58

7

I Love Stars

Displays iTunes’ current song’s rating in your menu bar. Click to change rating. Supports keyboard shortcuts. Has a configurable sound to remind you to rate an unrated song. Disappears when nothing’s playing.

answered Jan 31 '11 at 22:58

Graham

2,767

score 6 · Answer 120 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

6

Pomodoro

Pomodoro Desktop is a desktop application for Time Management on your Mac OSX. It is a simple but effective way to manage your (coding) time, and it's based on the Pomodoro technique you can find here.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 13 '10 at 10:42

Roberto Aloi

1,344

score 6 · Answer 121 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

6

Air Display

Technically this is both an iOS and Mac OS X application. What it does is let you use your iPad as a second monitor with your Mac. When I am using my Mac my iPad isn't usually in use (unless a family member stole it) so I use Air Display to make it useful while I am using my Mac. You get a 1024x768 or 768x1024 display that rotates and flips automatically - like you would expect.

The Mac portion is free, but you buy the iPad App. Runs with Windows too. Operates over WiFi, but you can always create a private network if one does not exist or it is too slow!

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 22 '10 at 17:11

Jim McKeeth

4,625

Seems interesting (if a bit pricey). Consider adding to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/1286/great-ipad-apps too. – Jonik Sep 22 '10 at 18:50
I finally sprung for it and couldn't be happier. It works really well with my Mac and with my WinXP computer. Definitely got my money's worth. – Matthew Frederick Feb 20 '11 at 04:06

score 6 · Answer 122 · answered Feb 20 '11 at 21:34

6

OmniDiskSweeper

OmniDiskSweeper scans your hard drive telling you where your largest files are, making it easy to delete cruft. It's intelligent in how it presents this information hierarchically.

answered Feb 20 '11 at 21:34

Alex Szatmary

356
7
11

score 5 · Answer 123 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:55

5

Forklift

A Finder replacement. Two panes file management program. Not as cutomizable as Total Commander but has a lot of features builtin.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:55

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Apr 06 '11 at 13:52

Lamnk

213

score 5 · Answer 124 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

5

VirtualHostX

For web developers who develop websites locally on their Mac. VirtualHostX manages your Apache Virtual Hosts and enable the use of domain names that point to your local machine (even non-routable domain names.) VirtualHostX does this by managing your Mac's hosts file and your Apache httpd.conf and httpd-vhosts.conf config files. It even supports MAMP (although I don't use MAMP.)

It's one of my top 5 favorite apps and one I'd hate to do without. I use it every time I start a new project!

Screenshot of VirtualHostX

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 04 '10 at 21:03

MikeSchinkel

473
5
19

I much prefer MAMP. – Josh K Sep 05 '10 at 06:13
@Josh K - Apples and Oranges. – MikeSchinkel Nov 04 '10 at 22:10

score 5 · Answer 125 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:58

5

Shady

If you're finding your laptop screen too bright at night even on the minimum brightness, Shady's the right guy for you. Basically, it puts a transparent overlay over your entire screen, dimming it anywhere between 0% and 90% of normal.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:58

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Apr 10 '11 at 08:57

wjl

1,358

Maxim Zaks · Answer 126 · 2011-05-09T13:53:38.947

muCommander

muCommander is a lightweight, cross-platform file manager with a dual-pane interface. It runs on any operating system with Java support (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris...).

Here's a non-exhaustive list of what you'll find:

Virtual filesystem with support for local volumes, FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP, Amazon S3, Hadoop HDFS and Bonjour
Quickly copy, move, rename files, create directories, email files...
Browse, create and uncompress ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST archives
ZIP files can be modified on-the-fly, without having to recompress the whole archive
Universal bookmarks and credentials manager
Multiple windows support
Full keyboard access
Highly configurable
Available in 23 languages : American & British English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Slovak, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, Ukrainian and Arabic.
Free Software (GPL)

score 5 · Answer 127 · edited Sep 13 '10 at 10:45

5

iChm

iChm is an ebook reader for CHM (Microsoft Compiled HTML Help) files.

edited Sep 13 '10 at 10:45

Robert S Ciaccio

5,647
3
42
52

answered Sep 12 '10 at 12:16

Peter Štibraný

4,294

score 5 · Answer 128 · answered Sep 12 '10 at 18:44

SABnzbd

SABnzbd is an Open Source Binary Newsreader written in Python. It's totally free, incredibly easy to use, and works practically everywhere. SABnzbd makes Usenet as simple and streamlined as possible by automating everything we can. All you have to do is add an .nzb. SABnzbd takes over from there, where it will be automatically downloaded, verified, repaired, extracted and filed away with zero human interaction.

score 5 · Answer 129 · edited Dec 24 '18 at 11:02

5

Voodoopad

VoodooPad is a place to write down your notes and thoughts. Ideas, images, lists, passwords, your mom's apple pie recipe. Anything you need to keep track of and organize. VoodooPad will grow with you without getting in the way. Drag and drop folders, PDFs, applications, or URLs into VoodooPad, and they will link up just like on the web. And with powerful search, nothing will be lost or out of reach.

edited Dec 24 '18 at 11:02

Glorfindel

4,057

answered Aug 06 '11 at 07:09

plindsay

31

..........what? – Fake Name Sep 20 '11 at 19:17

score 5 · Answer 130 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Adobe Creative Suite / Master Collection

The absolute KING of creative tools. Sure, the price is a bit up there, although there really isn't anything that can touch the versatility of having seventeen applications at your disposal. I've used some of these tools since their very existence (Illustrator, Photoshop) and I honestly can't imagine working without them. It would be difficult to describe what they all do; infinite possibilities.

Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat X Pro, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, OnLocation, Encore, Bridge, Device Central, Media Encoder, Media Encoder

◆ I'm a bit shocked this is just now making it's debut here.

score 5 · Answer 131 · edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:18

5

Audio Hijack Pro

Audio Hijack allows you to record any sound from your Mac or input device. You can also mute certain applications. This is my go-to-application for any audio recording.

edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:18

grg

201,078

answered Nov 12 '11 at 18:22

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

I love this app. There are still some regularly scheduled radio shows that this app records for me like an audio TiVo. It will also let you record the streaming radio from an app while ignoring other app or system sounds. – JTP - Apologise to Monica Apr 05 '13 at 02:10
Yes that's what I use it for!! – daviesgeek Apr 05 '13 at 06:42

score 5 · Answer 132 · edited Mar 28 '13 at 11:47

5

KeePassX password vault

KeePassX is a cross platform secure password saver. Like Keychain, but you can use it on your mobile phone and windows computers.

edited Mar 28 '13 at 11:47

Ingmar Hupp

3,544

answered Oct 14 '10 at 21:16

Anton

861

3

you really should consider lastpass. I abandoned my keepassX. – cregox Dec 23 '10 at 12:40
KeepassX is an ugly non-native app. Its only redeeming quality is that it is cross-platform. – titaniumdecoy Apr 09 '11 at 08:22
1Password is cross platform as well, and MUCH more popular. – Bryson Jun 03 '11 at 17:23
1

I use keepassX because it is open source software, vs lastpass, 1password which are not. I'm no fan of the non-native look, but my best alternative - and I would love to be corrected on this - is to use an encrypted textfile – HectorMalot Jan 27 '13 at 12:19
If you don't need to share a password file with others or open it on other platforms, simply use Keychain Access (comes with OS X). Otherwise KeePassX is still handy. – Ingmar Hupp Mar 28 '13 at 11:47

score 5 · Answer 133 · edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:19

5

Stickies

It's Apple's program for taking notes. Very minimalistic and fast.

Your notes can be:

formatted how you like
edited with hyperlinks
drag and drop pictures
export as *.txt
custom color of note

Stickies Icon

edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:19

grg

201,078

answered Jan 10 '12 at 10:52

gentmatt

49,722

score 5 · Answer 134 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

5

Postbox

Postbox 2 is first class email software that puts you in the driver’s seat. Stay on task, find information quickly and act, not react.

Unified Account Groups

Focus Pane

Quick Reply

Exist both free and paid versions

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Nov 30 '10 at 13:42

Nicolas NOEL

431

score 5 · Answer 135 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

5

Soulver

An amazing calculator that does it all with a nice text-based interface.

Just type your problem as you'd write it on paper. You see your answer instantly. No setting up formulas, no equals button. If you make a mistake, you don't have to start all over again, you just hit delete.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered May 08 '12 at 23:32

mckeed

367

score 5 · Answer 136 · answered Aug 07 '12 at 10:35

5

Hiss

Hiss is an OSX app that forwards notifications from Growl enabled apps to Notification Center in Mountain Lion.

Currently in beta, but it does an awesome job of piping all your Growl notifications into the Notification Center of OS X Mountain Lion. The only real downside to it is that it flags all notifications with the Growl icon.

answered Aug 07 '12 at 10:35

Terrance Shaw

1,614

1

I was just adding this one. – bot47 Aug 07 '12 at 10:35

score 5 · Answer 137 · answered Jan 27 '11 at 18:42

5

Kod

a programmers' editor for OS X

An open source project that is slowly replacing TextMate for me.

answered Jan 27 '11 at 18:42

terinjokes

101

Kod looks interesting, but it is nowhere near powerful enough for me to switch from TM at present. – Josh K Jan 31 '11 at 16:45
Kod is more powerful, just not enough add-on's / plugins. More importantly it's too buggy at the time (v0.0.3). That with the huge development slow-down , it isn't looking good. A lot like TM2 :0 – Ryan Gibbons Apr 10 '11 at 04:34
"slowly" is the word. :) look at macvim/vim for a serious all purpose text editor. I left textmate for it a while ago. – Vincent Apr 24 '11 at 15:58
I better throw cocoa Emacs.app in here for good measure, this or MacVim are where you go when you are finished with toy editors. (Emacs.app is my preference, however I have it heavily customized from the default, and looks a lot like my ideal version of TextMate now.) – ocodo Sep 08 '11 at 00:32

score 5 · Answer 138 · answered Jan 31 '11 at 22:47

Papers

Designed for scientists, Papers manages PDFs of journal articles. Articles imported to Papers can easily have their metadata applied from journal databases. Articles can then easily be sorted by author or journal, and labeled with different categories. Papers has an associated iOS app that it syncs with.

score 5 · Answer 139 · edited Feb 14 '11 at 11:17

5

SizeUp

SizeUp allows you to quickly position a window to fill exactly half the screen (splitscreen), a quarter of the screen (quadrant), full screen, or centered via the menu bar or configurable system-wide shortcuts (hotkeys). Similar to "tiled windows" functionality available on other operating systems.

edited Feb 14 '11 at 11:17

Martijn Pieters

103

answered Feb 01 '11 at 11:16

optixx

101

2

It is Duplicate! – Zote May 02 '11 at 00:52

score 5 · Answer 140 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:57

Plex Media Center for OS X

Plex bridges the gap between your Mac and your home theater, doing so with a visually appealing user interface that provides instant access to your media. Plex can play a wide range of video, audio and photo formats as well as online streaming audio and video. The real power of Plex is found in its library features: Organize your media into versatile libraries, automatically retrieve metadata from the Internet, and display your libraries using one of the visually stunning skins.

Plex has all but replaced VLC as my primary media application.

score 4 · Answer 141 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:56

4

PCalc

This is an awesome calculator that I have been using for at least 10 years. For basic arithmetic and quick calculations this app can't be beat.

It is also available from the Mac App store.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:56

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Apr 11 '11 at 11:58

Ɱark Ƭ

9,566

score 4 · Answer 142 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

4

Google's Quick Search Box

An application launcher, like Quicksilver. Having tried both, I found Quick Search Box's UI to be cleaner and the overall application to be faster.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 12 '10 at 13:05

Geraldo Nascimento

287

2

QuickSilver is much more then simply an application launcher. ;) – Josh K Sep 12 '10 at 14:08

score 4 · Answer 143 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:56

4

Fraise

Fraise is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.6 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users.

General-purpose text editor with extensive syntax highlighting support. Can be downloaded via MacUpdate.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:56

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered May 29 '11 at 13:51

sanekgusev

1

1

This application is no longer developed. The original app, Smultron, which was abandonned, is now developed again (and available on the App Store). So Fraise developer said there would be no other update to Fraise. – Loïc Wolff May 29 '11 at 16:39

score 4 · Answer 144 · answered Oct 13 '11 at 10:27

4

0xED

a free, native OS X hex editor based on the Cocoa framework.

Fast editing of large files.
Unlimited file size (limited by what the actual file system supports).
Small memory footprint.
Instant opening of files of any size.
Resource fork editing.
Full hex/text search/replace.
Binary/text Cut/copy/paste support.
Plug-in system to display your custom data types.

answered Oct 13 '11 at 10:27

Ingmar Hupp

3,544

1

this is a great hex editor. – neoneye Dec 11 '11 at 18:31

score 4 · Answer 145 · answered Oct 19 '11 at 20:42

4

Nocturne

For all those low-light situations, Nocturne is a tool for inverting colors, changing screen tint etc. So I can make the screen dimmer while keeping it readable, when the dimmest backlight setting is too bright.

I especially like the Invert hue option, which can be used to keep colors the same while inverting black/white.

answered Oct 19 '11 at 20:42

StackExchange saddens dancek

191

+1 I actually use this on my on my Mac Mini connected to the TV. Its "Dim when inactive" menu bar feature (coupled with hiding the Dock) gives the appearance of a having nothing on screen but the desktop picture – binarybob Feb 08 '12 at 21:06
I use this to work at night for 1: saving my eyes and 2: if I want to work on my laptop in bed without pissing off my wife! – Zrb0529 Feb 26 '12 at 23:37

score 4 · Answer 146 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

4

InsomniaX

Disables sleep mode, so you can shut your lid without the system hibernating.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 24 '10 at 20:09

Jemus42

169

I think it may be important to mention that this is probably not a good idea for new unibody Macbook Pros since the keyboard is one of the primary ways that cool air is pulled into the laptop (the MBP only has one external vent slit for pushing air out in the back). – pithyless Feb 13 '11 at 11:16

score 4 · Answer 147 · answered Nov 30 '10 at 01:47

4

TinkerTool

This handy tool allows you to customize OSX in various ways so that it is more efficient for you uses and allows you to access settings that you normally couldn't

answered Nov 30 '10 at 01:47

RCProgramming

99

Cocktail has even more options, but is commercial. Then there's also Secrets.prefpane. – Lri Jun 07 '11 at 16:09
TinkerTool provides a convenient graphical user interface for scores of customization functions that could only be accessed otherwise with command-line commands and obscure edits of system preference files. Many participants in this forum seem to prefer doing everything from the command line, but for those of us who don't, tools like TinkerTool are extremely valuable. TinkerTool will also show you customization options that you probably did not even know existed. – Aug 15 '11 at 15:55
Cocktail is not a substitute for TinkerTool. Cocktail's main purpose is to provide system maintenance functions such as clearing caches and repairing permissions. TinkerTool's only purpose is user interface customization. Cocktail has a few user interface customization options, but TinkerTool has many more than Cocktail in that regard. – Aug 15 '11 at 16:11
I have both Secrets and TinkerTool. TT is great for getting to many hidden system config options and I use Secrets for handling the rest. – CyberSkull Jan 16 '12 at 05:42

score 3 · Answer 148 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:58

3

TinyUmbrella

TinyUmbrella is a great app for anyone who has an iOS device they want to downgrade to a previous firmware for one reason or other. It backs up and saves the SHSH blobs or "Keys" required to complete the restore.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:58

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Mar 13 '11 at 05:28

Dswabster

410

kevin9794 · Answer 149 · 2012-11-06T23:36:52.783

Bowtie

Bowtie (free) is a little app for controlling iTunes and Last FM. It comes with several features, and it's really well done. Here's a brief description from its webpage.

Bowtie is a free application that allows you to control iTunes and your iPhone (requires 99¢ companion app) with customizable shortcuts, submits your songs to Last.fm with support for Loving and Banning, and sports a very simple, yet very powerful, HTML5 + CSS + JavaScript theming system.

It's got some pretty cool "Bowlets", or little controllers/information displayers that can sit on the screen. There are plenty to choose from (these are just a few I have downloaded from the theme browser):

Bowtie Themes

This is one of my favourite (PaperRift by creeze):

PaperRift bowlet

Download on App Store.

score 3 · Answer 150 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Port Map

Easily configure ports, assuming you have a UPnP router.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Apr 17 '11 at 12:20

Lauri Oherd

101
1
4

David Sykes · Answer 151 · 2013-03-06T10:35:10.477

3

Hex Editor

Practically every editor, including text editors, lie about the contents of files. Even programming languages change or omit certain characters. In general this is intended to help you see what they think you are looking for, but sometimes you just want to see things how they really are

Note: The original hexeditor I linked to is no longer on offer, so I have updated the link with the suggestion from neoneye

edited Mar 06 '13 at 10:35

answered May 11 '11 at 06:33

David Sykes

138

Hex Fiend has much better keyboard shortcuts. – neoneye Sep 19 '11 at 14:47
@neoneye Link for Hex Fiend please? – CyberSkull Jan 16 '12 at 05:44
Link above is now redirected elsewhere; no "Hex Editor" tool is evident at the destination. Hex Fiend, an open source alternative, can be found at http://ridiculousfish.com/hexfiend/ – Chris W. Rea Mar 04 '13 at 19:05
You should also look at 0xED in this list. – CyberSkull Sep 03 '13 at 05:44

score 3 · Answer 152 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:00

3

NetBeans IDE

A free, open-source Integrated Development Environment for software developers. All the tools needed to create professional desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications with the Java platform, as well as with C/C++, PHP, JavaScript and Groovy.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:00

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Sep 05 '11 at 21:37

udo

542

score 3 · Answer 153 · answered Oct 19 '11 at 20:45

3

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is the FLOSS office suite. It's comparable to Microsoft Office while available for free.

answered Oct 19 '11 at 20:45

StackExchange saddens dancek

191

This is basically the better version of OpenOffice.org, forked when Oracle refused to cooperate with the community. – StackExchange saddens dancek Oct 19 '11 at 20:48

score 3 · Answer 154 · edited Aug 24 '10 at 09:25

3

Overflow

Overflow is an application designed to quickly launch applications, open documents, or access folders while reducing the number of items needed in your Dock.

edited Aug 24 '10 at 09:25

Loïc Wolff

14,706

answered Aug 22 '10 at 01:32

Jason

1,819

score 3 · Answer 155 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Boom

provides a system-wide equalizer
boost the overall volume of your computer
boost volume of specific audio files
fast access via menu icon

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jan 10 '12 at 10:55

gentmatt

49,722

score 3 · Answer 156 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Hands Off! Firewall

Prevents applications from phoning home
Block outgoing/incoming network connections
Block subdomains
Supports IPv4, IPv6 and local networks
Block read/write file operations
Monitoring network connections and disk access
export/import rules
default rules for certain applications (Mail, Safari,...)
access via menubar

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jan 10 '12 at 11:06

gentmatt

49,722

score 3 · Answer 157 · edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:14

3

Moom

Moom is a very configurable window management tool. Some useful features include convenient and fast window placement and resizing using grids, saving window layout profiles, configurable hot keys, and much more.

edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:14

grg

201,078

answered Jun 07 '12 at 09:51

molgar

433

By far better than ShiftIt and Cinch! – pasawaya May 13 '13 at 01:46

score 3 · Answer 158 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Base

Base is an awesome tool for managing SQLite databases. It has an intuitive interface and allows you to easily create or alter tables. I especially like that the transcript shows you exactly what queries Base is executing against your database.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 25 '10 at 23:52

Reed Olsen

145
1
1
6

score 3 · Answer 159 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Clipmenu

A simple yet powerful clipboard management tool.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 26 '10 at 07:39

Davide Gualano

804

score 3 · Answer 160 · answered Aug 07 '12 at 17:25

3

Little Ipsum

It’s my favorite dummy text / lorem ipsum generator for OS X (free). What it makes so special is the selection mechanism from the menu bar (words… sentences… paragraphs):

enter image description here

answered Aug 07 '12 at 17:25

myhd

3,480

score 3 · Answer 161 · answered Aug 26 '10 at 14:55

3

JustNotes

A simple notes app that syncs with Simplenote--my favorite notes app for iOS.

answered Aug 26 '10 at 14:55

gerry3

101
3

score 3 · Answer 162 · answered Nov 06 '12 at 23:22

Bark

From their site:

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Bark intelligently brings
notifications from Growl into Notification Center under OS X Mountain Lion.

Much like Hiss, Bark forwards your Growl notifications to Notification Center in Mountain Lion. The catch though is it forwards them not as "Growl Notifications", but as notifications from the actual app that sent them, making the experience totally seamless.

Screenshots might make it more clear. I reckon Bowtie and Coda 2 don't support Notification Center natively, but with Bark this is what you get:

Bowtie through Bark Coda 2 through Bark

And on notification center they look like this:

Bowtie / Coda 2 in Notification Center

Correct icons, correct grouping, the plugin is completely free and works with the newer versions of Growl (App Store versions)... definitely worth checking out!

PS: Coda 2.0.3 I think now supports Notification Center natively, but you get the idea...

CyberSkull · Answer 163 · 2012-11-27T21:37:12.000

3

Secrets

Secrets is a PrefPane that lets users access hidden settings in many Mac OS X applications. It is also open source and user driven, any user can submit a secret and have it immediately available in the Secrets for anyone to use.

Secrets PrefPane

edited Nov 27 '12 at 21:37

answered Nov 27 '12 at 07:52

CyberSkull

2,567

score 3 · Answer 164 · answered Jan 30 '11 at 17:00

AppFresh

AppFresh helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date.

All from one place, easy to use and fully integrated into Mac OS X. AppFresh works by checking the excellent osx.iusethis.com for new versions and lets you download and install available updates easily.

score 3 · Answer 165 · answered Jan 31 '11 at 16:44

3

QuickCursor

QuickCursor lets you use your favorite editor to edit text in any Mac app that has a text input field. It's particularly useful for editing textboxes on web pages.

answered Jan 31 '11 at 16:44

Lorin Hochstein

2,084

score 3 · Answer 166 · answered Jan 31 '11 at 22:40

3

AppTrap

When you move a .app to the Trash, AppTrap notices this and offers to remove all associated library and preference files.

answered Jan 31 '11 at 22:40

Alex Szatmary

356
7
11

+1. But... Don't blindly "OK" the "remove" offer and delete good files when upgrading an app! – radarbob Apr 09 '12 at 19:24

score 3 · Answer 167 · answered Feb 19 '11 at 03:33

AntiRSI

A timer that detects when you're using the computer and tells you to take breaks if you've been at it too long. I like it because it has two timers running concurrently, one for small, frequent breaks, the other for long, rarer breaks. It's intelligent, configurable, and can show the timers on the dock icon.

score 2 · Answer 168 · edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:14

2

FinderPop

This tool provides a ton of enhancements to the contextual menu. It allows you to select move,copy,alias a selected item (icon) to pretty much any folder via pop-up hierarchical folder lists. Built-in preview stuff, and more.

edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:14

grg

201,078

answered Mar 12 '11 at 14:31

score 2 · Answer 169 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:59

Textual: IRC for Mac OS X

Textual is a lightweight IRC client created specifically for Mac OS X. It was designed with simplicity in mind. Textual has taken the best of IRC and built it into a single client. Its easy-to-use functionality combined with scripting support makes it an ideal IRC client for novice to advanced users.

I tried Colloquy; I tried MacIrssi; I tried X-Chat Aqua; but for a GUI client, I have happily stuck to using Textual.

score 2 · Answer 170 · edited Feb 09 '12 at 20:07

Vox

Vox is a little and simple music player for Mac OS X with support for many file types, including FLAC, MP3, AAC, Musepack, Monkey's Audio, OGG Vorbis, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, IT, MOD, XM, Games Music and many others. Includes numerous effects like Equalizer, Reverb, Time Stretch, Pitch Shift, Echo. Moreover, all supported files can be exported to AAC+, Apple Lossless, WAV and other formats with enabled effects.

This is one truly awesome little app which is sadly not well-known. I'd even say Vox was one of the reasons I switched to Mac. Nothing but the essentials for a music player. Besides, it offers some nice audio features (e. g. resampling with antialiasing) as well as built-in Last.fm integration and nifty controls in menubar.

I prefer to organize my music in folders by artists and albums and not bother with music libraries used in most modern audio players, so Vox's ability to play all files in a folder is the single most important feature to me.

If you feel that iTunes has grown far too big for a music player or just don't like messing with audio libraries you should really give Vox a try.

score 2 · Answer 171 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:02

2

Pianopub

Pianopub is a free Pandora internet radio player for OS X. It is a port of Pianobar, so please support the original developers. It is for use with your account from the Pandora.com internet radio service.

By far the best Pandora client ever — in form of a native Mac OS X app.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:02

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered May 29 '11 at 13:43

sanekgusev

1

score 2 · Answer 172 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:00

2

The Hit List

THL is a to-do list/GTD organizer that supports tagging, contexts, tabs, unlimited nesting, alarms, cloud syncing, keyboard shortcuts, and a ton of other features. It's a great piece of software, and comes from a developer with impeccable attention to detail. There's a companion iPhone app as well.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:00

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Aug 15 '11 at 19:08

NReilingh

4,469

score 2 · Answer 173 · edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:16

2

Prism by Mozilla Labs

Prism allows you to turn any webpage into an application. I've used this numerous times.

edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:16

grg

201,078

answered Sep 05 '11 at 21:26

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

Better app is Fluid. – TheWellington Oct 19 '11 at 21:03
@TheWellington Fluid is pretty cool! I've never even heard of it. Thanks! – daviesgeek Oct 19 '11 at 21:06

score 2 · Answer 174 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

2

Readiris

OCR software for OS X.

Readiris 12 family quickly converts your paper documents into editable text or PDF files you can edit, share and store!

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Oct 27 '11 at 17:09

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

I've tried Readiris many times since maybe version 7, and after many hours and a LOT of money, I hate the program with a passion. Perhaps version 12 is wonderful, but to my mind this is a very un-Mac-like program that not only produces poor results, but also crashes and corrupts itself. The developer cares very little about the Mac, and progress has been slow. I used it because despite this horrid performance, it was the best OCR app available. Luckily I don't do OCR much anymore, and while I hope Readiris has improved, I am a skeptic. – Ash Feb 29 '12 at 14:42

score 2 · Answer 175 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

2

Grooveshark

I know what you are thinking: "This isn't an application!", but wait a second, it actually is! I made Grooveshark into a standalone application with hotkeys. I love it and use it all the time! Information about turning Grooveshark into a standalone application here.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Nov 12 '11 at 18:27

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 2 · Answer 176 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

2

xGestures

adds mouse gestures to every program.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 20 '10 at 18:39

BarrettJ

101
3

score 2 · Answer 177 · answered Feb 09 '12 at 07:36

Sloth

Sloth is a graphical frontend for the console tool lsof. If don't know what that is, it doesn't matter!

Sloth makes it easy to find out which applications are using which files.

Sloth displays a list of all open files and sockets in use by all the applications your user account is running on the system. This list is presented along with the names of applications using the file and their process IDs. Includes support for regex list filtering, process killing, sorting and more.

score 2 · Answer 178 · edited Feb 26 '12 at 16:29

ControlPlane

ControlPlane supports multiple contexts where a context is defined as a location or activity you are performing. Using evidence sources you can create a set of rules that tell ControlPlane what context to apply to your environment. When ControlPlane enters or leaves a context a set of Actions are performed.

In other words: it will turn off screen saver protection when You arrive home and turn it back when You leave. And so much more.

score 2 · Answer 179 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

2

Rip

Rip is an application for accurate CD audio extraction.

It uses a smart combination of the AccurateRip database and CD Paranoia to ensure that the CD will be ripped accurately through the fastest means available.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Dec 02 '10 at 10:27

lpacheco

1,869

score 2 · Answer 180 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

2

CheatSheet

Just hold the ⌘ a bit longer to get a list of all active short cuts of the current application. It's as simple as that.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 04 '12 at 09:41

garrych

1

score 2 · Answer 181 · answered Oct 14 '12 at 12:34

ScreenFlow

With ScreenFlow you can record the contents of your entire monitor while also capturing your video camera, microphone and your computer audio. The easy-to-use editing interface lets you creatively edit your video, and add additional images, text, music and transitions for a truly professional-looking video. The finished result is a QuickTime or Windows Media movie, ready for publishing to your Web site or blog or directly to YouTube or Vimeo.

score 2 · Answer 182 · answered Nov 06 '12 at 17:58

2

WebStorm & Co.

These are the best IDEs for Web development I found so far. The features go way beyond what simple editors offer. Intellisense, refactorings, debugging, source control integration are my favorite.

answered Nov 06 '12 at 17:58

Dmitry Chornyi

515

score 2 · Answer 183 · answered Feb 14 '11 at 11:11

Spirited Away

Spirited Away checks each running application's activity, and if an application isn't active for a certain fixed time, Spirited Away hides the application automatically. It is, in effect, Spirited Away :-)

This is a great productivity app, keep your workspace clean and focussed, by hiding all the apps you are not using. No more distractions in the background!

score 2 · Answer 184 · answered Mar 22 '13 at 13:07

2

XtraFinder

XtraFinder add Tabs and features to Mac Finder.

• Tabs.

• Dual Panel & Dual Window.

• Cut & Paste.

• Colorful icons in Sidebar.

answered Mar 22 '13 at 13:07

flyingme

1

score 2 · Answer 185 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

2

Rulers

from the webpage:

"Rulers" allows you to create rulers on the entire screen area like most common graphic editors allow on their working areas only. The guide lines enable you to measure and position objects with precision. Rulers is incredibly useful in many fields, such as computer graphics, desktop publishing and web design. Rulers can also be used to select a screen area and take a screenshot that is automatically saved to your desktop or copied to system clipboard.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 30 '10 at 20:20

topskip

1,142

This is also similar to xScope by IconFactory, with Rulers being comparatively lightweight. – Philip Regan Aug 30 '10 at 20:37
1

I prefer xScope, though I hadn't heard about rulers. – Josh K Aug 31 '10 at 14:40

score 2 · Answer 186 · answered Mar 01 '11 at 09:59

2

Breakaway

Pull out your headphones, and iTunes pauses. Plug it back in, and it starts again. A simple application that makes your life that much easier.

answered Mar 01 '11 at 09:59

jboutros

46

score 1 · Answer 187 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:59

1

Alarms

Alarms app is the reminder system you never knew your Mac was missing. Just drag the items you want to be reminded of to the Alarms menu and place them on the time line.

edited Sep 20 '11 at 19:59

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Mar 14 '11 at 09:52

nuc

4,856

score 1 · Answer 188 · edited Oct 15 '21 at 19:42

1

Hyperspaces

Set names and separate background pictures for different spaces. Really helps me focus on one specific project at a time and helps me avoid tangents.

edited Oct 15 '21 at 19:42

Glorfindel

4,057

answered Sep 02 '10 at 14:08

Daisy Sophia Hollman

383

score 1 · Answer 189 · answered May 28 '11 at 09:10

1

Pow

Pow is a zero-config Rack server for Mac OS X. Have it serving your apps locally in under a minute.

Simple to use and indispensable if you are doing any kind of Rails/Sinatra/Rack development

answered May 28 '11 at 09:10

edgerunner

129

score 1 · Answer 190 · answered Aug 06 '11 at 18:10

Final Cut Express, a discontinued video-editing software made by Apple. Final Cut Express is one step above iMovie, with up to 99 video tracks, 99 audio tracks, and 12 compositing modes. My favorite features of FCE are Chroma Key, Color Correction, and Livetype, which comes with Final Cut Express.

score 1 · Answer 191 · answered Aug 15 '11 at 14:56

DragThing

is a utility that provides an alternative to the Dock. It is tremendously flexible and customizable in letting you design your own way to organize application launchers.

Let me be frank; I've been using a Mac every day since 1987. I cannot live without DragThing because I could never get used to using the Dock, which appeared with the first Mac OS X circa 2000 (and I was using developer builds of Mac OS X before the first version went public). While you can configure DragThing to perform many functions, what I use it for is to provide an application menu and an application launcher that behave the same way they did in Apple Macintosh System 7 through Mac OS 9. That's the way I want it.

score 1 · Answer 192 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

1

Final Cut Express

I am so amazed no one has mentioned this!
The best video editor for the price. Unfortunately Apple has abandoned FCE to go on to FCPX. I couldn't live without FCE!

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 05 '11 at 18:29

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 1 · Answer 193 · edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:11

1

SecondBar

SecondBar adds a second menu bar to your secondary monitor. Although there are a few bugs, it's a great little application.

edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:11

grg

201,078

answered Sep 05 '11 at 18:33

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 1 · Answer 194 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:01

Keyboard Maestro

An indispensable macro tool. Trigger a macro based on a hotkey (overriding the frontmost app if appropriate), typed strings (a la TextExpander, the status of an app, the system waking or your logging in, at certain times or dates, etc.

A macro can do pretty much anything you can do manually -- manage apps, choose menu items, click on windows or dialog boxes or whatever, display text or Growl or other notifications, etc. -- including running scripts. Macros can also include flow control (if, while, etc.) for less straightforward tasks (e.g. in Photoshop CmdDelete deletes the current layer if a layer is selected or the current group of layers if a group is selected).

One great use is unifying commands across apps, e.g. have Cmd- zoom out and Cmd= zoom in for every app that supports the concept rather than having to remember how, say, OmniGraffle does it vs Photoshop vs Numbers.

Keyboard Maestro enables you to create or record custom macro shortcuts that you can activate at any time. For example, your macros could help you navigate runnings applications or work with an unlimited number of clipboards. Best of all, every macro you create is available using simple keystrokes you choose.

score 1 · Answer 195 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

1

Growl Extras - Hardware Growler, Growl Mail,...

HardwareGrowler

Find out when a hardware status changes on the Mac.

Growl Mail

Notifications for incoming mail.

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jan 10 '12 at 11:22

gentmatt

49,722

score 1 · Answer 196 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

1

MarcoPolo

MarcoPolo brings context-aware computing to your Mac! It allows your computer to determine its context through gathering evidence from your environment (evidence sources), using flexible rule-based fuzzy matching to make an educated guess (rules), and then performing arbitrary actions upon changing context (actions).

I use MarcoPolo to run scripts (actions) when I arrive at work, as determined by WiFi hotspots detected or IP addresses assigned (context).

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Feb 09 '12 at 07:40

snowcrash09

485

1

Seems like ControlPlane (see http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/41826/19225) is the "new" MarcoPolo:
ControlPlane creating using code from version 2.5.1 of the MarcoPolo project still available at http://www.symonds.id.au/marcopolo/. Development of MarcoPolo seems to have come to a halt and ControlPlane attempts to pick up where MarcoPolo left off. As of version 1.0.0, ControlPlane is 64bit and fixes the WiFi Evidence Source.
– the_karel Feb 26 '12 at 15:46

score 1 · Answer 197 · edited May 14 '12 at 09:34

teleport

Okay, did a search of all eight pages posted to date, and didn't see "teleport" listed.

This little free System Preference gets installed on two computers, and then you can move your cursor off the screen of one, onto the screen of the other.

I run a dedicated Mac Mini server, but my main computer is a Mac Pro. I have the server screen above the pro screen, and I can simply move my cursor up to the server, like you'd do with multiple monitors on the same computer. BRILLIANT!

This is so much simpler and easier than using Screen Sharing or other such tools.

It also copies the clipboard of one computer to the other. This can cause a significant delay if you have something huge on the clipboard.

score 1 · Answer 198 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

1

Simple Comic

Simple Comic is the most intuitive comic reader on the Mac. Its clean interface gives you full control of your viewing experience without getting in the way. Reading comics on a computer has never been easier.

A great program for looking any any set of archived images.

Simple Comic viewer window http://dancingtortoise.com/simplecomic/images/screens/two_page.png

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Apr 05 '12 at 10:34

CyberSkull

2,567

score 1 · Answer 199 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Yep

I scan all my documents to PDF and use Yep to track & find them.
No filing! Everything goes to a single target folder, Yep takes care of it.
Tag documents
Automatically finds all PDF, iWorks, Office, et.al. documents anywhere on your hard drive.
Does not use a database like some similar apps. So I can access documents via finder; move, copy, delete, etc. easily.
In conjunction with a Fujitsu Scan Snap scanner Yep is a dream to use.

score 1 · Answer 200 · edited Mar 06 '13 at 14:29

1

Tweetbot for Mac

Though relatively new. Tweetbot for Mac is bringing the same innovation to the Mac platform that it's had established on iOS for a while now.

edited Mar 06 '13 at 14:29

Ɱark Ƭ

9,566

answered Aug 07 '12 at 10:26

Terrance Shaw

1,614

score 1 · Answer 201 · answered Aug 14 '12 at 18:36

1

EVE

From website:

EVE helps you to learn shortcuts, in order to increase your productivity with MAC OS X. Every time you execute an action using the mouse, EVE will show you the matching shortcut.

Great application! I use it with Cheatsheet.

answered Aug 14 '12 at 18:36

travmik

1

Maverik · Answer 202 · 2012-10-14T12:36:32.000

SparkleShare

SparkleShare allows you to create your own DropBox. In this way you don't have to pay for more space, if you have your own server, and you don't have to share data with no one else (service provided) except the people you decide.

How does it work?

SparkleShare creates a special folder on your computer in which projects are kept. All projects are automatically synced to their respective hosts (you can have multiple projects connected to different hosts) and to your team's SparkleShare folders when someone adds, removes or edits a file.

Why SparkleShare?

The idea of SparkleShare sprouted at the GNOME Usability Hackfest in London, where a couple of designers came to the conclusion that they didn't have a good (Open Source) collaboration tool to share their work (for more background, read “The one where the designers ask for a pony”). They didn't like how the good collaboration tools were proprietary, and that using them meant having to give up privacy, control and other rights. What they needed was something that they could run and control themselves, without having to depend on other companies.

score 1 · Answer 203 · answered Dec 01 '12 at 10:10

1

Vienna

Viennna is a free open source RSS/Atom reader. Very flexible and version 3 will have Google Reader support.

Vienna main window

answered Dec 01 '12 at 10:10

CyberSkull

2,567

score 1 · Answer 204 · edited Feb 14 '11 at 11:17

1

Clyppan

This is a really good clipboard manager.

edited Feb 14 '11 at 11:17

Martijn Pieters

103

answered Feb 01 '11 at 04:14

Julien Grenier

101

score 1 · Answer 205 · answered Feb 14 '11 at 11:07

Zooom/2

Zooom/2 is a Mac desktop utility that redefines how you can resize, move and align your application windows - making you faster and more productive.

On many X-based desktops (such as KDE and Gnome) you can resize windows from any side, move windows by clicking anywhere on the window, and switch windows simply by pointing your mouse. Zooom/2 brings the same functionality to Mac, and I can no longer live without it. For example, in my configuration I hold Shift-⌘ and click anywhere in a window to move it. No more hunting for the menu bar or the resize corner!

It also supports using fn as a modifier and snapping windows to screen edges and other elements. — Lri, Jun 07 '11 at 16:15

score 1 · Answer 206 · answered Feb 20 '11 at 03:36

1

Minuteur

Quick and easy to use timer. It's programmable, so you can do (10+2)*5 or the Pomodoro technique on repeating intervals.

The App is localized into English, but the linked webpage is French. The MacUpdate page is in English.

answered Feb 20 '11 at 03:36

Alex Szatmary

356
7
11

score 1 · Answer 207 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

1

VideoMonkey

This is an open source replacement for VisualHub. It's free and lets you do all kinds of mass video conversions as well as auto-tagging your video with tv show / movie metadata.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 31 '10 at 17:25

Alex Argo

141

videomonkey.org didn't resolve for me. I did find their sourceforge page however: http://videomonkey.sourceforge.net/Video_Monkey/News/News.html – r00fus Sep 15 '10 at 04:30

score 1 · Answer 208 · answered Jun 27 '13 at 14:27

Glui

I never really enjoyed using Skitch, even before Evernote bought them. Not too long ago I heard about Glui and have fallen in love ever since.

It's quick, provides some useful annotating tools, uploads to Dropbox and the automatically copies the share url to your clipboard.

Really has improved my workflow as a programmer. Makes it super easy to share screens when working with others.

score 1 · Answer 209 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

1

Monosnap

Monosnap is a free screenshot program for Mac OS X and Windows. The program allows users to create screenshots, annotate them and upload them to the cloud.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 06 '13 at 09:29

fedosov

101

score 1 · Answer 210 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Warp

From the website:

Warp is a preference pane that allows you to use the mouse to switch between Spaces rather than using the keyboard.

Warp offers the ability to display a live preview of a space when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen, allowing you to see what you have on another space before actually switching to it. Clicking the preview will then warp you to that space.

score 0 · Answer 211 · answered Aug 27 '13 at 13:28

0

Gimp

Gimp icon

Very powerful and free and open source image editor, inspired by PhotoShop. Has layers, RGB and indexed modes, and more tools and filters than you can shake a stick at.

Since version 2.8 Gimp is OS X native.

Screenshots - Features

answered Aug 27 '13 at 13:28

w00t

291

score 0 · Answer 212 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:01

0

News Anchor

One of the few RSS readers that doesn't try to imitate an e-mail application, News Anchor converts inanimate text in news feeds into lively television-like news broadcasts. With News Anchor you can now "read" news feeds while eating or doing other things.

News Anchor Screenshot

edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:01

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Apr 26 '11 at 13:29

adib

1,313

2

Whoa. I really think I could live without this application. :-D though the read out loud option may be useful to someone. – Jari Keinänen May 02 '11 at 12:45
1

They could do without the ugly anchor animation. – edgerunner May 28 '11 at 09:18

score 0 · Answer 213 · answered Jul 28 '11 at 15:26

0

Vuze

Vuze, the most powerful bittorrent app on earth

answered Jul 28 '11 at 15:26

Chris

1,198

2

And the heaviest. – Josh K Jul 28 '11 at 15:38
When they moved away from being just a BitTorrent client I dropped it. A Java-based media application and torrent client? My computer is crushed under the weight of it. – CyberSkull Jan 16 '12 at 05:45

score 0 · Answer 214 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

0

Monocle

A great utility to make a web search (Google, Wikipedia, any other search engine) just a keystroke away regardless of what application I'm in.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 15 '11 at 13:28

Daniel

34,803

score 0 · Answer 215 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

0

Livetype

Livetype is an awesome title generator that came with FCE. It does have a rather steep learning curve if you aren't used to keyframing, but it generates professional-looking titles at a great price.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 05 '11 at 18:35

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 0 · Answer 216 · answered Sep 24 '10 at 00:02

switchDiskSizeBase

In Mac OS 10.6 disk and file sizes are measured in base 10 (one kilobyte is defined as 1000 bytes, one megabyte is defined as 1000 kilobytes, etc.) in Finder and Disk Utility. Unfortunately this has created a lot of inconsistency even when working with Apple’s own programs since most of them still define file sizes in binary units (one kilobyte is defined as 1024 bytes, one megabyte is defined as 1024 kilobytes, etc.). This utility will switch the measurement of disk and file sizes in both Finder and Disk Utility back to binary units (or if the measurement has already been switched to binary units it will restore the system back to using base 10 units).

After the switch in Snow Leopard I never could get used to read file sizes in Finder with base-10. This application patches the Foundation framework in order to get back base-2 units. I can now again compare disk space and file sizes with other operating systems or output from shell tools.

score 0 · Answer 217 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

0

Spark

Spark is a powerful, and easy Shortcuts manager. With Spark you can create Hot Keys to launch applications and documents, execute AppleScript, control iTunes, and more... You can also export and import your Hot Keys library, or save it in HTML format to print it. Spark is free, so use it without moderation!

I use this all the time and love it!

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Oct 19 '11 at 20:50

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 0 · Answer 218 · answered Oct 25 '11 at 06:34

App bar

App Bar displays a quick list of all your applications. This is the quickest way possible to find and open any application launched from your Status Bar or Dock. All apps are listed alphabetical and the scroll list is well laid out and always just a click away.

score 0 · Answer 219 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

0

JiTouch

JiTouch is similar to BetterTouchTool, but with many, many more options. The one thing it doesn't have is Windows 7 snapping, so keep BetterTouchTool around for that. I would highly recommend this application, though it's a paid application.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Nov 12 '11 at 18:18

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 0 · Answer 220 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Shimo - VPN management for the Mac

Receive notifications via Growl. Assign network locations and wireless networks to profiles.

CiscoVPN Support
OpenVPN Support
IPSec Support
PPTP/L2TP Support
Hamachi Support
SSH Support
Use Keychain for Passwords
Certificate Management
Advanced Notifications
Automatic (Re-)Connection
Syncing Profiles with MobileMe
Scriptable with AppleScript
Global Keyboard Shortcuts

enter image description here

score 0 · Answer 221 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

0

Sophos Anti-Virus Mac Home Edition

Free commercial AV software.

Fast signature updates
Low cpu usage
Live scan
Define custom scan scopes
Define action upon treat alert (log only, cleanup, move threat, delete threat)

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jan 10 '12 at 11:13

gentmatt

49,722

Sophos anti-virus (like all other anti-virus) ONLY scans for windows malware (to avoid accidental contamination of networked PCs) – Alexander Aug 28 '13 at 04:16

score 0 · Answer 222 · answered Jan 17 '12 at 15:45

0

Scrawl

Scrawl is nifty little note taking app for the Mac that I made with iCloud support.

answered Jan 17 '12 at 15:45

Paul Dunahoo

123

score 0 · Answer 223 · answered Mar 11 '12 at 14:28

iProcrastinate

iProcrastinate is the ideal task manager for anyone who doesn't want their todo list to get in the way of actually getting things done! Great for anyone who is looking for a mobile, easy-to-use task manager. (Not just for students!) Add birthdays, soccer practice and conference calls, all without missing a beat.

Uses iCloud to sync between Mac and iOS. Couldn't do my homework without it.

score 0 · Answer 224 · answered May 09 '12 at 01:44

0

AppCode

From JetBrains, the makers of IntelliJ. Has a lot more refactoring support than XCode and a more powerful editor. Especially useful to anyone coming to iOS development from the Java world.

answered May 09 '12 at 01:44

nevster

974

score 0 · Answer 225 · edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:09

0

Emacs 24

Best text editor ever...Supports VIM bindings plus has org-mode and can run a shell, edit directories, view images, etc. Make sure to use the built-in package manager to load add-ons. Solarized-dark is an excellent color scheme.

edited Jul 06 '13 at 13:09

grg

201,078

answered Aug 07 '12 at 08:15

justingordon

933

Or use Aquamacs for a version pre-customized for OS X. I wouldn't cite VIM bindings as a key feature of Emacs though... – nohillside Aug 14 '12 at 19:47
The vim bindings are evil are awesome after too many years of ctrl-[key] really started to hurt my wrists. I almost went to vim, but then discovered evil. – justingordon Aug 14 '12 at 23:44

score 0 · Answer 226 · answered Aug 07 '12 at 11:05

0

Herald

Allow notification plugin for Mail.app. In ML you have notification center, but with Herald you also get the full message body which I really like.

answered Aug 07 '12 at 11:05

Anonymous

2,756
6
34
41

score 0 · Answer 227 · edited Nov 10 '12 at 13:27

0

CCleaner

One of best cleaning utility.

CCleaner is the no. 1 cleaning utility for Windows PC. In Mac it does the same function, cleaning temp files, cookies, cache etc. for making more space available. The tools section provides utilities to uninstall an application, change startup option, erase free space and manage permissions.

edited Nov 10 '12 at 13:27

noob

816
5
12
28

answered Sep 14 '12 at 17:59

Harsha Hulageri

101
2

Thanks for your answer. Can you add a little more information about CCleaner? What exactly does it do? – daviesgeek Sep 28 '12 at 05:26
I've used this app for almost my entire PC life. Good to have it on Mac too. – noob Nov 10 '12 at 13:28
Macs DON'T need this. Temp files, cookies and caches are GOOD (they're invented for a reason) and significantly speed up your system! I'd only even recommend clearing them for troubleshooting issues – Alexander Aug 28 '13 at 04:19

score 0 · Answer 228 · answered Oct 14 '12 at 12:32

SafeWallet

SafeWallet is a very useful and complete password manager, which allows you to safely keep you passwords, credit card pins, notes, and many more stored on your Mac.

It also provides functionality for sharing your wallet with the iOS App (SafeWallet for iPhone). In this way your wallet is always with you and always synced.

score 0 · Answer 229 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

0

Podworks

I recently referred to the app in this thread. If you own both a Mac and an iPhone or iPod, this application is a must-have.

Podworks works around iTunes to allow transfer of media to/from Mac and iOS devices.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

Community

1

answered Jan 27 '11 at 19:55

mummey

524

score 0 · Answer 230 · answered Nov 08 '12 at 15:07

ControlPlane (free/open-source)

This application can trigger a wide range on actions based on different events, its mainly use being to start/stop application based on your context.

For example when you bring your laptop to work it can start Outlook. You can detect that you are at work based on the network IP, presence of a wireless network, or many other options.

score 0 · Answer 231 · answered Dec 01 '12 at 18:05

Debookee

Debookee is a network traffic analyzer that allows you to see your traffic by protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, DHCP, DNS, SIP etc ...

It can also scan all the devices present on your network, and intercept the traffic of any of them, perfect to see what your iPhone or tablet is sending over the network.

score 0 · Answer 232 · edited Aug 07 '12 at 18:11

0

Hub List

Very promising successor of The Hit List.

Description:

A HTML5 compliant productivity application

From the author:

Hub List tries to strike a balance between simplicity and customization. If you’ve every managed a software project then you’ve probably spent more time then you care to admit inside an ugly bug tracking application that a bunch of developers convinced you would make them more productive. You probably use another app to manage your business projects and then something else to help you remember all those pesky personal todos like getting your mom a card for mother’s day. Rather than try to replace all those tools Hub List strives to provide real-time two-way integration with all of them so you can be more productive using the tools you already have.

Website:

hublistapp.com

edited Aug 07 '12 at 18:11

Mort

1,027

answered Aug 28 '10 at 10:26

Spiritual successor or actual successor? It seems like it was inspired by THL, not coded by the same guy. – Nick Sep 13 '10 at 01:34
5

You should add some description of what Hub List does. – Peter Štibraný Sep 22 '10 at 17:44
Hub List is basically a clone of THL written because some people were unhappy with THL's development schedule. THL is now released in version 1.0 with a companion iPhone app and cloud syncing. Hub list will likely die off. – NReilingh Aug 15 '11 at 19:04
That URL is no longer working. – Ingmar Hupp Mar 28 '13 at 14:32

score 0 · Answer 233 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

PogoPlug

There's a software version as well as the hardware box that creates a cloud server. The software version allows me to set a folder or drive on my Mac and link to it so I can let others access. I know there are other ways to do this, but for me the $20 ($30 now, I think) was well spent as the software is simple and no glitches.

If you have a good friend and you both agree to leave your computers running, you can use the other's extra drive to store your backup with no monthly fee, just install a decent size drive at the friend's house.

score 0 · Answer 234 · answered Feb 20 '11 at 03:31

iMote

I use it mostly to rate songs and get Growl to display the currently playing song. From the website:

iMote is a simple, elegant, and lightweight program for controlling iTunes from just about any application. Play/pause, change tracks, select playlists, adjust volume, rate tracks, and more using fully customizable hot-keys or a universal menu bar item. iMote includes a beautiful iPod-esque floating window, indicating current track information, and Growl support if you want an even more streamlined experience with your other Growl-enabled applications. Written using Cocoa, iMote is lean and mean, consuming minimal system memory and CPU time. iMote is the original iTunes controller.

score 0 · Answer 235 · answered Jun 27 '13 at 14:37

0

Airmail

After last year Sparrow acquisition from Google and development freeze, Airmail is new, actively developed mail client. It does not hide it's Sparrow roots, but exceeds it and new features are constantly added.

answered Jun 27 '13 at 14:37

b4d

866

score 0 · Answer 236 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

0

Entropy

dEntropy Logo http://bit.ly/16BItjE

I use it as my daily productivity booster since it moves all files I haven't touched within the last week from my Desktop into my archive. It has many more features you may find interesting. Here is a trailer.

Disclaimer: I'm the creator. Ask me anything. ;)

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jun 27 '13 at 14:46

Git.Coach

171

score 0 · Answer 237 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

0

Unclutter

Main features:

Instant, configurable access even in full screen mode
File Storage, to keep your Desktop clean from temporary files
Notes, your digital notepad
Clipboard preview, so you always know what you're about to share
Draggable cards that can stick on top of other windows
Retina display support

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 13 '13 at 18:54

sameetandpotatoes

4,141
3
24
38

score -2 · Answer 238 · edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:01

-2

StockMeter

enter image description here

edited Sep 20 '11 at 20:01

Jason Salaz

24,471

answered Mar 12 '11 at 08:09

sorin

29,875

score -3 · Answer 239 · edited Jan 27 '11 at 21:24

-3

Fuzzyclock

"Often you don't need the exact time in hours, minutes and seconds. A more human readable style like "five past ten" makes more sense. For that, you can now use FuzzyClock. FuzzyClock is a menubar clock which displays the current time in a "fuzzy" style." I use the handwriting font. (Alfred, Cloudapp and Growl have been said).

fuzzyclock

edited Jan 27 '11 at 21:24

Vebjorn Ljosa

548

answered Jan 17 '11 at 17:52

tobylane

139

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Eclipse IDE (free)

Activity Monitor

Air Video Server (Free)