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Nothing to say, i just love it
Dropover, Magnet, Arc Browser if you don’t like safari. Noir extension if you indeed like safari. Adguard for ad blocking globally. Best video player so far: IINA. Keka for rar files. Blueharvest if you use external drives and don’t wan’t macOS to fill them with .dstore crap. 🫡
Homebrew
My most used essential is BTT(BetterTouchTool).
It's quite expensive. I think $20? But it comes with so many handy software features to make your Mac more like windows a few examples I personally use are
It can independently reverse the scrolling of a mouse wheel, so now the mouse wheel and track pad can scroll in opposite directions like windows.
It can turn the green button into a maximize window button
It can make a Ctrl+click on the red button a quit app button
It can create any type of track pad gesture. IE: 3 Finger swipe down to minimize or 3 Finger swipe right to snap right, etc
It enables window snapping just like windows so you drag a window to the side and it'll snap there or drag a window to the top and it'll maximize
It can make option+arrow key snap the current window to that side. Just like the windows key + arrow on windows.
Folx: download manager + torrent client
Sniper text: for extracting text from images
Boom: equalizer
Do you still find Sniper Text useful? The latest versions of iOS and MacOS can extract text from images and rasterized PDFs. How much better is it compared to the default?
Do you still find Sniper Text useful? The latest versions of iOS and MacOS can extract text from images and rasterized PDFs. How much better is it compared to the default?
Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. As i have been using windows for past 3 years now. I can update you soon once my new mac gets delivered 😅.
I’m looking for an app to easily edit videos. I used to use MPEG Streamclip, but it’s not working anymore. I use it to edit parts of a video out, or to change format, resolution, etc. Any recommendations?
Probably DaVinci Resolve
Wireshark
Mos
Sleeves. It does everything Apple Music Mini Player failed to do. It displays now playing info in the corner of your screen. Fully customizable.
Dropover.
When you “shake” an image, text, or file with your trackpad it opens a box to drop the file into and saves it for later use so you can easily remove it from the box. It can also generate links to share the dropped item and has a bunch of nifty tools like reshaping images, converting files and more.
AND ITS FREE
I like using the weather radar apps from my phone since M series Mac’s run iPhone and iPad apps. Bring s former science teacher the free planetarium program Stellarium which has been around forever is great.
Arc is a very good browser I use it personally
dropzone
CleanMyMac
AppleCare
I used to work by connecting MacBook to the big screen smart TV. And wear special glasses to keep your eyes healthy
My app count is pretty stock. Only 3rd party I have installed is Microsoft RDP for connecting to an xps and that’s about it.
The same ones from the PC haha VLC VS code Spotify
Bartender and magnet
Rectangle or magnet for window management Amphetamine is great but better trust your dorm mate. Go into settings and allow 3 finger dragging of windows, i dont know why this isnt default it feels so natural. Figure out a knowledge graph, note taking, organization app like Notion or something. Its a learning curve but useful if you use it Get an ai whether thats Bing, a chatGPT plus account, or Visual code Blackbox, copilot or whatever Learn about Apple private relay and email generator built in to laptop that forwards to your icloud email. Great for privacy, controlling spam, protects in the least email identification from data breaches Safari has a built-in apple VPN figure out how to leverage it. Set up cmd+spotlight to launch spotlight. Configure spotlight to search all your stuff except your embarrassing private folders. So much easier to do a search than clicking nested folders and scrolling through an alphabetical list. Alfred is an upgrade to spotlight but I dont use it anymore
The FREE for personal use VMWare Fusion 13.5 Player will run Windows 11 ARM now with accelerated graphics and doesn’t limit you on cores and RAM like parallels.
The FREE for personal use VMWare Fusion 13.5 Player will run Windows 11 ARM now with accelerated graphics and doesn’t limit you on cores and RAM like parallels.
I recently got the MBP M3 Pro 14" 512gb - upgraded from MBP 13" retina early 2015 and as I'm trying to sort out my files, I found Dropover to be the best app to move files around in groups . You can put them together on what they call a shelf before moving files. They can stay there until you're ready to move files.
You can try for 14 days and can purchase for just £4.99. I'm currently on the trial but I will definitely purchase this when it ends!
I highly recommend for you to try it out!! :)
Why wouldn’t you just use a folder instead of a shelf? What the heck?
OP for the love all man kind, don't listen to a single person here telling you to install these silly utility tools that make a Mac run more like Windows. Don't get Alfred, or Bartender or apps that give you the "Windows" experience of split screens. It's all nonsense. Your Mac does everything those apps do. You really should take the time and discover what it does instead of instantly installing a lot of BS. Then you'll see why Apple puts so much time into the Mac and MacOS. You'd be surprised everything it's capable of.
The Mac comes with a very good office suite but if you need MS Office then get that. It also has a very good photo editing suit but if you need something more get Pixelmator or PS. If you need to do video editing it does include iMovie but if you need more then install Apple's Final Cut Pro X or Adobe Premiere.
If you want the best adblocker then get WIPR. It's ~$2 USD and it's absolutely the most powerful. It can't get everything but it's better than the other free ones.
????
When people say make Mac like Windows 99.9% of the time they mean
Scrolling on a scroll wheel and trackpad in opposite independent directions
Window Snapping
Both of which are essential features to get if you're coming from Windows.
Daisy disk, parallels, fermatta, Alfred, istats, pixelmator pro (I like it better than photoshop)
There is also another alternative to Alfred - Raycast
Heard Raycast has some recently discovered security vulnerabilities. Evwrything does but theres articles on this one.
My personal essentials:
Wipr - simple adblock for Safari (MacOS/iOS)
AlDente - useful if you’re keeping your Mac under charger for a longer time. MacOS has very similar feature build in but it may not work if you’re randomly plugging in and out your charger.
Rectangle - free tool for very quick windows management, snapping etc.
Keka - great software for compressing and decompressing .rar files and other compressed formats.
OnyX - great free software for performing overall maintenance in your system
AppCleaner - uninstall programs and delete leftover files
FlipClock - basic screen saver with a clock
Amphetamine - keeping your Mac awake, useful for longer tasks when doing them overnight etc.
Look into yabai for window management
!remindme 6 hours
!remindme 6000 days
I use Barrier everyday. I switch between a docked MacBook and a PC and this has been a life saver using one keyboard and one mouse
I’ve been looking for something like this! Hopefully I can set it up to work well. Thank you!