July 27, 2018

Power Tools You Need for Your New Mac

You've just got your new Mac. What's next?

Well, now you need to get hold of all the power tools you need for your new Mac. The right software and tools enable us to accomplish our goals much more efficiently by using less amount of time.

MacOS platform is well known for their software stability. There could be a long list of software if we go down to the general direction of software selection. I will try not to go overboard with this.

Audience: Management, Developer or Designer.

Reminder: A good quality MacOS software is not free most of the time. But, it is well worth the investment.

Now let's take a look at the "Must" haves Mac software below:

iTerm2

iTerm2 is a replacement for Terminal and the successor to iTerm. It works on Macs with macOS 10.10 or newer. iTerm2 brings the terminal into the modern age with features you never knew you always wanted. The features will blow you out of your mind - https://www.iterm2.com/features.html

Price: Free - https://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html

AppCleaner

AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps. Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily.AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them. Simply drop an application onto the AppCleaner window. It will find for the related files and you can delete them by clicking the delete button.

Price: Free - http://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/

Transmit

The gold standard of macOS file transfer apps just drove into the future. Transmit 5 is here. Upload, download, and manage files on tons of servers with an easy, familiar, and powerful UI. It’s quite good.

Transmit now connects to 11 new cloud services, like Backblaze B2, Box, Google Drive, DreamObjects, Dropbox, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace Cloud Files. And yes, Transmit still handles the classics — FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and S3 — better than any. We make complex services drag-and-drop simple.

Price: $45 - https://panic.com/transmit/

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is excellent for publishing images on the web (easily shrinks images “Saved for Web” in Photoshop). It's useful for making Mac and iPhone/iPad applications smaller (if you configure Xcode to allow better optimization).

ImageOptim removes EXIF metadata, such as GPS position and camera's serial number, so that you can publish images without exposing private information (but there's an option to keep the metadata if you need it).

Price: Free - https://imageoptim.com/mac

Bartender

Bartender 3 lets you organize your menu bar icons, by hiding them, rearranging them, show hidden items with a click or keyboard shortcut and have icons show when they update.There are many ways to configure Bartender as you wish. Give it a go and find out.

Price: $15 - https://www.macbartender.com/

Sublime Text

A sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. It's one of it's kind. Superior performance and features. Once you go to this tool, there is no turning back.

Price: $80 - http://www.sublimetext.com/

aText

aText accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations with frequently used phrases you define. With aText you can easily avoid typing the same thing over and over. Features; autocomplete, auto correction and predefined list of auto replacement texts.

Price: $4.99 - http://www.trankynam.com/atext/

Default Folder X

Make your Open and Save dialogs work as quickly as you do. Reopen recently closed Finder windowsCopy and Move files in file dialogsSupports tabbed Finder windowsNow in your Finder toolbars too.

Price: $49 - https://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/index.html

Magnet

Magnet keeps your workspace organized. Activated by dragging, customizable keyboard shortcuts or via menu bar, Magnet declutters your screen by snapping windows into organized tiles. Fullscreen, halves, quarters & thirds. Up to six external displays supported. The potential combinations are endless.

Drag windows to the corners and Magnet snaps them into quarters. Use side edges to arrange horizontal and vertical halves.

Price: $2 ~ $5 - http://magnet.crowdcafe.com/index.html

Clipy

Clipy is a Clipboard extension app for macOS. Free, simple and robust.

Price: Free - https://clipy-app.com/

GIPHY Capture

GIPHY Capture is the best way to create GIFs on your Mac. This free app is simple, powerful, and easy enough for pretty much anyone.

Price: Free - https://giphy.com/apps/giphycapture

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.

Price: Free - http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/

The Unarchiver

Open any archive in seconds. The Unarchiver is the only app you need to open RAR on Mac. It’s times more powerful than the native macOS utility and supports infinitely more archive formats.

Price: Free - https://theunarchiver.com

Mailplane

Gmail, Google Inbox, Calendar & Contacts on steroids. Use an unlimited number of accounts separately from the typical cluttered browser window. All in one app with Apple-like keyboard shortcuts. No separate set-up required.

Mailplane's notifier tells you how many unread messages are in your inboxes, right from your Mac menu bar.

And it notifies you if new emails arrive or keeps quiet in 'Do Not Disturb' mode.

Price: $29.95 - https://mailplaneapp.com/

This is a good list you can go with. I will update this time to time.