For me these have entered into my must haves

  • BetterDisplay: For better scaling support for external monitors
  • Rectangle: To be able to use a mouse to drag and snap windows
  • Pixea: To be able to double click an image with a mouse in any folder and then use arrow keys or scroll wheel to proceed to the next file in the folder. Replaced the stock preview with this.

Something I’m looking for now is the ability to use the forward and back buttons on my mouse when I’m in Finder and want to go back to the previous folder I was in. Doesn’t work in Safari either. Works in good old dependable Firefox though.

And separate volume controls for each applications.

  • @Deemo@bookwormstory.social
    11•11 months ago

    Some of my general programs

    1. Homebrew (https://brew.sh/)
    2. Magnet
    3. Shottr
    4. Velja
    5. Bitwarden
    6. Spark
    7. Firefox Nightly/Chrome
    8. Ferdium
    9. Pdf expert (before the subscription junk happened)/ PDF Studio
    10. Day progress
    11. Horo
    12. Obsidian
    13. Bartender (testing it)
    • @Dankry@lemmy.world
      4•11 months ago

      Horo

      For anyone reading this Horo is a timer for your menu bar. It’s simple but I can’t recommend it enough, I use it so often these days that I don’t know how I ever got by without it.

    • @rasta
      1•11 months ago

      Seconds this, Raycast also replaced Rectangle (window manager) and Maccy (clipboard manager) for me.

    • ImaginaryFoxOP
      4•11 months ago

      With pixea I can just double click to open an image no matter the folder view it is set to and use arrow keys or scroll wheel to look through the images in the folder.

      Meanwhile in Quick view I have to reach for the space bar. Mind you I’m using a macmini so my hands are more likely to not be near the space bar as it would be using a TouchPad on a laptop.

      And then my preferred view is grid, but then the arrow key navigation stops at the row it started on instead of automatically proceeding to the next row. So I have to click down then have to use the opposite keys to look at the previews then down again and go the opposite direction. And scroll wheel navigation doesn’t work either. So then if I want to use one key I have to go through the process of changing to list or column view so I can just click down to view the next. But, why would I have to do that? It just seems like too many unnecessary steps.

      No need to highlight anything with Pixea. Or switch to space or whatever. Simply open the image and just look through the media in the folder with no extra steps, which more fits into my idea of simplicity that I expect from MacOS than the default behavior that doesn’t feel mouse friendly either.

        • ImaginaryFoxOP
          1•11 months ago

          Yeah, basically the default windows or Linux pic behavior. When I saw you had to do these additional steps of space bar and selecting images in grid view I was like no… I could have lived with clicking space bar, but having to do the additional step of selecting images or do a folder view adjustment was just too clunky for me haha. It felt like someone trying to explain how downloading a PC game then going through setting options isn’t that hard a opposed just downloading and playing a game on a console. My thought why does a simple image preview even need those steps.

            • ImaginaryFoxOP
              2•11 months ago

              Yeah, it seems like it has less development that even the photo viewing behavior in iOS. Like you can just navigate through the files app and open a Pic and just keep swiping right instead of running into this random limitation.

                • ImaginaryFoxOP
                  1•11 months ago

                  Still seemed odd to me why a preview doesn’t have such a basic continuous function, since other native options for other OSS aren’t full blown editors either. I think this picture function has been around in other OS for over a decade now?

                  Especially with more people who use phones or tablets than desktop OS it seems like coming into MacOS and opening a file to look at a larger preview and being able to continuously look with no additional steps would be the behavior they’d expect.

                  This is the one thing that has confused me more than the default windows snap behavior or the scaling options for external monitors, since it is so basic I never expected to not be a thing in any OS released these days.

  • 520
    7•11 months ago

    UTM. The best free VM software that works on all Macs, M1/M2 included. Can even virtualise MacOS instances relatively easily.

      • 520
        3•11 months ago

        Runs like an absolute dream on an M1 - provided you use an ARM64 image. X86 performance is shit.

        • @cianmor@lemmy.world
          1•11 months ago

          How does it run Office and especially MS Teams? I guess you can watch a YouTube video but not really game on that VM?

          • 520
            1•11 months ago

            Depends on your setup. ARM based guest OSes will run them fine performance wise. X86 guest OSes run like dogshit just trying to boot the thing up.

            GPU acceleration is actually a thing but it is very much in beta and has known side effects, especially for Linux.

            It is worth bearing in mind that UTM can’t pass through the Apple laptop webcam and mic like it can with other USB devices. The same is true of all virtualisation software, as MacOS treats these devices very differently to regular USB devices.

  • Vector
    7•11 months ago

    I like Spectacle for arranging windows on the desktop.

    If you’re a command line user, give iTerm2 a look.

    If you’re a developer or power user, you’ll probably want Homebrew for package management.

  • Izax
    6•11 months ago

    These are the Mac-exclusive apps I use regularly on my MacBook Pro 14" CotEditor Amazing open source text editor just for Mac BetterSnapTool for snapping windows (old school I know) Image2icon is useful for making my dock icons consistent TopNotch because the notch is annoying TG Pro because Macs get hot Keka because sometimes you run across a RAR or 7z file

    These are just Mac apps, but I also use a bunch of cross-platform apps

    • ImaginaryFoxOP
      1•11 months ago

      CotEditor looks kind of like Notepad++ which I love for when I just want a simple text editor that is a little more functional that the default text editor without launching visual studio code. Thanks for the recommendations.

  • @HellmageTheVile@lemmy.world
    5•11 months ago

    Suspicious Package: A great utility for inspecting the payload of a package, including scripts.

    Macs Fan Control: Both a temp monitor and fan control. Especially useful on older Intel Macs.

    Amphetamine: Good GUI for caffeinate.

    coconutbattery: Monitor your battery health, cycles, etc.

    The Unarchiver: Think 7-Zip for macOS.

    Jamf Now: Stripped down version of Jamf, MDM for Apple devices. You get 3 devices for free. This is more if you want to dabble in endpoint management/light automation. You will get sales emails.

    • ImaginaryFoxOP
      1•11 months ago

      Lot of nice recommendations here. Particularly suspicious package.

    • @Onse@lemmy.ml
      1•11 months ago

      I always had my own configuration set up but recently, I switched to NvChad and only change some details.

  • @woofbark@lemmy.world
    4•11 months ago

    Maccy - clipboard app Alfred - launcher Iterm2 - terminal Firefox BettertouchTool - touchpad gestures Hidden bar - hide menu bar icons Itsycal - menubar calendar IINA - gui for mpv video player Keka - extract archives Espanso - text replacement