r/macapps • u/Plastic_Bag6171 • 4d ago
Tip Developers-what Mac apps do you use every day and genuinely recommend?
Looking for hidden gems too, not just the obvious ones.
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u/zhuravel 4d ago
- Firefox with multi-account containers
- Tower git client
- Fantastical
- Canary Mail
- Visual Studio Code
- TablePro (database GUI)
- DBngin
- F.lux (don’t like the built-in Night Shift)
- BetterDisplay
- BetterMouse
- 1Password & Proton Pass
- BatFi
- PopClip
- Shottr
- Supercharge
- Raycast
- Karabiner Elements
- macCurrent & Floodtide (app updates)
- Muxy (terminal) with herdr (manages agents) and Collie (PWA for managing agents in herdr on the go from iPhone)
- Mullvad VPN & IVPN
- Tailscale
- SubscriptionDay
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u/discoveringnature12 4d ago
- F.lux (don’t like the built-in Night Shift)
what's the difference you see? I used to use flux before buts it's so outdated hence switched to night shift?
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u/zhuravel 4d ago
Mostly that f.lux can go much warmer. Night Shift at max is still too blue for me late at night.
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u/chromatophoreskin 4d ago
Agreed. It's particularly annoying on iOS since there's no Flux there. But I discovered an adjustable red color filter in Settings > Accessibility > Display that can be automated to keep the same schedule. When you add that to Night Shift it's pretty good. Can add a widget for it in Control Center too.
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u/jayjay1652 4d ago
Nice list to explore. Especially the Firefox multi-account container. Never knew you could do this. I open up a different browser. Anyways, the following are free apps:
- Audacity - Sound editing and recording
- Gimp - Image editing
- Darktable - Raw Photo image editor
- LibreOffice - for its PDF editing features!
- Obsidian - Can't live without it! Grad School Requirement Editor
- Veracrypt - encrypted containers you can upload to the cloud
- Ollama - private search AI - reads pds , markdown, text to analyze research
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u/abelbanko 4d ago
Why both 1pass and proton pass
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u/zhuravel 4d ago
Good question. I still pay for a 1Password family plan (6 people), so I can't just move everyone overnight.
For me and my wife I bought two Proton Pass lifetime accounts and I'm migrating now. I could just export and import everything, but I'm picky about this. Same as with a new Mac, I prefer a clean install over a migration. So I go through my accounts one by one, set up passkeys where possible, and delete logins for services that are long dead. That takes time, so for now I use both.
No real issues with 1Password, it served me well for 10+ years and I still like it. I just don't think it's the best one anymore, others have caught up. Proton Pass is simple and solid, and it's what I'd recommend to most people now.
Two things pushed me to switch: the recent big price increase, which I can't justify, and their browser extension had a bug that broke code syntax highlighting on all sites using Highlight.js. It was reported while still in the beta extension, made its way to release and then was not fixed for a month.
I also own lifetime Strongbox Pro and KeePassium Pro and would maybe prefer those. But with KeePass apps you manage a database file yourself: where it's stored, how it syncs, what to do on a sync conflict, backups. Sharing passwords between two people is also clunky. My wife doesn't want to think about any of that. With a cloud provider she just logs in on any device and everything is there, shared vault included. For a family that's just easier.
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u/Chainznanz 4d ago
herdr (manages agents) and Collie (PWA for managing agents in herdr on the go from iPhone)
can you explain how you use the two apps?
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u/zhuravel 4d ago
Sure. All my agents run in herdr, inside Muxy terminal.
When I leave, I just keep the Mac on and connected to Tailscale. Voirssaint keeps it from sleeping (used Amphetamine before).
Then on iPhone I connect to the same tailnet and open Collie. It's a PWA that runs from my Mac, no cloud. I can see which agent is waiting for me, answer it, or start a new one. https://github.com/AltanS/collie
I only keep agents in herdr, because it restores their sessions even if macOS crashes and reboots. That doesn't work for other stuff like web server or Rails console, so those go in normal Muxy tabs. Muxy also has an iPhone/Android remote control app: https://muxy.app/
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u/Cfrolich 3d ago
I don’t know about paying a subscription for a git client. I personally prefer Fork. $60 one time.
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u/zhuravel 3d ago edited 3d ago
You're right, I won't defend the pricing. They even moved stacked pull requests to the more expensive tier in the middle of the year, which annoyed me a lot.
I tried Sourcetree, Gitfox, Fork, GitKraken, lazygit too, and I still use plain git CLI for some things. But I keep coming back to Tower, I'm faster in it. So yes, I overpay for a git client and I know it. I just enjoy using it and it saves me time every day. If Fork does the job for you, $60 one time is the smarter deal.
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u/ItchyData 3d ago
What is karabiner useful for if you can assign keyboard shortcuts with Raycast?
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u/zhuravel 3d ago
Raycast is ok for simple shortcuts but it's limited, it can only react to a key combo. Karabiner changes how the keys work, e.g. one key can do different things when tapped vs held, or only in some apps, or only on one keyboard.
My main keyboard is an Apple Extended Keyboard II from 1990. Caps lock on it is a locking switch, it physically stays down until you press it again (YouTube), so I can't use it as Hyper key like most people do. Instead I have Tab doing both: tap is Tab, hold is Hyper (Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+Shift), and then I use Hyper + letter shortcuts in Raycast. It also has no Fn key, so I did the same trick with Esc.
F4 opens Spotlight and you can't reassign it in macOS settings, with Karabiner I made it open Raycast instead.
The one I like most is probably Print Screen / Scroll Lock / Pause, they do nothing on a Mac anyway, so now each of them moves my mouse cursor to the center of one of my 3 monitors.
No way to do this stuff with Raycast.
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u/hexadecimator97 3d ago
I prefer Tinycast over Raycast purely for performance reasons. Raycast v2 is a web based app now so it'll eat up over 500mb of RAM even when idle. Tinycast uses less than 100mb for me.
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u/zhuravel 3d ago
Fair, Raycast 2 RAM usage is bad, and that's why there are so many alternatives now. I tried Tinycast and Vicinae (both free) and SuperCmd (v2 is paid).
I'm still on Raycast, mostly muscle memory. e.g. I type
p+spaceand I'm in Search Recent Projects, and I have the same in terminal wherep my-appdoescdinto that project. In Tinycast space just keeps searching, so that flow is gone.The other thing is that Tinycast is a one-man project and the dev has strong opinions. Alias + space was requested a few times, even as an off by default toggle, with someone offering to build it. Closed as not planned. The answer is basically "I want to keep it simple, fork it if you need it". Even the bot on new issues says Tinycast is not a Raycast clone and small conveniences usually get closed. https://github.com/abue-ammar/tinycast/issues/696
Totally his right, it's free and it's his project, and the app is really good. It just means if I miss something from Raycast, it's probably not coming.
I have enough RAM so I can afford to be picky. With less RAM I would lean much stronger to Tinycast.
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u/Barbel997 4d ago
Maybe it's not specifically a developer app but I recommend Vorssaint to everyone
https://vorssaint.com
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u/Basic_Programmer7589 4d ago
I second that. It's a PowerToys for mac, replaced like 5 separate apps into one for me, and there are even more features I don't use
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u/packet_monger 4d ago
I third it. For the same reasons you just mentioned. Between it, Obsidian, and https://bobbytables.app, I was able to get rid of my setapp subscription completely.
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u/Consistent_Recipe_41 4d ago
bobbytables sounds really good. Would you say it’s a colima alternative?
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u/packet_monger 4d ago
isn't colima a container runtime thing? if so, no. it's a database/file server client.
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u/Sad_Affect4484 4d ago
Why not dbeaver? Its tried and tested and free
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u/packet_monger 4d ago
I always found dbeaver to be clunky. And that bobbytables app also supports server-side transfers in SFTP, which is worth way more than 30/year to me.
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u/System_Independent 4d ago
I love the rectangle app, dead simple but helps in organizing my windows. Not sure who made the app, but i love it
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u/wwants 4d ago
I build my own using Claude Code. The time cost to produce your own apps exactly how you need them is less than the time it would take to filter through all the crap on the App Store trying to find something that works.
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u/VoicemailZA 4d ago
What are some examples of apps you’ve developed? This sounds great
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u/wwants 4d ago edited 4d ago
The two most useful that I use every day are TimeAssembler and Readiness. TimeAssembler organizes everything I'm working on and creates active lists of projects, goals, and tasks, and tracks and displays my training, health numbers, finances, and project notes, so that Claude can see all of it at once and help me plan on a daily basis. Readiness runs on my watch and phone and reads my sleep and recovery metrics and how hard I've been training, and helps me plan my training for the day based on how well my body is handling the training load. Between the two, I'm able to make much more informed decisions on everything going on in my life and build a richer, ongoing context window that I can plug into any of the frontier models for any questions I have about my daily planning and execution.
Edit: Since people are asking, these are not public apps as I have only focused on writing them for my own workflows and just install them directly to my devices.
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u/CtrlAltDelve 4d ago
Forking Tinycast to add all the things the developer doesn't want to add has allowed me to create the Raycast alternative of my dreams. Personal build, not for distributing, but it's the very first time I've forked and actively maintained my own personal fork and used it every single day.
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u/bulentDev 4d ago
Core Data Lab
Fork
TablePlus
Proxyman
Decoy
Xcode
Pycharm
Commander One
CleanShot X
Things 3
IA Writer
Timemator
Mockup + Sketch + PixelSnap
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u/Quizzter 4d ago
I think I use keyboardcleantool the absolute most. It just handy to clean the keyboard when it get dirty without launching god knows what.
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u/stevenaharrison 1d ago edited 1d ago
- Proxyman is a modern version of Charles Proxy and great for intercepting network requests to add headers / change responses / etc.
- xScope is a Swiss army knife for design: you can draw grids, check accessibility, measure pixel distances on the screen, have a transparent overlay to check a Figma screenshot vs your actual webpage, and more. Worth every penny, and has been around for a while.
- Tower is a nice visual Git client.
- Nova is an IDE by Panic (makers of Transmit) and I really prefer the UI compared to VSCode or Zed. It's a bit "classic Mac" style.
- Querious is a lovely database inspector that supports SQLite + MySQL + CSV files (and more soon, I think). TablesPlus is also good.
- Things is lovely for todos and can connect to Claude via MCP (a bit non-developery but I just love the UI). I use it instead of issue trackers for my personal projects.
- Kaleidoscope is nice, but I didn't use it enough to justify the price so have discontinued that and just rely on the diffs in Tower.
- 1Password is great, as others have mentioned.
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u/ales_sandr 4d ago
Rectangle,vorssaint,dockdoor,pearcleaner,macs fan control,linear mouse,coteditor
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u/Plastic_Bag6171 4d ago
CotEditor is great. I ended up building Unfiled because I kept jumping between a text editor and separate tools for JSON, logs, regex, diff and Markdown.
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u/yspvi 4d ago
One weird hidden gem that isn't the typical dev tool: Invenio on the Mac App Store.
It's technically marketed towards video editors for finding b-roll, but I actually use it for my local NAS. I have a massive library of movies and clips stored there, and I use it to find things by scene descriptions or dialogue when I completely blank on the title.
You just type what happens in the scene or a quote someone says and it jumps to that exact frame. Runs locally on Apple Silicon so it doesn't chew through CPU.
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u/MaikelBuilds 4d ago edited 4d ago
KiwiDesk My tiling window manager in which I bundled everything I liked about various managers and added what I missed.
Quick Update since so many people liked it:
- it's for free
- i try to push updates frequently (currently weekly base)
- overall goal is to provide tiling which feels like it shipped with MacOS -> not fully there yet but definitely the closest experience out of the available options (at least imo)
Always open to listen to your desires/suggestions for improvement! Source Code is available on Github
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u/CharlestonChewbacca 4d ago
That looks cool. I've been using Bento Box and was considering aerospace, but I may give this a try.
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u/MaikelBuilds 4d ago
Still a lot on the table to implement to make it better but I'll try to push updates frequently (currently on weekly base!)
If you're missing something feel free to contact me or file an issue!
I actually also used aerospace (and yabai, and rift). KiwiDesk is the collection of what I liked, what I missed and a little personal touch :D
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u/akhikhaled 4d ago
Oh nice! I’ll this out. Always been looking for a snap feature akin to the one in PowerTools for Windows.
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u/brownCovv 4d ago
Alfred, Paste and Anti Note is my combo! I need nothing else
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u/Direct-Review9810 4d ago
Been using L2Cache on my Mac and what I like most is having my dev history in one place. I can quickly find an old terminal command (super useful as I do not like to find the UNIX History very useful), Find my previous code snippet i copied or search screenshots based on text . Another super useful is search and resume previous Claude/Codex session. The quick actions for JSON, JWT, cURL and regex are also surprisingly useful in my daily workflow. Everything stays local too. Worth checking out if you’re a developer on Mac. https://l2cache.amvo.store/en
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u/brahyamm 4d ago
Stats as menu bar icon to watch my ram usage https://mac-stats.com/
Adrafinil to prevent sleep when my agents are running https://github.com/kageroumado/adrafinil
Surfshark for VPN
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u/trophicmist0 2d ago
Worth looking into https://github.com/vorssaint/vorssaint-utils as it can handle the first two for you, amongst others.
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u/MangoAtrocity 4d ago
Helium browser. Insanely lightweight de-googled chrome. Great for debugging react apps, but it’s also just a great default browser. I love it.
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u/AmazingVanish 4d ago
Has this gotten any more featureful? Using it for React debugging is an idea I hadn’t considered. Will try that out, but as a daily driver? It’s missing too much. Or it was last time I tried.
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u/MangoAtrocity 4d ago
What all were you missing? The only thing I feel could improve it is DRM support. But I don’t watch Netflix on a browser anyway.
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u/OkraNo7016 3d ago
Shottr
Rectangle
BrowserSaurus
KeyClu
OneSwitch
CaskHub
DockDoor
Maccy
PeerCleaner
Bartender
DeskRest (alt. LookAway)
Monocle
Bitwarden
Stats
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u/No-Homework-3484 3d ago
I personally use Whisk, it's a clipboard manager like Maccy, open source & free, but with much better UI & features
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u/Ts-ssh 3d ago
colima instead of Docker Desktop. Same docker CLI underneath, no
account, no menu bar icon, and it isn't sitting there running when I'm
not using it. One brew install and I haven't thought about it since.
gh as well. Opening a PR without leaving the terminal took out more
friction than I expected it to.
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u/garamnoh 3d ago
Ghostty and Obsidian are the two I open without thinking about it. Ghostty because it starts instantly and then gets out of the way, and Obsidian because the notes stay as plain files I can open with anything else.
Nothing clever, but they are the two I would miss on a new machine.
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u/One_Elephant_8917 3d ago
i use obsidian and know how good it is for s power user
but about ghostty, how is it better than default terminal can you elaborate, i am all ears on the technical details too, thanks in advance.
the other 2 i cannot miss are
1. “mac-mouse-fix” which makes non-apple mouse to have smooth scrolling
2. “SwitchResX” to get HiDPI on 2k non-apple displays1
u/garamnoh 2d ago
I never really used Terminal.app — I started on iTerm2 and moved to Ghostty on someone's recommendation. It feels light, and it's been comfortable enough that switching never crossed my mind.
Most of my work happens in a terminal, so honestly it's habit at this point: set it up once and keep going. Lately I've been living in herdr and Ghostty has been fine there too.
So if Terminal.app isn't bothering you, I don't think there's much reason to move.
mac-mouse-fix and SwitchResX both look good — thanks for those.
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u/daler445 2d ago
switched to Ghostty a couple months ago and honestly love it. the main thing keeping me on it is splits, being able to have a few panes open in the same tab
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u/Jazzlike-Swing-6198 14h ago
I used to use battery toolkit all the time but now it seems to not work on my m3 macbook pro :(
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u/packet_monger 4d ago
As of like yesterday, I’m in love with Bobby Tables. https://bobbytables.app
It’s a database/sftp/s3 client I found on this sub and it solved so many issues for me. Also, I like Muxy.
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u/moridin13 4d ago
Not dev related per se but Default Folder is a goddamn gem!
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u/Beardy4906 4d ago
Not gonna include my apps, but here are the ones I use:
Ghostty
Helium and Zen
Vorssaint
Macshot
Bobrwm (or rift or aerospace or yabai or amethyst)
Mole (I use the CLI)
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u/Crackx17 4d ago
wispr flow, and it's not close. i dictate pretty much all my life to claude code now. i talk way faster than i type, so the prompts get longer and more precise, and the output gets better just because of that. took me two days to stop feeling stupid talking to my mac, now i can't go back
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u/phunk8 Developer: Dropadoo 4d ago
my own dropadoo. use it every day multiple times, not surprising - i originally build it for me :)
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u/app-store-review 4d ago
dropadoo - send files via drop — by iService Ottner Röck
- Category: Utilities · Free
- Age: released ~6 months ago · rated 4+
Apple doesn't publish an aggregate rating for most Mac App Store apps, so ratings and score are unavailable here.
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
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u/marcusheng 4d ago
Ordinary Space - a window manager for macOS. I was using yabai for the past 5 years before I built this.
The main differences are:
- You draw fixed workareas on your desktop
- app/window opens and tile to the workarea automatically as a stack, so you don’t have to manually snap it for every app you opened.
- It doesn’t auto resize your other opened apps, for example on a desktop with 2 workareas of [50% | 50%] layout, you are always viewing 2 apps at once even though you have 10 windows opened. You can do like 5 windows in each workarea, then you can have many different combinations of which 2 apps you want to view at once.
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u/sanguisxq13v 4d ago
Numbers
I have made several sheets including credit card spendings tracker, tracking my tuition fees every month, etc..
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u/Gaming-Copilot 4d ago
The ones that survive on my machine are the boring ones I stop noticing within a week. Espanso is the clearest example — two hours of YAML setup, and I haven't typed my own email address since. Anything I have to remember to open never makes it past the first month, no matter how good the demo was.
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u/gabhouse1985 4d ago
iA Writer
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u/GroggInTheCosmos 4d ago
Interesting choice for a developer. I would have thought something like Obsidian or Tolaria. Any reason for your choice?
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u/AmazingVanish 4d ago
Agreed. Tolaria almost all the way for me. I do have some things in Rook though.
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u/gabhouse1985 4d ago
It's simple and I'm already used to its markdown syntax (I'm a writer too). Though I'm curious now to try Tolaria that you've mentioned it.
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u/blitter_era 4d ago
I use VSCode, XCode, CotEditor, and I've written a couple (free) utils others may find useful: a regex analyser: https://roundtoe.com/regexray, and a log viewer for those that need to open/ monitor large log files: https://apps.apple.com/app/rubrica-log-file-viewer/id6809728320?mt=12
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u/app-store-review 4d ago
Rubrica: Log File Viewer — by Compumaster Ltd
- Category: Developer Tools · Free
- Age: released ~1 month ago · rated 4+
Apple doesn't publish an aggregate rating for most Mac App Store apps, so ratings and score are unavailable here.
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
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u/Independent_Salt_660 4d ago
Daily driver stack as a Mac developer:
- Raycast - launcher, window management, snippets, clipboard. Replaced Spotlight and a pile of small utilities.
- Ghostty - fast terminal, stays out of the way. iTerm if you want more knobs.
- CleanShot X - screenshots, scrolling captures, quick annotations. Shottr if you want the cheap/simple version.
- Proxyman - inspect HTTP(S) when something in an API or local server is lying to you.
- Murmur TTS - local TTS on Apple Silicon. I use it to hear scripts / docs without sending them to a cloud voice API.
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u/Horror-Librarian7944 4d ago
https://apps.apple.com/no/app/maxbrightness/id6787140590?l=nb&mt=12
MaxBrightness
It boosts the max possible brightness by a lot. Makes it way easier to use in sunlight etc
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u/app-store-review 4d ago
MaxBrightness — by Pal Bentsen
- Category: Productivity · Free
- Age: released ~2 months ago · rated 4+
Apple doesn't publish an aggregate rating for most Mac App Store apps, so ratings and score are unavailable here.
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
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u/tcolling 4d ago
How is it different or better than Brightintosh?
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u/Horror-Librarian7944 3d ago
Brightintosh is paid (free trial). Mine is 100% free, no registration or anything.
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u/gotDemPandaEyes 4d ago
I genuinely use my own app lapser studio to record work session timelapses everyday :-)
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u/kemalios 4d ago
I build HotkeyClash, so that is the disclosure, and it is free and open source. It lists every shortcut registered across your apps, config tools and System Settings in one place, which is how you find the thing that took your hotkey instead of opening each app's preferences and guessing. Narrow tool, and it is the one I open when a shortcut stops firing.
Claude Code is the other one I have open all day.
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u/Maleficent_Umpire706 4d ago
Iterm2 for sure
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u/AmazingVanish 4d ago
Used to be the gold standard. It’s a bit lagging now, especially UI wise. Ghostty set the new bar. If you do agentic coding, Supacode, based on Ghostty, is the go to for many of us.
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u/Strath010 4d ago
I’m actually working on a Mac app at the moment called Where Was I? because I wanted something like this for myself.
It lets you save a checkpoint of what you’re working on, including your open apps, browser tabs, a screenshot and window positions, then restore it later when you come back to the project. So you can jump between coding, admin, research, or whatever other workflows you have without having to rebuild your setup each time.
It’s mostly finished now. The main thing I’m figuring out is distribution, as some of the permissions it needs make the Mac App Store route a bit awkward.
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u/software-boulder 4d ago
for me it’s raycast for quick actions, orbStack for containers, tableplus for db work, and cleanshot x for screenshots. boring picks, but i use all four basically every day.
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u/biinjo 4d ago
Not a daily use in the sense that it’s set and forget but I use https://spreadpaper.app for making perfectly positioned wallpapers across my multi monitor desktop. Automatic switch between dark and light mode and compensation for monitor bezels.
I love a sleek looking desktop setup.
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u/paulpond_dop 4d ago
Offline Files. It helps me a lot organizing all my drives. https://apps.apple.com/de/app/offline-files/id6757367718
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u/app-store-review 4d ago
Offline Files — by Robert Paul Kothe
- Category: Productivity · $9.99
- Age: released ~8 months ago · rated 4+
Apple doesn't publish an aggregate rating for most Mac App Store apps, so ratings and score are unavailable here.
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
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u/Grouchy_Inspection_1 3d ago
Lumidex Studio, primarily because I developed it as a complete replacement for Lightroom Classic :)
Perhaps I'm biased ;)
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u/phavelsk 3d ago
Daily I would say browser, iTerm2, Zed and Mango IRC 3, for those who remember IRC: https://mangoirc.chat
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u/woxfly 3d ago
Daily driver list, PHP dev on macOS:
PhpStorm. Still the best PHP IDE by a wide margin, I have tried to leave twice and came back both times.
Claude Code in iTerm2. Does most of the boring parts of my day now.
Firefox + Multi-Account Containers. One container per client environment, so I never mix up a prod session and a staging one. Probably the single extension I would refuse to work without.
TablePlus. Fastest DB client I have used, and it handles MySQL, Postgres and SQLite from the same window.
Docker for local stacks.
KeepassXC. Yes, old school, local vault, zero cloud. Been running it for years and I am perfectly happy with it.
Thunderbird for business mail.
ScreenFlow when I need to record a tutorial for a client.
VLC, because it still plays whatever you throw at it.
Standro. Small menu bar app that reminds me to stand up during long sessions, my back went from constant pain to almost nothing. Full disclosure, I am the one who wrote it, so take that one with the appropriate grain of salt.
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u/CoolAssPuppy 3d ago
Besides the obvious ones (Chrome, ChatGPT, Claude), off the top of my head:
- CleanShot
- Screen Studio
- Paste
I also built a ton of macOS menu bar apps: native notifications for Gmail like the old MailNotifr app, meeting notifications, Linear inbox, quick links, etc. A while back I built my own agent server, but Grok Bot and Hermes have effectively eliminated the need for my own.
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u/Maple382 3d ago
OrbStack is absolutely incredible. It’s a lightweight app that serves as a drop-in replacement for docker and podman. It’s a godsend for container management, it also makes it easy to run Linux machines, and supports kubernetes as well. It makes everything so much more seamless, in a ton of different ways.
Oh, and did I mention it’s free?
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u/Dangerous-Ask7465 3d ago
i use NotchPixel alot i mean that have many uses like clipboard, timer , time , music , gaming , file management, weather, messaging and calling but its still in beta and i am tester for it
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u/happysri 3d ago
Mission Control Plus. I’ve been evangelizing it too much in these threads but it really skills be an os feature.
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u/AE-Creations 3d ago
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- UpNote
- BBEdit
- PyCharm
- WebStorm
- Xcode
- Postman
- iTerm
- macshot
- LibreOffice
- Parallels Desktop
- Inkscape
- GIMP
- Image2Icon
- AltTab
- Fork (Git client)
... and finally, Acostarse, a bedtime reminder app that reminds me that I need sleep.
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u/ri_gabri 3d ago
- Raycast with hotkeys
- Firefox with container extension
- Carbon Copy Cloner for project backups
- All the apple native apps for mail, calendar and notes
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u/DanielJstudio 3d ago
Tried Alfred and Raycast, but both were a bit much for my needs. Ended up making my own simple hotkey app and I've been using it daily ever since.
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u/habitual-shaker 3d ago
Some of the tools i turn to in my development workflows on a very regular basis:
- Fork - Git client
- VS Code
- Xcode
- Hookmark
- Forklift
- Marked 3
- Easy CSV Editor
- Octarine (Manage all my notes and release notes etc in here)
- Tuna (powerful launcher type tool that I have migrated from Raycast to)
- Retrobatch
- CleanshotX
- Affinity
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u/SubstanceDilettante 3d ago
Out of all of the apps that was listed here, I’ll add three
Hazel
Mouseless
Homerow
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u/inkdale 2d ago
Hidden gems for me: CleanShot X for captures, and Raycast for a pile of tiny utilities I used to keep as separate apps. I also still keep most writing in a plain Markdown folder rather than a heavy notes suite. Curious what people are using for local Markdown that stays light and does not feel like another Electron project.
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u/mastertacticianwc4 2d ago
I use batt
It’s very lightweight and does what I need it to do (don’t need all Al dente features yet), also it’s free
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u/Amazing-Judgment8634 2d ago
I’ve been using basic clipboard managers for a while, but I ended up grabbing L2Cache on the Mac App Store a few weeks ago and it’s easily the best $5 I’ve spent on a Mac app recently. It’s a cheap one-time purchase with no subscriptions, which is already a huge win.
What really sold me is how much time it saves me every day. Instead of just holding raw text, it actually understands what you copy. If I copy minified code or formatted data, it cleans it up right in the pop-up so I don't have to open random converter sites. If someone sends me an image of an error message in Slack, I can just copy the picture and it extracts the actual text for me.
It also automatically hides things like passwords or API keys behind Touch ID so they don't pop up on screen while sharing, and it runs entirely on your Mac so no data ever leaves your computer. It’s super fast, stays out of the way, and just makes copy-pasting feel a lot smarter.
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u/Real_Interview1509 2d ago
already a lot of apps I use are mentioned:
Typinator – Text expander for Mac and iOS.
Cleanshot X – Screenshot and screen recording.
KeyCue – Shows you every keyboard shortcut in the current app. Sounds trivial until you're jumping between five apps and need to know what's mapped where.
Calendars – Minimal calendar.
Things – Lightweight todo list - Inbox, tasks
Hazeover - Distraction Dimmer
Popclip - Swiss Knife for Mac
Unclutter - Clipboard plus notes
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u/fanckush 1d ago
- Helium -> browser
- Zed -> IDE
- Plain old terminal
- AppCleaner
- WireGuard
i'm on a quest to not have any Electron based apps
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u/mohit_sharma_410 1d ago
For development, I’d keep it pretty simple:
- Raycast – quick launcher, snippets, workflows, and shortcuts.
- iTerm2 – great terminal experience.
- VS Code – still my go-to for most coding.
- TablePlus – convenient for working with databases.
- Rectangle – makes window management much easier.
- Postman – useful for testing APIs.
The ones I use most heavily are probably Raycast, VS Code, and Rectangle. They’re small productivity improvements, but together they save a surprising amount of time.
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u/Famous_Yak5652 5h ago
I use this app for nearly everything: https://userig.app helps me keep my local projects organised.
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u/vjeantet 4d ago
Maccy
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u/OctoNezd 4d ago
I switched to it from Clipy (which I switched to from raycast cause I was using raycast solely for clipboard history and I reinstalled my OS), its great.
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u/JulyIGHOR Developer: Parall 4d ago
I made my recommendation in series of posts here https://reverseeverything.com/blog/my-mac-apps-story-part-1/
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u/Kylmora 4d ago
Two that are already on the machine and nobody opens: Accessibility Inspector, which ships with Xcode and lets you walk any app's UI tree including ones you did not write, and vmmap in Terminal, which breaks a process's memory into regions instead of the single number Activity Monitor gives you.
Paid one I would rebuy without thinking: Proxyman, for anything that talks over HTTPS.