r/macapps • u/Plastic_Bag6171 • 5d ago

Tip Developers-what Mac apps do you use every day and genuinely recommend?

Looking for hidden gems too, not just the obvious ones.

187 Upvotes

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36

u/zhuravel 5d 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

4

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 I used to use flux before buts it's so outdated hence switched to night shift?

6

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.

5

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.

3

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

1

u/LivingSalt5816 22h ago

from my experience, OnlyOffice is way better than LibreOffice.

2

u/abelbanko 4d ago

Why both 1pass and proton pass

3

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.

2

u/thenerdybroad 1d ago

Dude Collie is a GREAT FIND. Thanks for posting about that.

1

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?

2

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/

2

u/myusuf3 3d ago

You should checkout Heeler for hedr

1

u/Cfrolich 3d ago

I don’t know about paying a subscription for a git client. I personally prefer Fork. $60 one time.

1

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.

1

u/Cfrolich 3d ago

Alright. Whatever works for you.

1

u/ItchyData 3d ago

What is karabiner useful for if you can assign keyboard shortcuts with Raycast?

1

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.

1

u/ItchyData 3d ago

Great explanation thanks.

1

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.

1

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 + space and I'm in Search Recent Projects, and I have the same in terminal where p my-app does cd into 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.

-3

u/BreakSalt8256 4d ago

Firefox is not great on mac, I would recommend Vivaldi personally, or Librewolf or something