Top 30 Must-Have Productivity Apps for Mac Users
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Introduction
In today's fast-paced digital world, having the right tools can significantly enhance productivity and streamline daily tasks. In this article, we explore the top 30 must-have applications that both Scott and I cannot live without when using our computers. While many of these applications focus on Mac, we aim to cover Windows alternatives as well and encourage readers to share their favorites in the comments.
Exploring the Essential Categories
We categorize the apps into various sections for better navigation and understanding. Here’s an overview of the categories we will cover:
- File Management
- Media Tools
- Utilities
- Productivity Tools
- Screenshot and Screen Recording
- Developer Tools
File Management Applications
Efficient file management is critical for any computer user. Here are some vital applications that help keep files organized and managed effectively:
1. DaisyDisk
DaisyDisk is a fantastic tool for visually analyzing the disk space on your Mac. It quickly scans your hard drive and provides a graphical representation of what is consuming all that space. With an excellent free version and a small purchase price, it becomes invaluable for anyone running out of space.
2. Marta
Marta is a fabulous file browser for Mac OS that features great keyboard support and a built-in terminal, making it a developer-friendly choice. Users appreciate its dual-pane layout and customization options.
3. EasyFind
The built-in file search on macOS is often criticized for its inefficiency. EasyFind is a better solution, offering flexibility with regex and fuzzy searching capabilities, making it easier to locate files even among large directories.
4. Chawka (Duplicate Finder)
Chawka serves as a duplicate file finder, helping users eliminate redundant files from their systems. It’s available as open-source software and supports multiple platforms, including Mac, Windows, and Linux.
5. Backblaze
Backblaze provides cloud backup solutions that run effortlessly in the background, ensuring your entire hard drive is automatically backed up and safe from data loss due to corruption or accidental deletion.
6. Hazel
Hazel is a powerful file automation tool that allows users to create custom rules for organizing and managing files. It’s remarkably efficient for automating file workflows and keeping the desktop decluttered.
7. Automount
This application automatically mounts NAS drives upon startup or connection, eliminating the hassle of remapping drives every time your computer restarts.
Media Tools
For those who regularly work with multimedia files, here are essential applications that enhance media handling and processing:
8. HandBrake
HandBrake is a widely-used open-source tool for converting video formats. It's excellent for encoding videos into more manageable sizes while maintaining quality.
9. Ena
Ena is a clean and modern media player that supports a vast array of formats and simplifies watching videos compared to traditional players.
10. Capture One
An excellent alternative to Lightroom, Capture One is sought after by professionals. Its powerful editing features and support for various camera models make it a worthy investment.
Utilities
Utilities add functionality to the operating system and improve overall user experience. Here are some key utilities:
11. Raycast
Raycast serves as a productivity powerhouse that centralizes app launching, file searching, and command execution. It has become an essential tool for efficient task management.
12. Stats
An open-source alternative to iStat Menus, Stats provides real-time monitoring of system performance, including memory usage and network activity.
13. Ice (Menu Bar Manager)
Ice offers a free, open-source solution to manage your menu bar apps effectively, ensuring a cleaner workspace on Mac.
14. Pair Cleaner
Pair Cleaner helps users remove unwanted files and clean up their system efficiently. This open-source utility offers a straightforward alternative to pricier competitors.
Productivity Tools
Productivity tools help users manage their time and tasks more effectively:
15. Numi
Numi serves as a handy calculator that allows users to make calculations and unit conversions using markdown-style input, making it a flexible addition to any productivity toolkit.
16. SIP (Color Picker)
SIP is a color picker tool that allows users to easily select colors, with options to export values in various formats, perfect for designers.
Screenshot and Screen Recording
Taking screenshots and recording screen activity is crucial for productivity in various fields:
17. CleanShot
CleanShot excels as a screenshot tool, allowing users to capture, annotate, and share screen content effortlessly while maintaining an organized workflow.
Developer Tools
Developers have specific needs when it comes to apps. Here are two standout tools:
18. Sentry
Sentry is a performance monitoring tool that assists developers in tracking errors and optimizing their applications efficiently, provided with a fantastic two-month free trial offer.
Conclusion
These 30 applications are designed to enhance productivity, manage files, and improve the overall computer experience for Mac users. While many features cater to Mac, we encourage Windows users to share their alternatives in the comments below. Always prioritize finding tools that fit your unique workflow, so you can maximize efficiency and make everyday tasks easier. If you have any favorites that we didn't mention, don't hesitate to let us know!
welcome to syntax today we have uh a whole bunch of apps you need for your computer so these are not necessarily
100% development applications but these are applications that Scott and I cannot live without just as people who work on
computers um and they are they're super handy so we're going to go through I think we have a list of 30 of them and
there's going to be some serious nuggets in them a lot of these are going to be fairly focused on the Mac version
however we will try recommend a good enough Windows version or if throw it in the comments below if there's a uh a
similar Windows version of of these apps that you like uh to run yeah yeah cuz I'm not I'm not personally familiar
enough with Windows or even I guess Linux to a degree as a platform to know exactly what's out there so yeah if you
have an alternative to these please leave it in the YouTube comments below and that way we can help other people
out well so many of these things are going to be focused on productivity but if you want to make sure you're
productive in solving your issues in software you're going to want to head to sentry.io sytax sign up and get 2 months
for free this makes it really easy to solve and find bugs all of your application to make sure you're not
wasting any time this show is presented by Sentry okay uh where do we want to start Wes what are you thinking let's
start with the files one so the topics we had have here our files media raycast utilities uh there's a whole bunch under
utilities productivity screenshots screen recording and a couple Dev related ones right at the end for you
there so the first one we have here is something called Daisy disc and if you have a Mac you'll know that Apple
squeezes you absolutely squeezes you when you're buying your laptop and uh it'll say all right well it it comes
with three gigs that's probably enough hey uh and then if you want anything other than through the three gigs it
gives you it's like an extra $5,000 so I have a 2 tbte hard drive here and I still often will run out of space and
the question of where is all that space going is is often hard to find out so Daisy dis is a application they have a
very generous free version I paid for it 10 bucks many years ago and you can drop a folder or scan your entire hard drive
and it will give you a view into what's going on and where all that space is so often I'll find myself running out of
space on the computer and I'll just go into it and be like all right well like what seems odd here you know like oh
applications what's 75 gig oh da Vinci resolve and X code you know seven gigs for Da Vinci resolve six gigs for X code
that's quite a bit or I'll go into my users and I'll say oh oh okay okay uh 1.6 terabytes in my folder oh it's my
videos you have 600 gigs of of videos it's often hard to find where the heck is this space going and this is an
awesome tool and if you have an SSD which most laptops do it scans your entire SSD in like like five minutes or
not even five minutes like 10 seconds let's see let's go back here let's go back uh
rescan so you see here I've been waiting for about 20 seconds and it's a it's like 20% through so takes a minute or
two to scan your entire disc and gives you really good insights so where the hell is that space taken yeah I um i'
I've been using Daisy dis for ever and ever and ever and somebody like me is visual I use it a lot even to find where
like on my NAS drive right I I use my NAS drive is just like just throw anything in there and often times you
recordings that you're not using especially someone like me recording a massive amount of screen recordings oh I
even for a remote Drive yeah oh I use this on my remote drives all the time it works just fine Works totally fine and
uh I definitely rely on this as well uh Daisy disc is one of my favorites another of my newer favorite apps is
Marta which is a nice file browser for Mac OS it has really good keyboard support it has a built-in terminal it
feels like feels like a developer friendly file browser I I I never liked finder I think finder is one of the
worst pieces of software on the Mac so yeah so mara. sh this is one of the few things I do actually uh subscribe to on
patreon so I am a patron of this and this thing is fully extendable too I even did a bit of a syntax theme for for
mine as you can see here uh so I I wrote a theme for it and you can do all kinds of things you can extend it and all
sorts of ways and I think it's fantastic so I even the best part about it I think is probably the the keyboard shortcuts
and all that stuff can you show uh you using it right now yeah the problem is is that you cannot easily zoom in on
this so it's very small if you're watching on YouTube so there's no easy way for me to to zoom in on this you
can't do this see look at my screen right now how are you doing that uh I hold down oh man you don't you don't got
option and you use your M or hold on control and scroll your your mouse wheel you have to turn it
onol okay there we go yes there you go well either way this is it um and as you can see there's nice little uh you know
really good keyboard shortcuts right click on something right click on something yes okay reveal so you get
access to like the kind of stuff that you would want uh but for the most part it's great cuz you have the Dual pan set
up that's like very common in file browsers outside of finder you don't have to worry about tabs or anything
like that and what's really neat about this project is that there's this interesting this this author who made
this is is really kind of a fascinating dude he wrote this DSL that is kind of like Json mixed with uh yaml or
something you can see it's like it's kind of like stylus you remember stylus it's it's kind of like that as a DSL for
modifying this and there's a whole bunch of built-in themes there's a plug-in API uh quick search dis usage there's a lot
of stuff here and for a long time he wasn't updating this at all but as you can see there's a new blog post as of
August 2024 uh back on track so I I've been really stoked that this development has resumed on this thing and yeah that
that was it for me I think there was a couple of little bugs and I just got this new update today so hopefully there
are no more bugs but you never know right either way it's a cool app that I don't think people know about that's
probably no more bugs that's probably no more bugs and it has a terminal built in I've always said this like oh I wish
that terminal had a little bit more gooey to it you know and that's exactly you can you can change files on the
terminal and it will reflect it up top that's a great question um that's what how I open my terminal I haven't been
using this for like a a month or two here because I was waiting for this update so oh okay man I want to try this
this yes it's a cool app and um you can get using it for free there's there's no like barrier there and you can support
their development of it if you'd like to to do that via patreon but it is I found it to be great it's fully customizable
and as a tinkerer in somebody like that I spent way too long working on a syntax theme for this so that's great all right
next one we have here and it might be sure locked by the app you just recommended but it's one called easy
find so the search in Mac OS is awful absolutely awful if you ever want to find a file especially us developers
have bajillions of node modules and the search will look through all of that and often it will find that so this one I've
only used it a couple times but when I really need to find a file that's on my computer and I for the life of me cannot
find where it is um this easy find does a much better job at allowing you to do uh rex or fuzzy matching or you can say
only find like you can have a bunch of presets here so only find code files or only look for jpegs or or media and it's
just a much better handle on doing search there's a couple of other ones I know raycast is I'm in the raycast beta
right now for their built-in search but I still miss the Windows search where that little dog would wag his tail on
Windows XP he would always find what I needed but the Mac OS search has just been awful so very happy with this it
takes a little bit longer but I have like two terabytes of files and it scans my entire hard drive very very quickly
yeah I I've never understood why finder is so awful it's the slowest thing in the entire world and it never finds
anything I end up almost always going to my command line and using the F command I I did find that the MARTA uh app that
I I showed the search on it is not any faster than finder so I think there's something with the indexing in it but
since you have the terminal right there you could use fine directly from there but I I've always wanted an app that has
a better find is this one fast you said it's pretty fast but the the thing about fine like I asked on on Twitter a couple
months ago and everyone's like just use grep or find on whatever but like that doesn't search inside of files like if
I'm looking for oh I had a API key in in one of these files I want to see where did I reference process. env. something.
openai or something like that if I want to be able to find that then that will search inside of all your files which is
absolutely key for me nice uh the next one here I have is and I'm sorry this is you know making my polish Heritage yeah
I was going to say yeah this is a Polish word I I am I I can't even read this chav chavka chavka yeah man polish is
tough I'll tell you that actually Wes did you know I found out that I'm only like a quarter polish I thought I was
like my whole life I thought I was much more polish than I maybe just because of the last name but um turns out I'm
application of something I've always loved is a duplicate finder and duplicate finders there's some that like
you have to pay a bunch of money for and something like that this thing is open source there's a CLI version for it
there is a gooey of it it looks like it's from 1992 but the cool thing about this is it does work on Linux Windows
Mac OS free BSD so it works on everything and I'm not going to run it because it takes a massive amount of
your computer's resources to run especially if you're looking at like a your NAS drive or something like that
but again I I I have all this social uh social clips and movie clip and I'm I'm dragging them to my na I'm I keep a copy
on my computer I have a backup here I have a backup there and then over the course of 10 years you end up having the
same file in a whole bunch of locations so this thing can actually uh dive into the file it can compare videos it can
compare files it can do a search for just big files and find the largest files or empty directories and remove
all the empty directories or broken files and valid Sim links and you can see this little GIF here of what what it
looks like in action and the only bummer thing about this app is that you can't just like you I at least I wasn't able
to find a way that you could just download it I actually have to launch this from the command line to get it to
even open up as a a gooey uh so it it's not exactly the friendliest app of all time but if you follow the instructions
on getting up and running it does work really really well I I would love to have something like automated in this
because I do have a bit of file automation where I'm sending things here sending things there and i' maybe like
this to run on an interval and uh remove duplicates in certain folders or whatever because you know I have
automatically sending screenshots that I take I take a lot of screenshots anytime I want to show anything uh I take a
screenshot and then that screenshot gets uploaded to a folder on my Nas and uh just I I yeah I need more automation
with these tools at the end of the day uh next one I have here is back Blaze I've been a big fan of back BL for I
don't know probably 8 years or so and what back Blaze does is it backs up your computer to the cloud so it's not like a
Dropbox where you put files in it and it will sync it and whatnot it's simply just a install it on your computer and
it will by default back up your entire hard drive over time and as the files change it will just kind of back them up
and you can see here I've got one and a half terabytes this is five million files that's the node modules for you
and it's just Contin backing up your files and it's saved me many times in the past of O I accidentally deleted
that and I I didn't have a backup of it or oops um the real one is is this file is corrupt when did that happen and
you're able to go back in time of course I run a time machine locally but a backup of a single hard drive being your
backup in the same spot is not burgol proof B burglary the Hamburglar could take it uh it's if you have a fire
you're going to have it we've always we've talked many times about you have to have multiple backups you have to
have local backups and you have to have remote backups and one cool thing they'll do is if you do ever need a
backup and you cannot download everything at once you can simply just get them to send you a hard drive via
like FedEx or something which I'm sure it's not cheap but if you need it you need it so I have this I run on my
computer run on my wife's computer a big fan of it nice uh another one here I have for files is file automation this
is one of my favorite apps it's for Mac specifically uh but it's file Automation and it's really really pretty awesome I
use this for all kinds of things so I have a dump folder where I just throw any file into the dump folder all that
folder does is it sends it to my inbox that's on the 36th chamber which is my NAS drive and once it's in the 36th
chamber it either finds images if it's an image like a photo if it's a photo it throws it into my photo backup directory
which is then consumed by Synology if it contains the word tax like any of my tax documents it automatically puts it in my
financial tax folder if it's a movie it puts it in my movies music screenshots whatever so it does all of that
automated this is called Hazel by the way you have you didn't mention the name yet oh okay Hazel at noodles.com this
app works really super well I have it paused right now but you can set up as many rules as you want those types of
rules can be like intricate you could even call like apple scripts from your rules and stuff like that so you can get
really really indepth with it and they have a pretty good forum full of people sharing things that they're working on
themselves but I use this to like clean up my desktop or or make sure that like I have a a temp folder where I just made
a temp folder and anytime I have a file that I just want to keep temporarily it automatically uh clears that folder
after a month or so and so um or I even have for downloads here here's a thing too where Mac OS if you have a NAS drive
and that NAS drive has a ton of files into it like let's say every time I take a screenshot it puts it in my
screenshots folder on my Nas Mac is really awful at loading up that folder if it has a lot of files and it comes to
a crawl for for some reason I don't know why so what I have one is I said if this file is older than a week old put it in
the archive folder or you could even have it like a sub folder based on the date or something and then that way if I
want to go to my most recent screenshots it's only showing me the past week of screenshots and it still loads fast
instead of having this like really chugging slowdown so I found this automation tool to be pretty great it's
one that you can really geek out on in terms of like how in depth you want to go into this thing it's an actively
built thing there's a lot of people using it there's a lot of discussions tips and tricks all sorts of stuff so
there's a a deep well of things to learn about this software but it's super powerful I I need to get this because
I've written a handful of like apple scripts or automator sequences in the past and it's never great like automator
on Mac OS is very powerful especially when you get into writing custom Apple scripts but like I always feel like it's
very very clunky for what it is I'm I'm trying to do and this just seems like a much better UI for that type of thing
yeah and you can get in as far as like people have written ones that they have examples of that will like completely
reorganize let's say you do have like a folders directory that's gotten unruly it will use the metadata to put them in
like the correct you know even by camera it shot on to date to stuff like that so um I I found the software to be pretty
pretty fantastic wow oh I have another one for files here and if you have a Nas out there and again on Mac you'll know
that it's constantly uh turning them off or it's constantly disconnecting if you close your laptop or whatever it's
having to reconnect it and sometimes that's like not always super reliable and I found a specific issue when I was
using Hazel is that Hazel would get angry sometimes because the drive would not be available when it wanted to be
available so autom mounter is a great app where you basically give it your NAS Drives you give it it your NAS Drives
credentials and then it makes it so those are always mounted 100% of the time you never have to remount your NAS
Drives ever oh that's great uh let's move on to some media applications this is for
consuming converting and working with media one of them that I use is this is just an automator script and what it
does is it watches for any hike or web peas that hit my downloads folder so often I'll be airdropping or saving a
file from the web or from coming from my iPhone and it will just immediately duplicate it convert to JPEG and and
rename itself and that is so so handy because as much as I love hike and web peas they don't work anywhere uh and H
being able for it to automatically convert it to jpeg or I can just right click on something convert to jpeg quick
action super nice I feel like uh I feel like apple is to blame for webp being useless on the Mac because webp you know
people like rag on it for you know they get a webp on the in the the web for something and they're annoyed by it but
like webp is a a good format so like mac give us a quick view support of it whatever I feel like it's because it's
it's classic apple because it's not their format that they're going to like totally like pretend that it do exist
but man these things exist people use it like just give us a little bit of basic functionality for the quick view can we
talk about quick view for a sec I installed all these like extensions to give you quick view for coding but you
cannot quick view a TS file because TS is like a DVD format or like like a video format yeah and it's like it's
typescript file so it drives me you remember the DVD Studio app that came on Mac I remember like exactly the UI you
could build DV like really B it was an iMovie but um I think there was like ivd as well where you could build really
basic DVD menus and that's actually something Nero guy Nero okay yeah Nero with their their like burning uh
animations and stuff like that um one thing that I've always wanted to build build and this is kind of stupid and
potentially not possible cuz I haven't really Dove I'm going to be honest I really want an in browser DVD menu
interface essentially you know like if you rip one of your DVDs nowadays it's like you have to rip each individual
file and DVDs like I have this one right here freestyle session uh 8 dis one there's extras and stuff on this DVD now
I got R each of those individually where it's crazy that I just have a DVD sitting over here on my desk but um I
want to rip all that stuff but what i' really prefer is I would prefer to have the DVD itself ripped and then have that
exist on a web server that I could then pop open and have the DVD menu in the browser and actually use it as a DVD uh
was intended but how do you what it it's got to be doable I guarantee it's just XML
like what is it well it is it's folders of metadata and stuff and I've kind of looked into it to a degree because VLC
can handle them but this one that I have right here Ena which is the modern media player does not handle them so Ena does
not handle DVDs which is a bummer about Ena although I do use VLC for a lot of things VLC classic video app if anybody
needs a a video player that's more robust than QuickTime or whatever your computer came with and VC works with
everything I like Ena because there's it's just nice interface easy to use supports all the formats and is like
easy to use but like uh I would love to have a a DVD menu menu support it feels ridiculous and and Wes actually if you
look at we just recorded an episode on side projects and I mentioned I have a big running to-do list of side projects
one of my big side project ideas is a DVD menu in the browser so oh that that would be great uh Ena is a really cool
media player especially like as much as I love VLC I also hate it because every time I open
a file in it it's like the wrong aspect ratio and it like doesn't remember it and then sometimes the audio is like
past the little tick so it's like distorted and like I I haven't been using VLC lately just cuz it's I find it
very obnoxious unless like you need like a stream from Network or something like weird like that so I switched to Ena as
well but then I was having issues with my videos being darker than they should so I've just been dragging videos into
the browser to watch them but I think I should give Ena another another shot I have a I have an issue open on the
GitHub for Ena yeah Ena open source so you um a lot of the software we're talking about today is open source and
some of it isn't but you know the chawa Chava oh man I already forgot that pronunciation the duplication s chavka
chavka is also open source Ena open source I have a bunch of more that I'm going to be talking about that are open
source so that's definitely a big theme um yeah this is the media player I typically use if I need to watch media
uh another app I really like that's not open- Source but you know I'm a big never Adobe kind of person I in fact I I
ditched Adobe a long time ago and I refused to to subscribe to A Creative Cloud so I need Alternatives one of
those Alternatives is for photos and capture one is a really great Lightroom alternative it is super full featured
it's a professional tool for photographers if you I don't know if this is still a case anymore but when I
bought this they had a special discount if you owned a Sony camera like the a73 or any of these cameras they give you a
really nice reduced price on it doesn't look like I see that anymore and it didn't used to be subscription based
pricing so I have a a license for it that I've bought and I just not have haven't gotten the latest version of it
but this application if you're looking for an ad Lightroom alternative uh Capture One really great software I'm
YouTube and what this does gives you a whole bunch of extra features on top of YouTube so that you can have a little
bit more control over it the one that I use it for the most is simply just persisting 2x playback by default you
know you shouldn't have to turn on 2x Absolut Ely every single time that you watch a YouTube video so mine just
defaults to it and it gives you all of these nice little features here where you can turn on theater mode or you can
expand it this this is not doing much cuz I'm already expanded fully but if you are in a different layout big fan of
it you can also just put your mouse over it and I'm just Mouse Wheeling right now and you can use that to change the
playback speed the one thing I I think should be added to all software and I'm gonna add it to my course player is the
the Tik Tok press on the left to speed up are you I don't even I did not know you could do that you didn't know that
oh my goodness so I'm learning this right now if you're this is how I watch absolutely every single one Let's
uh the life of a uh someone with ADHD I I watch every Tik Tok at 2x yeah so if you simply you're watching a Tik
Tok and you just put your your finger right here and it just goes at 2X and then you take it off when you don't want
so like my go if somebody's taken a while to explain something like I am right now you just you just press it and
it it goes to 2X and I was like that's good because it's you're not setting it to 2x for by default You're simply just
kind of scrubbing it forward as while still watching and I was thinking like man we that'd be kind of nice for
YouTube videos you know like just like if you pressed and clicked if it that'd be easy that'd be easy to do I
mean you build an extension just overlays a div or a button overlays a button an invisible button you click and
hold on it it uh it's fast forwarding whatever yeah it's like fast forwarding a cassette tape or that yeah um love
that um I have a couple of pieces software here that are kind of classic software if you've used Mac uh Windows
Linux a handbrake H speaking of DVD ripping I I've been ripping a lot of DVDs so one thing Wes is I have
I have like 30 or 40 of these break dancing DVDs B boy Breakin DVDs that I've had for a long time like Freestyle
Session 8 and stuff like that and even some of them are like they're like skate DVDs or skate VH VHS tapes even where
they were like produced by one person and you know I don't know they maybe sold 200 or less copies of this thing in
the entire existence of it and so many of them either exist on YouTube and are awful quality or don't exist anywhere on
YouTube I have so many of these things and I felt like I should I should at least back them up so I've been using a
lot of handbrake lately there's also um another really popular software that works with everything make MKV uh for
ripping full-on DVDs just ripping them straight up and you can rip them to MKV but you can also rip them I believe as a
full disc which again I would love those the menu support in the browser H handbrake is one that I use all the time
for my own videos because oh really uh if I need to like I'll export them at like super high quality and then if I
need to make them available for download cuz people want to watch offline like you can't give them a 3 gig file for
every 20 minute video so I'll run it through handbreak and I find that that gets me the best but like somebody needs
to make a handbreak with a UI that's a bit better I find the UI kind of complicated you have to add to que and
then start the que and there's all these settings so it's a little bit complicated to use and that's why people
use these like converter websites where you simply just upload your file to some random server and have them convert it
and you download it again yeah totally I I I do that all the time I agree about the interface for this what I do or what
I what I do now um is I'll just have several export presets in Da Vinci and just run those but in the past what I
would do because YouTube has really good compression algorithms I upload it to YouTube and then I would use YouTube DL
to download their highest quality version for a small super high quality version that sounds absurd in uh when I
say it alloud but that's what I would do yeah I know it I've done that in the past as well is YouTube and Vio they
have very good compression so they can give you much better quality a lot of times than these different algorithms
but a lot of these places I'm assuming handbreak is using FFM Peg under the hood yeah so they're probably doing that
all for you I can't imagine it's not using and a lot of these are just using F or like any sort of video app is using
FFM Peg underneath the hood to accomplish things so really what you need is just a gooey on top of FFM Peg
that isn't garbage uh I used to like one called Meo which is there's like 800 apps called Meo so it might not be the
one you're thinking of but that that end up getting like completely taken over by spam uh people at least it did at some
point so yeah that was a easy one cuz it gave you a presets I'm making this video for the web I need this format go okay
in a nice UI I'm going to pick one called overkill for mac and this is simply a app that
runs on your computer and will kill iTunes or apple music as soon as you open it um so if you have for whatever
reason most likely you're pressing the play button on your keyboard or your mouse and your Spotify is not open or
whatever else is going going on it tries to open up Apple music and the last thing I ever ever want to do is open up
the Apple music so this will simply just if I open up music it just immediately it doesn't
even get a half a bounce in on my Dock and it just immediately kills it that's great so yeah great great little app you
download it on on GitHub I was so I love how many these apps are like just fixing holes in Mac OS like making
we're going to get a lot of Linux and windows users uh being like well you just use Windows but yeah sometimes you
need uh sometimes you need systems to just make it perfect for yourself yes and yeah I have no interest in same
I know what you're Linux or or Mac because like most of the stuff I do is on the web and like these desktop apps
are becoming less and less of a need but I I'm not interested in learning something else or and honestly I don't
think it's as good like whenever you talk to anybody about Windows version of warp or raycast
or Arc the windows versions are it's like oh well similar pretty good yeah you know you can just see the pain in
their eyes as the Dell Inspiron is is flashed In Their Eyes by you know just a single tear of I'm I'm joking yes people
hate Mac people so much but uh I and I hate that as much as well but I do think it's the best choice one one time when I
worked at the I worked at a computer store in college and I had my like knit beanie on in the summer cuz it was like
one of those ones with the brims you know I was that kind of kid and um some guy came in and he was just like talking
about how he hates Mac so much and he was like I hate Apple users because they're just some hipsters where wear a
knit beanies in the summer and then he looks over at me and I'm just like uh you were talking about
me and uh unfortunately I I do fit your stereotype um but yeah that that's definitely a thing but I think any
platform has holes in it you know people want to talk about Linux but then we get into Graphics drivers and all sorts of
things the fact that you got to jump on the command line to do almost anything in Linux like that's not for normal
people you know I I I can handle it but I'm not going to give that Linux laptop to somebody I love and to to have fun
with it so yeah I think there's definitely holes in every single platform and I think the Mac OS holes
are ones that I can fix easier and I like the general experience better overall but yeah you can come at us if
you you don't agree with that I've got another one here which is another Chrome extension um and it's called search by
image and this one is way better than anything that's built in so um first of all if you ever go to like Instagram and
you want right click on an image you'll know Instagram does this annoying ass thing where they put like a div in front
of it or they use a background image and you like you can't find it and then you end up just screenshotting it but all
but this little things so watch this right click search by image open image and boom it knows that your mouse was
over top of that element and it finds it for you which is amazing that's not even the search by image part it just is able
easy to find background images but watch this so search by image all search engines so I have it up set up for
Google Google Images Bing Yandex BYU and sagu I didn't turn that one on I don't know what that is never heard that the
Yandex one is the by far the best if you're ever trying to find an image Yandex reverse image search is the best
so you click on it and opens tabs for every single one holy cow and look at that so now if Google Images found my
this was the Instagram post but it also found it on Twitter right Google search finds it in a couple
uh see Yandex does the same oh that's so funny but it doesn't and what else is there by do shows me t-shirts you can
funny uh I find this one so good because it automatically opens all of them and if you're looking for where an image is
from chances are one of those seven websites are going to find it you find it so goo so yeah so go so good yeah you
know what um Courtney really has a really high level of uh a hit rate with is on the iPhone I believe within Google
cuz I haven't seen her do it but let's say you see a pair of shoes that you like and it's on someone maybe even like
an influencer is wearing a pair of shoes she likes and she takes a screenshot of it and she just says find me these shoes
and it finds it every single time it's like incredible it uses AI somehow and does it but um man it's like really
impressive she she finds anything so yeah it's it's amazing even like um a lot of these like Drop shippers are
getting uh pooched by that type of stuff as well there's this website called dup oh which is D or
d.com which essentially does the same thing which is if some some white labeler or drop shippers is trying to
charge you $122,000 for a a chair and then you can oh it turns out that's on wafer as well it's the exact same thing
yeah if you are out there and you're buying furniture dupc is essential to check before you press Buy on that thing
um we just realized we're 40 minutes in and and hardly uh anywhere down the the list of next one I have here is eqm um
this one is really nice if you have multiple inputs or you want to change the tone on some things so I have a set
of speakers here so when I'm connected to my speaker output I want my Spotify to have a little bit more Bas in it and
I just turn those knobs ever slow slightly it makes it sound a little bit better they're not super nice speakers
so uh it makes it sound better to me big fan of this app i' tried out a several of them yeah let's get into some uh
utilities here because we have we have raycast but honestly we could do a whole episode on raycast I have so many
raycast utilities that I use daily so let let's take an opportunity to talk about raycast in um another episode but
utilities West you have IAT menu and I got to say IAT menu is fine but it's fair expensive for what it does so I
want to put you on to this one which is stats it's an open- Source alternative to IAT menus and you'll happen to notice
that it looks very very similar so um it's it's very customizable it's great it's open source does everything that
IAT menus does so uh before you spend any money on that which I have in the past i' I've bought IAT menu before uh
check out stats here IAT menu is $12 that's not a lot no it's breaking the bank it's a single
it's it's a single payment too so I'm I'm very much support of that because you don't have
to pay $4 a month for the rest of your life um okay well I've bought IAT menus as well and uh I'll check this out
though like obviously free is is great um what I love so much about IAT menu is it gives you the your memory it gives
you your CPU and GPU which I use quite a bit when we're Shar sharing screen or when I'm recording or anytime we're
doing any video stuff I like to keep an eye on CPU and GPU make sure that I'm not maxing it out um and then the other
one they have you see right here I'm not going to click it because it's going to show my um location it's going to show
my IP address okay but this shows me my upload and download which is really important because often we we'll say hey
SC be like hey you're you're glitching out and then I'll I'll look up at that and take a look and a lot of times it's
oh my back Blaze is running and I'm I'm maxing out my upload uh bandwidth right here or if you want to know is it
actually downloading something right now like is this working you know something installed downloading Mac OS update you
can click on it and it will show you which app is uploading or downloading um some stuff so you can see oh it actually
is doing something right now um even Riverside um when I'm at the cottage I often will have Riverside it
has to upload for hours after I'm done because it's a slow upload and sometimes I'm looking at it going from 66 to 67
and I think it's frozen it's not doing anything so I'll click on it and say oh no I see my Firefox or whatever is still
uploading data yeah I I'm going to Rattle through a couple of Alternatives here to other popular Mac software
bartender is a super popular app uh this one is open source and it's ice it does everything bartender does bartender was
also just recently sold to another company so you never know what's going on there you know it's they've had a bug
on it for months about with the new Mac OS and it hasn't been fixed it was obnoxious to me yeah it was like asking
for permissions and all sorts of stuff I think that's the same bug either way I found ice to be a completely fitting
replacement besides I do not need a menu bar Hider to be like any more full featured than what do you want to hide
and how do you want to hide it so you know for me it's just keeping this cleaner than having all of my things uh
bleed all over the top so ice is really good and another one is a lot of people use clean my Mac which is a software
that I do feel like price gouges you a bit and it's a it's you know clean my Mac is great but there's certainly uh
things I don't love about it there's an open source called Paar cleaner um the UI obviously isn't as beautiful as clean
my Mac but it does the job it finds the startup processes it finds all of the orphan files that you might have if you
deleted the app or anything like that so uh between ice stats and peir cleaner those are like three utilities that I've
always had to buy in the past now there's really nice open source versions oh I still use bartender because crazy I
can't live without this feature which is being able to click on menu bar apps without finding it because I don't know
what it is about me but when I look at the list of 30 icons look looking for the app it drives me crazy when the only
way to interact with an app is by some little black and white icon in the menu bar and they all are clouds and I don't
know what they are and you click on the wrong one and it opens up adobe updator so I don't know I just go goofy trying
to find it and it makes me so mad so I use bartender and I wish um raycast would would do this I I I did a YouTube
video with Ray Cass and I said you guys got to do this feature and they cut it out of the video because I don't know if
they thought they won't ever Implement that or if it didn't have any space but this will allow you to say okay well I
can hit it and then it will open it up it's on my other screen right now but Tay West I got I got something for you
here this is in uh ice it's but it's unchecked but it's the next one that means it's it's I don't
know if there implementing these in order or anything but it exists on their on their radar at least I hope so that
would be huge for me yeah it's a cool app um yeah next one I have here is called numi and this is for people who
like to just have like a scratch pad in their vs code well they're you're trying to figure out some numbers or trying to
do some some quick math as to like how does this split work so what newei will do is you can kind of just write mark
down and it will just evaluate it to the right of it so like uh if I say like um I don't know like1 Scott has $10 I have
$12 and $32 you know it just immediately evaluates it to the right and then you can just kind of view it as you go and
it will do all of course like all of your inches and converting currencies and leaders there's kind of cool stuff
on here where it says next Friday plus two weeks and then it gives a date uh 2ml in teaspoons wow this is really neat
and hey folks this is Mac Linux and windows so uh not just Mac folks on this one I I didn't know about this this is
pretty awesome is is it open source too yeah it's on GitHub you can install via home brew
even oh man it's it's a really cool app big fan big fan of it here's what I have one um that is you know kind of related
to Stats and that kind of stuff it is a command line utility so it's not like a full app here but um if you've ever used
top on your computer to see the processes and stuff like that like very much like what you would use IAT 4 this
one is bottom or BTM it's a rust based one it's really cool really beautiful runs nicely in the background and I I
use this quite frequently it also just like if one um I have a computer over here that I just use as a a server
really and I just keep this on the um the screen all the time so it looks like I'm I'm cooler than I am that's awesome
I like this app called sip as a Color Picker and there are a bazillion color Pickers out there and I really like that
this one can be bound to a keyboard shortcut so I just have hyper p and automatically open up my Color Picker
and then you can also have it export the values in the different what you want so if you're pasting into vs code it will
paste as a hex if you're pasting into X code it will give you a RGB and and it will also keep all of your colors as a
Color Picker so you can go back and and see the list of them and it's I think it's like five bucks a year or or
something like that and uh been a big okay five bucks a year is a little a little much for me but you know I I just
use raycast for this which we'll obviously talk about raycast in another episode but this is the first one that
I've seen that's made me consider not using raycast because yeah the the raycast has like everything built in and
often I find myself being like I just don't want to open it or like I guess you could you can put a a thing on it uh
keyboard shortcut yeah totally and I mean I I use it you know what it bogles my mind completely that figma has a
Color Picker right and you cannot use the Color Picker in figma outside of the figma window it is 2024 folks there's
two features in figma that drive me nuts you cannot drag an image from the browser SVG or otherwise like I want to
drag an SVG from my from a website into figma and it cannot do that what I got to drag it to my desktop and then drag
it into figma sketch could do that sketch sketch could do that uh and same with the Color Picker I you get the
little Color Picker and it stops at the edge of the window what are you talking about why why yeah oh man sip is now 27
I'm guarantee I paid like $4 for it buy SI for just $20 buy a Color Picker $20 per seat every freaking company is doing
this that sucks unpick that you can't no one's paying yearly for a Color Picker it's it's
probably because you know people love it and then they always go like corporate share your color schemes with your uh
entire team you know that's why I talk about habit trackers right all of them start off very simple and they do one
thing and then next thing you know it's got a full-on RPG system in there where you're like level up by completing
habits and do this and share this I'm like I don't I just want to track my dang habits I just want a color pick
man that sucks I feel like we could build this in a weekend Wes I'm pretty sure we could I'm trying to find I can't
find my receipt from it but I guarantee it was like $6 buy once and I I realize that that's hard for people to make
money on because at six bucks your couple bucks goes to stripe for processing and then you that's all you
have you know and then and then you got to provide updates forever you know all these new color spaces and every time
Mac OS updates you got to fix everything so I realize that that's hard but I prefer the
like let me buy the upgrade if I need it version two version five I think that's that's what they do here
but 27 bucks I think that this is still a one-time payment but $27 for a a onetime payment and then you don't get
updates after a year that's still more palatable than me than like a a subscription yeah totally sketch is like
that you pay for one of sketch and then you can use it forever and until after a year you stop getting updates and then
if you need it again if you want the newest updates you can pay a bit more yeah and and honestly it looks great and
the hard part is is that yes I want to support development I think that's great if this is in fact like an automatic
subscription and you can't just do the you know that's a different story but I would pay honestly I would pay $20 to
use this and not pay again unless I wanted to sip you may have me back on your side we'll see
all right uh man so we have so many more for productivity screenshot screen recording some developer ones um we'll
have to do a part two of this episode uh because we're getting a little long here but there are literally so many little
apps that we use in our day-to-day that makes things so much easier yeah we have a lot more for you and I promise they're
not all Mac some of these are online some of these are all kinds of things so uh yeah I I hope you enjoyed this and if
there's any particular tool maybe Alternatives the things that we said in this episode stuff that you cannot live
without drop those in the comments uh we're on YouTube so the best place to let us know is in the comment section of
YouTube we will check this stuff out I'm I'm the type of person that downloads a massive amount of these things and gives
them a try even if they don't end up being the thing I keep on my computer luckily I have something like parac
cleaner that just removes them all for me so yeah let me let us know what you think about these options and let us
know if you have any better options but that's all I got what about sick picks and shame
plugs West do you have a Shameless or a sick pick for us today I'm going to sick pick another TV show ever since we had
Tim from uh next Json and he recommended Apple TV there's so much good stuff on there that I've never heard of and it's
like a like a breath of fresh air getting a new subscription so we had finished this one series called the big
con which was about this like lawyer down in the South where he would like get he he was like in it with the judge
and uh he would get people money that they were not supposed to have and then some people were supposed to have it and
it's a wild wild story so it's called the big con I'm doing a bad job at explaining it but if you love docu
series type of documentaries that are about like scams and and peoples whose personality is
just like I cannot believe that is a person you're going to want to check this one out yeah have you watched
Severance on Apple TV no okay Severance is a bit slow uh if you're not into slow stuff but it's fantastic it's about a a
corporation that Adam Scott works at and when you join this Corporation they put a chip in your brain so your brain does
not have it separates your memory from while you're at work and while you're away from work so when you enter the
doors you're the time you don't remember anything that happens while you're at work and when you leave you you don't
remember your whole day and there's a whole lot there it's um very aesthetic it's it's a really cool show it came out
a couple years ago and season 2 is just about to come out so um yeah it it was really really cool show um to my wife
she always love she loves everything Scott recommends okay well don't well okay don't don't put that kind of
pressure is this an official endorsement or like a you might like it oh well we really enjoyed Severance and it is a
little slow and and plotting sometimes but it's very um very smart and really uh intense in some ways so if you if you
watch one or two episodes you'll get the vibe for the rest of the season but it's got a a great cast and um overall like
really cool Aesthetics um given that we were just talking about like apple uh episode sweet yeah I'm going to S pick
these wild protein chips protein chips we're getting into snacks here um specifically the ones that I like were
the I don't even know if they have them in their little Carousel oh the pink salt ones it is a website look at this
uh we want to talk about carousels this Carousel is like got a double layer navigation here uh Chicken and Waffles
ones are pretty good A little sweet but the pink salt wild chips what's great about these chips is that they're made
of chicken breast so they're not potato chips they're chips made of chicken breast and therefore they have protein
in them they taste really good dude they're so fantastic CU they're really they're really thin so they're not like
chunky like a dog tree right they're thin like a potato chip and they crisp and all that stuff uh they sell it at
Costco in Colorado so we get these all the time at Costco um but they are man uh shout out to the Wild web development
team did this such a good website you don't see this kind of love on websites anymore watch this bag fall over on
scroll um sorry my internet's choked out right now for some reason it's not the website I promise it's my uh Network all
right watch this bag fall over oh cool yeah that's great oh yes okay shout out to the wild Team every SLE every single
chip is its own element oh it's built on Shopify oxygen too okay shout out to the oxygen team uh
but also man agency that put this together developers that put this together y'all got it because this thing
is is gorgeous what do you think they're what do you think paral oh look at this parala
animations for the anime I mean it's react so the whole thing is probably framer motion is my guess or Gap um Gap
ta I guess I could bring this on bring on here this is kind of interesting um maybe in vendors I feel
like this is the only podcast that would dive into a chip website clo try it's all chunked up so it's kind of
component oh yeah and get some if they haven't stripped the names do you have the react Dev Tools in here oh you you
do you have the react Dev tools open okay remix provider um suspense contact transition context provider transition
context provider I don't know if that is leaning towards anything specifically yeah a lot of these are minified so
they're kind of nonsense names here I was hoping I could just go into the chunks themselves and see yeah usually
they'll have like a a function name or something yeah sometimes there like a a global Gap
but probably not the carousel is slick Carousel which that's available is it's is Gap there we go wow Gap folks shout
out to Cassie Evans uh yeah from Gap yeah that's a great website Cool platform okay this makes me want to use
Gap more makes me want to get some chips yes they're fantastic y'all I've only had the pink salt chicken and waffles
and bar uh Buffalo ones but they've all been amazing so yeah okay cool well that's enough for chips uh as always if
you want to get more syntax you want to see the visuals you want to check out this website we're faing over head on
over to YouTube fors syntax FM we're on YouTube all over the place CJ has been putting out a lot of really great