
My wonderful world of macOS - thmslee
https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac-os/
======
wlesieutre
Weird that Sketch gets the "I'm not a fan of subscription pricing" warning
when it's not a subscription. Buying it only gives you a year of updates
instead of until the next major feature/version bump, sure, but you're free to
stop paying and keep using the version you have.

The actual forced subscriptions like Ulysses and You Need A Budget somehow get
a free pass though?

~~~
suhastech
How comfortable are people with subscription pricing for a Mac App? I've been
seeing a lot of them are going that way.

To give a developers perspective, I have been contemplating to implement
subscription based model into my app to make it more sustainable. Putting in
time for development and as well as marketing (to always get more users) is
frustrating.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
It's a function of the straw that broke the camel's back. What non-life-
critical apps or services am I paying for every month? Quite a lot already.
Cell service and cable TV & internet are already $350/mo for me. Then you have
Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Sam's Club (Premium!), Google Play, some stupid
app my daughter needs for $8/mo, Wolfram Alpha to help her with homework,
LastPass, Apple iCloud storage, SpiderOak backup, Google apps for business...
and I'm probably forgetting several others.

I understand everyone wants a subscriber, not a customer, but my budget is
dying a death from a thousand cuts here. I just can't keep paying for all
these things, even when they're only a "few" dollars, every month. It all adds
up. This is why people are saying they only pay for a subscription if it
REALLY matters to them. The slots are full. If your model requires a monthly
payment for something, it must literally change my life, at this point.

Thirty years ago, I had a $20/mo land line, and a TV antenna, and that was it!
Think about that! I'm not at all clear that my quality of life is $500/mo
better than it was back then.

~~~
georgespencer
I wonder if in the future there will be a subscription service which
consolidates subscription services and pays our fractions of the subscription
fee to each provider a la music streaming.

~~~
mendelk
[https://setapp.com](https://setapp.com)

At least one of the apps on OPs list (2do) is included.

~~~
georgespencer
Thanks! Interesting.

------
csomar
These days, I no longer have a long list of apps. In fact, I don't even have
any language or compiler installed on my Mac.

My apps for development are: NeoVim, Docker, Source Control and Paw.

For Communication and other: Skype, Chrome, Dropbox, Banktivity, Tor, Google
Earth and VLC.

In fact, I'm upset that I have more apps than I should.

Why should I have Skype when Messenger can make video calls from the browser.
Banktivity could have an online version. Tor should be builtin in Chrome. Or
why use Chrome instead of Safari? Apple should release a functioning browser.
And Google Earth should run on the browser sometime in the future as
JavaScript improves. And why have VLC? QuickTime should be able to run the
videos I watch.

That means my list becomes: Dropbox. Maybe I don't even need that! Make
Dropbox like an external HardDrive or something. Some integration in macOS.
And my list is 0.

The last thing I want is more cluttering. A dashboard? What the hell do you
use that for? A photobooth? I'm not 15 years old.

Having lots of apps remind me of how I was 5 years ago. You just want more
apps to "feel" good and productive. Sometimes it makes you feel important,
busy and technical. It's all B.S. folks and it's bad for you.

~~~
swah
I really miss a Skype app in Linux, and keep closing the web.skype.com tab all
the time. I like apps. I don't like web technology being the one and only way
to interact with a computer.

~~~
rangibaby
I have Skype for Ubuntu and it works for video calls (2013 MBP Retina)

~~~
swah
What doesn't work is actually Groups which my coworkers use
([https://askubuntu.com/questions/573620/how-to-activate-
group...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/573620/how-to-activate-group-chat-
in-skype-4-3-in-ubuntu-14-04)).

But I will try again because maybe they did it.

\--edit--

Yep, this now works.

------
gervase
I'm surprised this list doesn't cover Spectacle[0]. This free app definitely
surpasses Windows 10's adequate window management, and completely supersedes
the embarrassingly poor built-in functionality.

[0]: [https://www.spectacleapp.com/](https://www.spectacleapp.com/)

~~~
kobayashi
BetterTouchTool provides the same functionality and then some

~~~
sridca
Yes! I love BetterTouchTool's touch bar customization. It works quite well
with the multi monitor setup as well.

See [https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-
real...](https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-really-
customize-your-new-touch-bar-ea42ec66f42c)

------
ikurei
He's recommending Clean My Mac. I am a bit out of my medium on Mac, even
though I use it 8hrs a day, but I was under the impression Clean My Mac is
little more than bullshit, albeit with very effective and somewhat shady
marketing practices.

Do the more expert Mac users in HN recommend it?

~~~
porsager
Is there any chance you're actually thinking about Mackeeper? I've seen those
two confused before.

MacKeeper is indeed shady, but I think Clean My Mac is a great piece of
software.

~~~
ikurei
Now I feel terrible for bad-mouthing an apparently respected company...

I could swear I've seen those "Your Mac is having a problem" ads that fake
being a system error trying to get me into Clean My Mac 3, but may be it was
MacKeeper.

------
app4soft
There are few[1,2,3] much better lists created according "AWESOME"
initiative[0]

[0]
[https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome/blob/master/awesome....](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome/blob/master/awesome.md)

[1] [https://github.com/phmullins/awesome-
macos](https://github.com/phmullins/awesome-macos)

[2] [https://github.com/phmullins/awesome-macos-
commandline](https://github.com/phmullins/awesome-macos-commandline)

[3] [https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-
mac](https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac)

------
wishinghand
On the repo owner's Pixelmator line: > probably the best image editor out
there on Mac, is packed with very powerful features and is very simple in its
UI

I feel like that's quickly being overtaken by Affinity Photo[0]. One time fee,
though you have to pay twice if you want a license on Windows _and_ MacOS, but
it's a closer approximation of Photoshop so you won't have to change too much
muscle memory. It has better non-destructive layer editing as well. I found it
crazy hard to do a layer style like desaturating a layer without "baking" it
in.

[0] - [https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-
us/photo/)

~~~
inDigiNeous
Been using Photoshop and Pixelmator, Affinity Photo definitely is the in my
books the best image editor currently. Love that most of the things in
Affinity a real time, so you see changes immediately for all the effects etc.

It's still under work of course, and hasn't reached the kind of UI maturity
that Photoshop has, but it's getting there, and you can't beat their price
either.

------
legulere
To me this amount of tools seems like spending more time configuring and
tinkering with tools than actually using them productively

~~~
tejasmanohar
I used to be like this... crazy about dotfiles, backgrounds, shortcuts, apps,
etc. Eventually, I learned that I'm better off with the standard setup and
little customization. No fancy aliases, no recorded dotfiles, no crazy editor
configuration, nothing. If I get a new computer or am using someone else's
even, it's easy for me to install what I need as I need it and get going out
of the box.

~~~
keithpeter
The Rob Pike approach
[https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/](https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/)

I'm coming round to it (at a considerably less exalted level).

~~~
antaviana
What I do is the VDI approach. I have one AWS Windows instance with and I RDP
to it from any of my computers at home, the office or any of my second homes,
which happen to be iMacs but could be anything.

~~~
ajsalminen
How's the latency for text editing? I tried doing something like this with
*nix tools but found it unbearable even when connecting to localhost.

~~~
antaviana
In my case it is indistinguisable from local text editing. I remember however
that I chose to turn off SublimeText scrolling animations because it was a way
worse than locally. My fiber latency to my AWS instance is about 60ms and with
phone 4G about 80ms.

~~~
monkmartinez
What does that run you per month? What are you doing on it compute wise?

~~~
antaviana
I do not have exact costs at hand because it is just one of several AWS
instances we have, but probably my fully loaded costs on a 160 hour month for
this instance would be something like:

\- 150GB SSD: $15 \- 150GB 30 last days of daily snapshshots as a backup:
$3.45 \- 160 hours of t2.medium (4GB) Windows: $8.64

The typical applications I use are Visual Studio, Delphi, Office, Chrome, and
some domain specific apps.

Admittedly, you can reduce further the SSD cost of $15 to 160/744*$15=$3.22,
by snapshotting and deleting the SSD volume each time you shut down but I
never did that optimization because startup time would then not be seconds but
something probably in the range of 5 minutes, as you need to have some lambda
funciton create a new instance, create a volume from the last snapshot,
shutdown the newly created instance, replace the boot volume and finally start
the instance with the right boot volume.

What I also like of this approach is that I do not have to overprovision disk
or instances, if I ever need a larger drive, I just modify the volume, if I
need a bigger instance, I just shutdown and start with a bigger instance size.

------
archagon
On the topic of macOS power usage: I made a free open source app that lets you
use the side buttons on your third-party mice for system-wide navigation[1],
just like in Windows. Other apps can do this too, but practically all of them
bind the buttons to annoying keyboard shortcuts and frequently exhibit
unexpected behavior. Mine is (sort of) event based and works a lot better,
including in Xcode!

Not to toot my own horn (I mean the app is pretty simple) but it's a splinter
that's been bothering me about macOS for years and years.

[1]: [http://sensible-side-buttons.archagon.net](http://sensible-side-
buttons.archagon.net)

~~~
michaelwu
Starting to go off topic but have you checked out BetterTouchTool[1]? It's not
_just_ another window tiling app for the Mac. It also lets you conveniently
remap trackpad gestures and taps, 3rd party mice (yes you can remap your side
buttons if you want), keyboard shortcuts, etc. The coolest thing is that if
you really want, you can also restrict your remaps to work only in certain
applications. I've been using it for years and just wanted to share.

[1]: [https://www.boastr.net](https://www.boastr.net)

~~~
archagon
For the specific purpose of remapping side mouse buttons, BTT only allows you
to bind them to keyboard shortcuts. As far as I can tell, no tool except for
the one I made lets you bind them to virtual swipe events (which generally
work better).

~~~
fifafu
BetterTouchTool has always had the "mimicking standard gestures" predefined
actions which really send gesture events and don't just send shortcuts.
However it currently only supports three finger swipe left and right (which
are the most useful to go back and forward). I probably should look into how
to synthesize other gestures as well (there is no official API for
synthesizing gestures but afaik people have reverse engineered how to do it,
e.g.
[https://github.com/calftrail/Touch/tree/master/TouchSynthesi...](https://github.com/calftrail/Touch/tree/master/TouchSynthesis))

For three finger swipes I'm using a trick to synthesize them without private
API, but for other swipe types I'd need to synthesize them using the private
API... However there haven't been too many requests for other event types thus
it's not very high up on my TODO list.

(I'm the author of BTT)

Also BTT allows you to bind them to many many predefined actions in addition
to keyboard shortcuts, e.g. "Trigger Menubar Menu Item" which can be very
powerful.

~~~
archagon
Huh, neat! I was wrong, didn't realize BTT supported that. I'm using fake
three-finger swipes for my app as well, via the calftrail code you mentioned.
(Hence the GPL license.) Are you using a different trick? Is there a more
elegant way to do it barring private API access?

~~~
fifafu
No, unfortunately it's not elegant at all :-)

I'm basically using CGEventCreateData to save an original system three finger
swipe, then I'm just generating an event based on that saved data and refresh
the timestamp and mouse location before sending it.

~~~
archagon
Thanks for the info! I was considering doing something similar when I was
building my app, but calftrail's code saved the day...

Wish developers were legitimately able to generate those three-finger swipe
events, because they are ubiquitously supported and really useful. (Just the
other day, I discovered that Preview allows you to switch pages by swiping up
and down! Weird.)

------
kgabis
I've found these apps to be fantastic if you care about security on a mac:
[https://objective-see.com](https://objective-see.com)

~~~
beautifulfreak
Although BlockBlock is in "beta," it works well, preventing installation of
persistent items unless given a user okay but running silently in the
background. It's fun to see what causes the warning window to pop up, like
whenever Adobe Flash gets auto-updated. It's saved me from at least one very
sketchy install.

~~~
kgabis
I'm still surprised all these tools are free, he could easily sell them for
real money. I've started supporting him on patreon because it felt weird to
not pay anything for it...

------
fauigerzigerk
Useful as many of these utilities may be, I'm worried about the fact that I
have to fully trust each and every one of them. There are 63 entries on that
list. How am I ever going to be sure that _all_ of them are safe?

This concern is starting to really affect my use of software more generally. I
have found many useful browser extensions but I rarely install any of them
because of what they have access to.

Open source or not doesn't make a whole lot of difference either, because I'm
never going to be able to review and compile all of it myself after every
single update.

The somewhat surprising consequence is that the built-in features of operating
systems and browsers have become much more important to me than they have ever
been.

Essentially, the software I use is

    
    
      (a) Built into the OS or browser
      (b) Coming from one of a handful of organisations I trust
      (c) Purely Web based
    

This is on the desktop. And on mobile the "solution" is to severely restrict
what software can do and give disproportionate power to some gatekeeper who
will then predictably abuse that position by extracting a 30% cut from
everybody and impose content restrictions way beyond what can be justified by
computer security.

------
rmrfrmrf
You could cut this list in half if you just used the free stuff already
included in macOS. I still don't get the appeal of iTerm or Alfred.

~~~
gervase
For me, a massive advantage of Alfred is the clipboard history. I know there
are plenty of other clipboard managers, but I've tried them all, and Alfred's
works the best for me.

Features I like:

* Ability to set upper-bound on individual size

* Ability to ignore clipboard CF_ types

* Ability to retain variable amounts of data by time

* Ignore certain apps' clipboards

* Filterable history search

* Short and long content previews

I also use iTerm, but that's mainly for the performance benefits and
customizability - I could live without it vs Terminal.app.

~~~
copperx
Performance benefits of iTerm? Terminal.app has much less latency.

------
thomble
Note that Textual is free. Codeux sells signed binaries.

[https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual](https://github.com/Codeux-
Software/Textual)

~~~
Etheryte
Huh, that's neat, I always thought they were closed source.

~~~
softinio
Textual is basically limechat with a theme.

------
coldtea
> _moved to it from Textexpander as I am not fond of subscription models for
> software (...) 1Password my password manager of choice_

I have bad news for you...

(Switching over to something else myself)

~~~
freetonik
You can still use 1Password without a subscription via 3rd party cloud
provider (e.g. Dropbox).

~~~
psaniko
From here [1] in case anyone is wondering. There is an option for "local"
vaults in the advanced settings.

[1] [https://agilebits.com/store](https://agilebits.com/store)

~~~
coldtea
For how long? The writing is in the wall. Will next version support it, after
it has given "ample time" to move to the subscription model? This version is
already under a time-delay popup.

------
xenihn
I'd like to recommend Snappy.

[http://snappy-app.com/](http://snappy-app.com/)

I can't live without it ever since I first tried it. I really hope Apple
either buys them or sherlocks them (preferably the former). Either way, I want
the functionality integrated into MacOS.

~~~
passivepinetree
I can't figure out if it's just poor implementation or just terrible UX
design, but every time I scroll on that site a sign-up dialog pops up. I can
click out of it, but when I scroll again, it immediately pops up. I'm unable
to scroll without this stupid dialog showing. (Chrome 60, MacOS)

I closed the tab after about five attempts to remove the dialog. I still don't
know what the product does.

~~~
xenihn
Clicking 'No thanks' stops it from re-appearing for me. Yeah, bad design. The
app is still great. It lets you take screenshots that float on top of your
desktop (like stickies), and can be resized and annotated.

------
amai
Telegram, really? From the guy who stored your passwords in cleartext:
[https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/vk-com-data-
breach.html](https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/vk-com-data-breach.html) .
Better have a look at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_\(software\))
. It is Edward Snowden approved.

~~~
newscracker
There are a few points I repeat while they're still true. I like Signal for
its reputation and standing on security, but it's highly deficient when
compared to Telegram.

Telegram provides a much richer UI/UX than Signal or even Wire. [1] It has
multi-device sync and multi-OS support. Signal lacks multi-device sync. Signal
does not even have a proper desktop app. Signal explicitly prohibits backing
up the data and restoring it if you move to a new phone/device (at least on
iOS). The backup cannot be done to iCloud or even a local iTunes backup. So
don't buy a new device ever if you like your chat logs. Or take screenshots of
the chats for reference whenever you do. To me, this doesn't make any sense
whatsoever. People want usability a lot more, and if a "super secure" app is
not really being very useful, it won't get very popular. I'm still waiting for
Signal to get ahead so I can switch to it, but every time I think of it,
Telegram looks a few years ahead of Signal.

[1]: [https://wire.com](https://wire.com)

------
SKYRHO_
Didn't crunch the numbers, but as I looked up his/her apps all I could see was
$$$ signs.

~~~
eaceaser
Luckily they included an app in the list that will automatically mute Spotify
ads so you don't have to pay for it! Good value there. /s

~~~
SKYRHO_
Agreed!

------
Brajeshwar
Nobody mentioned Stow[1]. Simple and straight forward.

"GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software
and/or data located in separate directories on the filesystem, and makes them
appear to be installed in the same place."

1\. [https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/)

------
msl09
I'm curious about one thing. I recently discovered the wonderful world of a
physical notebook for keeping track of everything with my life. One of the
things that I love the most about it is that I can leave the computer, zoom
out from the technical nature of my problems and solve them in a more
conceptual manner (while taking a break from screens).

What kind of improvements do mindmaps give?

~~~
nikivi
Author of the post here,

For me personally one big advantage that mind maps have is that they are
digital. So I can access any single mind map in few keystrokes by searching
for the file in Alfred. I am also pretty fast with my keyboard so prototyping
ideas and new concepts is really fast for me.

I still use notebooks for sketching things but digital mind maps have too many
advantages to dismiss. I also recently made an Alfred workflow that allows me
to essentially query any of the digital mind maps I made and present all of
the contents of these maps in Alfred. Here is the workflow :

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/alfred-my-
mind](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/alfred-my-mind)

The cool thing with that is that it lets anyone use my 'setup' of bookmarks,
links and notes in the most transparent way possible.

------
jamesw72
For productivity in development, I prefer simplicity over elegance.

------
mamp
Great collection. My favourite editor for notes/code is Quiver. It does
Markdown, WYSIWIG, code (via ACE editor), MathJax and even markup for
diagrams. It has a cell based approach so you can mix and match different
sections if you don't want everything as one big Markdown block. The only
downside is that there is no iOS editor, only viewer.

[http://happenapps.com](http://happenapps.com)

~~~
kossmoboleat
I like Quiver but I wish it would store regular Markdown files instead of
JSON. Equally important an Android app that can add notes or alternatively
Simplenote syncing would make me consider switching from nvAlt.

------
limeblack
The list is a little outdated for current Mac users. For example Karabiner
Elements is what I use on my Mac although all features aren't supported yet in
comparison to Karabiner. As side note although I love my Mac I find it to
support backwards compatibility in apps much worse then Windows. Many of my XP
apps still run in Windows 10 although I wouldn't necessarily encourage you to
use them.

~~~
otterpro
I miss Karabiner, and regretted upgrading to Sierra as soon as I found out
Karabiner wasn't supported. I miss the ability to map both Escape key and
control key to capslock key, which is essentially the greatest thing for my
Vim productivity.

~~~
gbear605
You can do that in Karabiner Elements, which does work on Sierra (and High
Sierra for that matter)

[https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-
Elements](https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements)

------
lobster_johnson
Pixave looks great, and is something I've been looking for, but I wonder if
it's still alive. There's not been any activity on the developer's (previously
very active) Twitter account since March, the demo version is several versions
behind, and support@littlehj.com bounces. I mention this as a concern because
it seems a bit buggy.

------
d_han
Thanks for sharing this. I found it very helpful. I haven't used karabiner
before and I'm trying to understand how you're using karabiner but I'm having
trouble doing so. Do you ever plan on writing something explaining your usage
or do you have any resources that you recommend?

------
kobayashi
I've seen many of these kinds of lists for macOS, but do any comparable lists
exist for Windows?

~~~
diego_moita
Scott Hanselman used to make a very good list, but the last one was in 2014:

[https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDe...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx)

~~~
roryisok
yeah, not been updated in some time, but it earns him buckets of traffic.

some of the stuff on there is outdated. for example flux is now pretty
redundant on Windows 10 because of the new "Night Light" feature

------
gamekathu
Is there a Vim equivalent of Snippets lab? I recently switched to using vim-
wiki which I think could be used in this way to store snippets, but I do not
know yet how to configure quick search.

------
therealmarv
Stay away fom SnippetsLab. It looses data very often... better approach: Use a
decent editor like VS Code and use Dropbox/Google Drive with a directory
structure of your own.

------
aggress
I like leaving some RAM for my browser to chew through.

~~~
dawnerd
And they complained about chrome being slow...

------
wbrocklebank
Great list. I hear you re subscriptions but people who are new to (I.e. don’t
own) many of the apps you mention...

Paw, iStat Menus, Ulysses, Gemini, 2Do and quite a few more

Can get fully working copies on Setapp for a really low monthly price. Setapp
is a heavily curated subscription app bundle from the MacPaw folks. People cd
save a bunch of money and also have access to a large number of useful apps
that once in a while are ideal to do a job but that you wouldn’t purchase for
one-off use.

Http://setapp.com

~~~
coldtea
> _Can get fully working copies on Setapp for a really low monthly price._

Yes, but will Ulysses remain on Setapp now that they're doing their own
subscription thing?

------
petraeus
Missing Stock+ Pro and CloudTV, also white noise is a good app to drown out
office noise

------
seasonalgrit
I really miss iCal, which Apple killed off several years ago.

~~~
andrethegiant
What did iCal have that Calendar doesn't?

~~~
seasonalgrit
It's interesting you ask. iCal had the option of 2-, 3-, or 4-day view, which
I liked a lot. Also, I think iCal did much better job visually distinguishing
the current day. But I'm also talking about the task management aspects that
had been integrated into iCal. Sure, there's Reminders, but besides being a
separate app, it is buggy (crashes a lot) and the ui/ux is nowhere close to
what iCal offered.

------
foobarhonest
Learned about some new great tools - thanks.

------
ChemicalWarfare
apps-wise - Chrome, Atom, IntelliJ and I'm pretty much set :)

------
mr-ron
No clipboard manager?

~~~
andai
I think (based on the graph linked under "[Alfred] has saved me a lot of
time") that OP is using Alfred for that
[http://i.imgur.com/eavekiX.png](http://i.imgur.com/eavekiX.png)

------
barbs
Am curious to know why they prefer Telegram to Whatsapp.

~~~
CrazyGentleMan
Pros: \- Secret Chat \- Share different file types up to 1.5 GB \- Multi-
device access \- Supergroups and public channels \- Telegram Bots \- Lock
chats and Ability to hide last seen for particular contact \- Edit Messages
and Mention People

Cons I can thin of: \- No calls support or ability to backup chats \- lacks
user base

~~~
ngrilly
How can secret chat be a pro for Telegram when it's the default in WhatsApp?

