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StephanieMedlock

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 14, 2019
28
3
I have some must-have apps like Alfred, for comfortable searching, MacFly Pro to clean my Mac or Little Snitch from unwanted connection attempts and other ones I'm using almost every day, but I thought about some other maintenance apps. It would be nice if you share some usable stuff you're using often as a Mac user. Thanks.
 
I haven't found much use for maintenance outside of the stock OSX apps, besides LittleSnitch for my firewall. I guess it depends on what you mean by maintenance

Some stuff I do use:
  • Firefox, my web browser
  • Audio Hijack; I use it as a sound limiter/EQ, but it does a lot more
  • OpenEmu for a lot of games
  • ControllerMate for some controller-based tweaks (like using a controller as a keyboard and mouse)
  • Atom for some coding, small text editing, and because it has a sidebar for folders
  • iWork 09 for papers and some spreadsheets
  • Pixelmator for art and image editing
  • Vienna for RSS
  • VirtualBox when I need some quick Windows work done (my desktop is for heavy stuff)
 
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QuickBooks 2016 (business financial management)
Postbox 7 (email client)
Nisus Writer Express 4 (word processing)
EagleFiler (document management and search)
Parcel (package tracking)
PDF Genius (PDF Manipulation)
PDF Scanner (for OCR with scanner or OCR existing PDF's)
Numbers spreadsheet

LANscan (network maps)
Seashore (GIMP-compatible lightweight image editor)
SuperDuper! (bootable disk imaging)
Softorino YouTube Downloader
 
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AppZapper2
Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop
Etcher
Final Cut Pro
Motion
Compressor
Pages
Keynote
Numbers
QuickBooksOnline
LanScan
Hyper (relaxed theme and letters plugin)
1Passw0rd
Splashtop Business
Parallels
ScreenFlow
Viscosity
Microsoft Remote Desktop
Google Chrome (for 4K YouTube because Safari won't)
HomeBrew
Mail (I run 7 accounts through this)
Valet for Tesla
Spotify (just for making playlists for the Tesla)
Messages (because texting from any of my computers is way better than any phone for me)
FaceTime
Notes
 
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Scrivener for both Mac and Windows, necessary to handle long or complex documents, stories and so on. Nisus Writer is Mac-only; it's a full-featured but very nimble word processor.
 
Mostly Opera which has a VPN, useful for Torrent site that are blacklisted in my country, uTorrent & Roon for the music.
 
Graphic Converter. Amazing app for opening anything and modifying images and formats.

iBooks Author for making ebooks

Affinity Serif Publisher. Just getting started with this. Looks good.

AppleScript

Numbers

Pages

Keynote
 
1Password
Notability
Wipr
Jump Desktop
VMWare Fusion
AppCleaner
Daisy Disk
FileZilla
Beyond Compare (not yet updated for Catalina).
Carbon Copy Cloner
IINA
Xee
 
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1Password 7
Affinity Photo
Alfred 4
BBEdit 13
Fantastical 2
IINA
Keka
Microsoft Office 2019
NetNewsWire 5
OmniFocus 3
PCalc
Tweetbot 3
Wipr
 
Microsoft Office (all apps)
Intellij IDEA
Homebrew
Xcode
The Unarchiver
MenuBar Stats
MilkyTracker (for listening to chiptunes)
AdBlock Plus

...and that's about all of 3rd party stuff (Xcode excluded).
 
Switching from Windows to Mac for the first time and worried about what apps you may need or what are the alternatives to some of the most popular apps on Windows? This list will help you get started.

Some are free whilst others are paid but our focus here is on quality apps the actually work!

- 1Blocker (for blocking ads)

- Adobe Photoshop Elements (no subscription required like the CS Suite, one time purchase only and has most of the tools you’d need for photo editing)

- AnyTrans (for easily managing data between my computer to the iPhone)

- AppZapper (simple to use tool that uninstalls an app and gets rid of its remnants)

- CCleaner (for cleaning out junk files)

- ExpressVPN (The best and fastest VPN that I’ve used and has a 0 logging policy with superb customer service and tech support)

- Final Cut Pro (Superb Video editor you can use this or Adobe Premiere but this is a one time purchase only not a subscription based license and you might like its interface and features better)

- Logic Pro X (complete professional recording studio on the Mac. And it has everything musicians need to go from first note to final master.)

- PopClip (Superb time saving tools that gives you many options when you highlight text with your mouse like copy/paste/search on YouTube or Google Maps, or IMDB, and much more, I can use my PC almost without touching the keyboard for doing basic functions), be sure to watch this video it's insane how much convince it adds to your daily workflow on a computer)


- Snagit (simply the best screen capture tool for Mac that allows you to make edits, annotations, add graphics, etc., for easily making illustrated guides and what not, it also has a screen capture mode for recording what you’re doing if you wanna make a video tutorial)

- SVP [Smooth Video Project] (Best video player for Mac that not only plays any video file format using MVP, but the best thing about it is it can play any video @ 60FPS to give you that buttery smooth effect, makes you wanna re-watch your movies because of how good they look!)

- Transmission (Best Torrent client for Mac, I’ve tried a few but this has the best UI and features)

- WinZIP (can handle almost any compressed file format and was one of the few which integrates into the right click menu for easy compressing/extracting of files)
 
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Still cannot find any app like IDM (Internet Download Manager) which gives me a "Download" Button for any streaming video that I'm watching, I don't mean the retarded method of copy/pasting the YouTube Video URL and pasting it in the app which is cumbersome, I mean an actual download button to grab the video and that's not only for YouTube, with IDM you can download any video on the web that you're watching; that is a priceless feature.

I tried Folx Pro and it's horrible. Not only does it not work for capturing anything I was trying to download, when you right click on a YouTube video you get a Download All with Folx context menu entry but all that does is show you 10s of YouTube URLs that mean nothing as you wouldn't know which is the right one and its developer's customer service is appalling.
 
My top apps are:
Google maps (I prefer to use this app instead of Maps for some reason)
Dropbox (for storing photos and videos, so I have more space)
Duolingo (for improving language skills)
Shazam (for catching songs I like)
Surfshark (for staying safe on public wifi and accessing more content on Netflix)
Netflix (for movies and TV series)
 
- Microsoft Office
- Cyberduck
- Transmission
- Safari
- Dropbox (waiting for iCloud Drive shared folders)
- Whatsapp web
- Spotify
- iCompta
- PDFZone
- Notes/Calendar/Mail from Apple
 
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