Feek's macOS useful tools, utilities and applications thread

[Feek]

I'm going to use this thread to post details about applications and utilities that I use on a regular basis. Please note that I have no connections to any of these apart from being a satisfied customer).

Bartender
What a great little utility this is. I bought it a couple of years ago to tidy up the menu bar on my MacBook and have just installed it on my iMac. I don't need to hide anything on the iMac because there's plenty of space but both Catalina and Big Sur don't seem to remember if you move things around in the menu bar and of course, Big Sur has increased the spacing between icons up there and I think it looks rubbish.

This is so much tidier, no huge gaps and everything stays where I put it.

https://www.macbartender.com

 

[Feek]

HyperDock
This is a useful tool that does a couple of things although I only use one of them. If an application has multiple windows, you can hover over the icon in the dock and you get a preview of all the available windows. I often have quite a few terminal windows open and this gives me a very quick and easy way to switch between them. It also does window management and snapping but I don't need that.

https://bahoom.com/hyperdock

 

[Feek]

I used to run Grand Perspective to find out where my storage went.

I use something else for that.

DaisyDisk
Another application I've had for years is DaisyDisk. It scans drives (both local and network drives) and gives a nice GUI of where disk space is being used. You can click down into each segment for more detailed info and you can use it to clear purgeable space as well. Some time ago I used it to find a cache that just continually grew and grew (com.apple.bird/session/g) due to a bug in how WhatsApp backs up. That bug is still there and I run a script every day via cron to clear it out.

https://daisydiskapp.com

 

[Feek]

AutoMounter
This is useful for those of us with more than one computer, or those who have a NAS and want to ensure that they always have a network link to their other devices. I've found that macOS isn't especially good at remembering what other computers you're connected to and doesn't seem to reconnect if the other device goes off line and then comes back. AutoMounter gets around that and does it in a clever way. You can set conditions so that it won't try and mount shares if the remote system isn't available and you can set custom mount points.

Here you can see AutoMounter in the menu bar on my MacBook Air. It's showing that both my iMac and my NAS are available, that it's connected to them both and has mounted my shares. If they weren't available, it wouldn't attempt the mount.

https://www.pixeleyes.co.nz/automounter/



For each device, I've created a folder in my home directory and mounted the shares in there. Then I've added each one as a favourite in Finder.





I've done similar on my iMac, I've got two configured, one for my NAS and one for my MacBook Air. Whenever I want to access any network shared drive, I just open Finder and can go straight to it via favourites.

 

[Feek]

Carbon Copy Cloner
Backups are important. I hope everyone reading this has Time Machine enabled (if not, why not?) but I like more levels of backup. I've used both SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner and while they both do a good job, I've settled with CCC.

I have it installed on both my iMac and my MacBook Air with slightly different configurations. On my iMac, it's configured to run each day at 01:30 and backup to a 1Tb SSD which I have in a caddy plugged directly into the iMac. I always put my Mac to sleep when I go to bed but CCC is really clever. Macs tend to wake themselves up from time to time overnight for various housekeeping tasks so as soon as it wakes up after 01:30, CCC starts the backup process and then puts the iMac back to sleep afterwards.

On my MBA, I have it configured to backup when the external drive is detected. I take my MBA into the office with me each day and it's become second nature for me to plug both the power and the drive in at the same time. CCC detects that, runs a backup and then ejects the drive.

Because backups are so quick to SSD, it takes just a couple of minutes to complete and the end result is an up to date, bootable SSD that's a mirror of my system. I like that it sends me an email notification on completion and I just quickly glance at it each day to make sure it's completed successfully.

I run Time Machine as well to a couple of different destinations and I also have an offsite backup via BackBlaze. You can never have too many backups/copies of your data.

https://bombich.com

Spoiler: Larger version of the image above

 

[Feek]

Downie
Downie is a video downloader, it installs as an extension in your browser and you simply click the icon to download the video you're watching. It works on 'thousands of different sites' although I mainly use it on YouTube and the BBC iPlayer to save stuff for offline viewing. You can configure it to download the best quality available or limit it to anything below a quality you define. When used on YouTube, if the video is part of a playlist, it will offer to download them all for you.

It'll download subtitles automatically if available, you can customise what it does with the file after it's downloaded it and you can tell it to automatically add the video into your Apple media library.

I don't think I've found a site where it doesn't work.

https://software.charliemonroe.net/downie/

 

[Feek]

WiFi Signal: Status Monitor
I have this installed on my laptop and I've disabled the macOS Network display. As you'll see from the screenshot below, what it displays in the menu is very customisable. I have it set to show whether I'm connected via 2.4GHz or 5GHz, the signal strength as a percentage and the connected speed. My home network consists of two Ubiquiti access points with the same SSID on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. I'm not interested in the network SSID but I do like to know that I've got a decent connection.

When I click on the menu item (which I've included below, enlarged so you can see it properly), I'm presented with various details about the network as per the first main screenshot. The second main screenshot shows all the configuration options as to what you can display in the menu bar.

When moving from Windows to macOS, a lot of people feel the need to install lots of system monitoring tools, such as CPU use, memory use, etc. These things really aren't needed when using a Mac and this is one of the very few system monitoring tools I actually use. It's not really a system monitor though as it's the network rather than the computer itself.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wifi-signal-status-monitor/id525912054

 

[Feek]

no opensource software on mac? All paid for apps?

I never really considered that, if I want a piece of software to do something, I look for it and if it does what I want, I pay for it.

Menu Bar UTC
This is a bit more specialised than anything else I've posted. As an amateur radio operator, I need to know the time in GMT (UTC) and so I wanted a clock to sit in my menu bar and just display the current time in GMT. This does that and nothing else! The display can be customised to show the time in the way you want but apart from that, that's literally all it does. It's a clock and nothing else. I struggled to find an app that does this so I saw the author has other clock related apps and I emailed him. This was quite literally made for me

You can see the clock in the first post of this thread where I show a screenshot of my menu bar.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/menu-bar-utc/id1505489419?mt=12

 

[Feek]

MacUpdater
I've mentioned MacUpdater before and it's another app that I love. It sits in your menu bar and once a day (or whenever you configure it for), it scans your Mac for software that's out of date and with just a couple of clicks, will update everything for you. It's surprising how often apps are updated and I used to get frustrated when I'd open something, just to be prompted for an update.

It can be configured to ignore specific apps, ignore specific updates, show or hide App Store updates, keep version backups, ensure updates are verified so the downloads aren't corrupted/hijacked.

It's just a great, really useful tool.

https://www.corecode.io/macupdater/

 

[Feek]

Option+Clicking the Wifi icon in your menubar.

Aye, I do know that but it's worth it to me just for the constant (and highly customisable) display of network, signal strength and speed.

 

[Feek]

Does anyone have a good finder alternative

I do actually have a Finder 'alternative' installed but I only use it for one thing. I hear people slagging of Finder a lot but I don't really know what they're expecting it to do, it's a file manager and it manages files! I'll add it to this thread later.

coconut Battery
Another useful tool which sits in the menu bar, replacing the standard macOS battery indicator and shows a lot more info once opened. It has detailed info about the charge rate, the discharge rate, the number of cycles, the battery temperature, battery life, Mac life and various other things. There's a free version which is perfectly good but the paid for version adds stuff like displaying battery details about iOS devices via WiFi. I have this on my MBA running all the time and occasionally fire it up on my iMac to look at the battery cycles on my iPhone.

Yes, I do only have 27 cycles on my six month old M1 MBA

https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

 

[Feek]

Both AppCleaner and Onyx were on my list

 

[Feek]

About 3 or 4 quid for the in app-purchase, and it's per machine too if I remember rightly. Full list:

It's one off, I've got it on both my iMac and my MBA and I only paid once.

Your post, along with the ones above has crossed off a whole load that I was going to mention.

 

[Feek]

does this still work on big sur?

Yes.

 

[Feek]

Alfred - Surely everyone knows about this? I like the shortcuts for emptying the trash etc.

I tried Alfred many, many years ago and didn't stick with it because Spotlight did everything I want. I've become a bit annoyed with Spotlight on Big Sur, it's very hit and miss and so I installed Alfred yesterday and bought the Powerpack straight away. To force me to use it, I've disabled the keyboard shortcut for Spotlight and changed Alfred to be the same.

Already got a couple of workflows and custom searches set up.

 

[Feek]

Does anyone have a suggestion for an app that'll show the current bandwidth usage? I've got Bandwidth+ installed which works but it'll only show either upload or download, I'd like both displayed simultaneously. Something like DuMeter (a Windows app) would be perfect.

Genuinely interested in knowing why you need this.

 

[Feek]

Sometimes it's useful for me to see actual network throughput, especially when working on a networking issue where poor throughout is suggested. Iperf and the like are very useful but it's often useful to have an 'at this moment' reading. It's likely not something most people will need, but it's extremely useful for me.

Good stuff. It's always interesting to know what usage cases are. iStat menus will do what you want as suggested.

 

[Feek]

Aldente - https://apphousekitchen.com

Snake oil.

as Apple's built in utility doesn't seem to do anything.

My M1 MBA is currently sitting at 80% charge, limited by the OS. It says it'll be fully charged by 17:00 this evening (when I typically take it off charge).

Battery and battery management tech is so advanced now that I really don't think there's any need for a third party app like this.

One of the things it claims is heat protection. Really? These new machines don't even get warm.

I'm not alone in thinking this, it was discussed in this thread.

 

[Feek]

Mine sat on 100% for quite some months before the management kicked in. Now it does as I’ve described above. Not every day, just some days.

Considering my old MB was five years old and still on 90% battery despite sitting on charge for most of its life. In my opinion, a battery management app is simply not needed and a waste of money.

 

[Feek]

Oh and Treesize, I use that almost daily on Windows machines.

DaisyDisk.