Feek's macOS useful tools, utilities and applications thread

Feek · 2 Jun 2021 at 21:15

MacRS4 said:
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.

MacRS4 · 2 Jun 2021 at 22:10

The custom stuff - it can take some setting up but it is JOYOUS. I don't think about it until I end up using one of our Macs that doesn't have it on or setup how I like, and I feel like I'm back using a 'My first computer'.

MacRS4 · 2 Jun 2021 at 22:20

As a quick side-note, MacUpdater has irritated me by not quite telling the truth. Current version 1.x works just fine. If there's no updates it implies you can only get updates if you upgrade to v2. A paid upgrade. Gives you a nice interface and some other....less important stuff.

Having looked at it the message appears a bit disingenuous. It'll work just fine without the paid upgrade.

Just to be clear, I don't mind paying for platform upgrades. It's the ...misleading way some companies do things that irritates me. It's why we no longer use 1Password, or TomTom for example.

Rainmaker · 4 Jun 2021 at 18:40

Some love needed here:

Brew or MacPorts
Get your FOSS *nix utilities, apps and tools here. Both have binaries available but the latter prefers to build from source and is integrated in a more Unix/POSIX way. I love both, but I tend to end up back at Brew (despite its flaws) more often than not.

GPG Suite
Paid. Integrates into Mail and has a separate keychain for all your GPG/PGP keys. Allows transparent signing and encryption of all email, fully customisable, full key management (local and remote). Paid, but worth it if you don't want to wrestle with Thunderbird - the new integrated key management of which is a bit iffy.

Keka
FOSS. Archive manager for macOS. Does what it says on the tin. Download from the site for free, as the Store version is paid (as a form of donationware).

Maccy
FOSS. Excellent, light and very reliable clipboard manager for macOS. Perfect integration, immediate responsiveness from keyboard shortcut or menu bar, very customisable. Indispensable.

Murus
Paid. Excellent GUI for the native/built-in pf firewall. Makes setting up networks, rules and so on a breeze. Option for a menulet to show blocked connections, pf logs etc. Practically invisible, resource wise, as it's using the built in firewall and once the GUI is closed you're using no extra CPU or memory. It basically configures the native /etc/pf.conf config file and then exits. Superb bit of kit, especially on a laptop roaming across WiFi networks. The screenshots on the website are the old version - the newest version is much more modern, nicer and easier to use.

If you don't need a full on managed firewall or aren't confident in setting it up, then the sibling app Scudo is more point and click - think Little Snitch but based on built in BSD/macOS tools. It's also a bit cheaper than Murus.

Sublime Text
Paid, but the 'trial' is unlimited (time and features) for unregistered devices. Pop up 'nag' screen every 100 saves (or something, I basically never see it). Fantastic text editor, full code style recognition (eg shell, js, yaml) and autocompletion. Very light and powerful - I've been using it for years and still don't use 10% of its feature set. I wish I could ditch TextEditor for this natively.

iStat Menus
Paid. System monitor for macOS. Fully and extensively customisable as a standalone app, menulet and notification centre widget. It lists all metrics (CPU, memory, hard disks, power/battery, networking, etc) with a list of graphs, hovering over each of which pops out lists of all associated stats. Very detailed, easy to read, lightweight. Been using it for years and find it indispensable.

Iterm2
FOSS. Fully featured and extensible terminal app that blows the native Terminal out of the water. Graphically accelerated, themable, does everything you'd want and more (including tmux, split screen, programmable outputs and more).

Rclone
FOSS. Remote file management and sync using an improved rsync. Multi-threaded, command line, GUI or web interface. Capable of mounting remote filesystems (eg Amazon AWS, Google Drive, OneDrive, PCloud) locally, and further able to create and mount encrypted volumes (AES256) within them for transparent end-to-end encryption regardless of your storage provider's abilities. Makes cloud storage safe. Fast and light. Cross-platform.

Following on from Rclone, and needing to be installed alongside it for it to function:

macFUSE
FOSS. File system utilities for non-natively supported filesystems like EXT* and NTFS. Accompanied by sshfs to mount locally a remote filesystem over SSH.

MOOGLEYS · 11 Jun 2021 at 23:50

I always use NTFS for Mac by Paragon. Let’s me seamlessly write and read to NTFS drives. Been using it for years….

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

newbieclocker · 12 Jun 2021 at 00:25

I install rectangle and amphetamine on all my machines, both free. Rectangle enables window snapping like windows and amphetamine keeps your screen unlocked and can do things like move the mouse cursor when idling.

Bluecube · 16 Jun 2021 at 10:37

Royal TSX - https://royalapps.com/ts/mac/features

It's not Mac only, and I've only been using it a week but it's proven to be a really useful remote desktop app. It uses plugins so can be used for RDP, VNC, SSH terminal sessions, and a few other types that are way out of my comfort zone. I'm still using the free version as that's all I need but I'll be paying for a licence soon.

ChrisD. · 30 Jun 2021 at 08:22

I SSH to a lot of VMs around the place and I used to used RoyalTSX with the vExpert NFR licence however it wouldn't seamlessly sync between devices, so I've bought:

Termius - certainly not the cheapest at $8.33 a month however it's excellent and seamlessly sync's between both Mac's, my iPad and iPhone. Plus you can use code snippets which are really handy.

MacRS4 said:
Alfred

Never heard of it, will give it a test drive and look up some of the other applications mentioned in this thread.

the-evaluator · 1 Jul 2021 at 08:10

I like Termius, but $8.33/month is too much but for me, the freebie version does what I need it to. I rarely SCP (when I do I'll just use the command line) and have no need to sync my sessions to other devices.

the-evaluator · 2 Jul 2021 at 10:51

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.

ChrisD. · 2 Jul 2021 at 10:54

the-evaluator said:
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.

iStat Menus.
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

Feek · 2 Jul 2021 at 10:58

the-evaluator said:
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.

the-evaluator · 2 Jul 2021 at 11:01

ChrisD. said:
iStat Menus.
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

Ah, that name rings a bell. I guess i've used it in the past - thanks.

the-evaluator · 2 Jul 2021 at 11:02

Feek said:
Genuinely interested in knowing why you need this.

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.

whitecrook · 2 Jul 2021 at 11:04

the-evaluator said:
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.

Is activity monitor not suitable?

ChrisD. · 2 Jul 2021 at 11:08

whitecrook said:
Is activity monitor not suitable?

It doesn't sit in the menu bar, it's handy to see what the network is up to at a glance.

Feek · 2 Jul 2021 at 11:18

the-evaluator said:
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.

Rainmaker · 2 Jul 2021 at 14:31

the-evaluator said:
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.

I listed iStat Menus earlier, it's a nice app. For what you're asking though, bmon would do nicely - albeit it's cli based. It gives an overview (with or without detailed statistics), and you can see each interface. You can install it in seconds with 'brew install bmon' or 'port install bmon', provided you have HomeBrew or MacPorts.

the-evaluator · 2 Jul 2021 at 14:41

Rainmaker said:
bmon

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Coming from a Linux background I'm trying to keep away from CLI stuff as when I'm there the temptation is too strong to start manually editing config files and so on. I'm trying to be good and do things the Mac way.

Rainmaker · 2 Jul 2021 at 14:53

the-evaluator said:
Thanks, I'll check it out.

Coming from a Linux background I'm trying to keep away from CLI stuff as when I'm there the temptation is too strong to start manually editing config files and so on. I'm trying to be good and do things the Mac way.

macOS is Unix too... *shrug*