For me these have entered into my must haves
- BetterDisplay: For better scaling support for external monitors
- Rectangle: To be able to use a mouse to drag and snap windows
- Pixea: To be able to double click an image with a mouse in any folder and then use arrow keys or scroll wheel to proceed to the next file in the folder. Replaced the stock preview with this.
Something I’m looking for now is the ability to use the forward and back buttons on my mouse when I’m in Finder and want to go back to the previous folder I was in. Doesn’t work in Safari either. Works in good old dependable Firefox though.
And separate volume controls for each applications.
Vim
I always had my own configuration set up but recently, I switched to NvChad and only change some details.
App Cleaner (app uninstaller), Wipr (ad blocker), IINA (video player), Subtler (converts mkv to QuickTime readable files), Keka (unarchiver), and LinearMouse (no mouse acceleration and separate scroll directions).
deleted by creator
Thanks will have to check this out!
Seconds this, Raycast also replaced Rectangle (window manager) and Maccy (clipboard manager) for me.
I installed an app to work around mouse scroll wheel acceleration, literally right after installing FF. I can’t recall the name though.
I’m not sure I understand the point of Pixea when macOS has QuickLook. Select an image/file, press the space bar, and you get a preview. Use the arrow keys to move around. You can also highlight a bunch of images to pull them all up and navigate through them or have a basic slideshow.
With pixea I can just double click to open an image no matter the folder view it is set to and use arrow keys or scroll wheel to look through the images in the folder.
Meanwhile in Quick view I have to reach for the space bar. Mind you I’m using a macmini so my hands are more likely to not be near the space bar as it would be using a TouchPad on a laptop.
And then my preferred view is grid, but then the arrow key navigation stops at the row it started on instead of automatically proceeding to the next row. So I have to click down then have to use the opposite keys to look at the previews then down again and go the opposite direction. And scroll wheel navigation doesn’t work either. So then if I want to use one key I have to go through the process of changing to list or column view so I can just click down to view the next. But, why would I have to do that? It just seems like too many unnecessary steps.
No need to highlight anything with Pixea. Or switch to space or whatever. Simply open the image and just look through the media in the folder with no extra steps, which more fits into my idea of simplicity that I expect from MacOS than the default behavior that doesn’t feel mouse friendly either.
Makes sense. Glad you found a solution that works for you. I always just deal with the round about arrows based on my views (but am typically a column view person).
I briefly used Windows for a while not long ago and installed InfraView(? Something like that), which did something similar to what you’re saying. I did kind of like it, but it was ugly. Lol
Yeah, basically the default windows or Linux pic behavior. When I saw you had to do these additional steps of space bar and selecting images in grid view I was like no… I could have lived with clicking space bar, but having to do the additional step of selecting images or do a folder view adjustment was just too clunky for me haha. It felt like someone trying to explain how downloading a PC game then going through setting options isn’t that hard a opposed just downloading and playing a game on a console. My thought why does a simple image preview even need those steps.
When QuickLook came out it was awesome, and I still use it a lot for previewing single things. Space to open, but also space to close, makes it easier for me than double-click to open, then hitting the tiny button to close. That being said, Apple hasn’t really done anything to it in a decade.
Yeah, it seems like it has less development that even the photo viewing behavior in iOS. Like you can just navigate through the files app and open a Pic and just keep swiping right instead of running into this random limitation.
To be fair, photo viewing on iOS is in the Photos app. If you view picture in Photos on macOS you can also swipe forever. Photos is specially for that while QuickLook is for general purpose file previews. I think it’s purpose was to quickly check to make sure you have the right thing before opening the file in a full app, the photo browsing ability is just kind of an incidental value add.
Still seemed odd to me why a preview doesn’t have such a basic continuous function, since other native options for other OSS aren’t full blown editors either. I think this picture function has been around in other OS for over a decade now?
Especially with more people who use phones or tablets than desktop OS it seems like coming into MacOS and opening a file to look at a larger preview and being able to continuously look with no additional steps would be the behavior they’d expect.
This is the one thing that has confused me more than the default windows snap behavior or the scaling options for external monitors, since it is so basic I never expected to not be a thing in any OS released these days.
Definitely check out the Contexts app.
It replaces some of the core window management features and can be configured to make Mac window management a bit more like what you’re used to on Windows/Linux.
Another +1 for Rectangle.
For me, a semi-recent convert from Windows, a fresh install of macOS includes:
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Dropover, it has a limited free version (3 second wait time) or $5 for a one time ‘Pro’ version. It worked way better for me than Dropzone for copying files around and temporarily grabbing web images for Messages and Discord.
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Top Notch, its free to use and cleanly hides the notch and just provides a clean black space for the menu bar.
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SoundSource, yes its $40 and thats expensive af. However FOSS alternatives like Background Music kept crashing due to my external DAC. It’s a volume mixer, EQ tool, and audio IO selector.
And finally if I need to run Windows tools or applications for some of my hobbies, I have Parallels on an external drive. That way Windows isn’t hogging space and is isolated when I don’t need it.
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If you’re looking for window tiling and keyboard shortcuts, Yabai and skhd are absolutely amazing. Add sketchybar to the mix and you can create an awesome and customizable alternative to the native Spaces.
Amethyst is good for tiling as well and doesn’t require disabling security features, making it usable on company machines.
Maccy - clipboard app Alfred - launcher Iterm2 - terminal Firefox BettertouchTool - touchpad gestures Hidden bar - hide menu bar icons Itsycal - menubar calendar IINA - gui for mpv video player Keka - extract archives Espanso - text replacement
Hidden bar looks awesome to clean up the menu bar.
App Cleaner!
As a Mac user it is a bit of a shame that we need to depend on apps like this… Despite this app is awesome lol.
Sometimes getting rid of certain programs is like getting rid of malware lol.
Does Mac not cleanly uninstall programs? Is this needed for programs installed from the official Mac store too?
Most Mac apps don’t have an uninstaller (or installer) you’re meant to just toss the app in the trash. The problem is this leaves in place your preferences files, any “application support” files it may have downloaded, maybe a cache, etc
That said, I’ve been migrating the same Library folder from Mac to Mac since around 2003 and have never used an app cleaner. It really isn’t an issue 99% of the time.
I can imagine a very edge use case for an app cleaner, but for most purposes - 99% of users - there’s really no reason for it. Macs don’t have a Registry. If you remove the application itself, all of its ancillary files in Application Support and elsewhere will just… not do anything. And they won’t interfere. They won’t interact in any way with anything else on your computer. And in most cases, they’re tiny files. There’s functionally no reason to care that they’re still around.
Sometimes there’s random startup files that clutter up the startup menu
I can’t speak for all the programs but I think almost all the programs I have ever used let a lot of undesired files everywhere, in theory moving the app to the thrash bin should be enough, but why let all that crap hanging around there?
Yeah, I do like the option of if I uninstall something to get rid of everything so it is back to the state it was before instead all these random misc and now unneeded files. I did some searches and lot of users were wondering why this functionality isn’t present already.
The problem is AppCleaner is effectively guessing based on file name (and potentially other metadata) what to get rid of, you have to use your brain to check the list of what it is proposing to delete (hence why they show it to you and make you check the additional boxes). Someone who is actively seeking out the app to do something like this is more likely to check, but if it was a default functionality from Apple, many users would just ignore it and delete everything, even if it’s something they’d want to keep. Apple’s ethos of how they view users is also not predisposed to this.
It’s also notable that many things get left behind even after unintsalling apps in Windows. Sometimes the manifest just doesn’t encompass everything an app will spit out during its existence on your device.
But if it was a default functionality from Apple, presumably apps would be packaged, installed, and run in such a way that the OS is aware of what files it’s creating and use that context to clean up after themselves properly when uninstalled.
The OS doesn’t create the files, the application does. The OS would need a way to track what’s being created throughout the lifecycle of the application on the device. For example, at install the app may just put the .app bundle in /Applications and then complete. During first startup, licensing, saving, customization, and at other various indeterminate points the application might create preference files, directories/files in /Library/Application Support, etc. macOS does log things but those get rotated, if you just keep infinite logs you end up using up a ton of space.
Apple could try and require that every Application provide a manifest of where it may put all files, but I don’t really now how they’d enforce it and this is still subject to error and may result in the wrong thing being deleted. Also, keep in mind there are some shared folders and file between apps within the same suite. For example, Autodesk puts a lot of things from various apps into /Application Support/Autodesk.
Another thought is, sometimes you don’t want it to delete all associated files created. Often applications create a save directory in /Documents. I think SPSS or Stata might do this (haven’t work with them for a bit). So if /Documents/Stata has all your work and some automated Apple uninstaller removes it, that isn’t ideal. It may even be disadvantageous to remove a plist file. For example if you’re installing an old version of an app for a new one, it may use the same plist with your settings so you don’t have to reconfigure the app. There’s just a lot that can go wrong if you automate this process for what is often relatively little gain.
Some of my general programs
- Homebrew (https://brew.sh/)
- Magnet
- Shottr
- Velja
- Bitwarden
- Spark
- Firefox Nightly/Chrome
- Ferdium
- Pdf expert (before the subscription junk happened)/ PDF Studio
- Day progress
- Horo
- Obsidian
- Bartender (testing it)
Horo
For anyone reading this Horo is a timer for your menu bar. It’s simple but I can’t recommend it enough, I use it so often these days that I don’t know how I ever got by without it.
When I buy a laptop it always comes with windows. I always play with it a day or two. Install Linux and that’s it. Have used osx or macOS a few times, but it’s not my thing.
Anyway software I use (that probably also works with macOS).
Meld (tools to compare 2 text files)
Firefox (still the best open source browser)
VLC (video player)
Filezilla (ftp client)
Audacity (audio editor)
Franz (chat client for lots of services)I was kind surprised how kind of hacky the experience of MacOS has felt having to search out so many different apps just to try to get the OS to behave how I’d like compared to Linux where I’m pretty happy with the out the box experience, and can just stick more to the app store just to find programs like firefox as opposed to trying to find a bunch of different apps to “fix” the desktop behavior for something as simple as display scaling.
Like one I hope there is a solution to is double click being required when Multitasking with a browser where the windows needs to be activated before it accepts user input. Has led to things feeling unresponsive, since not even split screen or floating app multitasking on phones require that. But, I’m sure I’ll get used to it, and it’ll be fun in the future to try out Linux on the powerful and very great value MacMini when Asahi Linux makes progress.
BetterTouchTool (which isn’t free but is worth every penny) lets you do everything rectangle does. Also lets you configure your mouse buttons to do whatever you want. Also infinite custom hot keys and shortcuts.
Also Raycast as a replacement for Spotlight.
Raycast has replaced BetterTouchTool for me. I own a license for BTT, have it installed, but it’s never running anymore.
