There is an absolute ton of great software out there. I've put a list together here with my favourite little bits of software, partially for my own reference, and partially because I think people should all experience these awesome software.
I've broken them up into a few simple sections:
Sometimes I jot down notes in markdown, and sometimes I take a bit more time to compose a letter or paper in LaTeX.
- TeXShop: The MacTeX editor of choice. The interface is a little old-school, but together with Hungrymark and Magnet, I've got a pretty good workflow going.
- TexPad: Not a free editor, but very pretty, and works well for tiny projects. It's a bit more finnicky when you're trying to make fine-detail adjustments, but for general-purpose writing it's great.
- MacDown: One of my favourite Markdown editors on Mac.
- MarkText: Windows and Linux versions available too. This is basically a WYSIWYG editor, but tends to be.
- Obsidian: A very pretty interface for taking notes in Markdown. I don't really use it at the moment, but I have it on this list in case I want to try!
- Atom: The hackable text editor for the 21st Century. Update: Atom is no longer supported by GitHub. I have not yet found a clean replacement.
- Voxal: Nice and free audio changer - fun to use in Discord etc.
- Spotify: I actually use Apple Music, but Spotify sits in the background in case I can't find something on Apple Music.
- Splashy: Wallpaper changer! There's a free version and it works nicely in the background!
I take a bunch of photos on a tiny little OM Systems OM-1 (actually, not that tiny). These bits of software are specific to my workflow, but hopefully you can find something useful too.
- RAW Power a professional image editor app and Apple Photos extension (this part is really important). You can edit RAW photos directly from Apple Photos, using Apple's Native RAW Decoder.
- Affinity Photo: Lightweight photo editor very photoshop-esque but works smoothly and for much less money. Affinity plugs in directly into Apple Photos, so is also really useful if your workflow involves Apple Photos. Update: V2 of the Affinity Suite is now available.
- Topaz Photo AI: I originally used Topaz Sharpen AI and found it gave me stallar results compared to every other piece of AI-Sharpening software out there. With Topaz Photo AI, you get Apple Photos integration, more versatile batch processing options, and the entire Topaz suite rolled into one click. Highly recommended.
- Pixelmator Pro: I use Pixelmator on the iPad, not my Mac - but can highly recommend it for ease of editing images (there's a really fun subject/background selection tool)
I don't really use these extensively. I got Affinity on a huge discount, and prefer the fact that it's a one-time-payment as opposed to Adobe's equivalent.
- Affinity Designer
- Affinity Publisher
- Inkscape: SVG editor, recently released v1.0
These are little mods that you'll use right up front (with keyboard shortcuts or the like) they change workflows a little.
- Magnet: Nice snap-to-corner window manager making it a bit more windows-esque, free alternative is Rectangle.
- Colormate: Allows picking colours and copying them from anywhere on the screen - has turned out to be incredibly useful!
- TextSniper: The shortcut ⌘+⇧+2 lets you select an area of your screen and converts images to text very quickly and actually fairly accurately.
- Hungrymark: Really cool bookmark button for websites, files, apps, lots of things you can use!
- ViMac: Keyboard scrolling, replaces little shortcuts and checkboxes with letter keys, makes it super easy to use vim-like shortcuts in most of the mac environment.
- Cheatsheet: Hold down ⌘ to view all shortcuts in basically any app or screen in your mac
- Dato: Fairly convenient clock/calendar replacement that offers good customisation.
These exist in the background a little more - you'll probably notice they're gone more than you'll notice than they're around, but YMMV.
- Glance: Gives some much nicer markup for things like Python/Markdown files. This one lives in the background and works beautifully without you ever really noticing.
- BlackHole: BlackHole is a modern MacOS virtual audio driver that allows applications to pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency.
- Amphetamine:Keeps your mac on permanently if you need to run renders etc. while AFK, with pretty good granular control. A paid alternative I've used before is Lungo.
- Karabiner-Elements: Karibiner does desktop shortcuts. I've used it almost exclusively to map my mouse keys to switch between virtual desktops (workspaces), because I realised I use that a LOT when I was working with a touchpad. Update: I've stopped using this now, since Logi+ provides sufficient control to do the shortcuts that I most commonly use.
- Mos: Smooth scrolling with the mouse on mac, and allows for the correct scroll direction (as opposed to "natural"). Apple has this natively in settings, and I have stopped using Mos since upgrading my mouse to a newer Logitech one - Logi+ has the same features as Mos.
- Dozer: Hide menu bar icons to give your Mac a cleaner look.
These bits do maintenance and help to run other little things that might be used once every few days/weeks.
- VirtualBox: Virtual Machine, good to run Windows when compiling for some binaries or other. Update: I've upgraded to Parallels Desktop, which is expensive, but amazing for Apple Silicon macs.
- Onyx: Use for maintenance/cleaning tasks.
- TinkerTool: Access to additional preference settings Apple has built into macOS.
- DeepL: Basically a native translation interface that uses DeepL - with a nice clean interface.
- CleanShotX: Great screenshotting interface. I like the native interface but things like scrolling capture have turned out to be pretty great additions.
- Aerial: Screensaver application that lets you play Aerial videos from Apple's tvOS screensaver. Update: Aerial now has a fancy ass website!
- Pipifier for Mac: Allows for Picture-in-picture views in Netflix, YouTube and most other websites. Update: This is now pretty much one of my most-used bits of software.
- AdGuard: After going through a bunch of different ad blockers, this has turned out to be by far the best. Although I use the system-wide version (that's paid), you can also use AdGuard for Safari, available on the App Store. Update: Activete DNS Protection to get faster internet
- VPN Unlimited: VPN Client of choice, mostly because I got the lifetime subscription for cheap. This runs system-wide and not just in Safari, so it works with all other apps too.
These are either drivers or software that works specifically with certain hardware.
- Veikk Drivers: Download for the super cheap drawing tablet I bought.
- Repaper Studio: I use this with the Slate - probably not for everyone else.
- Balena Etcher: Can be used to write image files to MicroSD cards. I use this with Raspberry Pi projects.
- Arduino IDE: The open-source Arduino Software (IDE) makes it easy to write code and upload it to the board.
- OM Workspace: I take pictures with an OM Systems OM-1, and this software is free, and has some really fancy features specific to OM Systems cameras (such as denoise) that no other software has.
Gaming on Mac has gotten significantly better. Apple Arcade offers a wealth of games (many of them are actually identical to those on the Nintendo Switch) - grab a controller for your Mac and you can hand-off progress with your phone.
- Battle.net: Starcraft II runs on Mac (in Metal), and is pretty slick.
- Steam: If you're coming from a windows gaming machine, it is likely you'd be able to find some games already written for Metal, or ported for Mac by Feral Interactive.
- nVidia GeForce Now: I have found that cloud gaming is not only viable, but a fantastic and cheaper alternative than building an expensive PC (especially now that I hardly have time to actually game). GeForce Now works for me, but the other ideal alternative would be XBox Cloud.
- Visual Studio Code: I use VSCode to run and compile most of my mini Python projects.
- Github Desktop: Use to manage and push updates to github repos.
- Transmit: Pretty much the best file transfer app I have ever used. It works flawlessly, and has a super-clean GUI.
- Neuromorphism: If you code CSS and hate trial-and-erroring corners and shading colours, use this.
- TinyWow: I've not used this all that much, but it offers a bunch of PDF and Image tools that could be useful to rush projects.
It's 2023 - of course there's a list of AI Tools I use to speed up my work process. This is just the top three most-fun ways that I deploy AI Tools (mostly because what I do is generally text-based).
- ChatGPT: Needs no introduction. I use this, pretty much more than the rest of the list combined.
- AutoGPT: From the GitHub repo: Auto-GPT is an experimental open-source application showcasing the capabilities of the GPT-4 language model. This program, driven by GPT-4, chains together LLM "thoughts", to autonomously achieve whatever goal you set. As one of the first examples of GPT-4 running fully autonomously, Auto-GPT pushes the boundaries of what is possible with AI.
- GPT4All: Offline version of ChatGPT, basically.
I use python for quick-and-dirty jobs. These libraries are either ML stuff (I've taken an interest in it, or other utility libraries I've found useful in work/play) that I wouldn't remember exist normally (obviously numpy needs no introduction).
- PDF2SVG: Converts any old PDFs to vector graphics - has turned out to be super useful.
- PyFiglet: Great little library to make cool header text.
- Cowsay: Another great little cool ASCII art text library.
- Anaconda: Python distribution of choice - I also prefer Spyder over Pycharm.
- Kite: Great little tool to do autocomplete in lots of editors.
- PyCharm CE: Other Python.
- XCode
- Docker Desktop
- iTerm 2