1y ago

Windows and Linux users what are your must have apps/programs when you set up MacOS for the first time?

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.

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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.

Raycast Is like Alfred but free, it has window controls and clipboard history integrated. Plus a bunch of other plugins. Also chat hot if you pay
- Seconds this, Raycast also replaced Rectangle (window manager) and Maccy (clipboard manager) for me.
- Thanks will have to check this out!

App Cleaner!
https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/
- 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?

BetterTouchTool

UTM. The best free VM software that works on all Macs, M1/M2 included. Can even virtualise MacOS instances relatively easily.
- I'll have to play around with this for Linux.
  
  Runs like an absolute dream on an M1 - provided you use an ARM64 image. X86 performance is shit.

These are the Mac-exclusive apps I use regularly on my MacBook Pro 14" CotEditor Amazing open source text editor just for Mac BetterSnapTool for snapping windows (old school I know) Image2icon is useful for making my dock icons consistent TopNotch because the notch is annoying TG Pro because Macs get hot Keka because sometimes you run across a RAR or 7z file
These are just Mac apps, but I also use a bunch of cross-platform apps
- CotEditor looks kind of like Notepad++ which I love for when I just want a simple text editor that is a little more functional that the default text editor without launching visual studio code. Thanks for the recommendations.

I like Spectacle for arranging windows on the desktop.
If you're a command line user, give iTerm2 a look.
If you're a developer or power user, you'll probably want Homebrew for package management.
- Check out Warp as well if you love your command line!
- I switched to KiTTY. It has all the functionality I need with little configuration. Also, I feel the speed difference a lot when rendering TUIs like telescope in nvim.

Vim
- I always had my own configuration set up but recently, I switched to NvChad and only change some details.

Witch for sane alt(cmd)+tab behaviour
And Alfred mostly for clipboard history

AppCleaner

Suspicious Package: A great utility for inspecting the payload of a package, including scripts.
Macs Fan Control: Both a temp monitor and fan control. Especially useful on older Intel Macs.
Amphetamine: Good GUI for caffeinate.
coconutbattery: Monitor your battery health, cycles, etc.
The Unarchiver: Think 7-Zip for macOS.
Jamf Now: Stripped down version of Jamf, MDM for Apple devices. You get 3 devices for free. This is more if you want to dabble in endpoint management/light automation. You will get sales emails.
- Lot of nice recommendations here. Particularly suspicious package.

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.

Check out LinearMouse. Can map buttons and is simple and minimal.
https://github.com/linearmouse/linearmouse

Blockblock and Lulu from https://objective-see.org/
And three finger drag in accessibility options.

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.

Microsoft Remote Desktop
Homebrew
Keka for RAR
- I'll keep keka in mind for rar files.

My MBP is largely a glorified SSH client. So, my must-haves are:
homebrew
Chrome and Firefox
iterm2
oh-my-zsh w/ Powerlevel10k
Amethyst
I'm going to try out Kitty soon to replace iterm2.

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).

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.

Swish
Can be used separate from or in conjunction with other snap-to apps. Instead of dragging your windows to the side to snap it there, you can simply flick it there on the trackpad.

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.

Another +1 for Rectangle.
For me, a semi-recent convert from Windows, a fresh install of macOS includes:
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.
Top Notch, its free to use and cleanly hides the notch and just provides a clean black space for the menu bar.
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.

beardie. i'm used to managing my music with alt+shift+{z,x,c} from my linux days, so thanks to beardie i can use the same bindings on macos

I installed an app to work around mouse scroll wheel acceleration, literally right after installing FF. I can't recall the name though.

Linux

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.

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