Productivity Tools

Essentials

Handbrake 🏆 Good video converter

brew install --cask handbrake

Paste - Clipboard Manager 🏆 The best clipboard to have in macOS

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/paste-clipboard-manager/id1020667032apps.apple.com

If you have already previously installed this:

Rocket 🏆 Gives you that slack-like experience of entering emojis

raindrop.io 🏆 Great bookmarking app

App Cleaner 🏆 Fully uninstall apps including its preferences

Jumpshare 🏆 A quick and instant way to share files using a public link

Neardrop Want to "airdrop" files from your Android phone to your Macbook? Now it's possible using Google's Nearby Share protocol on your Mac. Check it out.

Krisp.ai 🏆 Removes the background noise during your calls

Caffeine 🏆 Prevents screen from falling asleep / turning off with one click

Effortless 🏆 Effortless is a Mac menu bar app that helps you stay focused on one thing at a time. It allows you to create a simple plaintext to-do list

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/effortless/id1368722917?mt=12apps.apple.com

If you have already previously installed this:

🪦 Honorable Mention

ToothFairy Connect AirPods (or other Bluetooth headphones) to your Mac with a single click or keypress.

If you have already previously installed this:

However, with the recent updates to the Bluetooth widget on Big Sur. I don't really need this much anymore.

f.lux 🏆 Changes your screen color during nighttime (before Apple implemented their very own NightShift)

Daisydisk Great for inspecting your HD on to know which files are taking up too much space

Transmission 🏆 Best torrent client out there

Numi 🏆 A beautiful calculator app for Mac.

The Unarchiver 🏆 For extracting alot of zips

VLC Player 🏆 Best media player ever

Spotify 🏆 Music while working

Reflector 3 🏆 Airplay directly from your iphone to your mac

Karabiner Elements A powerful and stable keyboard customizer for macOS

Proton VPN 🏆 A good VPN to use

Geekbench If you're into benchmarking and comparing performance of your diff machines

Hazel Automation and housekeeping on your mac

Around https://www.around.co

Screen Studio The most elegant way to do a screen recording. https://www.screen.studio

Multi A very promising app that helps teams collaborate faster. https://multi.app

Documents, Spreadsheets & Presentations

Microsoft Office They're recently switched to a subscription-based model like Adobe

LogoMicrosoft 365 App - App StoreApp Store

WPS Office A promising cross-platform that is like Microsoft Office but better than LibreOffice

Keystroke Launchers

Raycast 🏆 The best keystroke launcher out there.

🪦 Honorable Mentions

Ueli Keystroke launcher for Windows and macOS

I got used to using option + cmd to open keystroke launchers (Alfred) before it was implemented natively in macOS. Alfred is a paid service, but Ueli is free. And customization is really nice with this app.After installing, add this under Settings > Application Search/System/ApplicationsDisable everything except: - Application Search - Calculator - Operating system commands - Operating system settings

Alfred The original Spotlight Search! (Before Apple sort of copied it. hehe)

Screen Recorders

Kap 🏆 A minimalist way to record videos / gifs on your screen.

Loom 🏆 Record audio/video of you and yourself and instantly share it from the cloud

Loom is great and seamless, especially for sending screen recordings + video of your self to clients. However, the free tier only offers 5 minutes.

System Monitors

Stats 🏆 A free macOS system monitor in your menu bar

iStat Menus A paid macOS system monitor in your menu bar

Calendars

Fantastical 2 🏆 Best calendar ever, syncs to everything including Google calendars and FB events!

It's really smart when adding events - which autodetects the time, location and place!

Cron 🏆 A very promising alternative to Fantastical.

🪦 Honorable Mentions

Calendar 366 II A good free alternative with Fantastical-like functionalities

Itsycal Another good free alternative with Fantastical-like functionalities

VPN

NordVPN Pricey but worth it. Speeds are fast.

NTFS Tools

MacOS can't natively write files to NTFS formatted drives (most likely your external drive). Here are some solutions:

Tuxera Disk Manager 🏆 A paid way to copy NTFS drives without much configs needed

NTFS-3G The free and open-source way to copy over NTFS with much configs needed

then:

then follow the rest of the instructions here: https://medium.com/macoclock/enabling-ntfs-write-in-macos-10-15-catalina-the-open-source-way-a5fd0d1cb32e

🪦 Honorable Mentions

Paragon NTFS A paid way to copy NTFS drives without much configs needed

Communication

Slack 🏆 Team communication

Skype Client communication

Zoom 🏆 Great for group video calls

Discord 🏆 Great for group video calls

Gitter Checkout the community

Facebook Messenger 🏆 Checkout the community

Telegram Used once for a project's main communication tool

Whatsapp 🏆 Used as a main communication tool in some projects as well

Grammarly Desktop 🏆 Effective communication and writing is an underrated skill for designers. If English isn't your first language, this definitely helps a lot.

Password Managers

Bitwarden 🏆 It's free and it just works!

LastPass My password manager of choice

1Password A good password manager

Email Apps

Airmail 5 🏆 A better email app then the default one

LogoAirmail - Lightning Fast Email App - App StoreApp Store

Edison A better email app then the default one

LogoFree Email Client for Mac - Unify All Your Inboxes — Edison MailEdison Mail

Spark A better email app then the default one

LogoSpark Classic – Email App App - App StoreApp Store

Menu Bar Organizer

Vanilla 🏆 A simple, fast, and freemium menu bar organizer.

Bartender Customize your menu bar & hide unwanted icons.

Dozer A free menu bar manager

I used to be on team Bartender. But the ease-of-use and simplicity of Vanilla is too hard to pass. Best of all, it's freemium.

Cloud Storage

Google Drive 🏆 I used this to backup my whole machine.

Dropbox The cloud for backing up

Notebooks

Notion 🏆 The best notebook I've ever had. It's more affordable than Evernote. Only missing is offline mode.

Craft

A really good contender against Notion.

🪦 Honorable Mentions

Evernote My first favorite app for note-taking projects

Of course, there are runner ups I've tried such as Bear, Milanote, Boost and many more. However, it just didn't really stick with me.

Window Management

Rectangle 🏆 My favorite window manager

Mainly because I'm super familiar with Spectacle before and it follows the same shortcuts such as:

  • cmd + option + arrow key to cycle thru 1/2 and 1/3 to the direction you want it auto-arrange

Magnet Window manager

Moom Window manager too

Amethyst 🏆 A tiling window manager. ... Also, it supports global shortcuts for moving, focusing and changing size of the windows, as well as cycling through the layouts

Gaming

OpenEmu 🏆 Emulator for playing retro games on macOS

Steam 🏆 For Dota 2

Battle.net 🏆 Launcher for Diablo III and Starcraft II

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