These apps and extensions run my Mac

Want to build a new Mac or just learn some of your new tricks? These are my Mac apps and Safari extensions that make my Mac feel like mine.

Having grown up on Windows, I’ve been using a Mac since I was old enough to live on my own and make wiser decisions for myself. After more than a decade, I’ve identified some preferences for how the Mac works. Each of these tools is necessary to achieve this.

Top 3 Mac Software

Fantastic

You don’t need to attend daily meetings to benefit from a great calendar app. In fact, a well-designed calendar for your Mac can encourage you to seek out the benefits of scheduling. Apple’s built-in calendar (formerly known as iCal) doesn’t inspire calendaring, but it’s an undisputed heavyweight in the Mac calendar space.

Fantastical is the perfect calendar for Mac that started life as a simple menu bar app. Natural language typing made it a breeze to create events, and a simplified list view made it easy to find upcoming events.

Apple’s Calendar app has had a name change and a facelift, but it still doesn’t match Fantastical’s core functionality. These key features carry over to Fantastical today, and years of improvements have made the Mac app extremely functional compared to a built-in calendar.

Flexibits, the creators of Fantastical, used the same approach with their contacts app called Cardhop. Both apps are so functional and easy to use that you’ll never touch the built-in apps again.

Pixelmate Pro

Of course, I was running a cracked version of Photoshop on my computer in high school. Who is asking? I hope Adobe isn’t reading this… either way, Pixelmator Pro is perfect for photo editors and casual graphics makers who can’t justify the cost of something like Creative Cloud. This is just one reason to check out Pixelmator Pro. The app is also an incredible citizen of the Mac. Pixelmator Pro is constantly introducing useful new features and includes machine learning and more. makes full use of its capabilities. Essential, must have, go get it now app type.

iA writer

I’ll keep it simple – iA Writer is a really nice text editor. Apple includes TextEdit in MacOS, but I can’t tell you how great it is.

I like iA Writer because it allows me to write without it everything Chrome, which includes something like pages. iA Writer is also available on iPhone and iPad, which is good. Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve been told that iA Writer is used for many functional things other than just writing text, but I’m just a casual user.

Top 3 Safari Extensions

stop the madness allowing us to navigate the modern internet without all the mindless interruptions that plague us all. I also use it to never autoplay videos and automatically use the highest resolution option on YouTube videos.

PiPifier Picture-in-picture lets you play any Safari video. macOS supports PiP system-wide, but let’s just say that not all video players on the web are compatible. PiPifier fixes that. True story: I assumed Hulu offered PiP on Mac until I built one from scratch last week. No, it was PiPifier. You know an app is great when it’s running in the background without you realizing you’re using it!

Black is my new best friend. I love dark mode, especially after sunset. Many websites support dark mode, but not all. Black does a really good job of fixing this. Even Netcost-security.fr backend (WordPress) has a dark mode thanks to Noir! I can’t believe how late I am for Noir.

Everything else

Listed in alphabetical order, these apps are equally important to me and worth a try if you’ve been sleeping on any of them:

• Audio diversion That’s how I record any audio podcast and keep it in the right place, and I’m still learning what it’s capable of on the Mac.
• Emissions That’s how I listen to Relay FM shows and the occasional live podcast on my Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, CarPlay, and even Apple Watch Without iPhone (Enter this address for Relay and this address for ATP).
• keep you awake it’s a simple menu bar switch to turn off your screen or let it sleep (and this app replaced caffeine for me when it wasn’t up to Retina resolution).
• KeyboardCleanTool is a program to clean up your Mac keyboard without accidentally typing anywhere or deleting a bunch of files.
• mactracker is an amazing Apple hardware benchmark program that every hobbyist should have.
• An example Brings back the photo book service that’s part of iPhoto and Photos on Mac.
• Bulk photo lets you format image titles, resize images and add watermarks in one go.
• Edited is a lightweight tool for blurring, blurring, or pixelating things in photos (drawing over something with Markup doesn’t work).
• Rider is my favorite RSS reader app with iCloud as a sync solution.
• Shut up it’s a virtual mute button for my mic when I’m trying to limit background noise from kids screaming while podcasting or on Zoom calls.
• Elevator is what you get when you cross a text editor with a calculator.
• TextExpander instantly and reliably converting a few characters into longer text instead of throwing out the same sentences over and over again.
• Twitter Space Karen replaced TweetDeck on the Mac when Twitter accidentally killed it before it took over the company.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of the best Mac apps of our time, but every one of these apps should live on my Mac. my Macintosh. The car feels broken in a different way.

Do you have your own favorites? Share yours with everyone below!

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