I feel like I’m probably missing out on a lot of good free Mac apps. Every time I see someone’s setup, they seem to have a few utilities I’ve never heard of. What are the free tools you actually use on a regular basis?
My core five that go on every Mac I set up: Rectangle for window snapping, Maccy for clipboard history, Stats for menu bar system monitoring (CPU, RAM, disk, all that), AltTab which actually shows individual windows when you switch instead of just apps, and Ice for taming a crowded menu bar. All free, open source, and none of them need an account
Solid list soo I’d add AppCleaner for actually uninstalling stuff properly instead of just dragging to trash, KeepingYouAwake for when you don’t want the Mac sleeping mid download, Karabiner-Elements if you want to remap keys, IINA as a video player that just plays everything, and Bitwarden for passwords if you’re not fully locked into Apple’s ecosystem
Downloading Rectangle and AppCleaner right now, gonna test these out!!
add Espanso to that list, text expander, runs fully local no cloud stuff. type a shortcut and it expands into whatever snippet you set up, saves me so much typing out the same email replies over and over
lol surprised nobody’s said KeyboardCleanTool yet, locks your whole keyboard and the Touch Bar so you can actually wipe it down without accidentally launching five apps. free too
quick heads up on Rectangle, if you’re on Sequoia the built in window tiling covers a lot of what it used to do for me. still keep it installed for the extra snap zones but wanted to mention it in case anyone doesn’t actually need to install it depending on their OS version
Been running AlDente for like two years now, caps my charging at 80% so the battery doesn’t sit at 100% all day while I’m plugged in at my desk. Genuinely think it’s why my battery health is still fine after this long. Heads up tho, the free version’s been acting weird on some Intel Macs since a recent update, worked fine on my M-series one so your mileage might vary depending on what you’re running
Rectangle alone already feels like a completely different Mac tbh, didn’t realize how much I was fighting with windows before