Desktop

Our favorite apps are the ones that help us

We love helpful apps! But we love helpful creatively designed and beautiful apps even more. Anyone can slap a tool together in Xcode, but few also think about the user-experience. Thankfully an increasing number of developers view a creative and beautiful interface as a valued part of the app.

Not affiliated

All these apps are just apps we like. We do not get paid to indorse any of these apps or their developers. We just want to spread the word about these great apps, and hope they can help you as much as they helped us. :)


Heartbeat

iStatMenu by bjango.com

iStat Menus

This highly configurable really give you the tools to quickly overview your Mac workload. bjango.com includes a comprehensive Help-section with visual guidance for every little configurable item – NICE!

We truly lost count trying to figure out how many different statistics it reports on but this mass of data is displayed remarkably clearly.William Gallagher, Apple Insider

Maintenance

CleanMyMacX by MacPaw

CleanMyMacX

The people at MacPaw.com made this excellent cleaning and maintenance app. The best on the marked - if you ask us! We use it to: Reclaim space, Update and Uninstall apps, Remove malware, Manage extensions, Securely shred sensitive files and more.

CleanMyMac X replaces dozens of optimization tools for Mac. It can be anything you tell it to be: a macOS cleaner, a performance monitor, a malware remover, and well, a life saver.MacPaw.com

Access control

Little Snitch by Objective Development Software GmbH

Little Snitch

If you are like us and want to see what data apps are sending ”Behind the curtain”, then Little Snitch from Objective Development Software GmbH is the app for you!

The 2nd app we install on our Macs! We are not paranoid, but we do like to know what data is transmitted and to that sites. Little Snitch has been our trusted companion working in the background for years, only to alert us if a new connection are being established without our prior concent. Little Snitch lets us set up ”Rules” for each app and to view all communications on a big world map.Devs @ MacX

Repair and Diagnostics

Drive Genius by ProSoft Engineering

Drive Genius

Drive Genius version 5 automates the monitoring for you and gives you total control over your hard drive. There are 18 powerful features that are available to you in the comfort of your own home and with a peace of mind that your Mac system is protected.

It is not pompous to call your own app ”genius” when it actually is genius! (well... more clever than other hard disk maintenance tools we know of)
It just works in the background and alert you if there are an issue you need to resolve. It has all the needed tools to check and repair your drives.Devs @ MacX

macOS Enhancements

NTFS for Mac by Paragon Technologie GmbH.

NTFS for Mac

Microsoft NTFS is one of the primary file systems of Windows. If you work on a Mac computer and need to read or write files from HDD, SSD or a flash drive formatted under Windows, you need Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Paragon Software. Write, edit, copy, move and delete files on Microsoft NTFS volumes from your Mac! Fast, seamless, easy to use. Mount, unmount, verify, format or set any of your Microsoft NTFS volumes as a startup drive.

Paragon Technologie GmbH. has created a wide range of tools to enhance the macOS, but our most used tool is ’NTFS for Mac’ – This allows us to store files directly on NTFS formatted drives – normally not allowed natively on a Mac (due to screwy legal license restrictions from Microsoft).Devs @ MacX

Backup and Recovery

DataRescue by ProSoft Engineering

Data Rescue

Admit it!... You did at sometime in the past (accidentally) delete an important file, right? (and cried silently inside). Yeah, We did too! But we had Data Rescue installed, so the whimpering was short.

We use Data Rescue from ProSoft Engineering, inc. to recovering ’lost’ files from any drive. The UI is simple and easy to understand. This apps does exactly what it is named – Rescues your Data!Devs @ MacX

Media download and transcoding

Downie by Charlie Monroe Software

Downie

Charlie Monroe Software just made the hassle of downloading videos from most sites a great deal easier - stylishly too! Supporting numerous websites and formats.

Yes, we know that we really should leave videos online for the content-makers to get their hard earned hits (99.999% of the time we do). But sometimes you just want to ensure you got a copy, so if the video is removed/censored, you have it archived. Or maybe you want a copy for offline listen/viewing on that 12h flight to the paradise island you where planing. Downie does this perfectly with minimal hassle.Devs @ MacX

Finder work

CopeQueue by Curio Software

CopeQueue

CopyQueue is a utility for managing file transfers. Copy multiple files faster than OS X, pause and resume file transfers, schedule tasks and more.

Copying or moving many files to different folders in the Finder is tiresome work. Curio Software made that fun and easy again! Being able to resume/restart failed items in queue after the other files has been copied/moved successfully is a treasured feature!Devs @ MacX

Settings

Onyx by Titanium Software

Onyx

This long-lived app has just about all MacOS configurable setting ready in its GUI for tweaking. Onyx has been updated along with every version of MacOS since Jaguar!

OnyX is a multifunction utility for macOS that you can use to verify the startup disk and the structure of its system files, to run miscellaneous tasks of cleaning and computer maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of many of Apple’s applications, and more.Devs @ Titanium Software

Website maintenance

goPanel

goPanel

goPanel offers complete system administrator capabilities, making it easy to install and configure Apache or Nginx, PHP, MySQL, FTP, domains, Free SSL certs, 3rd Party Scripts and email services on an unlimited number of servers, all via an easy to use native OS X interface.

This is absolutely the best VPS managing software I have ever used. Great for adding domains. Fantastic control of the server. Free Let's Encrypted SSL certificates at a click of a button. Well Done.Mike Perks

Media playback

IINA

IINA

Powered by the open source media player mpv, IINA can play almost every media file you have. Written in the Swift programming language, IINA is free and open-sourced under the GPLv3 license.

Our old media player needed upgrading when we migrated to Catalina, but then we found IINA (and haven’t looked back since). It plays all our files and has a ton of settings. Oh and it’s free!Devs @ MacX

Video editing and mastering

DaVinci Resolve by Blackmagic Design

DaVinci Resolve

Long being an option to Adobe Premiere, Apples Final Cut Pro and Media Composer from Avid, DaVinci Resolve is now a free (yet fully working and extensively featured) version of the full Studio media-editing software from Blackmagic Design.

DaVinci Resolve is light weight enough to run on any of our MacBooks, yet still powerful enough to handle all our video-editing needs. We have no space for big editing-panels and sound studios. Table, laptop, headsets, done! (table is optional)Devs @ MacX

Video muxing and track manipulation

VIDEOtoolbox by EmmGunn Software

VIDEOtoolbox

VIDEOtoolbox is a suite of application for editing the contents of MP4/MPV, MKV, and AVI videos, as well as for editing subtitles. This suite of applications are not for transcoding or editing video. Though having the ability to compress, resize and split the video and audio streams, these apps are mainly for assembling and rearranging the parts within the video container.

MP4tools by EmmGunn SoftwareMKVtools by EmmGunn SoftwareAVItools by EmmGunn SoftwareSUBtools by EmmGunn Software
Adding a subtitle options to your MP4s, or adding additional audio track to a MKV is easy using the tools from EmmGunn Software. Having 1 tool for each format makes the GUI simple. Devs @ MacX

More Apps

If you are like us, and like to test new apps, try some of these below. We use all and can recommend them highly. (In no particular order) ”Can has apps?!” – Dev @ MacX

Visual Differ

Visual Differ

CloudMounter

CloudMounter

ExpanDrive

ExpanDrive

Coherence X by BZG Inc.

Coherence X

Encrypto

Encrypto

EtreCheck Pro by Etresoft, Inc.

EtreCheck Pro

Calendar 366 II

Calendar 366 II

Sketch

Sketch

Figma

Figma

Visual Designer

Visual Designer

Dashlane

Dashlane

1Password

1Password

LastPass

LastPass

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code

BBEdit

BBEdit

DB Browser for SQLite

DB SQLite

Meta by Nightbirdsevolve Software

Meta

Suspicious Package

Suspicious Package

X-Mirage

X-Mirage

BetterZip

BetterZip

HexFriend by ridiculousfish.com

HexFriend

Big Mean Folder Machine

Big Mean Folder Machine

Adobe Creatie Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud



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