Homebrew and mise-en-place are the only must have apps for me (both of which are not .app applications). Everything else is pretty well context-dependant and/or built in.
For Homebrew - having used Nix, Macports, and pkgsrc, I found Homebrew easier than everything else. I would like to get into Nix, but there is too much mucking around for it to be worth it to me.
mise-en-place has such a unique feature set that I can’t compare it to anything else. I started using it as a replacement for pyenv and sdkman, and found it so helpful.
For me, the better-than-you-think built in apps are:
- Reminders - I haven’t gone all in on any other task management software, but I don’t bother because Reminders does everything I need
- Mail - it is fiddly and idiot proof to a fault, but provided you don’t have an exotic setup and can deal with only average search capabilities, it works well
- Calendar - it’s a calendar. Only thing I don’t particularly like is the date-picker interface for new events, and that’s mainly because I like my Sunday-Saturday format
- Terminal - it’s tidy and works well. Many swear by iTerm2; I find Terminal good
- Safari - does what it says on the tin and does it well, I like Safari. (Edit: I use Wipr2 for Adblock which is necessary)
- Passwords - having been a medium-long term user (2-5 years) at various times of both Keepass and Password Store, I ended up transitioning to Passwords because of its good integration with Safari and its sync in iCloud, which is good for family. However the app itself has improved over time as well and I call it good
- TextSoap (clean text with various cleaners [regex etc] that can be saved and invoked on selected text, entire files, or batches of files throughout the system)
- Klack is fun to add typing sounds (helps me stay in the zone)
- Dark Noise for background noise (stay in the zone) — although MacOS has some background noise generation built in now
- 1Blocker (ad and tracker blocking; also for iOS)
- Voice Dream Reader (read articles / any text aloud)
- Default Folder X (set defaults for how files get saved — e.g., which directory to default to for a given file extension)
- Rectangle
- Fantastical (calendar with lots of thoughtful additional features)
- Karabiner Elements (to turn Caps Lock into a hyper key; right Command key + hjkl into arrow keys; sky's the limit)
- TextExpander
- Homerow or Shortcat
- HoudahSpot (great file search utility; can save searches, save templates, and export Smart Folders)
Honestly its not huge and most are probably obvious, but those are what I immediately install on my machines. Looking forward to seeing alternatives or new must-haves.
Homebrew to get a package manager that is not managed by Apple and its many restrictions and high fees.
AltTab and Rectangle to have more features to manage windows.
Ghostty can replace Terminal.app though I think it leaks memory.
Zen Browser is Firefox with an Arc inspired interface. It's slow and heavy but it blocks ads and trackers a bit better than Chromium based browsers, or Safari.
Firefox Nightly - https://www.firefox.com/en-US/channel/desktop uBlock Origin - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin Ghostty - ghostty.org Homebrew - https://brew.sh Oh-my-posh - https://github.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh Zed - https://zed.dev 1Password - https://1password.com Tailscale - https://tailscale.com iStats Menu - https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus Little Snitch - https://obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html Ice Toolbar Manager - https://icemenubar.app MarkEdit - https://github.com/MarkEdit-app Magnet - https://magnet.crowdcafe.co/ Pi - https://pi.dev
https://magnet.crowdcafe.co/ needs an `m` at the end, https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/
Homebrew and mise-en-place are the only must have apps for me (both of which are not .app applications). Everything else is pretty well context-dependant and/or built in. For Homebrew - having used Nix, Macports, and pkgsrc, I found Homebrew easier than everything else. I would like to get into Nix, but there is too much mucking around for it to be worth it to me.
mise-en-place has such a unique feature set that I can’t compare it to anything else. I started using it as a replacement for pyenv and sdkman, and found it so helpful.
For me, the better-than-you-think built in apps are:
- Reminders - I haven’t gone all in on any other task management software, but I don’t bother because Reminders does everything I need
- Mail - it is fiddly and idiot proof to a fault, but provided you don’t have an exotic setup and can deal with only average search capabilities, it works well
- Calendar - it’s a calendar. Only thing I don’t particularly like is the date-picker interface for new events, and that’s mainly because I like my Sunday-Saturday format
- Terminal - it’s tidy and works well. Many swear by iTerm2; I find Terminal good
- Safari - does what it says on the tin and does it well, I like Safari. (Edit: I use Wipr2 for Adblock which is necessary)
- Passwords - having been a medium-long term user (2-5 years) at various times of both Keepass and Password Store, I ended up transitioning to Passwords because of its good integration with Safari and its sync in iCloud, which is good for family. However the app itself has improved over time as well and I call it good
FYI uBlock Origin Lite is officially available for Safari now.
- Alfred (launch bar extraordinaire)
- Keyboard Maestro (automation)
- TextSoap (clean text with various cleaners [regex etc] that can be saved and invoked on selected text, entire files, or batches of files throughout the system)
- Klack is fun to add typing sounds (helps me stay in the zone)
- Dark Noise for background noise (stay in the zone) — although MacOS has some background noise generation built in now
- 1Blocker (ad and tracker blocking; also for iOS)
- Voice Dream Reader (read articles / any text aloud)
- Default Folder X (set defaults for how files get saved — e.g., which directory to default to for a given file extension)
- Rectangle
- Fantastical (calendar with lots of thoughtful additional features)
- Karabiner Elements (to turn Caps Lock into a hyper key; right Command key + hjkl into arrow keys; sky's the limit)
- TextExpander
- Homerow or Shortcat
- HoudahSpot (great file search utility; can save searches, save templates, and export Smart Folders)
- OmniFocus (to-do / task management; GTD-centric)
- TaskPaper
- Good outliners: OmniOutliner, Bike
- nvALT (barely alive; Brett Terpstra's nvUltra has been on the cusp of release for like 7 years now …)
Heres my list:
Transnomino (https://www.transnomino.com/)
StillColor (https://github.com/aiaf/Stillcolor)
SublimeText (https://www.sublimetext.com/)
Homebrew (https://brew.sh/)
VLC (https://www.videolan.org/)
Macs Fan Control (https://crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control)
Rectangle (https://rectangleapp.com/)
NetBird (https://netbird.io/)
Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/)
Honestly its not huge and most are probably obvious, but those are what I immediately install on my machines. Looking forward to seeing alternatives or new must-haves.
pretty good. Which browser do you use?
Safari for most things, Chromium if I have to for something.
I didn't toss those there because those (and IDEs and SSH/Terminal clients) are very opinionated and everyone has their favorites.
Homebrew to get a package manager that is not managed by Apple and its many restrictions and high fees.
AltTab and Rectangle to have more features to manage windows.
Ghostty can replace Terminal.app though I think it leaks memory.
Zen Browser is Firefox with an Arc inspired interface. It's slow and heavy but it blocks ads and trackers a bit better than Chromium based browsers, or Safari.
Ublock-origin with Firefox, Audacity, Batch Photo Resizer, calibre, cardflow, Diffraction, Ejimo and Ultra Character Map (try finding emojis without them), Libre Office, Paprika Recipe Manager, Samurai Safe, SeaMonkey (who else edits HTML?) GIMP, Darktable, RawTherapee, Super Photo Upscaler, Sublime Text, VLC, Clearview (and why isn't epub supported natively?), PhotoSync (share photos with all platforms), GhostText for editing browser text areas with Sublime Text or other. (life-saver)
Ones I actually use.
Firefox or Safari for Browser, and just install the apps you need (you should know your must-have)
Raycast (also does window management, dictation), Chrome, Ghostty, Karabiner..
Whatever you decide it's useful to find things on Homebrew and record in a file. Then you can mass install next time around
Handy, Cotypist, Markedit, Ghostty Tip, BetterTouchTool, GoodLinks, Pixelmator Pro, Handbrake, Zed, Onyx, LittleSnitch (or LuLu), Chezmoi, Stats, Shottr, llama.cpp, oMLX, LM Studio, Parcel, Things, OrbStack, Msty Studio.
I always come back to Safari.
I’d install apps based on your needs. If you install other people’s must-have apps, you’re not going to have such a clean install anymore.
Magnet app (for window splitting) is usually one of my first installs. I think I paid like $7 for it years ago and it's well worth it.
Malwarebytes, Microsoft Office. That's the software I'll install when I buy a new device.
Hammerspoon, Little snitch, iTerm2, Chezmoi, Orion
Package manager: Nix(alternative to homebrew) https://nixos.org/download/#nix-install-macos
Package management: Nix-darwin https://github.com/nix-darwin/nix-darwin
Browsers: - Librewolf https://librewolf.net - Tor https://www.torproject.org - Orion https://orionbrowser.com
Video downloader: Yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
Video/audio player: Mpv https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv
Video editor: LosslessCut https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut
Video encoding: Ffmpeg https://search.nixos.org/packages?&query=ffmpeg
Office suite: LibreOffice https://www.libreoffice.org
IDE: Zed https://github.com/zed-industries/zed
Window management: Rectangle https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle
Menubar system monitor: Stats https://github.com/exelban/stats
Screen tweaks: MonitorControl https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl
Autorun checker: KnockKnock https://github.com/objective-see/KnockKnock
Video streaming platforms: Grayjay https://grayjay.app/desktop
Communication: Signal https://signal.org/download/macos
Torrenting: Transmission https://github.com/transmission/transmission
VPN: Mullvad https://mullvad.net/en/download/vpn/macos
DNS: NextDNS https://nextdns.io
Add the following in denylist to block the constant communication with apple servers:
aaplimg.com
apple-cloudkit.com
apple.com
apple.com.akadns.net
apple.com.edgekey.net
apple-dns.net
apple.news
cdn-apple.com
icloud-content.com
icloud.com
me.com
mzstatic.com
push-apple.com.akadns.net
safebrowsing.apple
Connect to the mac from anywhere: Tailscale https://tailscale.com/download/mac