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I’ve always enjoyed reading articles about the apps that people use on their Macs, and I’m pretty much guaranteed to read every one that comes through my feed. These days I’m familiar with 90–95% of the apps that are written about, but every now and then I’m introduced to a new one. In fact there are several apps on this list that have recently made it into my daily rotation due to learning about them from articles such as this one. So I figured it’s only fitting that my first post on Medium should be the type of article that I read the most. With that, here are my most frequently used apps for August 2022.
1Password
I’m not sure how much there really is to say about 1Password. If you’re not using a password manager, you should be. There are many to choose from. 1Password happens to be my choice.
I’ve used LastPass many years ago when I was primarily using Windows. When I switched to Mac I was introduced to 1Password and felt its UI was much cleaner than LastPass, so I switched.
But seriously, if you’re not using a password, go get one. When I first started using LastPass I went through every website that I had bookmarked and assigned it a unique password, which was stored in LastPass. The process took months. I just slowly chipped away; I set a recurring task to change a minimum of 2 passwords per day, and eventually I got through them all. When I switched from LastPass to 1Password there was a simple import tool. As of this writing I have over 600 items in 1Password. Most are website logins but I also have credit cards, mine and my childrens drivers license numbers, social security numbers, passport details, and many other document types. We have a shared family vault for things like Netflix, Wifi passwords, health insurance details, etc.
Alfred
Let’s set one thing straight right from the beginning: Alfred is so much more than a Spotlight replacement. It’s more of an automation platform for your Mac.
My most-used feature is using it as an app launcher. I like to keep my Dock pretty minimal, and even apps that I keep in my Dock I rarely actually launch from the Dock. I invoke Alfred, start typing the app name, and hit enter to launch. Same with files. When I want to open a certain file in Word or Excel or PowerPoint or whatever, I invoke Alfred, hit the spacebar to indicate I’m searching for a file, and start typing the filename. Alfred works extremely fast and finds the file in milliseconds. To browse a specific folder in Finder, I invoke Alfred, hit the “F” key to indicate I’m searching for a folder, and start typing the folder name. Alfred will find it and then launch it in Finder. For contact email addresses, phone numbers, etc. you can simply invoke Alfred and start typing the persons name, then you’ll immediately see all of the contact details you have for them. Hit enter on the desired field and it copies it to your clipboard as well as dismisses the Alfred window so you can hit Command + V to paste the data into whatever field your mouse is on.
I also use Alfred pretty heavily for text expansion. I have some file name templates that I call up in “Save As…” dialogue boxes, and I have a meeting note template that I enter into new meeting notes. As well as about a half dozen workflows that I use pretty regularly.
OmniFocus
I love detailed task lists. I’ve tried many task apps over the years, but I’ve found nothing that offers the customization and flexibility of OmniFocus. I actually once tried to leave OmniFocus for Things 3 because I preferred the UI of Things, but I couldn’t build the same customizations into Things that I had built with OmniFocus. OmniFocus ended up pulling me back in and I suspect I’ll be an OmniFocus user for life.
I could probably write an entire article focused on how I use OmniFocus. Perhaps I should add it to the list.
Calendar 366 II
My company uses Office 365 so Outlook is by default my main calendaring application. My partner and I also have a shared Apple calendar to track our personal and family activities. I wanted the ability to quickly see a merged view of both my professional and personal calendars in the menu bar. I’ve tried a bunch menu bar calendars, and Calendar 366 II is my choice. I didn’t want a full standalone calendar app; I merely wanted a menu bar calendar. I realize many people swear by Fantastical, and I know that it has a menu bar calendar, but overall its feature set is too heavy for my needs. Calendar 366 II is exactly what I wanted and nothing that I didn’t.
Shottr
I’ve used macOS’s native screenshot capabilities for many years, but was recently introduced to Shottr through an article like this one. Shottr offers some advanced editing capabilities such as the ability to blur parts of a screenshot, perform a rolling capture (I love this feature), and a few other features that are missing from macOS’s native capabilities.
Bartender
This one is pretty straightforward. Bartender allows you to clean up your Menu Bar by hiding apps that you don’t need to see, and moving them down to a submenu.
Apple Notes
I’ve never really felt all-in on any particular notes app; it’s always a moving target. But Apple Notes is where I’m currently at.
I consider Microsoft OneNote to be the OG of note-taking apps. It launched in 2003 and I believe, though I’m not certain, that it predates Evernote. I immediately jumped on the bandwagon and to this day I still have OneNote notebooks going back to 2003. At the time, I worked for a Microsoft system integrator partner and then shortly after I began working directly at Microsoft so I felt no need to switch.
Fast forward to the mid-2010’s and the notes app landscape is looking a lot different. By this time I was using a Mac as my daily driver. The OneNote client for Mac was actually really nice and I was still using OneNote for my work notes but was exploring alternatives for personal notes. I tried just about everything but nothing really stuck. I also found that I was organically creating more and more Apple Notes. I was fully in the Apple ecosystem (Mac / iPhone / iPad) and Notes was on every device so it was easy and frictionless. Not to mention I was increasingly sharing notes with family and it’s a lot easier to share an Apple Note, because they already have it on their device, than to expect someone to install another app like OneNote.
But the real watershed moment was about 2 years ago when I dove deep into Notion. I spent hours upon hours reading every article and watching every YouTube tutorial I could find on Notion. Eventually I had a “what am I doing?” moment and realized I was spending far more time organizing my Notion dashboard than I was actually consuming and using my notes. Since I didn’t foresee my Apple Notes usage going away (due to sharing notes with others), I settled on it and walked away from the notes search. I told myself I wouldn’t look elsewhere unless I had a very specific quantifiable need that Apple Notes couldn’t fulfill. So far, nothing has come up.
Better Snap Tool
Mac’s suck at window management. And with the features Microsoft added to Windows 11, the gap is only getting wider. Better Snap Tool brings missing window management to the Mac and surpasses even Windows’ native capabilities. One particular feature of Better Snap Tool (that I think is unique to it) is the ability to map specific applications to specific window locations — down to the pixel.
Bumpr
If you haven’t heard of the Bumpr browser, there’s good reason: It isn’t a browser. Bumpr is a utility that intercepts hyperlinks and allows you to choose which browser to launch it in. I use Safari for personal browsing and Edge for work browsing and I find Bumpr to be a valuable tool for selecting the appropriate browser for a particular link. Bumpr also allows you to select default browsers for specific domains, so you can bypass Bumpr and go directly to your browser of choice for that domain.
It works similarly for email links; if you have multiple email clients, it allows you to select which client to launch when you click a mailto: link.
Batteries
Batteries is a simple widget that allows you to see, at a glance, the battery status of your connected Apple devices from within your Mac’s notification area and get notified when the battery is low.
Raindrop.io
I’m still in the experimental stage of the concept of using a standalone bookmark manager instead of the browsers’ native bookmarks, but so far I’m pleased with the results.
As I’ve stated earlier, I use 2 browsers: Safari for personal use, and Microsoft Edge for work use. Raindrop.io is a standalone bookmark manager that has extensions for both, as well as many other browsers, which lets you retrieve your saved bookmarks as well as save new ones. Raindrop.io saves your bookmarks within a web interface hosted on their site, and I have the interface for my bookmarks saved as a pinned tab on both Safari and Edge. So I now navigate my Raindrop pinned tab instead of my browsers’ bookmark manager.
Things get interesting when you integrate Alfred and Bumpr into the workflow. There’s an Alfred workflow that lets you search your Raindrop bookmarks via a keyboard shortcut (mine is Option + space). This in turn triggers Bumpr, since it’s configured as my default browser. So for example if I wanted to launch Amazon from Raindrop, my workflow would be to press Option + Space, start typing “Amazon”, hit enter as soon as the Alfred workflow for Raindrop “finds” the Amazon bookmark, Bumpr then launches asking which browser to launch in, and I select the browser of my choice and Bob’s your uncle.
Silicon
I find it interesting to occasionally scan the apps installed on my MacBook Pro to see which ones have not yet been updated for Apple Silicon. Silicon accomplishes this.
Spark
I’ve tested just about every Mac email client out there and I keep coming back to Spark. I have relatively basic requirements for my email client so for me the choice boils down to whether or not I like the UI and it works with my personal workflow. Spark always comes out on top. I also appreciate that Spark has a very robust set of configurable preferences that allows you tweak the app to your specific needs. And your settings sync to its iOS / iPadOS companion applications, which I also appreciate.
Tot
Tot is another app that I recently discovered through an article like this one. It’s very simple: It’s a lightweight notes app that sits in your menu bar and acts as a holding bin for capturing and storing quick notes until you’re ready to do something else with them. It gives you 7 notes pages, represented by circles. That’s it, that’s all you get. I find it to be similar in concept to Drafts, except Drafts is much more complex. I tested Drafts for a few weeks and it had so many configuration options that I felt like I was managing another notes app. I appreciate Tot for its simplicity. It has one job, and it does it well.
Tweetbot
I’ve been using Tweetbot pretty much since it launched many years ago and I haven’t really seriously tested anything else. One of my very early requirements for a 3rd party Twitter client was that it needed to sync my read position across devices (iPhone / iPad / Mac) and Tweetbot was one of the first and only clients on the market at the time that accomplished that. I like the interface and I think it has a great dark mode, so I’ve stuck with it.
Visual Studio Code
I don’t write a ton of code, but I occasionally need to craft some Terraform, Bash, Python, Ansible, etc. VS Code is my IDE of choice when I’m not using VIM.
MindNode
I don’t mind map a lot, but when I do, I use Mindnode. I primarily create mind maps when I’m in the very early phases of planning a project, document, or presentation, and I don’t yet have a full mental picture of its flow. Mind mapping helps me to story board whatever I’m working on. Then when I feel like the flow is set, I’ll transfer its outline over to OmniFocus for execution.
There you have it, there’s the primary Mac apps in my rotation. I did leave out some apps like the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Teams, Slack, WebEx, etc. Mainly because I felt like this post was getting too long and I don’t really need to describe Microsoft Word to anyone, but also they’re pretty specific to my needs at work. You’re not going to go out and install WebEx for the heck of it. If you need it, you have it. If you don’t, you don’t.
I’ve always enjoyed reading articles about the apps that people use on their Macs, and I’m pretty much guaranteed to read every one that comes through my feed. These days I’m familiar with 90–95% of the apps that are written about, but every now and then I’m introduced to a new one. In fact there are several apps on this list that have recently made it into my daily rotation due to learning about them from articles such as this one. So I figured it’s only fitting that my first post on Medium should be the type of article that I read the most. With that, here are my most frequently used apps for August 2022.
1Password
I’m not sure how much there really is to say about 1Password. If you’re not using a password manager, you should be. There are many to choose from. 1Password happens to be my choice.
I’ve used LastPass many years ago when I was primarily using Windows. When I switched to Mac I was introduced to 1Password and felt its UI was much cleaner than LastPass, so I switched.
But seriously, if you’re not using a password, go get one. When I first started using LastPass I went through every website that I had bookmarked and assigned it a unique password, which was stored in LastPass. The process took months. I just slowly chipped away; I set a recurring task to change a minimum of 2 passwords per day, and eventually I got through them all. When I switched from LastPass to 1Password there was a simple import tool. As of this writing I have over 600 items in 1Password. Most are website logins but I also have credit cards, mine and my childrens drivers license numbers, social security numbers, passport details, and many other document types. We have a shared family vault for things like Netflix, Wifi passwords, health insurance details, etc.
Alfred
Let’s set one thing straight right from the beginning: Alfred is so much more than a Spotlight replacement. It’s more of an automation platform for your Mac.
My most-used feature is using it as an app launcher. I like to keep my Dock pretty minimal, and even apps that I keep in my Dock I rarely actually launch from the Dock. I invoke Alfred, start typing the app name, and hit enter to launch. Same with files. When I want to open a certain file in Word or Excel or PowerPoint or whatever, I invoke Alfred, hit the spacebar to indicate I’m searching for a file, and start typing the filename. Alfred works extremely fast and finds the file in milliseconds. To browse a specific folder in Finder, I invoke Alfred, hit the “F” key to indicate I’m searching for a folder, and start typing the folder name. Alfred will find it and then launch it in Finder. For contact email addresses, phone numbers, etc. you can simply invoke Alfred and start typing the persons name, then you’ll immediately see all of the contact details you have for them. Hit enter on the desired field and it copies it to your clipboard as well as dismisses the Alfred window so you can hit Command + V to paste the data into whatever field your mouse is on.
I also use Alfred pretty heavily for text expansion. I have some file name templates that I call up in “Save As…” dialogue boxes, and I have a meeting note template that I enter into new meeting notes. As well as about a half dozen workflows that I use pretty regularly.
OmniFocus
I love detailed task lists. I’ve tried many task apps over the years, but I’ve found nothing that offers the customization and flexibility of OmniFocus. I actually once tried to leave OmniFocus for Things 3 because I preferred the UI of Things, but I couldn’t build the same customizations into Things that I had built with OmniFocus. OmniFocus ended up pulling me back in and I suspect I’ll be an OmniFocus user for life.
I could probably write an entire article focused on how I use OmniFocus. Perhaps I should add it to the list.
Calendar 366 II
My company uses Office 365 so Outlook is by default my main calendaring application. My partner and I also have a shared Apple calendar to track our personal and family activities. I wanted the ability to quickly see a merged view of both my professional and personal calendars in the menu bar. I’ve tried a bunch menu bar calendars, and Calendar 366 II is my choice. I didn’t want a full standalone calendar app; I merely wanted a menu bar calendar. I realize many people swear by Fantastical, and I know that it has a menu bar calendar, but overall its feature set is too heavy for my needs. Calendar 366 II is exactly what I wanted and nothing that I didn’t.
Shottr
I’ve used macOS’s native screenshot capabilities for many years, but was recently introduced to Shottr through an article like this one. Shottr offers some advanced editing capabilities such as the ability to blur parts of a screenshot, perform a rolling capture (I love this feature), and a few other features that are missing from macOS’s native capabilities.
Bartender
This one is pretty straightforward. Bartender allows you to clean up your Menu Bar by hiding apps that you don’t need to see, and moving them down to a submenu.
Apple Notes
I’ve never really felt all-in on any particular notes app; it’s always a moving target. But Apple Notes is where I’m currently at.
I consider Microsoft OneNote to be the OG of note-taking apps. It launched in 2003 and I believe, though I’m not certain, that it predates Evernote. I immediately jumped on the bandwagon and to this day I still have OneNote notebooks going back to 2003. At the time, I worked for a Microsoft system integrator partner and then shortly after I began working directly at Microsoft so I felt no need to switch.
Fast forward to the mid-2010’s and the notes app landscape is looking a lot different. By this time I was using a Mac as my daily driver. The OneNote client for Mac was actually really nice and I was still using OneNote for my work notes but was exploring alternatives for personal notes. I tried just about everything but nothing really stuck. I also found that I was organically creating more and more Apple Notes. I was fully in the Apple ecosystem (Mac / iPhone / iPad) and Notes was on every device so it was easy and frictionless. Not to mention I was increasingly sharing notes with family and it’s a lot easier to share an Apple Note, because they already have it on their device, than to expect someone to install another app like OneNote.
But the real watershed moment was about 2 years ago when I dove deep into Notion. I spent hours upon hours reading every article and watching every YouTube tutorial I could find on Notion. Eventually I had a “what am I doing?” moment and realized I was spending far more time organizing my Notion dashboard than I was actually consuming and using my notes. Since I didn’t foresee my Apple Notes usage going away (due to sharing notes with others), I settled on it and walked away from the notes search. I told myself I wouldn’t look elsewhere unless I had a very specific quantifiable need that Apple Notes couldn’t fulfill. So far, nothing has come up.
Better Snap Tool
Mac’s suck at window management. And with the features Microsoft added to Windows 11, the gap is only getting wider. Better Snap Tool brings missing window management to the Mac and surpasses even Windows’ native capabilities. One particular feature of Better Snap Tool (that I think is unique to it) is the ability to map specific applications to specific window locations — down to the pixel.
Bumpr
If you haven’t heard of the Bumpr browser, there’s good reason: It isn’t a browser. Bumpr is a utility that intercepts hyperlinks and allows you to choose which browser to launch it in. I use Safari for personal browsing and Edge for work browsing and I find Bumpr to be a valuable tool for selecting the appropriate browser for a particular link. Bumpr also allows you to select default browsers for specific domains, so you can bypass Bumpr and go directly to your browser of choice for that domain.
It works similarly for email links; if you have multiple email clients, it allows you to select which client to launch when you click a mailto: link.
Batteries
Batteries is a simple widget that allows you to see, at a glance, the battery status of your connected Apple devices from within your Mac’s notification area and get notified when the battery is low.
Raindrop.io
I’m still in the experimental stage of the concept of using a standalone bookmark manager instead of the browsers’ native bookmarks, but so far I’m pleased with the results.
As I’ve stated earlier, I use 2 browsers: Safari for personal use, and Microsoft Edge for work use. Raindrop.io is a standalone bookmark manager that has extensions for both, as well as many other browsers, which lets you retrieve your saved bookmarks as well as save new ones. Raindrop.io saves your bookmarks within a web interface hosted on their site, and I have the interface for my bookmarks saved as a pinned tab on both Safari and Edge. So I now navigate my Raindrop pinned tab instead of my browsers’ bookmark manager.
Things get interesting when you integrate Alfred and Bumpr into the workflow. There’s an Alfred workflow that lets you search your Raindrop bookmarks via a keyboard shortcut (mine is Option + space). This in turn triggers Bumpr, since it’s configured as my default browser. So for example if I wanted to launch Amazon from Raindrop, my workflow would be to press Option + Space, start typing “Amazon”, hit enter as soon as the Alfred workflow for Raindrop “finds” the Amazon bookmark, Bumpr then launches asking which browser to launch in, and I select the browser of my choice and Bob’s your uncle.
Silicon
I find it interesting to occasionally scan the apps installed on my MacBook Pro to see which ones have not yet been updated for Apple Silicon. Silicon accomplishes this.
Spark
I’ve tested just about every Mac email client out there and I keep coming back to Spark. I have relatively basic requirements for my email client so for me the choice boils down to whether or not I like the UI and it works with my personal workflow. Spark always comes out on top. I also appreciate that Spark has a very robust set of configurable preferences that allows you tweak the app to your specific needs. And your settings sync to its iOS / iPadOS companion applications, which I also appreciate.
Tot
Tot is another app that I recently discovered through an article like this one. It’s very simple: It’s a lightweight notes app that sits in your menu bar and acts as a holding bin for capturing and storing quick notes until you’re ready to do something else with them. It gives you 7 notes pages, represented by circles. That’s it, that’s all you get. I find it to be similar in concept to Drafts, except Drafts is much more complex. I tested Drafts for a few weeks and it had so many configuration options that I felt like I was managing another notes app. I appreciate Tot for its simplicity. It has one job, and it does it well.
Tweetbot
I’ve been using Tweetbot pretty much since it launched many years ago and I haven’t really seriously tested anything else. One of my very early requirements for a 3rd party Twitter client was that it needed to sync my read position across devices (iPhone / iPad / Mac) and Tweetbot was one of the first and only clients on the market at the time that accomplished that. I like the interface and I think it has a great dark mode, so I’ve stuck with it.
Visual Studio Code
I don’t write a ton of code, but I occasionally need to craft some Terraform, Bash, Python, Ansible, etc. VS Code is my IDE of choice when I’m not using VIM.
MindNode
I don’t mind map a lot, but when I do, I use Mindnode. I primarily create mind maps when I’m in the very early phases of planning a project, document, or presentation, and I don’t yet have a full mental picture of its flow. Mind mapping helps me to story board whatever I’m working on. Then when I feel like the flow is set, I’ll transfer its outline over to OmniFocus for execution.
There you have it, there’s the primary Mac apps in my rotation. I did leave out some apps like the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Teams, Slack, WebEx, etc. Mainly because I felt like this post was getting too long and I don’t really need to describe Microsoft Word to anyone, but also they’re pretty specific to my needs at work. You’re not going to go out and install WebEx for the heck of it. If you need it, you have it. If you don’t, you don’t.
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