As Apple has tweaked and improved its Mac operating system, the want for third-party utilities just shifted—it never went away. Plenty of the fiddly missing stuff we used to want an app for is constructed in, but Apple ambitions for the best experience for the general public, which leaves more significant superior users or people who wish to a desire of how they perform an assignment looking for alternatives.
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The 5 Must-Have Utilities for macOS Catalina
I’ve used many masses of mac utilities over many years and nevertheless, rely on them to make my computing lifestyles higher. Right here’s the top 10 I recommend, a combination of loose software, donationware, and cheaper paid products.
Some of the paid merchandise might seem high-priced on their personal, and the charge tag altogether may be too much for plenty humans’ finances to shop for: it’s over $300 in case you purchase all my fundamental tips. Choose opportunity guidelines of utilities under and omit a pair you don’t need, like a report-switch software program, and the feed tag comes down towards $a hundred. (usually, search for discounts on the more luxurious merchandise: some frequently seem in charity and seasonal bundles, and a few apple-oriented sites offer widespread membership discounts on the popular software program.)
But, I like to suppose of those utilities as having a return on funding, as I agree with my time (as well as yours) has cost. A few apps estimate how an awful lot time you stored, and others lessen muddle and frustration, that may make you figure more enormous successfully. In a few cases, you need to buy a device because there’s no alternative. I’m confident I’ve stored masses of hours over a decade across in sub-2d and multi-second increments.
1. Default Folder
I can’t remember how long I’ve been using Default Folder ($35), because it’s been a constant companion since I first discovered it years ago. Default Folder enhances every open and saves dialogue in macOS, as well as offering a system menubar item and options to add navigation in Finder windows.
You use Default Folder to navigate to standard macOS locations, frequently used directories, and recent folders without having to use an endless sequence of Command plus Up and Down arrows, Spotlight, or folder menu navigation. The app lets you more effectively organise items in folders because you can so efficiently access those folders later.
The utility wraps itself around open and save dialogues, and offers buttons with drop-down menus. You can click and access the top level of any mounted drive and common Home folder areas, favourites that you’ve set, any window open in the Finder, and folders that you’ve recently opened items from or saved items too. Want to open the current view in a dialogue as a Finder window? Press one keystroke. Another keystroke lets you rotate among recently used folders.
Default Folder seemed like it might be a casualty of System Integrity Protection (SIP) introduced in El Capitan, but the developer wrote a complete overhaul of the app to work within Apple’s limits, and the new version now exceeds the previous one.
Whenever I have to use a Mac that doesn’t have Default Folder installed, I’m reminded of how frequently I use it and how much I rely on it. It has a very shallow learning curve.
2. TextExpander
Computers are meant to reduce tedious repetition, and yet we often find ourselves acting like a computer in our work. TextExpander is a text-expansion utility, letting you type a few keystrokes and have them “expanded” to be something else. It turns the computer back into a repetition-avoiding machine. I can type two or three characters, and TextExpander drops in my email address, phone number, or mailing address.
With wildcards and placeholders, you can also have TextExpander type out the current date and time, or use the clipboard’s contents alongside other manipulations, including a few keystrokes (like Tab and Escape) and cursor movements. It also allows you to create forms with pop-up options for standard replies.
TextExpander supports AppleScript and other system scripting integration and includes a few scripts for things like turning the current contents of the clipboard into a bit.ly shortened URL. One of the app’s gimmicks is tracking the estimated time saved. It’s bought me 10 hours of my life back between July and December of this year.
TextExpander had a kerfuffle this year when its maker switched from flat-rate pricing for version 5 to subscription pricing for version 6 (including software updates, cloud sync, and snippet sharing). We have reviews of both version 5 and version 6. You can still purchase the fully featured version 5, compatible with macOS Catalina, for a flat $45 or subscribe to version 6 for $4.16 a month or $40 a year ($3.33 a month).
While I’m a long-time TextExpander user, some people prefer Keyboard Maestro ($36), which has text-expansion features like TextExpander, but also can directly manipulate the mouse and menus in macro sequences and has clipboard-history management.
3. 1Password
In these days of constant password breaches at major and minor websites, having unique, strong passwords is a must. 1Password not only stores passwords, but creates them, and through the browser, plug-ins can create and drop them into a form and save them in just a few easy clicks.
Because 1Password has extensions or plug-ins for all the major browsers, you never have to switch to it to drop passwords into a form to login. And it can also store in a structured way all sorts of other things, like credit cards, bank accounts, and licenses. 1Password can fill in credit-card information into forms. You can also save all the entries in a way from a webpage, which is invaluable in inventing fake answers to security questions and storing them so you can remember them later.
(Tip: You can use 1Password to create unique random gibberish for questions like “What is your first pet’s name?”, and as long as you store it, a hijack of that site’s list of such questions doesn’t compromise your accounts elsewhere that would otherwise share security answers.).
I like that its creator, AgileBits, added a few months ago the ability to generate multi-word passwords. These are easier to remember and to type, and as long as they are sufficiently random and long enough, just as resistent to brute force as the most ridiculous looking password with an unnecessary mix of letters, numbers, punctuation, and Egyptian hieroglyphics.
1Password added subscription-based options this year that include continuous updates and a family version that allows secure sharing of passwords. It’s $36 a year for a single user or $60 a year for up to five users in a family. This price includes free use of clients in macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS.
The standalone 1Password for macOS is $65; the complementary iOS version is free for everyone, but some not-critical Pro features cost $10 to unlock unless you’re subscriber, in which case they’re part of the subscription.
LastPass is a widely used alternative to 1Password, although LastPass stores password centrally. It’s been hacked once, but the care with which they secured their database rendered that theft virtually useless to the attackers. That resiliency is a plus. I prefer, however, using 1Password either on storage I control or with AgileBits’ partitioned cryptographic approach, which stores your data centrally in a way that the company never directly handles your password.
LastPass’ key advantage? The standard version is free across platforms; it’s $1 a month for a premium flavour that includes family sharing and priority tech support.
4. Bartender
My system menubar is a mess! I’ve tried scrubbing, I’ve tried washing, and nothing works! Bartender ($15), take me away!
If you’re anything like me, you have a ridiculous number of drop-down and status menus in your system menubar from Apple and third-party apps and system components. Some of Apple’s items you can’t hide, even if you want to. Even on my more full of two displays, an app’s menu items often crowd out the leftmost menubar icons.
Bartender 2 brings a refreshing and straightforward management approach. With this app, you can choose to leave a menubar item alone, hide it entirely, or drop it into a secondary dropdown Bartender menu. Even if you’re hiding the issue, you can set Bartender to show it whenever the icon displays activity.
The app was another one that people worried El Capitan’s SIP would render impossible to update, but the developer thoroughly revised it to work in the new model, and released a Catalina update in a timely fashion, too.
5. LaunchBar
I have many, many apps installed on my Mac, and my preferred way to launch them isn’t by invoking Spotlight and typing part of the name and selecting a result or using Mission Control or the Applications folder.
LaunchBar can be set to index all sorts of locations and all kinds of things, so it goes far beyond running apps. It can find system preference panes, contacts, AppleScripts, emoji, URL bookmarks, music tracks, and other items. You can use it as a calculator, to expose file metadata, keep a scrapbook of items pasted to the clipboard, and interact with reminders and events. It runs queries on search engines, too.
Add your document folders and enable some indexing rules that are turned off at installation, and you can pull up files in those locations by name, too, or see a list that matches however much of a name you want to type.
For all that it’s a Swiss Army knife, you can turn off or leave many disabled features. Some people dive deeply into LaunchBar and use it regularly; others, like me, rely on it for a handful of widespread uses.
It has a statistics window like TextExpander, and reports I’ve saved just over two hours in the last two and a half years. That’s too modest of the developers, though, because I can launch an app in LaunchBar in well under a second; it takes seconds to find and start an app through any other built-in means.
Several launcher alternatives have their adherents; we published a roundup of several in early 2015, including free one. The long-running DragThing app also has its staunch users and defenders, but it hasn’t had an overhaul in some time, and its developer hasn’t announced plans beyond the current compatibility updates and bug fixes that keep it working.
