Recommendation of macOS Apps

In this post, I’m going to introduce some macOS apps that I’m using, all of them are free of charge.

FOSSs (Free and Open Source Softwares) are marked by ⭐.

MacPorts ⭐

This is a package manager, something like a third-party App Store, but in command line.

Many people may prefer homebrew, but I would say even if MacPorts is not to your taste, don’t use homebrew.

IT IS UNSAFE!

Check my previous post: Don’t Use Homebrew

Btw, I made a macports repository of my own, check it out if you are interested: https://repo.sainnhe.dev/macports

NetNewsWire ⭐

NetNewsWire

This is a RSS reader, written in Swift.

It supports import from OPML, and can also connect to some online services.

NetNewsWire-services

DevToys ⭐

NetNewsWire-services

DevToys helps in daily tasks like formatting JSON, comparing text, testing RegExp. No need to use many untruthful websites to do simple tasks with your data.

If you drag the app icon to the Bin to uninstall an application, you just delete the application executables, libraries and resources. But most of apps will distribute some small files like caches and preference files throughout your system, they will not be cleaned using this method.

But with AppCleaner, you’ll be able to clean these files while uninstall an app.

UninstallPKG

If you have ever installed apps via clicking *.pkg files but now want to completely uninstall them, you can use this app to complete this task.

This app will not automatically clean cache files generated by apps, so I’d recommend you to use AppCleaner to remove cache files first.

Note that if you directly drag this app to Finder, you may not be able to see it in the Launchpad. This is a known bug of macOS, a temporary solution can be found in FAQ.

Motrix ⭐

Motrix

This is a full featured download manager, basically a wrapper of aria2, it supports multi-threaded download, BitTorrent & Magnet, mock user-agent and more.

HandBrake ⭐

HandBrake

This is a video convertor, basically a wrapper of ffmpeg, it can convert video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.

MouseCape ⭐

MouseCape

Do you know that you can change cursor theme in macOS? This sweet tool can help you do this!

The cursor theme in the screenshot can be downloaded from here.

Element ⭐

Element

This is an open source implementation of Matrix, an end-to-end encrypted, decentralized communication protocol, it can protect your privacy to the greatest extent possible.

Karabiner Elements ⭐

Karabiner Elements

This is a keyboard customizer, you can define a lot of complex rules, for example system-wide vim-like keybinding.

There are many predefined rules by community, you can found them here: https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org

Just Focus

This is a simple, clean Pomodoro timer to help you stay healthy and regain your focus.

Maccy ⭐

Maccy

Clipboard manager.

Hidden Bar ⭐

Hidden Bar

Hide your menu bar icons.

Übersicht ⭐

Customize desktop widgets. You can add widgets like clock, weather, system monitor to your desktop.

MacZip

Full-featured archiver, supports more than 20 archive formats, can be integrated with Finder.

YouTube Music ⭐

YouTube Music

This is the best youtube music client for macOS I can find. Although it’s written in electron, but it’s full-featured, it supports account login, ad blocking and downloading. It’s bundled with many plugins that you can enable via a single click.

Moreover, it support macOS native controllers like touch bar, pause button, notifications and so on.

Amazing AI

Generate images from text using Stable Diffusion, using native Apple Neural Engine and native SwiftUI.

This app is only available for Apple Silicon Macs currently.

DiffusionBee ⭐

DiffusionBee

Another image generation tool powered by Stable Diffusion. Compared to Amazing AI:

It’s open source.
Supports Intel chips.
Supports custom models.
Image to image.
In-painting & Out-painting.
And more features.

But:

It’s written in electron.
Doesn’t support Apple Neural Engine yet.

Orion

A native macOS web browser written in Swift, based on WebKit browser engine.

The most interesting thing about it is that it supports both chrome and firefox extensions.

UTM ⭐

UTM

This is an open source virtual machine for macOS, basically a wrapper of qemu. It supports both Intel chips and Apple Silicon chips.

I ran some Geekbench CPU benchmarks on Windows 11 for Arm and the results show that the performance of UTM is almost the same as Parallels Desktop. I didn’t save the urls of benchmark results, but found another guy’s results: UTM vs Parallels

Now I have fully migrated from Parallels Desktop to UTM.

Here, I’m also going to recommend some Safari extensions.

AdGuard ⭐

This is the only ad blocking & anti tracking extension I’ll recommend in Safari. Don’t use stuffs like “AdBlock Plus” or “uBlock” (not uBlockOrigin), see here for discussion.

Btw, if you are using Chrome and Firefox, uBlockOrigin + Privacy Badger might be a better choice.

uBlacklist ⭐

Block sites from search engine results. You can use this to block ads & copycat sites.

MeddleMonkey

Free alternative to Tampermonkey. This is a user scripts manager, a kind of must-have extension on any web browser. You can find many useful scripts on Greasy Fork and other user scripts sites.

Btw, if you are using Chrome or Firefox, Violentmonkey might be a better choice over Tampermonkey because Tampermonkey is no longer open source while Violentmonkey is an actively maintained FOSS.

For Chinese users, you can also consider Stay which is partially open source (pro features require payment).