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Five Essential Apps for Your Mac

I can't live without iStatMenus. Core count and usage, network stats, memory usage, and more. It's my absolute favorite app and the first thing I install on any Mac.
 
pier said:
You could look into TotalFinder or PathFinder.

Edit: Also Commander One.
Click to expand...
Thank you pier.
I couldn't find PathFinder in the AppStore.
Is TotalFinder the same as "Total Manager"? I could find Total Manager, but not TotalFinder.
 
dwfaust said:
In PathFinder, you can right click on the file name and choose Copy Path from the context menu and capture the file path in one of several formats.
Click to expand...
Thanks so much for the helpful screen shot!

Do you see PathFinder in the App Store now? I am running Sierra (not High Sierra yet) and I don't see it. I don't think I'm filtering it out somehow...

edit: Never mind - Just saw pier's reply above!
 
barthrh said:
Have you tried MailHub from Dervish Software? It's an essential filing / moving app. You may also want to check out InDev's mail plug ins; they are a bit different but may have more of the style of work you're looking for.
[doublepost=1517280216][/doublepost]

Here is the problem with Keychain: On macOS if I want to see my password in Keychain, I need to key in my user password that I would typically make complex. Great.

Now go to iOS > Settings > Safari > Passwords. You can reveal all of the passwords using nothing but the device unlock code (i.e. usually 4-6 digits).

Personally, I like my PW vault to have a completely discrete master PW from anything else. I also like the ability to store not just passwords, my passport details, health card info, memberships, licenses, secure notes, etc. 1Password is a secure vault for everything that deserves a secure vault. Better still, you can make multiple vaults. I have one for myself and one "family" vault that has the kids' passwords. They are allowed to access that vault, not mine.
Click to expand...
And all of this information is entrusted into the hands of those who run 1Password. What happens when they get hacked?
 
pier said:
Most macOS software is not in the App Store.
Click to expand...
Wow, I did not realize that. I thought software not on the Mac App Store would probably be malicious. i.e., So it's not like I need to jailbreak my Mac to load them? ;-).

I guess that makes sense (that most macOS software is not in the App Store) given that the Mac App Store is relatively new compared to Macs which have been around forever.

I wish they were on the Mac App Store though, because then I'd know Apple has inspected the code. I prefer paying small app fees ($30 and under is how I define small) vs downloading from an unknown website.


[ separate topic ]
Any chance you know the solution to my biggest other difficulty with transitioning to a Mac?

I am used to moving 1 page up or 1 page down via a single keystroke, done without conscious thought on all my Thinkpad laptops:
Thinkpad%20Keyboard%20PageDown_zpssvnlscnm.png

On my MacBook Pro, there's no consistent way to page up and page down with a single keystroke. It's totally bizarre to me that there are no dedicated PageUP and PageDown keys.

I used Better Touch Tool to remap the right side
propeller command key , alt option key
From: their default actions
To: Page Up, Page Down

At first, I thought that tool had solved it!.
That does fix it in Safari and a lot of apps.
1 keystroke (right side command key ) pages up. 1 keystroke (right side option key) pages down. Yay!

But not in Microsoft Office apps. So I still switch to my Thinkpad when I need to be productive in Word Powerpoint and Excel which is everyday. Using 2 keystrokes for paging up and paging down vs 1 keystroke would massively increase my keystrokes in a day.

I touch about 200 files a week for my work, and keep ~ 1.2TB of files sync'd automatically via GoodSync , an awesome file syncing tool which I've used for > 6 yrs. So I switch back to my MacBook Pro in the evenings or if I'm in read-only mode for the awesome screen and mousepad.

It's disappointing given that I spent a ton of $ for a maxed out 2016 MBP with 2TB. I really expected it to be my main laptop by now. I thought it would be no-comparison-better vs a Thinkpad-Windows experience, like it was when I switched from the Palm Treo to the Apple iPhone.

These 2 things
1) Finder actions requiring a lot more keystrokes vs Windows File Explorer
2) the missing PageUp,PageDown keys

have been the 2 biggest friction points.
 
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MareLuce said:
On my MacBook Pro, there's no consistent way to page up and page down with a single keystroke. It's totally bizarre to me that there are no dedicated PageUP and PageDown keys.

I used Better Touch Tool to remap the right side
propeller command key , alt option key
From: their default actions
To: Page Up, Page Down

At first, I thought that tool had solved it!.
That does fix it in Safari and a lot of apps.
1 keystroke (right side command key ) pages up. 1 keystroke (right side option key) pages down. Yay!
Click to expand...
the vanilla way to do that is spacebar to page down and shift-spacebar to page up.

(obv won't work in a text entry field ;) )
 
flat five said:
maximizing windows is still in macOS, no?
Click to expand...

yeah, but you have to option-click the green button to get it. keyboard shortcut is easier for me and there are a couple of other shortcuts that I found useful (left/right half of screen, and to a lesser extent upper/lower)
 
BetterTouchTool (Snap windows, adjust Magic Mouse middle click etc)
1Password (Installed in iMac, iPhone, iPad, Windows BC)
RemoteBuddy (Control Kodi with a Harmony remote, or iMac while in sofa)
And I’m surprised no one is using Find Any File. (Makes removing leftovers from uninstalled apps a breeze)
 
turtlebud said:
yeah, but you have to option-click the green button to get it. keyboard shortcut is easier for me and there are a couple of other shortcuts that I found useful (left/right half of screen, and to a lesser extent upper/lower)
Click to expand...

besides the option-green button, there's Window->Zoom.. or double click an app's title bar.. that's early OS X style maximizing.. you could set that to a keystroke in system preferences.


the other thing you mention, if i understand correctly, can be done with a mouse (not saying it's better than a keystroke if that's what you want).. it's a newer feature of the OS that let's you put the mouse cursor on a window edge or corner.. double-click when you have the edge cursor and the window will extend to the screen edge in the chosen direction. (sides, up/down, diagonal)
 
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For myself LastPass, Spark, Boom, QuickRes, VMware Fusion, Tuxera NTFS, DaisyDisk, iStat Pro (the old one, I am not a fan of iStat Pro Menus), CleanMyMac, coconutBattery.
 
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I just installed DeskCover. Ran it, app icon appeared in Dock, but nothing else; no windows, nothing. Go to DeskCover menu in menu bar, "Preferences" is greyed-out. Notice a new menu bar app icon, so I click that. Ah! Click "Preferences" in that menu instead, and set it up how I want it. Turn it on (from that same menu bar app), and all that happens is I get a slightly transparent copy of the system wallpaper spread across my two monitors. Isolating the frontmost window doesn't work. Nothing changes regardless of what app window I'm on. All I see is a copy of the wallpaper.

Deleted.

+1 for Magnet, though.
 
ignatius345 said:
Has anybody noticed that there's now a bit of "snap to" distance on Finder windows built into MacOS? It's like a few pixels at most, but try it: take one Finder window and drag it up next to another, slowly, until they touch. Notice it "snaps" up very gently to align with the other window. It's very subtle, like I said, just a few pixels. Is this new? I've never noticed it before, and never heard it mentioned anywhere. Works for moving and resizing windows that abut other windows.
Click to expand...


Yes. I use it all the time. For most of these apps I was thinking “I already like the way MacOS handles these things natively without installing more software. “

I’ve tried to get into Alfred, but would just rather use spotlight. I know Alfred does other things but I have not found that I need them.
 
All these things increase clutter or just hide it. If you really want to get rid of clutter, you need to delete programs/files you dont use.
 
The app I use most on my desktop is Zooom/2. Unfortunately is was discontinued more than a year ago, but it works flawlessly with Sierra and High Sierra. I still haven't found an app that does what Zooom/2 does: place the cursor anywhere in a window, press a user defined keyboard shortcut, and then simply move the cursor to resize the window, or anther shortcut to move the window. It also has focus-follow-mouse-and-auto-raise-window. Magnet and BetterSnapTool & co are just bleak imitations of this fantastic app!
 
My favourite and essential 'utilities' are The Unarchiver, Bartender 3, CopyClip 2 (definitely worth the paid update from v1), AppCleaner, Transmission and BetterTouchTool.
 
sirozha said:
And all of this information is entrusted into the hands of those who run 1Password. What happens when they get hacked?
Click to expand...

No it's not. Read their security papers. The cloud data is stored on Amazon AWS S3 buckets. Each record is stored as an encrypted object in S3 - essentially hundreds of encrypted 'blobs' distributed over S3. Even if a person were to get one of those blobs, they would have to decrypt it (very unlikely due to the way your master password derives the actual encryption key i.e. your master password doesn't encrypt the object - it is used to generate a large random string which is used to encrypt the object).

The major issue with trusting your data to these people isn't someone hacking in their servers (they don't own any), or getting your data (that's the point of encryption - expect it to be stolem) but to a dodgy company introducing a backdoor that sends your details to a government or third party. As Agilebits is a privately owned Canadian company who have been around for a very long time - it's unlikely to do this. Not sure about the others.
 
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1Password is my ESSENTIAL app, can’t live without it. Alfred, Caffine, Popclip. For Apple Mail: Mailtags, Act-on, SpamSeive and SaneBox
 
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