[doublepost=1524916486][/doublepost]I looked through the existing comments and could find no mention of the fact that station is now $14.99.
Apps designed for the Mac don't typically receive as much attention as apps for iOS devices, so we've launched a monthly series that highlights useful, interesting Mac apps that are worth checking out.
This month's app selection, outlined in the video and the post below, includes apps for managing and organizing your files, getting info about your Mac, accessing your favorite content quickly, and more. Many of the apps we've included this month were chosen by our forum members.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
- DaisyDisk ($9.99) - DaisyDisk is an app that's been around for quite some time, but it was just recently updated with extended support for Apple File System (APFS), the file system on macOS High Sierra. DaisyDisk is designed to show you all of the files on your Mac, so you can see what's eating up your disk space. Using simple drag and drop gestures, you can delete unnecessary content, freeing up storage.
- Hazel ($32) - Hazel is a little bit more expensive than the typical Mac apps we feature, but it has a unique function -- it automatically sorts and organizes all of your files. You can assign Hazel to watch folders on your Mac, such as the download folder, and using user-specified rules, Hazel will organize all incoming files into categories like Movies, Music, Pictures, Old Files, New Items, and more. Hazel can be used to open, archive, tag, rename, and upload files, and there are tools for cleaning up support files when you delete an app.
- Shortcut Bar ($8.99) - Shortcut Bar is a simple menu bar app that lets you access your favorite files, folders, apps, web bookmarks, and text snippets, essentially putting all of the files and apps you use most on your Mac right at your fingertips.
- Station (Free) - Station is an app that's designed to house and aggregate all of your web applications in one easy to access location. Instead of having dozens of tabs open with things like Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, and Slack, you can relocate them all to Station for quicker, more streamlined access. Station is, essentially, a web browser that has a more thoughtful layout for accessing web apps.
- iStat Menus (Free) - iStat Menus is a fairly well-known app that's worth checking out if you haven't already. It provides a wealth of information about your Mac that's accessible through your menu bar. You can track battery life and health, processor usage, memory usage, network details, weather information, and more, and it can send notifications based on your custom parameters. Want to know if your CPU usage has exceeded 60 percent for over 10 seconds or if your internet is down? iStat Menus can do that. It's free to download, but unlocking full functionality costs $9.99.
Do you have favorite must-have Mac apps that we haven't highlighted yet? Let us know what they are in the comments and we might feature them in a future video. Many of this month's picks came from our forum members.
For more of our Mac app picks, make sure to check out our lists from February and March.
Article Link: Five Useful Mac Apps Worth Checking Out - April 2018
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Five Useful Mac Apps Worth Checking Out - April 2018
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Another vote for OmniDiskSweeper. The visual representation is much better then Disk Inventory X or Daisy Disk.
Yep, simple and functional. When it comes to deleting loads of data, I don't like these visual pie charts with graphics-boiling animations to make it look pretty.
I'd much rather know a simple breakdown of what's taking up what space and exactly what I'm deleting before I start culling my drive.
Can vouch for DaisyDisk, Hazel, and the paid version of iStat Menus (the free version is pretty crippled compared to the paid version).
Just not deleting but reporting what folders are consuming the disk space. I find a sorted list much easier to work with
High Sierra also has a built in functional large file locator that indexes into Spotlight so there's no real waiting. All these apps have to search and sort before they can be used.
Apple Menu->About This Mac -> Storage Tab ->Manage
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A 4 minute video to figure out how to use a space saving app. There's something wrong before you even begin.
It took me 5 seconds to figure out how to use it.
Maybe you're a computer expert. The rest of computer users just want to solve the problem simply and the OS based method is possibly the fastest and least inhibitive to those who are more comfortable with iPad style tools.
+n (not sure what N represents at this point). Love OmniDiskSweeper - straightforward, easy to use, works great.
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Not sure where you got that information... but it was free for me, just 5 minutes ago.
To be honest it has no real competition and 'just works'. There is absolutely no reason everyone with a Mac shouldn't install the free version of this incredible app, but yeah sure I am pretty sure most everyone at all interested in great audio wouldn't hesitate to 'splurge' the $20 for Pro. Have you applied the example he gave for equalizing your airpods? Personally I use it with Sonarworks Reference 4 calibrations for my Magnepan speakers and 6 different custom calibrations across all my headphones. It is also useful to create a hotkey preset containing the recording plugin he provides for doing things like on-demand call recording through skype, etc.
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This really isn't worth debating, but I'll just say - no, the 'OS based method' (whatever that is) is not the fastest and least inhibitive. There are just different methods of viewing data. Someone people like one and some people like another. Daisy Disk is incredibly fast at scanning and keeps things quite simple when it's done.
Enjoy your life using whatever works for you. There's no need to make it into a religion.
Your welcome. No I have no idea what it stands for, or if it even stands for anything...
(good I decided to make that list of other apps)
I think IINA is Japanese, いいな is saying something is "good".
But the developer who started this project is Chinese though.
you need to uninstall it using the uninstall option in its menu
trashing the app does not remove it from the menu bar
The linkage of Little Snitch as a assistant to Piracy is interesting, I don't think I've ever heard that before. The primary reason I run it is for Privacy and Awareness. I utilize a range of apps, many of which mentioned in the comments, to enhance my Mac experience. Yet, anyone (who isn't yet aware) of how many connections are being made by their Mac on a daily basis are in for a shock. At a minimum, a huge number of utility type Apps I run on my Machine are often trying to connect to Google Analytics servers, update servers, activation servers. Social network and integration features, several connections that you don't even have the option of turning off until you open and start to interact with the app, IF the developer even allows you to toggle the connections. If I don't expect or have a need for app to try and connect to the web, it doesn't. I'll maybe allow activation (if there is no offline option), but after that, it's blocked.
Creative Cloud is the biggest offender of peculiar behavior. A process called "log transport" attempts to connect to Adobe every time I close an application. What's this? Log transport is part of Adobe's telemetry services. I'm not a huge fan of telemetry and so I turn off the feature and block the connection, but it still happens...hmmm....
Another is protection against macOS Malware. XProtect is pretty good, best in the industry IMO, but there is still a lag time between when the threat is in the wild and before it is picked up by XProtect. So in that case, Little Snitch will alert you if a piece of malware is trying to reach out to a remote server. Ok, it won't be obvious (depending on the malware writer, who could put "MacOS Update Service" as the service name, however if you are aware enough to realize that something like this should never connect to "zzzxxxx.update.ru" (a Russian domain), you can block the connect. Infact, several malware even look for the presence of Little Snitch and terminate their connection if found, for risk of being uncovered. You can see a few examples here: https://bitrot.sh/post/24-12-2017-little-snitch/
Not only malware writers are looking for little snitch, but so are "bonafide" application developers, who are often using little snitch on their own workstations. There are several apps that detect the presence of little snitch and offer a pop up box to explain exactly what connection is to where to make the user more informed. Some application devs are great, minimal connections, informed consent, but the majority are not. Several connections to far flung locations doing who knows what without informing the user. We get to keep some control for ourselves.
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Your opinion ... and you're certainly entitled to it... but as with everything on the internet, some is true, some is not, and YMMV.
Furthermore, there is nothing inherent in the act of charging for something (or paying for something) to change any argument that you might offer to support your position.
Yeah, I haven't even looked at Disk Inventory X yet, but I had a few Mac users in the office asking for help finding why they were out of disk space -- so I ran across Daisy Disk. But that $9.99 just seems too steep for such a basic thing.
It's a good app, sure ... but I can't help but feel like this functionality should be built into OS X anyway. And this isn't worth more than maybe a dollar or so to me.
It's a good app, sure ... but I can't help but feel like this functionality should be built into OS X anyway. And this isn't worth more than maybe a dollar or so to me.
One of my absolute favourites is Airfoil. I use it to stream Spotify to my Airplay speakers, but it can also send audio to bluetooth and chromecast speakers. I've had it since 2012 and the developers are very good at keeping it updated.
https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/
https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/
Second this, I've used Disk Inventory X for years on all my Macs. Brilliant little utility that can free up Gigabytes in a few seconds.
I'd been a VLC user for years, until I found out about IINA: feel in love with it instantly. Now it has become my only media player.
Airmail is a good Mail replacement, but I personally prefer Spark (and it's free).
1Password is a great utility app, but feels a little bit pricey.
My only gripe with Spark is that it stores a lot of data server-side, which I'm not sure has changed since the last time I read up on it....
Thanks for the explanation. Sorry for making assumptions. I know that these kinds of tools are used to block online authentication of serials and other things which would cripple pirated installations especially of Adobe software which is obviously must-have for most Mac users.
I have used similar several software firewalls on Windows through the years which allow you to block both incoming and outgoing connections. It was useful but it used resources. Now that was on 512MB-4GB RAM machines. It’s probably much different with the headroom of 16 GB or more.
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Thanks for your input. I know it’s used to make cracked installations work especially those that require online authentication or to stop automatic updates which would obviously remove the crack since they are always version specific.
I always turn off all of the diagnostic stuff whenever there is an option. I pay for CC and didn’t know they were collecting this stuff. I didn’t want to try to block anything since Adobe probably checks that you have a valid license every time the CC menu bar app is launched and I thought any tinkering could break the installation and would require me to reinstall the entire thing. Since there really is no clean way to uninstall CC, that would pretty much either mean reinstalling the OS or restoring from a time machine backup. I don’t like when an OS has lots of garbage and unfortunately there is no easy way to uninstall programs like these that have so many dependencies and files all over the place. It is much easier to uninstall everything in Windows and cleaning the registry entries. I grew up with Windows so I know my way around the registry really well.