My Current Everyday macOS Apps
Since my last post, I've switched my everyday apps around a bit. Here's a list of the main changes, and also some apps that I use everyday and would like to recommend.
Keyboard Maestro
I retired Magnet as my window manager in favor of a more versatile tool that I already owned but never got to learn and use: Keyboard Maestro. If window management is all you need, go with Magnet. If you want a complete automation tool that also does window management, Keyboard Maestro might be perfect for you too.
Alfred
I've been using Alfred solely as an app launcher and contact searcher for many years because it's much faster than Spotlight. I've dabbled with some workflows, and many of them were very janky (I miss Spotlight's unit converter the most), but never went too far into Alfred's full suite of features. What a waste.
I'm glad that I finally realized I could replace two or more apps with Alfred. The first one was aText, that was one of my favorite little apps until I saw its new UI proposal — it's so atrocious it made me look for an alternative, and I found it in good old Alfred and its Snippets functionality. Granted, it's not entirely straight forward like aText as you have to resort to custom workflows for variables, but after I figured things out it does the same thing and more.
Another tool I also liked a lot but became redundant with Alfred was Maccy, the clipboard manager. Alfred has that built-in, and it works great. One less app.
→ Get Alfred for free (and purchase the Powerpack if you like it)
ToothFairy
This one I found by accident on some random YouTube video. It's a menu bar app that basically helps you manage Bluetooth devices. My Anker headphones — or any Bluetooth headphones, to be honest — don't always work perfectly, and ToothFairy lets me reconnect them with a click instead of turning the device on and off or messing around in macOS' System Preferences. The definition of “quality of life”.
SoundSource
I own most Rogue Amoeba's apps and I love them. This is another one that I couldn't see the value for some time, but now it's shining on my menu bar as my default sound controller. It's great for checking and assigning input and output devices to different roles or apps, or boosting the volume of something specific.
Amphetamine
This is a neat little app that prevents your laptop screen from sleeping. Just like the discontinued Caffeine, it does what it says on the tin. Simple and free.
1Password
This is not new, I've been using 1Password as my sole password manager for many years. It's the best on the market. Affordable, reliable, easy to use, and has great integrations with web browsers.
→ Sign up for 1Password ($2.99/month)
Soulver
I took advantage of a great sale to finally grab this app, and now I can say that it is indeed better than Numi. I just wish it could live only in the menu bar and not the Dock, as it has a Spotlight-like prompt accessible via a keyboard shortcut.
ColorSlurp
I don't remember how I got to this app. Maybe it was a sale. The fact is its web page is gorgeous and definitely steered me into purchasing the pro version. So long, Sip and your weird pricing model — it was good while it lasted.
→ Get ColorSlurp for free (and upgrade if you like it)
MEGA
After seeing so many issues being reported by Dropbox users, I was really afraid of losing my files or being falsely accused of storing shady stuff and get locked out of my account. Also, the way they would be able to tell that — false positives or not — is because there's no privacy at all, they can look into all your files and that's not ok.
Then I started a long journey after a worthy alternative. I needed cloud storage that would:
Sync a local folder instead of creating a virtual disk (because Finder cannot perform searches in those)
Respect my privacy, so have zero-knowledge encryption
Be easy to use, with decent native apps (most failed here)
I was almost migrating to Sync.com — with its terrible apps and horrendous transfer speeds — when I stopped to seriously consider MEGA, despite all the controversies with its founder. I must say it's been a great, seamless and affordable experience so far — I only need around 250GB, so their cheapest ‘Pro Lite’ plan got me covered. I'm a happy, worry-free customer and I'd recommend it to anyone.
→ Get MEGA for free (and upgrade if you need more than 20GB with this affiliate link)
Basecamp
My endless search for a good work platform has finally ended.
I've used Basecamp Classic on and off with many small projects for as long as I can remember, and the only thing that prevented me from adopting version 3 for my company was the very prohibitive monthly subscription — a flat $99, which corresponds to almost R$600 since 2018. I sent them a couple e-mails asking for regional pricing or a discount, but had no luck, so we went with Trello and Discord.
Then they recently changed their pricing to $15/user/month with one year for free, and they only bill you for employees, not clients, guests or contractors. I couldn't let this pass, so now we're proud Basecamp users and it's been great.
Reminders + Clock
I probably used all of the top to-do list apps in the past decade, and I think I'll finally settle on the stock Reminders app from Apple, that seems to be finally usable after they completely destroyed it in recent updates.
Deep down, I wish The Hit List wasn't abandoned, that Wunderlist hadn't been killed by Microsoft, that Things had a sharing feature, that TickTick wasn't so shady and didn't have so many useless features, and that Todoist had a truly native app and actual recurring tasks, but none of this matters as Apple Reminders rises from the ashes to be good enough for what I need.
Also, Clock is now a thing on macOS. It's also just good enough so I don't need other alarm/timer apps.
Nord VPN
I switched to Nord from Express VPN a while ago, as the latter was giving me more headaches than I was willing to go through. Nord also has its hiccups, but for me it's been much more stable, faster and reliable.
They have these crazy perpetual sales, and one day I decided to get a 2-year plan with a coupon code from Critical Role. It's good. Works most of the time.
→ Sign up for Nord VPN (affiliate link)