Ask HN: Suggestions for native Mac apps? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Suggestions for native Mac apps?

22 points_justinfunk14 comments

With an updated Mac App Store coming this fall, I started evaluating my own use of Mac software. Aside from a code editor and music player, practically everything else that I do on MacOS is in a browser (streaming video, documents, maps, email, etc).

Help me change this (should I change this?) - what apps should I be using natively?

I work full-time doing programming, consulting, and other general-purpose internet-y things.

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It’s worth checking out https://setapp.com (no affiliation). They have some useful utilities.

Personally though, I like the interoperability of a browser-based workflow. I use multiple different computers - Mac, windows, and Linux - and the switch feels seamless because most of my life is spent in Firefox, chrome, and VSCode

Notes app is a really usefully tool. It’s easy to use but has a lot of powerful features if you dig a little.

OmniOutliner

OmniFocus

NetNewsWire

Photoshop

Corel Painter

Autodesk Fusion 360

Cura (3D printing slicer)

WWDC.app (WWDC videos app for macOS, from a 3rd party)

Skim.app (PDF reader)

Timing (time tracker)

Audio Hijack

Navicat for SQLite

WireShark

Loving [Numi](https://numi.io) as a nice scratch pad for math. Has support for things like variables, constants, functions, and even px/em/pt values conversions. You can hack it with JavaScript to add personal global values, etc as well.

Please try http://write.pub

WYSIWYG markdown editor + git baked in, with rich WYSIWYG diff visualizations.

For power users, it has a raw markdown editing mode, plenty of extensions. Would love your feedback on 6+ months of blood, sweat & tears poured into this

When will collaborative editing be launched?

I quite enjoy native Markdown editors with instant preview. https://macdown.uranusjr.com/ or https://getlightpaper.com/

In that space, my favorite is Typora (https://typora.io/)

Please give http://write.pub a shot.

And a nod to Typora, we're inspired by them

I really like the mail client, since I have 5 different email addresses I use that would otherwise be difficult to coordinate by just forwarding everything to one gmail inbox.

Also I big fan of the messages app, if you use an iPhone it’s very convenient.

In addition to editors and notes, I user mail, terminal, and IMs. IMs are really important to me -- basically for everything I care about being notified, I prefer an app rather that in-browser.

Noizio, Bear, TickTick, Airmail, GitKraken are one of my favourite Mac apps, have a look at them. Most of them are cross platform too.

I just finished reinstalling my Mac, so I've been working on a list of all the native apps that I reinstalled. Apologies for the giant comment, but I hope it helps:

Mac Specific Utilities

* Alfred (best reason to own a Mac) https://www.alfredapp.com/

* Bartender 3 (for tweaking the menu bar) https://www.macbartender.com/

* Coconut Battery (battery menu-bar monitor) https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

* Focus (block distracting websites & apps) https://heyfocus.com/

* Camouflage (hide desktop icons) https://briksoftware.com/products/camouflage/

* Caffeine (stop your Mac going to sleep) http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/

* Soundsource (switch between audio inputs) https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/

For coders / developers

* Panic Transmit 5 (File transfers, S3, Backblaze B2, Dropbox, OneDrive) https://www.panic.com/transmit/

* Panic Coda 2 (an IDE for editing websites) https://www.panic.com/coda/

* Cathode (gorgeous terminal app) http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/

* Sequel Pro (beautiful MySQL admin tool) https://sequelpro.com/

* Beyond Compare (cross-platform diff tool) http://scootersoftware.com/

* Tower (Git client, alas subscription only) https://www.git-tower.com/mac

* MAMP (Run MySQL, Apache, PHP etc locally) https://www.mamp.info/en/

* Synalyze It! (Color-coded Hex editor for Mac) https://www.synalysis.net/

* Feeder (RSS editor / micro-blog tool) https://reinventedsoftware.com/feeder/

* Xojo (cross-platform IDE for making native apps in Basic) https://www.xojo.com/

* Corona SDK (mobile focused cross-platform apps in Lua) https://coronalabs.com/

* Parallels Desktop 13 (for running Windows / Linux) https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

* DropDMG (create DMG installers for Mac) https://c-command.com/dropdmg/

* Iconographer (multi-platform icon creator) http://www.ohanaware.com/iconographer/

For Backup

* SuperDuper! (create bootable external USB backups) https://shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.ht...

* Arq (cloud backup to your choice of host) https://www.arqbackup.com/

Internet Utilities

* Tweetbot (Twitter without ads or annoyances) https://www.tapbots.com/tweetbot/mac/

* Postbox (Powerful email client) https://www.postbox-inc.com/

* EncryptMe (VPN with a Mac-first design) https://www.encrypt.me/

Productivity

* Soulver (spreadsheet as a text notepad) http://acqualia.com/soulver/

* Harvest (timetracking service for freelancers) https://www.getharvest.com/apps/mac

* NeoOffice (Mac specific version of OpenOffice) https://www.neooffice.org/

* Affinity Photo (non-subscription Photoshop competitor) https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

Gitup is wonderful if you use git.

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