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List of recommended OS X software
For a more complete collection of terminal applications, be sure to check the GNU/Linux applications page.
Contents
- 1 Package Managers
- 2 Terminal Applications
- 3 File Management
- 4 FTP Clients
- 5 Online Storage
- 6 Network Monitoring
- 7 System Monitoring
- 8 Productivity
- 9 Audio Players
- 10 Audio Tools
- 11 Video Players
- 12 Web Browsers
- 13 Chat clients
- 14 Mail
- 15 Utilities
- 16 System Maintenance
- 17 BitTorrent Clients
- 18 Archiving Tools
- 19 Coding
- 20 Images & Graphics
- 21 Gaming
- 22 Other Platforms
Package Managers
Terminal Applications
- iTerm 2 - Free
- TotalTerminal - Free
File Management
- TotalFinder - $18
FTP Clients
Online Storage
Network Monitoring
- Little Snitch - $35
- Wireshark - Free
System Monitoring
- MenuMeters - Free
- iStat Menus - $16
Productivity
- Dropzone - $10
- CloudApp - Free
- imguru and imgurBar - Free
- nvALT - Modified version of the lightweight note taking app Notational Velocity. Has the option to save notes as plain text files.
- TodoTxtMac - Open source to-do manager for mac using the todo.txt format.
Audio Players
- iTunes - The default audio player. While not very customizable, it features good sorting options and integration. Can't play FLAC files.
- Fidelia - At $20, it's a pretty harsh price for a music player. Unless you really need those advanced features, stick to a cheaper player.
- Swinsian - Also $20, but made by a /g/ user.
- Sonora - Original devs have abandoned it. Seemingly no github activity.
- Ecoute
- Enqueue - $10
- Vox - Minimalistic alternative to iTunes that also has the ability to play FLAC.
Command line players
Audio Tools
Video Players
Web Browsers
For more detailed information see Web browsers.
Safari is the default web browser in Apple's Mac OS X. It is based on Apple's Webkit layout engine, a KHTML fork.
Firefox is free software developed by Mozilla. It is highly extensible via addons and included as the default browser in many GNU/Linux distributions.
Chromium is the developer version of Google Chrome. Its tracking features can be easily disabled. Although it is free and open source software, its code is not as well audited as Firefox.
Opera is a proprietary web browser developed and maintained by Opera Software.
Chat clients
RetroShare is an open source decentralized communication platform. It provides secure chat, photo and video sharing using OpenPGP to authenticate peers and OpenSSL to encrypt all communication.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Clients
HexChat is a popular replacement for the XChat IRC client, a client which offered a free binary for Linux but charges money for the Windows version. HexChat is a continuation of XChat and makes both its source code and binaries available to users of all platforms it's created for. Like its parent software, HexChat is licensed under the GNU GPL. It includes all the basic features one would need, and can be ideal both for new users and IRC veterans.
- Thunderbird
- Airmail - $2
- Opera Mail
Utilities
Application Launchers
- Alfred - Simple but efficient application launcher. Best in combination with the Powerpack.
- Launchbar - A little more complicated than Alfred, has a few convenient features that Alfred lacks.
- Quicksilver
Ricing
- Obsidian Menu Bar - Changes the color of the menu bar to black.
- Bartender - Utility to clean up and manage your menu bar.
- Geektool - Add shell scripts and images to your desktop.
- Bowtie - Customizable display for the music you're listening to.
Window Management
- Spectacle - Open Source window managment tool.
- BetterSnapTool
- Moom
Other
- PCKeyboardHack - Change the functionality of the "Caps Lock" key.
- KeyRemap4MacBook - Remap the keys on your keyboard and change the key repeat settings.
- jitouch 2
- Handbrake - Utility for ripping movies.
- [1] - Command line program for downloading videos from Youtube and similar sites.
- 1Password - Safely store all your passwords.
- Growl - Alternative notification system with good customization features. Best in combination with HardwareGrowler. $4 or build from source.
- f.lux - Utility for changing the color tone of your display.
- Automator
- EiskaltDC++
System Maintenance
Misc.
- coconutBattery - Utility for checking battery health.
- Appcleaner - A free and good way to uninstall software.
- Onyx
Disk tools
- DaisyDisk - Gives you a graphical overview over your file system.
- Disk Inventory X - Free alternative to DaisyDisk.
- Gemini - Intelligent duplicate remover.
BitTorrent Clients
- Deluge is a libtorrent-based BitTorrent client. It is highly extensible via its plug-ins system. Deluge is notable for having originated the particular method of protocol encryption that is currently in use by every major BitTorrent client.
- qBittorrent is a libtorrent-based BitTorrent client. According to the its developers, the aim of the client is to provide a free software alternative to µTorrent. There's also a daemon version called Qbittorrent-nox.
- Transmission is a lightweight torrent client with support for blocklists.
Terminal
- qBittorrent-nox is an advanced command-line Bittorrent client written in C++ / Qt4, using the libtorrent-rasterbar library by Arvid Norberg. qBittorrent-nox aims to be a good alternative to other command line bittorrent clients and provides features similar to popular graphical clients. qBittorrent-nox is fast, stable, light and it supports unicode. It also comes with UPnP port forwarding / NAT-PMP, encryption (Vuze compatible), FAST extension (mainline) and PeX support (utorrent compatible).
- Deluge-Console is an ncurses interface for Deluge that generally comes bundled with the main GUI client.
- rTorrent is a client with an ncurses interface brought to you by the people who make libtorrent.
- Transmission-CLI is an ncurses interface for Transmission.
Archiving Tools
- The Unarchiver or the CLI version
- The Archive Browser - $4
Coding
- BBEdit
- TextWrangler
- TextMate
- MacVim
- Coda
- Sublime Text
- Any of JetBrains' IDEs (they have different IDEs for different languages)
Images & Graphics
Compression
- ImageAlpha - Program for reducing the file size of PNG files.
- ImageOptim - Software for reducing the size of JPG and PNG files.
Editing
- Preview - The default image viewing and editing app. Lightweight and functional alternative for simple edits.
- Skitch - Simple editing program for adding anotations to images.
- Pixelmator - A good and affordable ($30) alternative to photoshop.
- Acorn - Similar to Pixelmator.
- Sketch - Another alternative to Pixelmator.
- GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program. Free open source image editing program.
- Camerabag - Easy-to-use photo editing tool.
Viewing
- Preview
- PhotoStickies - Stick photos to your desktop.