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Difference between revisions of "List of recommended OS X software"

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m (Removed 1Password as a recommended password manager. https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Passwords lists 1password as a bad password manager)
 
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<!-- See discussion page for todo list-->
 
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For a more complete collection of terminal applications, be sure to check the [[Recommended software (Linux)]] page.
+
{{TOCright}}
 +
== Package manager ==
 +
*[http://brew.sh/ Homebrew] — Free, written in Ruby
 +
*[https://www.cakebrew.com/ Cakebrew] is a graphical client for managing Homebrew.
 +
*[http://www.macports.org/ MacPorts] — Free
 +
*[http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/ Portage] — Originally for Gentoo Linux, but will work on macOS with hacks.
  
[[Category:Software]]
+
== Terminal emulator ==
[[Category:Recommendations]]
+
*[http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home iTerm 2] — Free
 +
*[http://totalterminal.binaryage.com/ TotalTerminal] — No longer under active development
  
=== Package Managers ===
+
For a more complete collection of terminal applications, be sure to check the [[List of recommended GNU/Linux software|GNU/Linux applications]] page.
*[http://brew.sh/ HomeBrew]
 
*[http://www.macports.org/ MacPorts]
 
  
 +
== Internet ==
 +
=== Web browser ===
 +
For more detailed information see [[Web browsers]].
  
 +
[https://www.apple.com/safari/ Safari] is the default web browser in Apple's Mac OS X. It is based on Apple's Webkit layout engine, a KHTML fork.
 +
*[http://nightly.webkit.org/ Webkit Nightly]
  
=== Terminal Applications ===
+
[[Firefox]] is free software developed by Mozilla. It is highly extensible via addons and included as the default browser in many Linux distributions. It is often criticized on /g/ and /tech/ as "SJWfox" because of some Mozilla developers outspoken campaigns on social and political issues.
*[http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home iTerm 2]
+
*[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/beta/ Firefox Beta]
*[http://totalterminal.binaryage.com/ TotalTerminal]
+
*[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/#aurora Firefox Aurora]
 +
*[http://nightly.mozilla.org/ Firefox Nightly]
  
 +
[http://www.qupzilla.com/download QupZilla] is a FOSS web browser, built on the Qt and QtWebEngine (based on Chromium's rendering engine) frameworks. It supports extensions, ships out of the box with AdBlock, Mouse Gestures, GreaseMonkey, Speed Dial, Click2Flash, and more. It provides seamless integration with most desktop environments, and has several other distinguishing features. QupZilla is licensed under GPLv3.
  
 +
[http://www.opera.com/ Opera] is a proprietary web browser that has pioneered open web standards for over two decades. It is notable for being the first web browser to sport a tabbed interface. It is developed and maintained by Opera Software.
  
=== File Management ===
+
[https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium 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.
*[http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/ TotalFinder]
+
*[https://www.google.com/intl/no/chrome/browser/ Google Chrome]
 +
*[http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/canary.html Google Chrome Canary]
 +
*[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/ Ungooogled Chromium] Google Chromium, sans dependency on Google web services.
  
 +
[http://otter-browser.org/ Otter Browser] is a FOSS web browser that aims to recreate the best aspects of the classic Opera (12.x) UI using Qt5.
  
 +
[http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ SeaMonkey] is a continuation of the Mozilla suite. Unlike most modern web browsers, it is an Internet suite, complete with bundled programs for email, IRC, and web design. It is compatible with most Firefox add-ons.
  
=== FTP Clients ===
+
[https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en Tor Browser] (formerly known as Tor Browser Bundle) is a package of a modified Firefox extended support release, NoScript, HTTPS-Everywhere, Tor, TorButton and TorLauncher. It automatically routes traffic through the Tor network and deletes history and cookies when closed.
*[https://www.panic.com/transmit/ Transmit]
 
*[http://cyberduck.io/ Cyberduck]
 
  
=== Monitoring ===
+
=== E-mail client ===
==== Networking ====
+
*[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204093 Mail.app] - Comes default with Mac, supports iCloud mail drop for large attachments. Pretty neat.
*[http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html Little Snitch]
+
*[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird Thunderbird]
 +
*[http://airmailapp.com/ Airmail] — $10, Cross platform with iDevices
  
==== System ====
+
=== Instant Messenger (IM) ===
*[http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ iStat Menus]
+
*[https://www.adium.im/ Adium] is a customizable chat client with loads of themes, sound packs and other plugins.
 +
*[https://ricochet.im/ Ricochet IM] is and end-to-end encrypted instant messages which uses [[Tor]] hidden services.
 +
*[https://macos.telegram.org/ Telegram] is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed.
 +
*[http://www.skype.com/en/ Skype] owned by Microsoft, your privacy won't mean anything.
 +
*[http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ 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) ===
 +
*[http://hexchat.github.io/ 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.
 +
*[http://limechat.net/mac/ LimeChat] user friendly and free as in freedom.
 +
*[https://www.codeux.com/textual/ Textual] –$8
  
  
=== Productivity ===
+
=== BitTorrent (BT) ===
*[http://aptonic.com/ Dropzone]
 
*[http://www.getcloudapp.com/ CloudApp]
 
  
 +
*[http://www.transmissionbt.com/ Transmission] is a lightweight torrent client with support for blocklists.
 +
*[http://sourceforge.net/projects/qbittorrent/ qBittorrent] is a libtorrent-based BitTorrent client. According to 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.
 +
*[http://deluge-torrent.org/ 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.
 +
'''Terminal'''
 +
* [https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki/Running-qBittorrent-without-X-server 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).
  
 +
* [http://deluge-torrent.org/ Deluge-Console] is an ncurses interface for Deluge that generally comes bundled with the main GUI client.
  
=== Audio Players ===
+
* [http://www.transmissionbt.com/ Transmission-CLI] is an ncurses interface for Transmission.
*[http://ncmpcpp.rybczak.net/ ncmpcpp] + [http://www.musicpd.org/ mpd]
 
*[https://www.apple.com/itunes/ iTunes]
 
*[http://moc.daper.net/ moc]
 
*[http://cmus.sourceforge.net/ cmus]
 
  
 +
=== File Transfer Protocol (FTP) ===
 +
*[https://www.panic.com/transmit/ Transmit] — $45
 +
*[http://cyberduck.io/ Cyberduck] — $24
 +
* [https://filezilla-project.org/ FileZilla] — Free
  
 +
=== Other ===
 +
*[http://code.google.com/p/eiskaltdc/ EiskaltDC++] is a direct connect client for file sharing.
 +
*[https://github.com/FigBug/imguru imguru] and [https://github.com/zbuc/imgurBar imgurBar] — Free
 +
*[http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page Kiwix] Offline Wikipedia browser
 +
*[https://ranchero.com/netnewswire/ NetNewsWire] FOSS RSS reader
  
=== Audio Tools ===
 
*[http://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html XLD]
 
  
 +
== Text ==
 +
=== Word Processing ===
 +
*[http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html Bean] is a small, easy-to-use word processor that is designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is lean, fast and uncluttered. It starts up quickly, has a live word count, and is easy on the eyes. Also, Bean is available free of charge.
 +
*[https://www.openoffice.org/download/index.html OpenOffice]
 +
*[https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/ LibreOffice]
 +
*[https://www.apple.com/iwork/ Pages] Part of the iWork suite (competitor to Microsoft Office), now free! Works seamlessly with iDevices and very intuitive, reasonable powerful for casual use.
  
 +
=== Text editor ===
 +
*[https://code.visualstudio.com Visual Studio Code]
 +
*[http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ BBEdit] - $50
 +
*[http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ TextWrangler] - No longer under development, merged with BBEdit
 +
*[http://macromates.com/ TextMate] - $55
 +
*[http://macvim.org/ MacVim]
 +
*[https://emacsformacosx.com/ Emacs] - Preinstalled with macOS
 +
*[http://spacemacs.org/ Spacemacs]
 +
*[https://www.panic.com/coda/ Coda] - $99
 +
*[http://www.sublimetext.com/ Sublime Text] - $80
 +
*[https://www.jetbrains.com/products.html Any of JetBrains' IDEs] - $200 per year (they have different IDEs for different languages, very expensive)
 +
*[https://atom.io Atom]
 +
*[http://brackets.io/ Brackets]
 +
*[http://macrabbit.com/espresso/ Espresso] - $79
 +
*[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12 Xcode] Apple's default IDE, if you want to start making money selling iPhone apps, this is where you start.
  
=== Video Players ===
+
'''Plaintext/richtext editor'''
*MPlayerX
+
*[https://bywordapp.com/ Byword] - $11
*VlC
+
*[http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom WriteRoom] - $10
*[https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv-build mpv]
+
*[https://ia.net/writer/mac/ iA Writer] - $30
 +
*[https://71squared.com/focused Focused] - $20
 +
*[https://www.peterborgapps.com/smultron/ Smultron] - $14
 +
*[http://www.ulyssesapp.com/mac/ Ulysses] - $5 per month
 +
*[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itext-express/id416550249?mt=12 iText Express]
 +
*[http://www.codealchemists.com/jdarkroom/ JDarkRoom]
 +
*[http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/ Soulver] - $12
 +
*[http://getxpad.com/ xPad] Very good for rich-text documents. No longer maintained.
  
 +
=== To-do manager ===
 +
*[http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ nvALT] is a modified version of the lightweight note taking app [http://notational.net/ Notational Velocity]. It has the option to save notes as plain text files.
 +
*[https://mjdescy.github.io/TodoTxtMac/ TodoTxtMac] is an open source to-do manager for mac using the todo.txt format.
 +
*[http://www.taskpaper.com/ TaskPaper] is a plain text to-do list that’s surprisingly adept.
  
 +
=== Document Reader ===
 +
*[http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/ Skim]
 +
*[https://www.kitabu.me Kitabu]
  
=== Browsers ===
+
== Images and graphics ==
See [http://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php?title=Browsers Browsers]
+
=== Viewing ===
 +
*[https://xee.c3.cx/old Xee (v2.2)] open-source, lightweight, highly customisable.
 +
*[http://www.tucows.com/preview/1103787/Simple-EXIF-Viewer-For-Mac-OS-X EXIF Viewer] view image meta-data.
 +
*[http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html PhotoStickies] can stick photos to your desktop.
  
*[http://nightly.webkit.org/ Webkit Nightly]
+
=== Editing ===
*[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ Firefox]
+
*[https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201740 Preview] is the default image viewing and editing app. It is a lightweight and functional alternative for simple edits.
*[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/#aurora Firefox Aurora]
+
*[https://evernote.com/skitch/ Skitch] is a simple editing program for adding anotations to images.
*[http://nightly.mozilla.org/ Firefox Nightly]
+
*[http://www.pixelmator.com/ Pixelmator Pro] The successor to Pixelmator higher price of ($60), great alternative to Photoshop.
*[http://www.chromium.org/ Chromium]
+
*[https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ Affinity Photo] is a good and affordable ($35) alternative to photoshop.
 +
*[http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/ Acorn] is similar to Pixelmator.
 +
*[http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/ Sketch] is another alternative to Pixelmator.
 +
*[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gimp+site:www.gimp.org GIMP] is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a free and open source image editing program.
 +
*[http://www.nevercenter.com/camerabag/desktop/ Camerabag] is an easy-to-use photo editing tool.
 +
*[http://www.inkscape.org/en/ InkScape] is a FOSS vector graphic editor.
 +
*[https://www.fotor.com/mac/ Fotor]
 +
*[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/image-tools/id493949693?mt=12 iMage Tools]
 +
*[http://colorsnapper.com/ ColourSnapper] Simple colour picker app.
 +
*[http://theolabrothers.com/ Sip] Simple colour picker app.
 +
*[http://pngmini.com/ ImageAlpha] is a program for reducing the file size of PNG files.
 +
*[http://imageoptim.com/ ImageOptim] is software for reducing the size of JPG and PNG files.
  
 +
=== Drawing/Painting ===
 +
*[http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/ Paintbrush] Basic paint application.
 +
*[http://www.frykholm.se/rita.html Rita]
 +
*[http://www.eazydraw.com/ EazyDraw]
 +
*[http://pinta-project.com/ Pinta] is a free, open source program for drawing and image editing.
 +
*[http://mypaint.org/about/ MyPaint]
 +
*[https://www.madewithmischief.com/ Mischief]
  
 +
=== Animation ===
 +
*[http://www.pencil2d.org/pencil2d/ Pencil2D]
 +
*[http://www.dayofthenewdan.com/projects/time-lapse-assembler-1/ Time Lapse Assembler] allows you to create movies from a sequence of images.
 +
*[https://www.reto-hoehener.ch/japng/ JAPNG] Create animated PNGs (APNG).
  
=== Mail ===
+
=== 3D Modeling ===
*[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird Thunderbird]
+
*[http://www.blender.org/ Blender] is a 3D animation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation.
*[http://airmailapp.com/ Airmail]
 
  
 +
== Video ==
 +
=== Viewing ===
 +
*[https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv-build mpv] is a fork of MPlayer/Mplayer2 with cleaner code, less bloat, better video scaling, color management, and other high quality video rendering algorithms.
 +
*[https://iina.io/ IINA] User friendly mpv front-end. FOSS.
 +
*[http://mplayerosx.ch Mplayer OSX Extended]
 +
*[http://mplayerx.org/ MPlayerX]
 +
*[https://code.google.com/archive/p/movist/downloads Movist (v0.6.8)]
 +
*[https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ VLC]
 +
*[https://www.macblurayplayer.com/ Macgo Blu-ray Player Pro/Standard] Excellent program to watch Blu-ray and DVD discs. Paid, but offers free trials.
  
 +
=== Editing ===
 +
*[https://www.shotcut.org/bin/view/Shotcut/Download Shotcut] is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor.
 +
*[http://www.videoblend.org/mac/ VideoBlend] Very basic video editor.
 +
*[http://videospec.free.fr/english/ VideoSpec] View video meta-data.
 +
*[http://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/ Final Cut Pro X] Expensive, but powerful and easy to use. (Still cheaper than Adobe though)
  
=== Utilities ===
+
=== Conversion/Ripping ===
==== Application Launchers ====
+
*[http://handbrake.fr/ Handbrake] is a free and open source video transcoder with an easy to use GUI. It can rip and convert a variety of video formats, but can not break DVD or Blu-ray copyright protection.
 +
*[http://www.makemkv.com/ MakeMKV] can convert video from proprietary (and usually encrypted) discs into a set of MKV files, preserving most information but not changing it in any way. It can instantly stream decrypt video without intermediate conversion and decrypt Blu-rays and protected DVDs.
 +
*[http://project-x.sourceforge.net/ ProjectX] can resync DVB (Digital TV broadcasts) ready for encoding.
 +
*[https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ Youtube-dl] is a command line program for downloading videos from Youtube and similar sites.
 +
*[https://ffmpeg.org FFmpeg] the gold standard for video encoding, command line based.
  
*[http://www.alfredapp.com/ Alfred] - Simple but efficient application launcher. Best in combination with the [http://www.alfredapp.com/powerpack/ Powerpack].
+
=== Screencasting ===
*[http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html Launchbar] - A little more complicated than Alfred, has a few convenient features that Alfred lacks.
+
*[https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/ ScreenFlow] Includes a capable video editor — $99
*[http://qsapp.com/ Quicksilver]
+
*[http://www.getcloudapp.com/ CloudApp] — Free
  
==== Ricing ====
+
== Audio ==
 +
=== Playing ===
 +
*[http://mamburu.net/cog/ Cog] Functional, lightweight, customisable.
 +
*[http://swinsian.com/ Swinsian] iTunes clone - but more lightweight with less bullshit.
 +
*[http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/fidelia/ Fidelia] Posh UI.
 +
*[http://www.pixiapps.com/home/ Ecoute]
 +
*[http://mac.filehorse.com/download-vox/2239/ Vox (0.2.7.1)] Older version of Vox. Less features, barebones UI, but much more lightweight.
 +
'''Command line players'''
 +
*[http://moc.daper.net/ moc]
 +
*[http://cmus.sourceforge.net/ cmus]
 +
*[http://ncmpcpp.rybczak.net/ ncmpcpp] + [http://www.musicpd.org/ mpd] (+ [http://50hz.ws/mpdas/ mpdas] for last.fm scrobbling.)
  
*[http://www.obsidianmenubar.com/ Obsidian Menu Bar] - Changes the color of the menu bar to black.
+
=== Editing ===
*[http://www.macbartender.com/ Bartender] - Utility to clean up and manage your menu bar.
+
*[https://www.mp3tag.de/en/mac-osx.html Mp3tag] Probably the best tag editor for audio files. Ported from windows, works flawlessly.
*[http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ Geektool] - Add shell scripts and images to your desktop.
+
*[https://github.com/Sneeds-Feed-and-Seed/sneedacity Sneedacity (Formerly Audacity)] is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder made by /g/ as a replacement to Audacity which now includes telemetry. It has support for LADSPA, Nyquist, VST, Audio Unit effect and VAMP analysis plug-ins.  
 +
*[http://all2mp3.en.softonic.com/mac All2MP3]
 +
*[https://software.com/mac/apps/tagr Tagr] Audio metadata tagger.
 +
*[http://2manyrobots.com/yate/ Yate] Audio metadata tagger (more advanced).
 +
*[http://sourceforge.net/projects/xld/ XLD] is the preferred Mac audio disc ripper of what.cd. It can output cue sheets and log files via a plugin. It also supports tagging with MusicBrainz and FreeDB.
  
==== Other ====
+
=== Tools ===
*[http://www.bettertouchtool.net/ BetterTouchTool]
+
*[https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic BackgroundMusic] FOSS audio utility with features such as per-application volume control and recording system audio.
*[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=12 BetterSnapTool]
 
*[http://www.jitouch.com/index.php?page=jitouch jitouch 2]
 
*[http://manytricks.com/moom/ Moom]
 
*[http://handbrake.fr/ Handbrake]
 
*[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1password/id443987910?mt=12 1Password]
 
*Automator
 
  
 +
== Utilities ==
 +
=== Archiving ===
 +
*[http://unarchiver.c3.cx/unarchiver The Unarchiver] or the [http://unarchiver.c3.cx/commandline CLI version]
 +
*[http://archivebrowser.c3.cx/ The Archive Browser] — $4
 +
*[http://www.7-zip.org/ 7zip] is a free and open source file archiver developed in C++ by Igor Pavlov. Its primary feature is lossless compression in the 7z format, based upon the [[Wikipedia:Lempel%E2%80%93Ziv%E2%80%93Markov_chain_algorithm |Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm]]. In addition to the handful of formats it is capable of creating new archives in, 7zip can retrieve files from archives in virtually any format that one is likely to encounter. Only Windows binaries are provided on the site, but OS X and Linux binaries are available.
  
 +
*[http://www.kekaosx.com/en/ Keka]
 +
*[http://www.eigenlogik.com/entropy/ Entropy]
 +
*[http://macitbetter.com/ BetterZip 3]
 +
*[https://www.rarlab.com/download.htm RAR] WinRAR for macOS. CLI only.
  
=== System Maintenance ===
+
=== Application launchers ===
==== Misc. ====
+
*[http://www.alfredapp.com/ Alfred] is a simple but efficient application launcher. It is best in combination with the [http://www.alfredapp.com/powerpack/ Powerpack].
*[http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/ coconutBattery] - Utility for checking battery health.
+
*[http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html Launchbar] is a little more complicated than Alfred, but has a few convenient features that Alfred lacks.
*[http://www.freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ Appcleaner] - A free and good way to uninstall software.
+
*[http://qsapp.com/ Quicksilver]
*[http://www.titanium.free.fr/downloadonyx.php Onyx]
 
  
==== Disk tools ====
+
=== File management ===
*[http://www.daisydiskapp.com/ DaisyDisk] - Gives you a graphical overview over your file system.
+
*[https://mrrsoftware.com/namechanger/ NameChanger]
*[http://www.derlien.com/downloads/index.html Disk Inventory X] - Free alternative to DaisyDisk.
+
*[https://manytricks.com/namemangler/ Name Mangler]
*[http://macpaw.com/gemini Gemini] - Intelligent duplicate remover.
+
*[http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/ A Better Find Rename]
 +
*[https://www.hardcoded.net/dupeguru/ DupeGuru] Free duplicate finder.
 +
*[http://macpaw.com/gemini Gemini] is an intelligent duplicate remover.
 +
*[http://www.hyperbolicsoftware.com/TidyUp.html TidyUp]
 +
*[https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download CCleaner]
 +
*[http://www.freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ Appcleaner] is a free and good way to uninstall software.
 +
*[http://www.cleverfiles.com/ Disk Drill] Recover deleted files.
 +
*[http://www.macdentro.com/MacDentro/Home.html IceClean] System maintenance and optimization tool.
 +
*[http://overmacs.com/ PhotoSweeper]
 +
*[http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html TinkerTool] Access to additional preference settings.
 +
*[http://www.titanium.free.fr/downloadonyx.php Onyx] Additional system utilities.
 +
*[http://www.daisydiskapp.com/ DaisyDisk] gives you a graphical overview of your file system.
 +
*[http://www.derlien.com/downloads/index.html Disk Inventory X] is a free alternative to DaisyDisk.
 +
*[https://www.omnigroup.com/more OmniDiskSweeper] shows you files on the disk in descending order of size.
  
 +
=== Virtualization/Emulation ===
 +
*[https://www.virtualbox.org/ VirtualBox] is free and open source GPL software. It was first developed by Innotek GmbH, then bought by Sun Microsystems and now continually developed by Oracle.
 +
*[http://qemu.org Qemu]
 +
*[http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ rEFInd] Boot manager.
 +
*[https://www.parallels.com/ca/ Parellels] Advanced virtualization software — $80
 +
*[https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-2/ RetroArch], a FOSS emulation program which will emulate over 9000 platforms for you with little tinkering. It doesn't emulate anytging itself but provides a big library of "cores" which do the job.
 +
*[http://openemu.org/ OpenEmu] does the similar thing with less core and platform choice but sexy GUI instead.
 +
*[http://www.bannister.org/software/kigb.htm KiGB] Gameboy/Gameboy Colour emulator.
 +
*[http://www.bannister.org/software/ba.htm Boycott Advance] Gameboy Advance emulator.
 +
*[http://www.bannister.org/software/bsnes.htm BSNES] SNES emulator.
 +
*[https://dolphin-emu.org/ Dolphin] GameCube/Wii emulator. Open-source.
 +
*[http://joystickmapper.com/ Joystick Mapper] Not free to purchase.
 +
*[https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion.html VMware Fusion] Commercial product from VMware. Equivalent to VMware Workstation, although the UI is quite different.
  
 +
=== Maps ===
 +
*[https://marble.kde.org/install.php Marble]
 +
*[http://www.stellarium.org/ Stellarium] is a planetarium software that shows exactly what you see when you look up at the stars. It's easy to use, and free.
  
==== Torrent Clients ====
+
=== Ricing ===
*[http://www.transmissionbt.com/ Transmission] - Simple and lightweight open source torrent client.
+
*[http://www.macbartender.com/ Bartender] is a utility to clean up and manage your menu bar.
*[http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ rtorrent] - Terminal torrent client.
+
*[http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ Geektool] can add shell scripts and images to your desktop.
 +
*[http://tracesof.net/uebersicht/ Übersicht] can add widgets to your desktop using coffee script, bash, and CSS.
 +
*[http://bowtieapp.com/ Bowtie] is a customizable display for the music you're listening to.
 +
*[http://namedfork.net/bootxchanger BootXChanger] Change the boot image. For OSX 10.4 to 10.6.
  
=== Coding ===
+
=== Window management ===
*[http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ BBEdit]
+
*<s>[http://spectacleapp.com/ Spectacle] is an Open Source window managment tool.</s> No longer maintained.
*[http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ TextWrangler]
+
*[https://rectangleapp.com/ Rectangle] Spiritual successor to Spectacle. FOSS.
*[http://macromates.com/ TextMate]
+
*[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=12 BetterSnapTool] - $2.99
*[http://macvim.org/ MacVim]
+
*[http://www.blazingtools.com/right_zoom_mac.html Right Zoom for Mac] changes the behavior of the zoom button. <!-- Actually very useful. -->
*[https://www.panic.com/coda/ Coda]
+
*[http://manytricks.com/moom/ Moom] <!-- Haven't had opportunity to check Moom out personally, but I've heard that it's pretty good] -->
*[http://www.sublimetext.com/ Sublime Text]
+
*[https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst Amethyst] Tiling WM for Mac. Pretty good if you have the screen space for it.
  
 +
=== Network Monitoring ===
 +
*[http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html Little Snitch] — $45
 +
*[https://www.wireshark.org/ Wireshark] — Free
 +
*[http://radiosilenceapp.com/private-eye/ Radio Silence] - $9
 +
*[https://objective-see.com/products/lulu.html LuLu] FOSS macOS firewall.
  
 +
=== Password managers ===
 +
*[https://www.keepassx.org/ KeePassX] is a light interface and cross platform password manager published under the GNU GPL.
 +
*[https://keepassxc.org/ KeePassXC] Cross-platform community fork of KeePassX "with the goal to extend and improve it with new features and bugfixes to provide a feature-rich, fully cross-platform and modern open-source password manager.".
  
=== Images & Graphics ===
+
=== Desktop environment (DE) mods===
==== Utility ====
+
*[http://www.bettertouchtool.net/ BetterTouchTool] trackpad modifications
 +
*[http://www.jitouch.com/index.php?page=jitouch jitouch 2] trackpad modifications
 +
*[https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html Seil] can change the functionality of the "Caps Lock" key.
 +
*[https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/ Karabinier] can remap the keys on your keyboard and change the key repeat settings.
  
*[http://pngmini.com/ ImageAlpha] - Program for reducing the file size of PNG files.
+
=== Clipboard manager/Virtual clipboard ===
*[http://imageoptim.com/ ImageOptim] -  Software for reducing the size of JPG and PNG files.
+
*[http://aptonic.com/ Dropzone] — $10
 +
*[https://clipy-app.com Clipy] FOSS clipboard manager, only available in Japanese right now.
 +
*[https://maccy.app/ Maccy] FOSS searchable clipboard manager.
  
==== Editing ====
+
=== System monitoring ===
 +
*[http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/ coconutBattery] is a utility for checking battery health.
 +
*[http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/ MenuMeters] — Free
 +
*[http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ iStat Menus] — $16
  
*Preview - The default image viewing and editing app. Lightweight and functional alternative for simple edits.
+
=== Fan controller ===
*[https://evernote.com/skitch/ Skitch] - Simple editing program for adding anotations to images.
+
*[http://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control/ Macs Fan Control] Free and readily updated fan controller for Mac.
*[http://www.pixelmator.com/ Pixelmator] - A good and affordable alternative to photoshop.
+
*[http://www.eidac.de/ smcFanControl]
*[http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/ Acorn] - Similar to Pixelmator.
 
*[http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/ Sketch] - Another alternative to Pixelmator.
 
  
==== Viewing ====
+
=== Miscellanous ===
*Preview
+
*[http://mactracker.ca/ Mactracker] provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made.
 +
*[http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/ RCDefaultApp] — easily configures what app opens what file type.
 +
*[https://gfx.io/ gfxCard Status] — provides switching between dedicated/integrated GPU from statusbar. Free
 +
*[http://growl.info/ Growl] is an alternative notification system with good customization features. It is best in combination with [http://growl.info/documentation/hardwaregrowler.php HardwareGrowler]. It costs $4 or can be built from source.
 +
*[http://justgetflux.com/ f.lux] is a utility for changing the color tone of your display.
 +
*[https://sveinbjorn.org/sloth Sloth] FOSS application that displays all open files and sockets in use by all running processes on your system.
  
 +
== External links ==
 +
*[https://prism-break.org/ PRISM Break] — Lists software for different platforms that respect your freedom (and points out those which do not). Maintained by the EFF.
  
 +
== See also ==
  
== Other Platforms ==
+
* [[List of recommended Windows software]]
 +
* [[List of recommended GNU/Linux software]]
 +
* [[List of recommended Android software]]
  
 
+
[[Category:Software]]
*[[Recommended software (Windows)]]
+
[[Category:Recommendations]]
*[[Recommended software (Linux)]]
+
[[Category:OS X]]

Latest revision as of 01:01, 25 December 2022


Package manager

  • Homebrew — Free, written in Ruby
  • Cakebrew is a graphical client for managing Homebrew.
  • MacPorts — Free
  • Portage — Originally for Gentoo Linux, but will work on macOS with hacks.

Terminal emulator

For a more complete collection of terminal applications, be sure to check the GNU/Linux applications page.

Internet

Web browser

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 Linux distributions. It is often criticized on /g/ and /tech/ as "SJWfox" because of some Mozilla developers outspoken campaigns on social and political issues.

QupZilla is a FOSS web browser, built on the Qt and QtWebEngine (based on Chromium's rendering engine) frameworks. It supports extensions, ships out of the box with AdBlock, Mouse Gestures, GreaseMonkey, Speed Dial, Click2Flash, and more. It provides seamless integration with most desktop environments, and has several other distinguishing features. QupZilla is licensed under GPLv3.

Opera is a proprietary web browser that has pioneered open web standards for over two decades. It is notable for being the first web browser to sport a tabbed interface. It is developed and maintained by Opera Software.

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.

Otter Browser is a FOSS web browser that aims to recreate the best aspects of the classic Opera (12.x) UI using Qt5.

SeaMonkey is a continuation of the Mozilla suite. Unlike most modern web browsers, it is an Internet suite, complete with bundled programs for email, IRC, and web design. It is compatible with most Firefox add-ons.

Tor Browser (formerly known as Tor Browser Bundle) is a package of a modified Firefox extended support release, NoScript, HTTPS-Everywhere, Tor, TorButton and TorLauncher. It automatically routes traffic through the Tor network and deletes history and cookies when closed.

E-mail client

  • Mail.app - Comes default with Mac, supports iCloud mail drop for large attachments. Pretty neat.
  • Thunderbird
  • Airmail — $10, Cross platform with iDevices

Instant Messenger (IM)

  • Adium is a customizable chat client with loads of themes, sound packs and other plugins.
  • Ricochet IM is and end-to-end encrypted instant messages which uses Tor hidden services.
  • Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed.
  • Skype owned by Microsoft, your privacy won't mean anything.
  • 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)

  • 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.
  • LimeChat user friendly and free as in freedom.
  • Textual –$8


BitTorrent (BT)

  • Transmission is a lightweight torrent client with support for blocklists.
  • qBittorrent is a libtorrent-based BitTorrent client. According to 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.
  • 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.

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.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Other


Text

Word Processing

  • Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that is designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is lean, fast and uncluttered. It starts up quickly, has a live word count, and is easy on the eyes. Also, Bean is available free of charge.
  • OpenOffice
  • LibreOffice
  • Pages Part of the iWork suite (competitor to Microsoft Office), now free! Works seamlessly with iDevices and very intuitive, reasonable powerful for casual use.

Text editor

Plaintext/richtext editor

To-do manager

  • nvALT is a modified version of the lightweight note taking app Notational Velocity. It has the option to save notes as plain text files.
  • TodoTxtMac is an open source to-do manager for mac using the todo.txt format.
  • TaskPaper is a plain text to-do list that’s surprisingly adept.

Document Reader

Images and graphics

Viewing

Editing

  • Preview is the default image viewing and editing app. It is a lightweight and functional alternative for simple edits.
  • Skitch is a simple editing program for adding anotations to images.
  • Pixelmator Pro The successor to Pixelmator higher price of ($60), great alternative to Photoshop.
  • Affinity Photo is a good and affordable ($35) alternative to photoshop.
  • Acorn is similar to Pixelmator.
  • Sketch is another alternative to Pixelmator.
  • GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a free and open source image editing program.
  • Camerabag is an easy-to-use photo editing tool.
  • InkScape is a FOSS vector graphic editor.
  • Fotor
  • iMage Tools
  • ColourSnapper Simple colour picker app.
  • Sip Simple colour picker app.
  • ImageAlpha is a program for reducing the file size of PNG files.
  • ImageOptim is software for reducing the size of JPG and PNG files.

Drawing/Painting

Animation

3D Modeling

  • Blender is a 3D animation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation.

Video

Viewing

Editing

  • Shotcut is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor.
  • VideoBlend Very basic video editor.
  • VideoSpec View video meta-data.
  • Final Cut Pro X Expensive, but powerful and easy to use. (Still cheaper than Adobe though)

Conversion/Ripping

  • Handbrake is a free and open source video transcoder with an easy to use GUI. It can rip and convert a variety of video formats, but can not break DVD or Blu-ray copyright protection.
  • MakeMKV can convert video from proprietary (and usually encrypted) discs into a set of MKV files, preserving most information but not changing it in any way. It can instantly stream decrypt video without intermediate conversion and decrypt Blu-rays and protected DVDs.
  • ProjectX can resync DVB (Digital TV broadcasts) ready for encoding.
  • Youtube-dl is a command line program for downloading videos from Youtube and similar sites.
  • FFmpeg the gold standard for video encoding, command line based.

Screencasting

Audio

Playing

  • Cog Functional, lightweight, customisable.
  • Swinsian iTunes clone - but more lightweight with less bullshit.
  • Fidelia Posh UI.
  • Ecoute
  • Vox (0.2.7.1) Older version of Vox. Less features, barebones UI, but much more lightweight.

Command line players

Editing

  • Mp3tag Probably the best tag editor for audio files. Ported from windows, works flawlessly.
  • Sneedacity (Formerly Audacity) is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder made by /g/ as a replacement to Audacity which now includes telemetry. It has support for LADSPA, Nyquist, VST, Audio Unit effect and VAMP analysis plug-ins.
  • All2MP3
  • Tagr Audio metadata tagger.
  • Yate Audio metadata tagger (more advanced).
  • XLD is the preferred Mac audio disc ripper of what.cd. It can output cue sheets and log files via a plugin. It also supports tagging with MusicBrainz and FreeDB.

Tools

  • BackgroundMusic FOSS audio utility with features such as per-application volume control and recording system audio.

Utilities

Archiving

  • The Unarchiver or the CLI version
  • The Archive Browser — $4
  • 7zip is a free and open source file archiver developed in C++ by Igor Pavlov. Its primary feature is lossless compression in the 7z format, based upon the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm. In addition to the handful of formats it is capable of creating new archives in, 7zip can retrieve files from archives in virtually any format that one is likely to encounter. Only Windows binaries are provided on the site, but OS X and Linux binaries are available.

Application launchers

  • Alfred is a simple but efficient application launcher. It is best in combination with the Powerpack.
  • Launchbar is a little more complicated than Alfred, but has a few convenient features that Alfred lacks.
  • Quicksilver

File management

Virtualization/Emulation

  • VirtualBox is free and open source GPL software. It was first developed by Innotek GmbH, then bought by Sun Microsystems and now continually developed by Oracle.
  • Qemu
  • rEFInd Boot manager.
  • Parellels Advanced virtualization software — $80
  • RetroArch, a FOSS emulation program which will emulate over 9000 platforms for you with little tinkering. It doesn't emulate anytging itself but provides a big library of "cores" which do the job.
  • OpenEmu does the similar thing with less core and platform choice but sexy GUI instead.
  • KiGB Gameboy/Gameboy Colour emulator.
  • Boycott Advance Gameboy Advance emulator.
  • BSNES SNES emulator.
  • Dolphin GameCube/Wii emulator. Open-source.
  • Joystick Mapper Not free to purchase.
  • VMware Fusion Commercial product from VMware. Equivalent to VMware Workstation, although the UI is quite different.

Maps

  • Marble
  • Stellarium is a planetarium software that shows exactly what you see when you look up at the stars. It's easy to use, and free.

Ricing

  • Bartender is a utility to clean up and manage your menu bar.
  • Geektool can add shell scripts and images to your desktop.
  • Übersicht can add widgets to your desktop using coffee script, bash, and CSS.
  • Bowtie is a customizable display for the music you're listening to.
  • BootXChanger Change the boot image. For OSX 10.4 to 10.6.

Window management

Network Monitoring

Password managers

  • KeePassX is a light interface and cross platform password manager published under the GNU GPL.
  • KeePassXC Cross-platform community fork of KeePassX "with the goal to extend and improve it with new features and bugfixes to provide a feature-rich, fully cross-platform and modern open-source password manager.".

Desktop environment (DE) mods

  • BetterTouchTool trackpad modifications
  • jitouch 2 trackpad modifications
  • Seil can change the functionality of the "Caps Lock" key.
  • Karabinier can remap the keys on your keyboard and change the key repeat settings.

Clipboard manager/Virtual clipboard

  • Dropzone — $10
  • Clipy FOSS clipboard manager, only available in Japanese right now.
  • Maccy FOSS searchable clipboard manager.

System monitoring

Fan controller

Miscellanous

  • Mactracker provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made.
  • RCDefaultApp — easily configures what app opens what file type.
  • gfxCard Status — provides switching between dedicated/integrated GPU from statusbar. Free
  • Growl is an alternative notification system with good customization features. It is best in combination with HardwareGrowler. It costs $4 or can be built from source.
  • f.lux is a utility for changing the color tone of your display.
  • Sloth FOSS application that displays all open files and sockets in use by all running processes on your system.

External links

  • PRISM Break — Lists software for different platforms that respect your freedom (and points out those which do not). Maintained by the EFF.

See also