My favourite tools for OS X

osx tools for developers Mac

My favourite tools for OS X

Yes, this is another post about favourite tools for Mac. I have used OS X for over two years and during this time I have come across tools that simplify my workflow. One part of this list is related to software engineering, because last year I was programming mainly in JavaScript and Java.

If you are looking for a guide how to set up Mac for software development, I highly recommend The definitive guide to setting up a new mac for development and The Perfect Web Development Environment for Your New Mac. In this list you can find small tools useful for specific kinds of tasks, I skipped default applications and IDE’s.

I like productivity and always try to find a way how to get things done faster. Each person is different and has different workflow. In my case it took me some time to learn how to be more efficient and use some tools properly.

Update 5/17/2018 — tools added:

Misc

BetterTouchTool – allows you to configure many gestures for trackpad and actions for keyboard shortcuts.

Jumpcut – system-wide clipboard buffer that allows you to go back through your previous copies and paste them.

Pocket – manages a reading list of articles from the Internet.

Evernote – application and service designed for note taking, organizing, and archiving. With browser plugin you can take a snapshot of screen or webpage.

The Unarchiver – for extracting and compressing files.

EasyFind – helps find files and folders with many options.

F.lux – turns screen yellow. Doing that allows me to work by staying up late. It might look weird at first, but once you get used to it, your eyes will like it. iOS has night shift mode feature by default.

Disk Inventory X – disk usage utility for Mac OS X 10.3 (and later). It shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called “treemaps”.

AppCleaner – allows uninstall apps. Installing an application distributes many files throughout your system using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily. AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them. If you are looking for a specific a mac cleaner, check this Mac cleaner software comparison.

Muzzle – automatically mutes notifications while you screen-share with Slack, Google Hangouts, join.me, and other apps.

Software Engineering

Homebrew – popular package manager for OS X. Package managers keep all the big and small tools that we need to install on our machines tidy and up-to-date. Switch over to your terminal, and type in this one command:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Visual Studio Code – finally solid text and source code editor.

QuickLook plugins – list of useful Quick Look plugins for software development.

KDiff – cross-platform tool designed to analyze text difference and merge files or directories.

SourceTree – free Mercurial and Git Client that provides a graphical interface for your Hg and Git repositories.

Github – designed to simplify essential steps in GitHub workflow.

Codekit – serves as a background tool for web projects. It has own server built-in and monitors projects that you’re working on, constantly checking to see if any code needs to be reloaded or compiled.

iTerm2 – more advanced Terminal for OSX. I don’t use terminal so often anymore, but when I was actively developing I really liked split view where I could have seen tails of multiple log files.

ngrok – Allows you to create a “tunnel” from your localhost to the internet.

freeruler – It’s useful to have a ruler desktop application, if you can’t or don’t have access to inspect designs.

Menu bar

Itsycal – calendar for Mac’s menu bar, where you can easily see following events.

Barsoom – rearranges menu bar items in any order, and keep menu bar order. You also can hide items that you don’t want to see.

The Clock – I bought this application with Barsoom as a “Bundle offer” and I use it for showing different time zones with time zones offset.

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