Which OS X Applications do you find indispensable?

Question

Please Search Prior To Posting!

There are many applications already listed. In all likelihood, this includes the one you are thinking of. Please check the existing answers to avoid duplicates, and the resulting cleanup it necessitates.

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inquestion:this Evernote

If it hasn't already been posted, please follow a few simple rules when adding it as an answer.

Rules

1. Limit to one application per answer.

2. Add a short description of the application.

3. Add a link to the website in the name of the application if possible (no direct downloads).

4. Use ## [appName](link) for citing the application name.

5. Only Mac OS X (not iOS, OS 9, compatible, etc) applications. All versions of OS X are accepted, but if the application requires a specific version please note.

Answer 1

InsomniaX

Disables sleep mode, so you can shut your lid without the system hibernating.

Answer 2

AppFresh

AppFresh helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date.

All from one place, easy to use and fully integrated into Mac OS X. AppFresh works by checking the excellent osx.iusethis.com for new versions and lets you download and install available updates easily.

Answer 3

QuickCursor

QuickCursor lets you use your favorite editor to edit text in any Mac app that has a text input field. It's particularly useful for editing textboxes on web pages.

Answer 4

AppTrap

When you move a .app to the Trash, AppTrap notices this and offers to remove all associated library and preference files.

Answer 5

AntiRSI

A timer that detects when you're using the computer and tells you to take breaks if you've been at it too long. I like it because it has two timers running concurrently, one for small, frequent breaks, the other for long, rarer breaks. It's intelligent, configurable, and can show the timers on the dock icon.

Answer 6

TinyUmbrella

TinyUmbrella is a great app for anyone who has an iOS device they want to downgrade to a previous firmware for one reason or other. It backs up and saves the SHSH blobs or "Keys" required to complete the restore.

Answer 7

NetBeans IDE

A free, open-source Integrated Development Environment for software developers. All the tools needed to create professional desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications with the Java platform, as well as with C/C++, PHP, JavaScript and Groovy.

Answer 8

Port Map

Easily configure ports, assuming you have a UPnP router.

Answer 9

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is the FLOSS office suite. It's comparable to Microsoft Office while available for free.

Answer 10

Moom

Moom is a very configurable window management tool. Some useful features include convenient and fast window placement and resizing using grids, saving window layout profiles, configurable hot keys, and much more.

Answer 11

xGestures

• adds mouse gestures to every program.

Answer 12

Rip

Rip is an application for accurate CD audio extraction.

It uses a smart combination of the AccurateRip database and CD Paranoia to ensure that the CD will be ripped accurately through the fastest means available.

Answer 13

Rulers

from the webpage:

"Rulers" allows you to create rulers on the entire screen area like most common graphic editors allow on their working areas only. The guide lines enable you to measure and position objects with precision. Rulers is incredibly useful in many fields, such as computer graphics, desktop publishing and web design. Rulers can also be used to select a screen area and take a screenshot that is automatically saved to your desktop or copied to system clipboard.

Answer 14

Spirited Away

Spirited Away checks each running application's activity, and if an application isn't active for a certain fixed time, Spirited Away hides the application automatically. It is, in effect, Spirited Away :-)

This is a great productivity app, keep your workspace clean and focussed, by hiding all the apps you are not using. No more distractions in the background!

Answer 15

Breakaway

Pull out your headphones, and iTunes pauses. Plug it back in, and it starts again. A simple application that makes your life that much easier.

Answer 16

FinderPop

This tool provides a ton of enhancements to the contextual menu. It allows you to select move,copy,alias a selected item (icon) to pretty much any folder via pop-up hierarchical folder lists. Built-in preview stuff, and more.

Answer 17

Textual: IRC for Mac OS X

Textual is a lightweight IRC client created specifically for Mac OS X. It was designed with simplicity in mind. Textual has taken the best of IRC and built it into a single client. Its easy-to-use functionality combined with scripting support makes it an ideal IRC client for novice to advanced users.

I tried Colloquy; I tried MacIrssi; I tried X-Chat Aqua; but for a GUI client, I have happily stuck to using Textual.

Answer 18

The Hit List

THL is a to-do list/GTD organizer that supports tagging, contexts, tabs, unlimited nesting, alarms, cloud syncing, keyboard shortcuts, and a ton of other features. It's a great piece of software, and comes from a developer with impeccable attention to detail. There's a companion iPhone app as well.

Answer 19

Prism by Mozilla Labs

Prism allows you to turn any webpage into an application. I've used this numerous times.

Answer 20

Pianopub

Pianopub is a free Pandora internet radio player for OS X. It is a port of Pianobar, so please support the original developers. It is for use with your account from the Pandora.com internet radio service.

By far the best Pandora client ever — in form of a native Mac OS X app.

Answer 21

Readiris

OCR software for OS X.

Readiris 12 family quickly converts your paper documents into editable text or PDF files you can edit, share and store!

Answer 22

Grooveshark

I know what you are thinking: "This isn't an application!", but wait a second, it actually is! I made Grooveshark into a standalone application with hotkeys. I love it and use it all the time! Information about turning Grooveshark into a standalone application here.

Answer 23

Hands Off! Firewall

• Prevents applications from phoning home
• Block outgoing/incoming network connections
• Block subdomains
• Supports IPv4, IPv6 and local networks
• Block read/write file operations
• Monitoring network connections and disk access
• export/import rules
• default rules for certain applications (Mail, Safari,...)
• access via menubar

Answer 24

Sloth

Sloth is a graphical frontend for the console tool lsof. If don't know what that is, it doesn't matter!

Sloth makes it easy to find out which applications are using which files.

Sloth displays a list of all open files and sockets in use by all the applications your user account is running on the system. This list is presented along with the names of applications using the file and their process IDs. Includes support for regex list filtering, process killing, sorting and more.

Answer 25

Vox

Vox is a little and simple music player for Mac OS X with support for many file types, including FLAC, MP3, AAC, Musepack, Monkey's Audio, OGG Vorbis, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, IT, MOD, XM, Games Music and many others. Includes numerous effects like Equalizer, Reverb, Time Stretch, Pitch Shift, Echo. Moreover, all supported files can be exported to AAC+, Apple Lossless, WAV and other formats with enabled effects.

This is one truly awesome little app which is sadly not well-known. I'd even say Vox was one of the reasons I switched to Mac. Nothing but the essentials for a music player. Besides, it offers some nice audio features (e. g. resampling with antialiasing) as well as built-in Last.fm integration and nifty controls in menubar.

I prefer to organize my music in folders by artists and albums and not bother with music libraries used in most modern audio players, so Vox's ability to play all files in a folder is the single most important feature to me.

If you feel that iTunes has grown far too big for a music player or just don't like messing with audio libraries you should really give Vox a try.

Answer 26

Little Ipsum

It’s my favorite dummy text / lorem ipsum generator for OS X (free). What it makes so special is the selection mechanism from the menu bar (words… sentences… paragraphs):

Answer 27

CheatSheet

Just hold the ⌘ a bit longer to get a list of all active short cuts of the current application. It's as simple as that.

Website

Answer 28

Bowtie

Bowtie (free) is a little app for controlling iTunes and Last FM. It comes with several features, and it's really well done. Here's a brief description from its webpage.

Bowtie is a free application that allows you to control iTunes and your iPhone (requires 99¢ companion app) with customizable shortcuts, submits your songs to Last.fm with support for Loving and Banning, and sports a very simple, yet very powerful, HTML5 + CSS + JavaScript theming system.

It's got some pretty cool "Bowlets", or little controllers/information displayers that can sit on the screen. There are plenty to choose from (these are just a few I have downloaded from the theme browser):

This is one of my favourite (PaperRift by creeze):

Download on App Store.

Answer 29

Secrets

Secrets is a PrefPane that lets users access hidden settings in many Mac OS X applications. It is also open source and user driven, any user can submit a secret and have it immediately available in the Secrets for anyone to use.

Answer 30

Hex Editor

Practically every editor, including text editors, lie about the contents of files. Even programming languages change or omit certain characters. In general this is intended to help you see what they think you are looking for, but sometimes you just want to see things how they really are

Note: The original hexeditor I linked to is no longer on offer, so I have updated the link with the suggestion from neoneye