180
votes

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.

To search, use the search box in the upper-right corner. To search the answers of the current question, use inquestion:this. For example:

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.

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  • 15
    Voted to close — a good question, but we really should avoid subjective ones here.
    – apostlion
    Commented Aug 17, 2010 at 20:19
  • 19
    @Apostlion: Simply because it's subjective does not mean it can't be answered. There are (community defined) "good" applications that are useful on a daily basis.
    – Josh K
    Commented Aug 17, 2010 at 20:22
  • 27
    Voted to reopen - it is subjective, but a popular and useful style of question, if kept as a wiki and not repeated too much. These questions are mostly accepted on gadgets.stackexhange.com for example.
    – Jon Hadley
    Commented Aug 17, 2010 at 21:08
  • 10
    Can we make this Community Wiki? And also 1 app per answer? Much easier to check if something has already been said and to edit to add information about said app. Thank you.
    – Loïc Wolff
    Commented Aug 19, 2010 at 20:39
  • 11
    I did a lot of cleanup. Changed all the app names to ## (because it was the most commonly used in the existing answers. Moved links so that they were within the app names. Removed some first-person descriptors.
    – Robert S Ciaccio
    Commented Aug 23, 2010 at 3:18

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13
votes

MPlayer OSX Extended

It is a media player. I like it more than VLC player.

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    I like both, but I'm using mplayer more nowadays. It is great!
    – cregox
    Commented Dec 23, 2010 at 12:39
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    I tend to go with VLC or QuickTime Player with Perian in this case, I find MPlayer to be too buggy.
    – CyberSkull
    Commented Jan 16, 2012 at 5:37
  • For the last year, I moved from VLC to MPlayer X without regret. I like its interface a lot more than VLC's. I also have Perian installed for when I use Quicklook or play a video in Finder (the play button in the file icon).
    – lpacheco
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 10:16
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Audacity

A free software, cross-platform digital audio editor and recording application (from Wikipedia).

If you want to record plain old audio onto your computer, Audacity is a pretty easy way to do it.

(Apple's optical drives from the past several years have implemented region lockout DRM in firmware, rather than simply software, so I can't play back DVDs from multiple regions on my Mac. It's a laptop, so "just buy a second DVD drive" isn't really feasible, and I'm not brave enough to try flashing it with a third-party firmware. Plugging in my DVD player to my Mac is quick and easy, though!)

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  • My it's ugly! I hate to see cross-platform software on Mac. Of course it does “the job” but I find applications like this degrading the whole experience.
    – Dan
    Commented Oct 13, 2011 at 12:09
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votes

Xee

Xee is a lightweight, fast and convenient image viewer and browser. It is designed to be a serious tool for image viewing and management, with a sleek and powerful interface. Xee is useful as a more powerful replacement for Preview, or most any other image viewer available on Mac OS X.

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  • Xee's fullscreen mode is much better than Previews.
    – neoneye
    Commented Jun 8, 2011 at 12:17
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votes

Onyx

OnyX is a (free) multifunction utility for Mac OS X which allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, QuickTime, Safari, Mail, iTunes, Login window, Spotlight and many Apple’s applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more.

I've seen this utility majorly improve the performance of Mac OS X. I run it about once a month to automate maintenance scripts and it's helped identify problems like the need to repair a disk several times. A very useful and effective tool.

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  • For the most part, these types of utilities actually SLOW system performance (cache files are a good thing, they're designed to store the result of repetitive actions so the same actions don't have to done over and over again). I'd advise only using OnyX is a troubleshooting utility for fixing glitches
    – Alexander
    Commented Aug 28, 2013 at 4:10
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nvALT

Unbeatable note-taking app, featuring online syncing with the plain text notes web service, Simplenote, and the simplenote apps for iPhone and iPad.

nvAlt is a fork of the existing application, Notational Velocity.

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Fantastical

Amazing background app for quickly accessing and adding events to your mac's calendar. Supports Caldev Sync to keep your mac's calendar always up to date, as well as natural writing event creation.

Bring up fantastical with a keyboard shortcut, and then type out your new event. Hit return and it's in. Quickly view all the upcoming events for the next month and beyond. Next time you open iCal, all of your data will remain intact as Fantastical works with your software in the background.

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cdto

Fast mini application that opens a Terminal.app window cd'd to the front most finder window. This app is designed (including it's icon) to placed in the finder window's toolbar.

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  • This is a great little app, though I don't think it's been updated to Lion, yet.
    – D. Simpson
    Commented Sep 7, 2011 at 1:35
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votes

Default Folder X

Augments the Open Folder and Save Folder dialogs from any application to allow you to immediately jump to any folder currently open by Finder. (Also works for folders open with Path Finder).

Once you start using this app, it's really hard to live without it.

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  • I used this back in Classic OS 9. There is no point to it that I know anymore, since the standard behavior for Open/Save dialogs is that you can drag any folder or file into them to navigate to that location. If there are other unique benefits, please add info.
    – Andrew Vit
    Commented Sep 7, 2011 at 2:10
  • Apple should have bought and integrated this app into the years ago.
    – Ɱark Ƭ
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 14:26
  • I don't see the point off this application
    – Richard
    Commented May 12, 2013 at 21:41
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Gitbox

Gitbox is a Git repository manager.

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Airfoil

Play any audio across your network to a whole host of devices, all in sync! Airfoil sends audio to remote speakers including iOS devices, other computers, and hardware devices like the Apple TV and AirPort Express. Airfoil for Mac gives you any audio, everywhere.

Basically, what previously only iTunes could do (send audio to an AirPort Express) you can now do with all applications.

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votes

Geektool

Geektool allows you to put a tail of your syslog on the desktop, or the output of some command, or some graphic/chart/picture.

It's a bit like a more single-minded Dashboard for your desktop. You can make awesome clocks, or beautiful server monitoring, or just a fortune cookie (if you install fortune with HomeBrew).

It's not perfect (it would need sticky borders, continuous command output and sane multi-monitor behavior for that) but it's a lot of fun, using little resources.

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  • Geektool is awesome, but I do have to say that it does eat up memory. :-(
    – daviesgeek
    Commented Sep 19, 2011 at 2:24
  • @daviesgeek — How so? I've got it running 25 scripts currently for a total of 18.9 MB. In 1998 that would have been considered eating memory, but not today.
    – l'L'l
    Commented Oct 13, 2011 at 11:59
  • @ioi Hmm... It may just be the PPC computer I was running it on. :-)
    – daviesgeek
    Commented Oct 13, 2011 at 17:05
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votes

Shift It

(Uses the same principles as SizeUp, but free)

This application will let you resize and move your windows without having to using a mouse. Here are some of things you can do with Shift It:

  • Shift the focused window to left/right/top/bottom half of the screen.
  • Resize the focused window to fill the whole screen.
  • Move the focused window to the center of the screen.

Shift It is a great tool that lets you organize your windows. Now you can read documents side-by-side without having the pain of manually resizing the windows.

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votes

Tunnelblick

Tunnelblick is a free, open source Graphic User Interface (GUI) for OpenVPN on Mac OS X. It provides easy control of OpenVPN client and/or server connections.

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Notify

Notify is an awesome email notifier for Mac OS X. It fits seamlessly into your menubar, only vying for your attention when you have new mail. Notify supports mutliple accounts, including Gmail, MobileMe, and Rackspace Email.

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votes

Echofon

A really simple, intuitive twitter client. This is the one that got me to switch from Tweetie.

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  • Great because if you use it on your iPhone or iPad it will also sync read tweets in your timeline.
    – Ryan Sharp
    Commented Jan 18, 2011 at 18:54
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votes

Unrar

This is a command line utility to unpack the .rar files on Mac OSX. You can't unpack the .rar files natively on OSX, where this small util is useful.

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    "The Unarchiver" does this in the GUI and can be set as your default so it acts like the native OS X archive utility.
    – Robert S Ciaccio
    Commented Sep 16, 2010 at 21:32
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votes

X Lossless Decoder

X Lossless Decoder(XLD) is a tool for Mac OS X that is able to decode/convert/play various 'lossless' audio files. Supported audio files can be split into tracks with a cue sheet when decoding. It works on Mac OS X 10.3 and later.

XLD is Universal Binary, so it runs natively on both Intel Macs and PPC Macs.

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  • I use this pretty much constantly for archiving my CD collection to lossless FLAC and then later into mp3. It's better than EAC (Windows only) in my opinion. Easier to set up, faster, and far less buggy.
    – Robert S Ciaccio
    Commented Sep 20, 2010 at 4:48
9
votes

Aperture

Aperture is a fine app for photo management and editing for professionals and advanced amateur photographers alike. It supports many file-formats and raw image file formats.

For a complete feature list see the link above.

One of my favorite features is having a full screen view while still having image control for editing via a HUD.

enter image description here

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votes

Isolator

Isolator is a small menu bar application that helps you concentrate. When you're working on a document, and don't want to be distracted, turn on Isolator. It will cover up your desktop and all the icons on it, as well as the windows of all your other applications, so you can concentrate on the task in hand.

It's a small utility, but one that I find pretty indispensable. One of the first apps I install on new Mac.

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    I try to keep my desktop empty so then I can achieve the same with Cmd-Shift-H to Hide Others and Cmd-Shift-D to hide the Dock. Fullscreen in Lion really helps too.
    – w00t
    Commented Sep 29, 2011 at 10:53
  • I mean Cmd-Option... Sigh
    – w00t
    Commented Sep 30, 2011 at 10:00
8
votes

A Better Finder Rename

A Better Finder Rename has long been the file renamer of choice for tens of thousands of professionals, businesses and hobbyists across the world.

alt text

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  • No offense anyone, but I do find it somewhat strange and hilarious that in the Mac world there are commercial applications for something as trivial as renaming files (or deleting them)...
    – Jonik
    Commented Sep 6, 2010 at 7:41
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    Windows have programs too for mass renaming. A free alternative to A Better Finder Rename is the program: NameChanger, it's not that advanced, but it's something.
    – neoneye
    Commented Sep 6, 2010 at 9:07
  • @Jonik: it's not about simple rename, but mass rename of many files :-) On Windows I use built-in tool in Total Commander for this.
    – Peter Štibraný
    Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 18:31
  • @Peter: Of course it's about mass rename; I still find it odd and funny, especially the price tag. (NB: my background is in the Unix world, where powerful command-line has always existed and people generally are adept at it, which might partly explain my reaction :-)
    – Jonik
    Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 18:45
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    I'd prefer to do these things in Terminal. Also Automator is really helpful!
    – fardjad
    Commented Nov 29, 2010 at 21:34
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votes

Mathematica

If I need to choose only one software to install on my Mac, I would install Mathematica by Wolfram.

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    This is a great app, and really helped me understand my last Trig class better.
    – D. Simpson
    Commented Sep 7, 2011 at 1:36
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votes

XBMC

XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for Linux, OSX, Windows, and the original Xbox.

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  • Runs beautifully on a Mac Mini under my TV...
    – binarybob
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 20:57
8
votes

iMovie

iMovie is the best amateur video editing software out there. It has a very small learning curve, which makes it great for doing quick projects. I used iMovie for the longest time, then switched to FCE. I still use it for minor projects.

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votes

Clean My Mac

The world's easiest-to-use maintenance solution. This all-in-one tool includes everything you need to keep your Mac clean and healthy.

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    I thought Mac OS X itself had everything I needed to keep my Mac clean and healthy...
    – Josh
    Commented Dec 1, 2010 at 14:05
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    Clean My Mac clears cache files, broken links and also it has an uninstaller to remove applications completely.
    – AliBZ
    Commented Dec 1, 2010 at 22:50
  • @Josh: Healthy yes, clean, no.
    – Ingmar Hupp
    Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 11:41
  • You don't need this! The use of these types of utilities is hyped by intense advertising, and it's generally a huge scam industry!
    – Alexander
    Commented Aug 28, 2013 at 4:07
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Opera

Because it's still my favourite browser. After having used it on Windows for eight years, I took it with me when I "switched" four years ago.

Browsers are always subjective, but I like Opera because I rely on its single-key shortcuts, used its mouse gestures a lot before I moved over to a glass trackpad, I have dozens of tabs open at any time, it has session handling, bookmark syncing, and dozens of other neat, small things. And everything is built in and just works.

I could probably get Firefox to do everything Opera does for me, but it would be a hassle, and it would be even slower than it already is without any extensions. I could never get Safari to do everything I need.

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NTFS-3G (Tuxera)

We still need to learn how to play nice with windows systems (and filesystems). I use this to access my NTFS drives.

NTFS-3G is a stable, read/write NTFS driver for Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, QNX, Haiku, and other operating systems. It provides safe handling of the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 NTFS file systems. A high-performance driver is available commercially for embedded devices.

7
votes

CrashPlan

A very powerful backup application that allows you to backup to external drives, other computers, and/or their own cloud at a very reasonable price. It has an impressive compression rate and allows you to create multiple backup sets to backup different data to different locations. It has a well-designed interface and allows you to specify scheduled or continuous backups. It offers versioning and 448-bit encryption. For a home user the software is free to use if you choose not to backup to their cloud.

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  • TimeMachine not enough?
    – hhh
    Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 0:56
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I Love Stars

Displays iTunes’ current song’s rating in your menu bar. Click to change rating. Supports keyboard shortcuts. Has a configurable sound to remind you to rate an unrated song. Disappears when nothing’s playing.

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MusicBrainz Picard

MusicBrainz is an audio file metadata (or "tag") editor. It has options for both automatic and manual modification of audio metadata.

It's cross-platform (Linux/Mac OS X/Windows) and written in Python and is the official MusicBrainz tagger.

Picard supports the majority of audio file formats, is capable of using audio fingerprints (PUIDs, similar to other fingerprinting apps like Shazam and SoundHound), performing CD lookups and disc ID submissions, and it has excellent Unicode support. Additionally, there are several plugins available that extend Picard's features.

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  • You need to give a better explanation of what benefit it gives to users. The only thing you've told them is that it is "cross-platform", not very useful at all.
    – mummey
    Commented Jan 30, 2011 at 18:22
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votes

Pomodoro

Pomodoro Desktop is a desktop application for Time Management on your Mac OSX. It is a simple but effective way to manage your (coding) time, and it's based on the Pomodoro technique you can find here.

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