Which OS X Applications do you find indispensable?

Question

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inquestion:this Evernote

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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

Air Display

Technically this is both an iOS and Mac OS X application. What it does is let you use your iPad as a second monitor with your Mac. When I am using my Mac my iPad isn't usually in use (unless a family member stole it) so I use Air Display to make it useful while I am using my Mac. You get a 1024x768 or 768x1024 display that rotates and flips automatically - like you would expect.

The Mac portion is free, but you buy the iPad App. Runs with Windows too. Operates over WiFi, but you can always create a private network if one does not exist or it is too slow!

Answer 2

OmniDiskSweeper

OmniDiskSweeper scans your hard drive telling you where your largest files are, making it easy to delete cruft. It's intelligent in how it presents this information hierarchically.

Answer 3

VirtualHostX

For web developers who develop websites locally on their Mac. VirtualHostX manages your Apache Virtual Hosts and enable the use of domain names that point to your local machine (even non-routable domain names.) VirtualHostX does this by managing your Mac's hosts file and your Apache httpd.conf and httpd-vhosts.conf config files. It even supports MAMP (although I don't use MAMP.)

It's one of my top 5 favorite apps and one I'd hate to do without. I use it every time I start a new project!

Answer 4

SABnzbd

SABnzbd is an Open Source Binary Newsreader written in Python. It's totally free, incredibly easy to use, and works practically everywhere. SABnzbd makes Usenet as simple and streamlined as possible by automating everything we can. All you have to do is add an .nzb. SABnzbd takes over from there, where it will be automatically downloaded, verified, repaired, extracted and filed away with zero human interaction.

Answer 5

iChm

iChm is an ebook reader for CHM (Microsoft Compiled HTML Help) files.

Answer 6

Postbox

Postbox 2 is first class email software that puts you in the driver’s seat. Stay on task, find information quickly and act, not react.

Unified Account Groups

Focus Pane

Quick Reply

Exist both free and paid versions

Answer 7

Kod

a programmers' editor for OS X

An open source project that is slowly replacing TextMate for me.

Answer 8

Papers

Designed for scientists, Papers manages PDFs of journal articles. Articles imported to Papers can easily have their metadata applied from journal databases. Articles can then easily be sorted by author or journal, and labeled with different categories. Papers has an associated iOS app that it syncs with.

Answer 9

SizeUp

SizeUp allows you to quickly position a window to fill exactly half the screen (splitscreen), a quarter of the screen (quadrant), full screen, or centered via the menu bar or configurable system-wide shortcuts (hotkeys). Similar to "tiled windows" functionality available on other operating systems.

Answer 10

muCommander

muCommander is a lightweight, cross-platform file manager with a dual-pane interface. It runs on any operating system with Java support (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris...).

Here's a non-exhaustive list of what you'll find:

• Virtual filesystem with support for local volumes, FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP, Amazon S3, Hadoop HDFS and Bonjour
• Quickly copy, move, rename files, create directories, email files...
• Browse, create and uncompress ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST archives
• ZIP files can be modified on-the-fly, without having to recompress the whole archive
• Universal bookmarks and credentials manager
• Multiple windows support
• Full keyboard access
• Highly configurable
• Available in 23 languages : American & British English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Slovak, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, Ukrainian and Arabic.
• Free Software (GPL)

Answer 11

Forklift

A Finder replacement. Two panes file management program. Not as cutomizable as Total Commander but has a lot of features builtin.

Answer 12

Plex Media Center for OS X

Plex bridges the gap between your Mac and your home theater, doing so with a visually appealing user interface that provides instant access to your media. Plex can play a wide range of video, audio and photo formats as well as online streaming audio and video. The real power of Plex is found in its library features: Organize your media into versatile libraries, automatically retrieve metadata from the Internet, and display your libraries using one of the visually stunning skins.

Plex has all but replaced VLC as my primary media application.

Answer 13

Shady

If you're finding your laptop screen too bright at night even on the minimum brightness, Shady's the right guy for you. Basically, it puts a transparent overlay over your entire screen, dimming it anywhere between 0% and 90% of normal.

Answer 14

Adobe Creative Suite / Master Collection

The absolute KING of creative tools. Sure, the price is a bit up there, although there really isn't anything that can touch the versatility of having seventeen applications at your disposal. I've used some of these tools since their very existence (Illustrator, Photoshop) and I honestly can't imagine working without them. It would be difficult to describe what they all do; infinite possibilities.

Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat X Pro, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, OnLocation, Encore, Bridge, Device Central, Media Encoder, Media Encoder

◆ I'm a bit shocked this is just now making it's debut here.

Answer 15

Soulver

An amazing calculator that does it all with a nice text-based interface.

Just type your problem as you'd write it on paper. You see your answer instantly. No setting up formulas, no equals button. If you make a mistake, you don't have to start all over again, you just hit delete.

Answer 16

Hiss

Hiss is an OSX app that forwards notifications from Growl enabled apps to Notification Center in Mountain Lion.

Currently in beta, but it does an awesome job of piping all your Growl notifications into the Notification Center of OS X Mountain Lion. The only real downside to it is that it flags all notifications with the Growl icon.

Answer 17

KeePassX password vault

KeePassX is a cross platform secure password saver. Like Keychain, but you can use it on your mobile phone and windows computers.

Answer 18

Audio Hijack Pro

Audio Hijack allows you to record any sound from your Mac or input device. You can also mute certain applications. This is my go-to-application for any audio recording.

Answer 19

Stickies

It's Apple's program for taking notes. Very minimalistic and fast.

Your notes can be:

• formatted how you like
• edited with hyperlinks
• drag and drop pictures
• export as *.txt
• custom color of note

Answer 20

Voodoopad

VoodooPad is a place to write down your notes and thoughts. Ideas, images, lists, passwords, your mom's apple pie recipe. Anything you need to keep track of and organize. VoodooPad will grow with you without getting in the way. Drag and drop folders, PDFs, applications, or URLs into VoodooPad, and they will link up just like on the web. And with powerful search, nothing will be lost or out of reach.

Answer 21

InsomniaX

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

Answer 22

Google's Quick Search Box

An application launcher, like Quicksilver. Having tried both, I found Quick Search Box's UI to be cleaner and the overall application to be faster.

Answer 23

TinkerTool

This handy tool allows you to customize OSX in various ways so that it is more efficient for you uses and allows you to access settings that you normally couldn't

Answer 24

PCalc

This is an awesome calculator that I have been using for at least 10 years. For basic arithmetic and quick calculations this app can't be beat.

It is also available from the Mac App store.

Answer 25

Fraise

Fraise is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.6 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users.

General-purpose text editor with extensive syntax highlighting support. Can be downloaded via MacUpdate.

Answer 26

0xED

a free, native OS X hex editor based on the Cocoa framework.

• Fast editing of large files.
• Unlimited file size (limited by what the actual file system supports).
• Small memory footprint.
• Instant opening of files of any size.
• Resource fork editing.
• Full hex/text search/replace.
• Binary/text Cut/copy/paste support.
• Plug-in system to display your custom data types.

Answer 27

Nocturne

For all those low-light situations, Nocturne is a tool for inverting colors, changing screen tint etc. So I can make the screen dimmer while keeping it readable, when the dimmest backlight setting is too bright.

I especially like the Invert hue option, which can be used to keep colors the same while inverting black/white.

Answer 28

Overflow

Overflow is an application designed to quickly launch applications, open documents, or access folders while reducing the number of items needed in your Dock.

Answer 29

Base

Base is an awesome tool for managing SQLite databases. It has an intuitive interface and allows you to easily create or alter tables. I especially like that the transcript shows you exactly what queries Base is executing against your database.

Answer 30

Clipmenu

A simple yet powerful clipboard management tool.