As a developer or DevOps professional, having the right tools can significantly enhance your productivity and efficiency. Here’s a curated list of essential Mac apps for 2024 that every developer and DevOps professional should consider.
Development & DevOps
- VS Code: — A popular code editor with a wide range of extensions and features that make coding a breeze.
- Sublime Text: — A lightweight yet powerful text editor loved by many developers for its speed and simplicity.
- Nova: — A sleek and modern code editor designed specifically for macOS, offering a native Mac experience with advanced features.
- Sublime Merge: — A Git client that makes managing code repositories easy and efficient.
- CotEditor: — A simple and lightweight text editor with syntax highlighting, ideal for quick editing tasks.
- Proxyman: — A powerful tool for capturing and analyzing HTTP/HTTPS traffic to debug and optimize web development.
- DevBox: — A convenient all-in-one development environment that provides pre-configured tools and services for various programming languages.
- OrbStack: — A cloud-based development platform that offers a complete development environment with built-in collaboration and deployment tools.
- AptaKube: — A Kubernetes development environment that simplifies the deployment and management of containerized applications.
Terminal
- iTerm2: — A feature-rich terminal emulator with advanced customization options, enhancing your command-line experience.
- Warp: — A handy tool for quickly switching between directories in the terminal, saving you time and effort.
- Alacritty: — A fast and customizable terminal emulator that focuses on performance and responsiveness.
- Wave: — A terminal emulator with a clean and intuitive interface, designed for simplicity and ease of use.
- Termius: — A powerful SSH client that allows you to securely connect to remote servers and manage your infrastructure.
FileManager
- QspacePro: — A powerful file manager with advanced search and file organization features, making it easy to find and manage your files.
- Commander One: — A dual-pane file manager with a wide range of functionalities, providing a convenient way to navigate and manage your files.
- Forklift4: — A versatile file manager with a user-friendly interface, offering advanced file management capabilities and seamless integration with cloud storage services.
- FE File Explorer Pro: — A feature-rich file manager that supports various cloud storage services, allowing you to access and manage your files from different platforms.
Office
- MS Word: — The industry-standard word processor for creating and editing documents, offering a wide range of formatting and collaboration features.
- MS Excel: — A powerful spreadsheet application for data analysis and calculations, providing advanced formulas and visualisation tools.
PDF & Reader’s
- Wondershare PDF Element: — A comprehensive PDF editor for managing and editing PDF files, offering features like text editing, annotation, and conversion.
- Thorium Reader: — A versatile app for presenting and collaborating on digital content. Thorium allows you to display and annotate PDFs, eBooks, and other digital documents, making it ideal for meetings, presentations, and educational settings. It offers a range of interactive features, including highlighting, drawing, and sharing notes, to enhance collaboration and engagement.
VPN
- ProtonVPN: — A trusted VPN service that provides secure and private internet browsing, protecting your online activities and data from prying eyes.
- Tailscale: — A secure networking solution that simplifies remote access and connects your devices seamlessly, providing a private and encrypted network.
Messaging
- Signal: — A secure messaging app that offers end-to-end encryption for text messages, voice calls, and video calls, ensuring your conversations are private and protected.
- Discord: — A popular messaging and voice chat platform designed for gamers, but widely used for communities and team collaboration, offering text, voice, and video communication channels.
- Telegram: — A cloud-based messaging app that prioritizes security and speed, allowing you to send messages, make voice and video calls, and share files with end-to-end encryption.
Bookmarks
- Goodlinks: — A bookmark manager for organising and accessing your favorite links, allowing you to save and sync bookmarks across devices.
Browsers
- Firefox: — A popular open-source web browser known for its privacy features and customisable interface.
- Orion: — A lightweight and fast web browser designed specifically for macOS, offering a smooth browsing experience.
- Tor Browser: — A secure browser that protects your privacy while browsing the web, ensuring anonymous and encrypted communication.
Password Manager
- 1Password: — A trusted password manager that securely stores and manages your passwords, making it easy to generate strong, unique passwords for all your accounts.
- ProtonPass: — A password manager that focuses on privacy and security, with features like end-to-end encryption and zero-knowledge architecture.
Notes
- Obsidian: — A powerful note-taking app with advanced features like linking and graph visualization, allowing you to create and organize your notes in a flexible and interconnected way.
Media Player
- VLC: — A versatile media player that supports a wide range of audio and video formats, providing a seamless playback experience.
- IINA: — A modern and lightweight media player for macOS, offering a clean and intuitive interface and support for various media formats.
Zip & Archive
- Keka: — A powerful file archiver and compression tool for macOS, supporting various archive formats and providing advanced compression options.
- The Unarchiver: — A lightweight and easy-to-use app for extracting various archive formats, ensuring seamless file extraction.
Bootable Drive
- Balena Etcher: — A reliable tool for creating bootable USB drives, making it easy to install operating systems or create rescue drives.
Screenshot and Clipboard
- Cleanshot: — A feature-rich app for capturing and managing screenshots, offering annotation tools, screen recording, and cloud storage integration.
- Clipboard Manager: — A tool for organizing and accessing your clipboard history, allowing you to easily retrieve previously copied items.
- PopClip: — A handy app that provides instant access to common actions for selected text, saving you time and effort.
- Paste: — A clipboard manager that allows you to store and access your copied items, making it easy to find and reuse previous clipboard contents.
- Text Sniper: — A text recognition tool that extracts text from images or screenshots, making it easy to capture and use text from visual content.
- Pastepal: — A clipboard manager that syncs your clipboard across devices, ensuring seamless access to your copied items.
Cleaning
- CleanMyMac: — A comprehensive utility for cleaning and optimizing your Mac, removing junk files, and improving performance.
- Hazel: — An automated organization tool that keeps your files and folders in order, allowing you to set up rules for file management and organization.
- Sensei: — A system monitoring and optimization app for improving Mac performance, providing insights and tools to optimize your Mac’s performance.
Mac Specific
- Rectangle: — A window management tool that allows you to resize and move windows with keyboard shortcuts, improving your productivity.
- Wins: — A tool for managing windows and improving productivity on macOS, offering features like window snapping and multi-monitor support.
- Stats: — A menu bar app that provides system monitoring and resource usage information, giving you insights into your Mac’s performance.
- Mac Mouse Fix: — A utility for customizing and enhancing mouse behavior on macOS, allowing you to fine-tune mouse settings to your preference.
- SoundSource: — A powerful audio control app for managing audio input and output, providing enhanced control over audio settings on your Mac.
- Dropover: — A drag-and-drop utility for quickly moving and copying files, making file management and organization a breeze.
- Wifi Explorer Pro 3: — A Wi-Fi analyzer and troubleshooting tool for advanced network diagnostics, helping you optimize your Wi-Fi connection.
- Command X: — A utility that provides shortcuts and quick access to system commands, allowing you to perform common tasks with ease.
- MacBot: — A virtual assistant for automating tasks and enhancing productivity on macOS, providing shortcuts and automation workflows.
- Raycast: — A productivity app that allows you to perform tasks and access information with keyboard shortcuts, boosting your efficiency.
- Anytype: — A versatile productivity tool for organizing and managing information, offering customizable data structures and powerful search capabilities.
- Amphetamine: — A utility for keeping your Mac awake and preventing it from sleeping, ensuring uninterrupted work or entertainment.
- AltTab: — A window switcher app that provides a fast and efficient way to switch between open applications, improving your multitasking workflow.
- Motrix: — A lightweight and full-featured download manager for macOS, offering fast and reliable downloading of files from various sources.
- MacPilot: — A system customization tool that provides access to hidden macOS settings, allowing you to tweak and optimize your Mac’s behavior.
- Downie 4: — A video downloader app that supports downloading videos from various websites, making it easy to save your favorite videos for offline viewing.
- wins: — A tool for managing windows and improving productivity on macOS, offering features like window snapping, hotkeys, and multi-monitor support.
Mac & IOS Backup
- Duplicacy: — A backup tool that offers efficient and secure data backup and restoration, ensuring your files are protected.
- AnyTrans: — A versatile backup and file transfer tool for managing iOS devices, allowing you to easily transfer and manage your data.
Equipping yourself with these essential Mac apps can transform your development and DevOps workflows, boosting your productivity and efficiency. Each tool has been chosen for its ability to solve specific challenges you might face, ensuring you have a well-rounded set of resources to tackle any project.