There are some great utilities for macOS that everyone should check out!
In a previous article, I wrote about some great utilities that people found to be useful. I won’t cover them again in this article, but you can read more about them by following the link below:
There are more great utilities for your Mac that you should definitely check out!
Default Folder X
The beauty of Default Folder X is that it streamlines your workflow without you even noticing. By extending the capabilities of Open and Save dialogs, Default Folder X saves you time and hassle without requiring you to learn anything new. Just keep following your normal flow and enjoy the benefits of this powerful little app.
Default Folder X (DFX) It has many features that can save you time:
- Directory Assistant: Quickly access your recent, favorite, and open folders from DFX’s toolbar using hierarchical pop-up menus.
- Real Time Saving: If you always save things in the same folder, DFX can remember that folder for you. Alternatively, you can set it as the default folder for an application so you’re in the right place from the start.
- Finder Management: DFX provides quick access to any Finder window with a single click, as well as letting you get info, duplicate, rename, and delete existing files — all from within Open and Save dialogs. This makes the Finder’s power much more convenient and accessible.
- Instant Recall: DFX keeps track of your most recent folders and files so you can quickly get back to them. It even remembers which file you last had open, making it easy for you to pick up where you left off.
- Keyboard Shortcut: You can quickly access your favorite folders using keyboard shortcuts, or jump to recent folders and open Finder windows with a keystroke. DFX’s shortcuts are fully configurable, so you can tailor them to your needs.
- Spotlight: You can tag your files or edit your Spotlight comments from within any Open or Save dialog. If you can’t remember what tags you used before, DFX shows you all of your recently used tags — just drag and drop.
Price: $34.95 for a single license, or 2+ licenses for $29.95 each
Mission Control Plus
Mission Control provides you with an easy way to manage your windows and add keyboard navigation, shortcuts, and more. You can minimize or close windows straight from Mission Control.
Really, Apple should just make this the default.
Price: $9.99
Filepane
Filepane has the following features:
- Drag-and-drop: Filepane is the perfect way to quickly and easily get your work done. With its fast, minimalist interface, you can drop files, folders, images, and text into Filepane and perform quick actions to optimize your workflows.
- Edit, Convert, Compress images: Crop, resize, and convert images quickly between formats like PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and BMP. Compress images for the web or reduce their size easily.
- Move Files to Favorite Destination Folders: Make a list of your favorite places to keep files. You can move and copy them there quickly and easily, and it will help keep your Mac desktop tidy.
- Tools for Text and Text Files: The word and character counter tool is built-in and allows you to export the highlighted text in various formats. You can convert RTF and TXT documents to PDF with just one click.
Price: $6.99 for a standard license or $9.99 for a family license
BetterZip 5
BetterZip is an archiving to work with compressed or archived files. It handles ZIP, DMG, TAR, TGZ, TBZ, TXZ, TZ, Zstandard, Brotli, 7-ZIP, XAR, and RAR.
BetterZip can currently open and extract over 30 archive formats including: ZIP, TAR, TGZ, TBZ, TXZ, TZ, Zstandard, Brotli, 7-ZIP, RAR, Apple Disk Images (DMG), TNEF (winmail.dat), ARJ, LHA, LZH, ISO, CHM, CAB, CPIO/CPGZ, DEB, RPM, StuffIt’s SIT and SITX, BinHex, MacBinary, ePub, JAR/WAR/EAR/SAR/PAR/WSR Java archives, CBZ/CBR e-books, GZip, BZip2, WIM.
BetterZip can also join split files with enumerated file extensions 001, 002, …
Preview or Quick Look files inside your archives without extracting first.
Protect your data with strong AES-256 encryption.
Price: $24.95
Aldente Pro
Li-ion and polymer batteries (such as the one in your MacBook) last longest when kept between 20% and 60% charged. Constantly keeping your battery at 100% will shorten its lifespan significantly. Replacing an old battery is not only harmful to the environment but also wasteful.
You can use Aldente to set charging limits to extend battery life. It can also discharge the battery when plugged in.
Price: free if charge limiter and discharge, Pro is $10.26 annually or $21.60 lifetime.
Trickster
Trickster helps you keep track of recent files you’ve used on your Mac, so you can easily and quickly access them again.
Trickster takes file monitoring to a whole new level by personalizing it to your needs. It has a “sticky” sidebar that provides quick and easy access to your favorite apps, folders, and files. This is extremely convenient if you need to sort out recently downloaded files or save those you use repeatedly.
Price: $29.99
iBoySoft NTFS
NTFS for Mac is the best software to mount your Windows NTFS volumes in read-write mode. With it, you can delete, edit, rename, and write files on NTFS drives in macOS & Mac OS X freely without formatting.
Price: $19.99 per year.
HoudahSpot 6
HoudahSpot is an app that super-charges file search on Mac. With HoudahSpot, you can easily find the files you need — no matter where they’re hidden. Just enter a few keywords, specify some search criteria, and let HoudahSpot do its magic. Plus, you can save your searches as templates for even faster results next time.
Price: $34 for a single license, or $52 for family
Gemini 2
Gemini 2: Instant Duplicate File Finder for Mac (macpaw.com)
Gemini 2 can quickly scan your entire system for duplicate files, even if they’re in remote corners of your system. You can then review the scan results and hand-pick the files to erase, or let Smart Select do all the work for you.
Gemini 2 is on the lookout for similars — files that take up space but are very similar to others. It pinpoints the differences between them so you can decide which ones to keep and which ones to delete. This way, you can make better use of the space they occupy.
Get rid of duplicate photos by taking a close look at them and zapping the extras.
Eliminate duplicate music or songs.
Gemini is intelligent and can easily distinguish between copies and originals. It knows which files to keep intact, and also learns which duplicates you prefer, making it more like a personal assistant than a mere program.
Price: $19.95 per license, $29.95 for two, or $44.95 for five
ForkLift
You can connect to SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, Rackspace CloudFiles, SMB, AFP, and NFS remote volumes quickly and easily manage your files across networks. You can connect to multiple servers simultaneously and even copy files between them with drag and drop.
Compare local and remote folders to identify matching, modified, new, and deleted files. Synchronize them one or two-way with a single mouseclick, or save it as a favorite. If you’re a web developer, you’ll love this feature.
The preview panel provides you with useful information about the selected file. You can playback audio and video files, inspect images, PDFs, and other popular document types. You can also do quick edits on a text file in place, both on local drives and remote servers.
Price: $29.95 per license, or $49.95 for family
Amphetamine
Amphetamine is a tiny app that lives in your menu bar. With Amphetamine, you can effortlessly override your energy saver settings and keep your Mac awake.
Price: free
Conclusion
You probably use Mac utilities if you regularly use your Mac. Mac utilities are software add-ons that let you customize and tweak your Mac OS. Mac utilities are especially useful if you’re working with multimedia, as they have a lot of built-in plugins that make working with multimedia files easier.
Let me know of any other great utilities that we could all use.
By Mad Machine on .
