I really like the Mac operating system, it’s the reason why I’ve owned so many
Mac computers over the years, but I’m very aware that it isn’t perfect. Fortunately,
there are lots of apps, some very low cost, some available in an app bundle,
some even free, that you can download in seconds, and use to massively improve your
Mac experience. In this video, I’m going to share with you 8 that I use all the time.
OK, let’s get into it.
************************App 1 - Moom************************
The ability to split out and tile windows on the Mac is, quite frankly, awful. If you’re unaware,
you do it by clicking and holding on the green button in a window,
and you can see that you have essentially three options - you can make an app go full-screen,
you can split an app off to the left or to the right.
So Moom is everything that this function should be. There are lots of similar apps out there
by the way, apps like Rectangle and Magnet, it’s just that Moom is the one that I’ve been
using for a few years now, and I’d much rather recommend you something that I genuinely use.
Once downloaded and installed, you can choose whether to run Moom as a standard app, a menu
bar app or a faceless app, meaning it simply runs in the background, that’s what I tend to do but
it’s up to you how you use this. You can also choose to use this primarily by clicking with
your mouse, or by using keyboard shortcuts, again I tend to use my mouse personally.
Here’s where this app is awesome.
Let’s say that here on my MacBook Pro, I want to have two apps running side by side. I can
just hover over the green button, and tap the relevant option, and the app will snap to place.
But I can also do that for top and bottom, not just side by side. All pretty standard so far.
But what about if you’re like me, and you use a large external display? Here on my
Pro Display for example, I might want to have a window in the upper left corner of
the screen. Moom’s hexagon option allows me to do that, and I could then maybe have one that
takes up two hexagon spaces beneath it. And this is with me using a 2 by 3 hexagon grid,
you can go much larger than that, giving you much more granular control if you wish.
Here on my LG DualUp, the hexagon grid works really well, allowing me loads of
control about where I choose to put windows to really make the most of my working space.
Another nice Moom feature is the ability to resize from centre, which I use when I’m screen recording
for video tutorials - I can tap a single button, and the window I’m working in will resize to
exactly 1920 by 1080 pixels, which is the perfect size for when I’m doing screen capture work,
and I use this in sync with a screen capture app that I’ll talk about a bit later on.
Moom is available from the developer’s website, or via the App Store, and it costs $10 and honestly,
if you’re anything like me, you’ll make your money back in saved time on this right away.
************************************App 2 - Bar Tender************************************
The Menu Bar on your Mac is one of those features that seems great at first,
but quickly becomes unusable when it gets too full. Especially if you use a MacBook
Pro or MacBook Air with a notch, you lose so much usable space up here,
and pretty soon you’re going to struggle to find what you’re looking for.
Bar Tender is a simple little app that makes this problem disappear, quite literally. When
installed, the Menu bar disappears, only showing your Control Centre, your Siri button and the date
and time. But when you tap on this little icon here, all of your menu bar is visible again,
accessible just like it was before. It sounds simple, and honestly that’s because it is,
it just makes managing your menu bar that little bit cleaner and easier.
BarTender is one of the pricier apps here at £15.90, but if you’re interested,
it’s also available as part of SetApp, which is kind of like Netflix for Mac software,
you get hundreds all included for $10 per month, and you can download and use
as many of them as you like. This video isn’t sponsored by SetApp by the way,
I’ve had no involvement with them, I just think that if you’re someone who likes getting more
from your Mac via third party apps, their offer is a bit of a no-brainer. If you’re interested,
there is a signup link in the description of this video, full disclosure I earn a little
commission from anyone who signs up for the paid account, but I honestly only recommend
things here on the channel that I genuinely use myself, and this is one of those things.
Oh also, on the subject of SetApp, they also offer a tool which I get asked about all the
time which is iStatMenus, it’s these little widgets that give you super in-depth information
about your Mac at a glance, anything from your CPU and GPU usage, to your RAM and SSD usage,
they’re really handy, and again this app is also included in the SetApp bundle.
************************PDF Shoutout************************
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to accompany this video, and you can access it by joining my membership programme, where for a small
monthly fee, you’ll get access to all video PDFs moving forward, plus the growing library of old
ones. Just follow the link in the description of this video that says ‘Become a Channel Member’.
**App 3 - Dropover**
The third app is called Dropover, and it fixes what is probably the most annoying
problem with the drag and drop. Drag and drop, a bit like the clipboard, is super outdated now in
terms of how people use them. So here for example, I’ve got a folder full of files,
and let’s say that I need to add a couple of these to an email that I’m sending.
I can click to select these two files. But now, what if I’ve got some files elsewhere
on the computer that I also need to go and add into the email? I could obviously add these two
files into my email, then go back to Finder and go and locate the other files, but that’s a bit
like going to the grocery store and taking each individual item to the checkout, one at a time.
So, with Dropover installed, here’s what we’re going to do instead. With the two files that we’ve
got selected, we’re going to shake our cursor a little on the screen, which opens what Dropover
are calling a shelf. Simply drag and drop the items onto the shelf. Then, still in Finder,
browse around your computer to find more things to add to your shelf. Keep doing that until you’ve
got a nice little of pile of files to work with. You can then either drag the pile directly from
the shelf into another app, like Mail or Dropbox or whatever you might need to use,
or you can click the menu button on the shelf itself, to access additional actions,
like bulk zipping and uploading the files to easily share with other people,
batch renaming and more. Honestly, if you’re someone who works with a lot of files on the Mac,
this is an app that’s going to pay for itself in saved time very, very quickly,
especially as the cost of this is £4.99 here in the UK, and that’s a lifetime purchase.
****************App 4 - CleanShot X****************
Screenshots on Mac are more complicated than they need to be, and less effective
than they should be, but CleanShot X aims to resolve that. It makes the actual process of
capturing a screenshot really easy, giving you loads of options to choose from,
but the real magic comes once you’ve captured something. You can annotate with a whole suite
of the usual text and shape tools, but they also include a pixellation option, something which I
really don’t understand why Apple don’t include as standard in markup. You can add backgrounds,
combine multiple screenshots into one just by dragging them across, and you can even use a
scroll capture feature, to capture long webpages, or specific sections of a long webpage with ease.
And if you’re like me, and you need to work with video, this app has that covered too,
making screen capture for videos as easy as capturing screenshots,
whilst giving you a tonne of options to work with. You can capture system audio,
you can capture key commands that will then show on your screen, you can even record Gifs.
CleanShot X is available for a one-off payment of $29 which, for what you get,
is really good value, but again it’s available as part of the SetApp bundle,
so if you’re on the fence about that, and you think this might also be a useful app for you,
it could be worth checking it out, there’s a link in the description of this video.
************The Proper Weekly************
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****************App 5 - Mos****************
This app is especially useful if you’re like me, and you use a third party mouse with your Mac,
and you use multiple displays, or if you try to make use of features like Universal Control.
Getting the scroll wheel on your external mouse to work properly with your Mac, plus any external
displays that you’re using is way harder than it should be, and this is where Mos comes in.
The developers of Mos describe it as a lightweight tool used to smooth scrolling
and set scroll direction independently for your mouse on Mac OS, and that’s exactly what it does.
With Mos installed and running, you can setup both smooth scrolling,
and natural direction scrolling at the touch of a button. It’s even been able
to fix an issue I was having with my logitech mouse, that Logitech’s own software couldn’t
help with. You can set exceptions by app if there are any apps where you’d
prefer not to enable it’s functions, it’s really good, and best of all it’s free.
****************App 6 - Cheat Sheet****************
Have you ever tried to use a keyboard shortcut in an app, but given up after multiple attempts
when you realise that you can’t remember it? Or have you ever wondered if a specific app
has keyboard shortcuts, but you can’t find the information you need online? Download and run
Cheat Sheet. Once installed, simply open the app that you’d like to explore, and press and
hold the Command button on your keyboard. Cheat Sheet will open with a cheat sheet,
showing you every single keyboard shortcut that’s available for that app. From there,
it’s just a case of practicing them and learning them until you know them off by heart.
Cheat Sheet is again, free of charge.
******************App 7 - Reeder******************
If you, like me, miss the days of RSS feeds,
and find services like Apple News to be a little underwhelming and impersonal,
then you might want to check out Reeder. With Reeder, you can simply add websites, social feeds,
even YouTube channels to the app, and you can categorise them out into folders if you like.
So for example, if you wanted to add Proper Honest Tech’s YouTube videos to the app,
you would simply tap the little plus icon, choose YouTube and then search for the channel. Click to
select the channel, add it to a folder if you like, and that’s it, you’ll never miss out on
a video ever again. The app is $10, and there is also an iPhone and iPad version which is $5,
so $15 in total if you want to cover all your bases, but it does offer iCloud syncing between
those devices, meaning you can stay up to date no matter where you are, or what app you’re using.
****************App 8 - Rocket Emoji****************
Do you enjoy using emojis when you’re typing? If the answer is no you can probably skip this one,
but if the answer is yes, check this out. With Rocket Emoji installed, I simply hit the colon
key, and then start typing in whatever I’m looking for. So ‘wave’ for example. And just like that,
Rocket Emoji finds a suitable emoji. It makes working with emojis a piece
of cake… I should probably insert the cake emoji on screen at this point I guess, and
it’s another free app! I don’t think there’s an emoji for free. Although if you do want to spend
a little bit of dollar… you can get Rocket Emoji Pro, which includes a search library and Gifs.
******End******
So there you go, 8 apps that I use all the time,
to get way more out of my Mac. What do you think, any apps that you use that you
think should have been included in this list? Drop me a comment and let me know.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.