This video is brought to you by TrendMicro’s Cleaner One Pro
So we are kicking of 2023 with a list of cool Mac
apps worth sinking your teeth into and to set the vibes just right,
I shall waste no item and open up the first app called Poolsuite FM to set the mood.
Poolsuite FM is an internet radio station that started as a retro-inspirited website which now
has an official Mac app. The music that you can find on Poolsuite is described as an infinity
pool of summer sounds which, let’s be honest, all of us need. It’s a very minimal looking
app that reminds me a lot of WinAmp, which if you know what it is, means you are a Millennial. It’s
free to use and it has some nifty tools like an easily acessible AirPlay controls for dispursing
the music and if you like a track that’s playing you can click on the name to open it in SoundCloud
(which the app is based on) for easy sharing. The next app that I recently started playing
with is called Dropover and you can think of it as a drag and drop utility. Once installed,
the app stays hidden in the menu bar ready to be triggered by grabing something and shaking
the mouse. By doing that you summon a Dropover floating shelf to place things into. You can use
this app to gather all sorts of information into one temporary place. It works with any content,
not only local finder files. You can select images from browser or even highlight text.
The app comes in very handy if you are trying to organize files that are scattered all over the
computer or simply collect online materials. Once you have your items placed on the shelf,
you can move them to the desired location or use the menu to take all sorts of actions like
creating an iCloud link and my most used one - send them over via AirDrop. Very inconspicuous
and useful app that costs as much as a coffee. While on the topic of grabing things and overall
organization, another app that I rely on after every single video project of mine is TrendMicro’s
Cleaner One Pro. It is an All-in-one disk cleaning manager that helps me visualize,
manage and free up storage space with one click thanks to the smart scan feature. Two other
features that matter to me a lot are the disk map and app manager. Disk Map helps me find out
what is taking up most of my disk space and the app manager helps me uninstall apps the proper
way - without leaving a trace of additional library or other files. The built-in toolbar
monitors my computer perfomance and traffic which also comes in handy when I put my Mac to it’s
paces while transcoding and exporing. The app has a lot more features worth exploring, like managing
your startup apps & finding duplicate files so if you want to keep your Mac in order head over
to the first link in the description below and install Trend Micro’s cleaner one Pro for free.
Next ups is Xnip…Xnip - not sure what’s the right pronounciation. I got the app for the scrolling
screenshot capabilities. I used an older Safari Page Screenshot app, but I can’t always rely on it
if I want to take a screenshot of sites that load on scroll. With Xnip, I can take a full or partial
page screenshot based on my scrolling behavior. Another reason to pay attention to the app is the
simple, yet powerful annotation capabilities - much easier than the built-in ones of
Preveiw - mainly because they have less friction when using. Another reason I switched to this
app is the pixel perfect screenshot preview pane which helps me grab the most accurate screenshots,
which might seem a bit excesive to some…but I can appreaciate the time that I save in image editing
later. Xnip lives in the menu bar and can be aquired via a subsciption or a one-time fee
for people like me who are more than happy with what they currently see in as far as features.
The next app is called Balance and it’s a time tracking app with focus on work-life balance.
It’s a very well designed app that you can use to manually clock in and out of sessions. The manual
aspect is on purpose to help you mentally detach when not working. The app features break reminders
and weekly summaries as well as a Focus feature for people who are into the Pomodoro techique.
I’ve been using Balance for a while to track my different tasks as I try to optimize them
as much as possible…oh and to get occational breaks of course since I tend to go overboard
once I sit in front of the computer. All the app links that we talk about will be linked
in the desciption below and BTW, if you end up enjoying this video, subscribe…because WHY NOT?
The next app is called HiddenBar and it’s a free alternative to Bartender. It basically
helps you take control of the huge list of apps that you keep in the menu bar in the simplest way
possible. It’s a simple separator app that works by dragging the vertical like to the
position where it will hide everthing to the left, while keep everything to the right visible. Once
downside of the app compared to the more expensive and powerful alternatives is that you need to
rearrange all menu items so that all the ones that you want to keep visible stay to the right
of the HiddenBar divider - not a big deal and in most cases a one-time job. If you don’t know
how to arrange the menu items BTW, you can hold command and use the mouse to move them around.
If you use a mouse that has additional buttons but doesn’t have native MacOS support, you can get an
app called Better Touch Tool to remap those buttons. With this app, you can program and
customize various input devices - from the magic mouse, all the way to a Steam deck. In my case,
I wanted to bypass the Logitech G HUB Software to customize my G502 mouse and simply remap
two of the side keys to move between my desktop spaces. Another application I found for the tool
is for my Keychron K3 keyboard which for some reasons didn’t change the Studio Display brigtness
levels unless I simulated and F1 press with FN & F1. With Better Touch tool I
can now use my brighnness controls as intended. Speediness is a simple, yet convinient speed test
app for the Mac. Instead of each time going to the browser to use speedtest.net and witness a
plethora of ads, Speediness is just a tap away. By default the app runs tests in parallel to
better reflect real-world situations rather than displaying the optimal result. For tjat reason,
if compare Speediness with another tool you might witness results that differ from each other.
Rocket is a cool emoji app that can help you spice up any text, desciption,
email or chat. The app is invisible and if you want to trigger it just type column and start
typing the emoji you are looking for. I don’t know a faster way to summon emojis to be honest. What’s
even better is that it’s absolutely free. HomeControl Menu for Homekit is the little
menu helper that I use to summon Homkit scenes and most of all integrate with my
home Elgato stream deck. Aside from saving time from having to open the Home app,
HomeControl gives you unique scenes links that you can use to paste in the stream deck to use it as a
scenes trigger - something that I use all the time in my home studio. BTW, if you are interested to
know more about my home studio desk setup, I’ll be sure to place a link at the end of this video.
In my recent favorite iPad apps video which I’ll link in the desciption below I talked about an
app called Noir, which I relish for its ability to transform every website into a dark mode version.
Even though it is now officially released for the Mac, I already started using an
alternative for it called Dark Reader for Safari. I know this is not a traditional app per say,
but rather an extention, still it is worth exploring, especially if you work during the
dark hours of the day and want to reduce the stress on your eyes. What’s great about Dark
Reader is the ability to use it for PDF files that are displayed within the browser as well.
Now, let’s move to some creative apps. Mockview app is something that I discovered very recently.
With it I can create Apple device mockups in both 2D and 3D. If you want to test how a design mockup
might look on an iPhone or how a wallpaper might render on a tablet, this is a great tool for that.
You can use it to showcase projects to clients and impress them with gorghous visuals. You simply
have to drop your image in the app and position it relative to the screen size that you’ve chosen.
Once that’s ready in the 2D option you can even add gradients or even custom backgrounds
and if you choose 3D you can create all sorts of angles that you can export as transparent PNG’s
to apply in presentations or in my case videos. The next creative app is for people who often
require placeholder text for visualization purposes - something that is often referred
to as Lorem Ipsum. If you are a designer for example GetIpsum is a tiny app that saves a
lot of time. It lives in the menu bar and once you trigger it, all you have to is to hover and
select with you mouse the amount of Lorem Ipsum text you require. From the settings,
you can choose if you want your text to appear as plain text or html and even change the dictionary.
If you are in a meeting while sharing your screen and you start getting messages everyone can see,
the quickest way to trigger Do not Disturb mode is to head over to the clock and while holding the
option key click on the clock - that immediately turns on DND - the other people wouldn’t realize
what’s happening. That’s one of the hidden tips that I discuss in my MacOS OPTION tips I SHOULD'VE
KNOWN video, which you can check out here. Like & Subscribe to the channel, as well
as my newsletter, and as always, it’s been an absolute pleasure,
This is E Over & out