Dr. Mac's 3 Must-have Utilities For Mac

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1:13 Window managers Window management on isn't particularly great. Sure, you can make optimized apps completely full-screen or have two apps side by side in a split-screen view. What if you don't want the full-screen experience and want to organize a handful of floating windows on your desktop? Well, without a third-party app, you'll be dragging floating windows around freely and manually resizing everything to fit.

If you want a similar window snap experience like you get in Windows, consider one of these four apps:.: $0.99 (£0.99 or AU$1.49).: $2.99 (£2.99 or AU$4.49).: $9.99 (£9.99 or AU$14.99).: $13.99 (£13.99 or AU$21.99) Franz Taylor Martin/CNET. If you're tired of having a different application or browser window open for all the different chat services in your life, is the answer. Franz is an aggregator of all sorts of services, but primarily chat. Inside the one Franz app window, you can have a tab each for services such as Slack, Discord, Google Inbox, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Trello and many more. When you install and run it for the first time, you'll need to create a Franz account and add (and log in to) all the services you want to use. Then when you open Franz in the future, all those services will open automatically.

Franz is free to use, but there is an option to upgrade to premium for 35 euros (about $40, £30 or AU$55) per year. This upgrade adds support for services such as HipChat and removes ads, as well as giving access to future premium services. 2:07 Dropbox or Google Drive 's iCloud Drive is a great cloud storage system if you're totally invested in Apple's ecosystem. But if you're more cross-platform, a service such as or is probably a better fit.

Their applications for Mac are just as seamless. Install either Google Drive or Dropbox and your files and folders will be two-way synced. To upload a file to a specific folder in your Dropbox, just drag and drop the file into the corresponding folder in the Dropbox directory that's created when the app is installed. Also, like iCloud Drive, you can setup selective sync so not all your Dropbox or Google Drive accounts are synced with your computer. And unlike iCloud Drive, you can disable Google Drive or Dropbox when you don't want them to sync by pausing or closing the apps.

The Unarchiver is a power file extractor tool for Mac. It can unzip ZIP files, extract RAR files and much more.

Best of all, it's completely free and super simple to use. When you come across a compressed file that needs to be extracted, right-click on it, hover over Open With and select The Unarchiver.app. If the file type is a bit more obscure, make sure you've enabled all the necessary file types within the app settings.

Dr. Mac

Bartender 3 Taylor Martin/CNET Useful menu bar apps are plentiful on the Mac ecosystem, which is problematic for, well, your menu bar. It can get crowded and cluttered in a hurry, so is an absolute must-have app. What Bartender 3 does is simple: It hides seldom-used menu bar apps and icons under its own icon.

When you click on the Bartender icon, all of the hidden icons will be revealed. In preferences, you can choose which icons are shown in the main menu bar and which are hidden in the Bartender menu. You can also customize the appearance of Bartender and setup hotkeys for displaying the hidden icons. You can try Bartender 3 for free for four weeks, but after the trial expires, you'll have to cough up $15 to continue using it.

Hocus Focus If you're prone to having a bunch of windows open at once but would rather your desktop stay neat and tidy, does just that - automatically. When you click to change focus into another app, Hocus Focus will automatically hide the other app after a short timeout period.

You can whitelist apps that you don't want hidden, or you can have apps hidden as soon as the focus is changed away from them. It's a powerful organization tool and it's dead simple to use. The best part is it's completely free, though you can opt to support the developer via a PayPal donation on its website. Alfred Taylor Martin/CNET Apple has taken strides to make the Spotlight function on MacOS better, but is still the more powerful tool. Alfred looks and operates much like Spotlight, letting you search for files, launch apps, perform quick calculations and much more without ever lifting your fingers off the keyboard.

It's also free to use. However, if you buy the Powerpack, for a one-time £19 ($25 or AU$33) fee, you will have access to so much more, such as a built-in text expander, extensive clipboard history, 1Password support and custom themes. Arguably the best part of Alfred is workflows, third-party plug-ins that blow the doors wide open for what is possible with the program. Read our breakdown of some of the to learn more about what they are capable of. Amphetamine Tired of constantly having to adjust your Mac's Energy Saver settings to keep it from powering off in the middle of something important? All you need is.

Once it's installed, just right-click the menu bar icon and your computer will stay on indefinitely (or for a set amount of time). That's simple enough, but Amphetamine can get much more complex if you wish. You can make it so your Mac doesn't ever power off if it's connected to a specific wireless network or so that connected storage drives won't go to sleep. Best of all, Amphetamine is completely free.

Reeder 3 Taylor Martin/CNET To stay on top of your RSS feeds directly from your Mac's desktop, you need. It works with services such as Feedly, Feedbin, NewsBlur, Inoreader and more, and will let you view all of those different feeds and services side by side. The interface is highly customizable and can be altered to suit your needs for easier reading, whether that means a serif typeface or a low-contrast interface for night reading. Reeder 3 used to be a premium application but recently went entirely free. Bear Taylor Martin/CNET MacOS has a built-in text editor (two, actually, if you count the iWork suite). But if you're not a fan of TextEdit or prefer a more simple interface for distraction-free writing, there are a number of options available in the App Store. One of the better options out there is.

It has a completely distraction-free interface, supports Markdown right out of the gate and has a no-nonsense way of organizing your notes with hashtags. Bear is free to use, but if you want premium features such as seamless sync with, premium themes and more exporting options, you'll need to subscribe to Bear Pro for $1.49 monthly or $14.99 annually.

Similar options to Bear include,.

Advertisement If you have a MacBook, you The world of home computing is moving towards solid state drives for storage. Should you buy one? Inside it. SSDs are much faster than their hard disc drive predecessors, but the speed has come at a cost: storage capacity. This can lead to a reliance on external drives, and the constant need to juggle your available space. Even if you have terabytes of storage on your desktop iMac or Mac Pro, it’s still handy to know how that space is being used. Today we’ll look at the best tools to analyze, visualize, and ultimately help clean up your drives and create more free space. Apps That Didn’t Make the Cut First we’ll take a look at what was left out and why, particularly considering we included a few of these the last time we covered this topic.

Dr. Mac

Was once the go-to app for storage management, as it creates a visual “map” of your drives. Unfortunately it’s not had an update since 2005, and though it still technically works, there are a few weird quirks that show up in macOS Sierra.

($30) is premium tool that looks great, but comes with a premium price tag. Even though it’s powerful and designed for macOS Sierra, we think $30 is a steep price to pay considering what you can get for free. You can download a free trial to find out if it’s really worth your money. We also left free app off the list, which requires the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to be installed. The JRE isn’t necessarily a bad thing (it’s the leaky Java Browser Extension You might think it's pretty difficult to infect your Mac with malware, but there are always exceptions.

Here are five ways you can get your computer dirty.), but you can get similar results without installing Java from one of these other apps. MacOS Sierra’s Storage Management Apple has always provided a simple way to visualize used disk space under the Apple About This Mac Storage tab. While limited, it splits your usage up by Documents, Apps, Photos, Mail, and so on. In macOS Sierra you can click the Manage button on this screen to dig a little deeper. The Storage Management tool can also be accessed like any other app using Spotlight, or under the Applications Utilities folder. This is where you can access a few of Sierra’s big new features, including Optimized Storage which automatically tidies up your old media, and Store in iCloud. The latter option places rarely-used files and folders into iCloud storage, purging available space on your local machine.

There’s One is supposed to keep certain folders on all your Macs in sync, the other is supposed to intelligently free up space by deleting files you don’t need. Neither work as advertised., especially if you use a professional-level app like Logic or Final Cut.

You can however use the Storage Management tool to list files that fall under Applications, Documents, and core apps like Photos, Mail and GarageBand. It’s not a great way to visualize free space, but you can hover a file and click on the X to delete it right away. Click on the magnifying glass icon to reveal it in Finder. You can also enable Empty Trash Automatically and Reduce Clutter under Recommendations to maximize available space. If you’re feeling more adventurous, consider Whether you want to increase available storage using the cloud or take matters into your own hands, here's how macOS Sierra can help lighten the load. You can either download Grand Perspective for free from the project’s, or pay $1.99 and get it from the. According to the developer “y ou’ll get the same app either way,” though if you buy it you’ll be actively supporting development. The project is still under active development, and works great with modern Mac operating systems including macOS Sierra.

Grand Perspective basically takes the place of Disk Inventory X, and displays your files as color-coded blocks. These blocks are grouped by folder and size, so you can quickly see which files and folders are taking up the most space. Click on a file and hit Reveal to be taken to that directory to tidy things up. You can also use the Zoom controls to navigate the map.

The app allows you to scan your whole drive, or just a directory of your choice. A whole-drive scan can take a while, and you’ll need to wait for the entire scan to complete before you can see any results. Summary: A great way to visualize used space, with handy menu options for repeating previous scans. OmniDiskSweeper was last updated in 2013 but fortunately it still works well in macOS Sierra. It allows you to list files and folders by size using a simple and lightweight interface. You can size your whole disk, external drives, or just a folder of your choice. There’s no visual map of your drive, just a list view. The interfae may be simple, but still allows you to delete files right there from within the app.

You also don’t have to wait for the entire scan to complete, as OmniDiskSweeper starts showing you what it’s found from the second you hit Scan. Summary: A simple tool for finding big files and the folders that contain them. It works as well as could be expected, and it’s free. Last updaed for OS X 10.10 Yosemite, DiskWave hasn’t had any work done on it since 2012.

Dr. Mac's 3 Must-have Utilities For Mac Download

But just like OmniDiskSweeper, it works just fine in macOS Sierra, even if the interface feels a little outdated at this stage. The app uses a Finder-like tabulated interface to isolate big files and folders, which can be listed by name or size. You’ll find all of your drives and attached devices on the left-hand side, along with a few common locations like the Home directory and your Documents. The app begins scanning as soon as you start it up, and you can then filter by drive or location. Hit the Trash button you clean things up, Reval (which should read “Reveal”) to show the folder in Finder, and Quick Look to preview media. Summary: Not a bad free app, though personally I prefer OmniDiskSweeper’s lightweight approach to listing files by size. Premium Option: ($10) This might be a “free” list, but it’s worth mentioning one additional premium option. In that case, DaisyDisk is worth a mention.

Dr. Mac's 3 Must-have Utilities For Mac Free

At $10 it won’t break the bank, and the app manages to look stunning while performing one very simple task. DaisyDisk uses a bright and colorful interface to display your used space as a pie chart. You can choose to analyze your internal drive, external USB storage, or a folder of your choice.

Dr. Mac's 3 Must-have Utilities For Mac 2017

Being a premium app, it’s actively maintained and has been optimized for use with macOS Sierra. Summary: DaisyDisk might be just what you’re looking for if the rest of these apps don’t cut it. Grab a free trial from the before you buy. The Pursuit of Free Space Be sure to check out our Your Mac only has a limited amount of available disk space – even more so if you're using a laptop.

It's time to fight back and free up some serious space. if you’re struggling to trim the fat. You can take things to the next level by If you're desperate, and you don't fancy paying over the odds for a solid state drive upgrade, here are a few ideas for further maximizing the available storage on your MacBook. or With my head held low with shame, I publicly admitted last week that I'm a digital hoarder. My once blazingly fast Mac is now left with just 100GB of a 1TB drive left. I've already. If things are really tight then you might want to Running out of space on your MacBook? Here are all your options for adding more storage space to your MacBook.

How do you keep your storage in check? If we’ve missed your favorite app then add it in the comments below. Image Credit: Krisda via Shutterstock.com Explore more about:,.

This entry was posted on 23.01.2020.