macOS Apps, Tools, and Tricks.md

20 Tools, Apps, and Tricks

Link to the Google Slides presentation

Mac Apps

• Alfred

  Replaces Spotlight and adds a lot of additional functionality, such as in-search file management, executing Terminal commands from the search prompt, plugins and extensions, and much more.

• PiPer

  Adds picture-in-picture support to popular video sites not supported by default, most importantly YouTube.

• OBS

  Capture and composite video from multiple sources, including screen capture, webcams, and other video input devices. Also provides a virtual webcam, allowing you to build OBS scenes and use the composited scene as a camera in another app.

• Bartender

  Hide menu bar app icons behind a click or keyboard shortcut, reveal icons when certain conditions are met, and display hidden icons in a separate bar (great for use with the notch).

• Hidden Bar

  Less feature-rich version of Bartender, but free and open source.

• Syntax Highlight

  Add code syntax highlighting to Quick Look

• Lingon X

  Manage launchd services from a GUI

• BetterTouchTool

  General-purpose automation tool; launch apps, run scripts, and more based on a variety of triggers, such as keyboard shortcuts, mouse buttons, and trackpad gestures.

• QR Factory 3

  Make beautiful QR codes

CLI Tools

Many of these tools are included in macOS or in the DNAstack Brewfiles.

Also check out the DNAstack Oh My ZSH! customization repository!

• yt-dlp

  Download YouTube videos from the command line.

  brew install yt-dlp

• fzf

  Search your filesystem from the command line with fuzzy name matching. Also integrates with history with OMZ plugin.

  brew install fzf

• say

  Like echo but speaks out loud using text-to-speech. Can also write generate speech to a file.

  Built-in to macOS

• caffeinate

  Prevent your Mac from sleeping forever or until a specified command exits.

  Built-in to macOS

• hidutil

  Modify the function of human-interface devices. Can be used to remap keyboard keys.

  More info on how to use it can be found here.

  Full list of keyboard key codes can be found here

  Built-in to macOS

Tricks and Settings

• Holding ⌘ allows you to interact with unfocussed windows without changing focus. Most useful for moving windows in the background.

  Note: The ⌘ key will be sent to the background application if you click in the window, e.g., links will likely open in a new tab in browsers.

• Use the Zoom accessibility feature to make screen sharing easier Open Settings and navigate to Accessibility > Zoom, then enable Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom, then select your desired modifier.

  Select your preferred zoom style from the Zoom style drop-down menu.

• Shortcuts can run commands over SSH and make HTTP requests Shortcuts for macOS and iOS can be used to execute commands over SSH or make calls to HTTP. Inputs can be passed from other Shortcuts actions to these commands, and output can be passed back to Shortcuts to be used to perform other actions.

• Double-clicking the title bar resizes the window to fit content Before Spaces was added to macOS, the green button in the top-left corner could be used to resize a window to fit content. This functionality is still accessible by double-clicking the title bar of a window. The window can be returned to its original size by double-clicking the title bar again.

• Group windows by app in Mission Control, and use Quick Look to preview windows in Mission Control If you use Mission Control for window management but have a lot of windows, you can more easily find the window you're looking for by configuring Mission Control to group windows by app.

  Open Settings and navigate to Desktop & Dock, then enable Group windows by application under Mission Control.

  You can also preview a window before selecting it in Mission Control by hovering your cursor over it and pressing Space.

• Make Dock icons of hidden applications transparent

  To make hidden app icons transparent in the Dock, run defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES; killall Dock in the command line.

  To restore the default behaviour, run defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool NO; killall Dock in the command line.

• Hold Option to access additional characters from the keyboard

  Holding Option and Option + Shift gives you access to alternate character sets that can be input directly from the keyboard.

  This can be useful when typing characters like © or ®, or when using accents.

  The full alternate key mapping can be found by using Keyboard Viewer