Top free Mac utility apps to boost your productivity
I recently bought a shiny new Macbook and as a power user I instantly was on the hunt for utility apps that could make my life just that bit easier…
So here is a list of the Utility apps that I use, compiled from mutliple sources like Youtube, AlternativeTo, other Medium articles, Stackexchange and the great great Reddit!!
1.Rectangle
Truth be told, the default window management in MacOs is simply non existent. No window snapping and also Finder opens in all sorts of weird sizes. It’s a constant pain to size and position your windows when multitasking.
Well Rectangle is an Open Source window management app that allows you to snap windows to sides and corners either by dragging them or by custom keyboard shortcuts!!
Check it out here.
2.Dropover
Dropover is a super innovative yet simple app that makes dragging and dropping stuff across workspaces and windows a breeze… It’s the kind of app that you never thought you’ll need but cannot do without once you’re used to.
Although the title of this article says Free apps, Dropover is not entirely free. It has a one time payment for the Pro version, but the Free trial is is still very useable with the only limitation being a 3 sec wait to drag items into the app. (P.S: I use the free version)
Check it out here.
Now, if you’re annoyed by the 3 second lag, but don’t want to pay for the Pro, here is another app DropPoint, developed by my buddy which supports drag and drop support for files as of now and is in the early stages of development.
DropPoint is free and open source, and works across Windows, Linux and Mac.
Check it out here.
3.Yabai
Yabai is yet another Window management tool like Rectangle, but this takes it to a whole different level. Unlike Rectangle in which you have to manually snap windows, Yabai does everything for you, maximising screen real estate in the most efficient way!
Open a window and its full screen, open another and both take half the screen each, open another and you get a 3 window layout! Also includes moving, resizing and shifting windows to other desktops all with a few custom keyboard shortcuts you set up.
Follow the below tutorial to set it up
Also linking my config file for yabairc and its shortcuts config skhdrc, which you may copy and edit for quick setup.
4.Maccy
It’s pretty dumb how MacOs doesn’t include Clipboard history, and most of the decent apps are paid as well.
Maccy is an amazing Free and Open Source clipboard app, which even includes a fuzzy search feature to browse through your clipboard items! It is paid via the app store (to support the developer) but you can download for free from the official website.
Check out Maccy here.
Clipy is another great Free and Open Source Clipboard manager that can hold text, images, hell even files and folders.
Check out Clipy here.
5.Soduto
Are you a Mac + Android user?
Do you yearn for Apple’s Airdrop or Microsoft’s Connect to PC? (Well, I did)
Soduto is an Open Source app that pairs with your Android phone using the KDEConnect Android app to seamlessly share Files between your Mac and Android phone.
Also includes Clipboard syncing and a feature to share urls from your phone to open in your Mac’s browser.
Check it out here.
6.Maczip
If you come from Windows or Linux, you probably just expect to be able to view the contents of zip files and other archives without having to extract them. Well I was pretty bummed on seeing each and every archive getting extracted (although it is pretty fast and must be okay for most of you after getting used to it).
MacZip is a fast and free application that lets you open archives and preview the files without having to extract them completely.
Check it out here.
7.Amphetamine
Macs sleep on closing the Lid.
Are you the kind of person who likes to close the lid during some kind of time consuming task, like say Downloading a large file or compiling a huge app?
Well this app is for you, it helps prevent sleeping of your Mac as long as you want, also including timed and custom triggered sessions so that it can automatically sleep the Mac in case you forget to end the session or your battery drops below a certain percentage.
Check it out here.
8.Alt-Tab
As I mentioned before, window management in the MacOs is just stupid.
The Cmd-Tab and Cmd-` are simply pointless if you have multiple windows of the same app (like a browser) across different desktops.
Well Alt-Tab brings the Windows Alt-Tab to Mac. It presents you all windows you have open (or even minimised ones if you want to), and you can customise its styling and shortcuts.
I don’t use the in built Cmd-Tab now at all!!
Check out Alt-Tab here.
9.Itsycal
Itsycal is a tiny menu bar calendar for Mac. It can display all your events, meetings, reminders including an easy “click to join meeting” button alongside.
Apart from viewing, you can also add events to your calendar seamlessly from within this app. You can also replace your default clock with Ityscal menu (by making the default clock icon analog) like I did as shown below..
Check it out here.
10.Mac-Mouse-Fix
The title pretty much sums up what it does.
Fixes how a non Apple mouse works with your Mac.
Makes the scrolling smoother and allows you to invert the natural scrolling of the scroll wheel without messing up the natural scrolling setting of Trackpad. (which I still can’t believe you cannot do using the default mac settings)
Also allows you to map your back/fwd keys (the ones you find in gaming mouses) to other stuff like switching workspaces.
Check it out here
11.JiTouch
The Trackpad on the Mac is just sweet. The gestures make it even better. Now JiTouch adds even more gestures!!
JiTouch is a discontinued app that is no longer under development. However with a bit of tweaking you can get it working on Big Sur even on M1.
Download the app here
Now follow the below video to fix it for Big Sur and also check out the steps mentioned in the following Pastebin link, that I extracted from a Reddit comment, in case the video wasn’t helpful enough.
BetterTouchTool is yet another really popular app for assigning custom trackpad gestures which is a paid app now. But you can download a legacy version of the app for free which surprisingly still works well on even the latest Big Sur.
Download it here.
12.AppCleaner
“AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.
Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily.
AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them.”
That’s the quote from their website itself :)
Check it out here.
