List of software I use and can wholeheartedly recommend you.
Essentials
| Name | Platform | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Raycast | macOS, Windows | App that starts when you press a keyboard shortcut, letting you launch applications, run scripts, and much much more. It just makes your computer better. |
| Obsidian | All | It’s where I take my personal notes. The website you’re on right now is actually published through Obsidian. I even made a few YouTube videos about it, including a guide for absolute beginners. Link’s in the footer for that. |
| AltTab | macOS | Brings a proper Alt-Tab (well, ⌘-tab) to macOS. |
| Homebrew | macOS, Linux | My favorite way to install software on macOS. Well, my second favorite actually – the first would be the Nix package manager. But that’s not for the faint of heart. |
| Maccy | macOS | Best clipboard manager I have found so far. Free and lightweight (unlike Paste). |
| Shottr | macOS | Screenshot utility. Not as featureful as, say, CleanShot X, but much more lightweight. Or at least it feels that way. |
| Ghostty | macOS, Linux | The one and only terminal app. Fast, featureful, often updated, good-looking. No need to look anywhere else. |
| Little Snitch | macOS | Firewall you can install on your Mac. The main thing is that it has lists of known trackers, and it blocks those at the system level. You can also allow/deny manually of course. The Window version of this would be NetLimiter. |
| IINA | macOS | The media player for macOS. Basically a more “beautiful” and easy to use version of mpv, which is the actual goat player. |
| AlDente | macOS | Advanced battery manager for macOS with a ton of functionality, graphs, etc. Good for battery health (I think). |
| Overcast | macOS, iOS, Web | My favorite podcast player. I’ve been using it for 10+ years. Its best feature is the “smart silence” one, where it automatically speeds up small silences smoothly as you listen. Apparently, it saved me over 80 hours so far just from those small optimizations. |
| Figma | Web | Need I say anything else? |
Things I use often
| Name | Platform | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Taskbar | macOS | Windows-style taskbar for macOS. It always stays open at the bottom, just like the Windows taskbar. I find it most useful for work, where I have tons of tabs. |
| WizTree | Windows | Fast disk usage analyzer. Great to understand what’s taking up space. |
| PearCleaner | macOS | Whenever you delete an application, it pops up helping you delete that app’s stray files. |
| Neovim | All | The text editor. Learning Vim keybindings will change you. Pair it with LazyVim and you’re golden. |
| Google Antigravity | All | AI code editor with generous limits (more generous and capable than Cursor’s free tier in my opinion.) |
| btop | macOS, Linux | The coolest “task manager” / “resource usage viewer” for the terminal. |
| Screen Studio | macOS | Fancy screen recorder for the Mac. |
| Amphetamine | macOS | Keeps your screen and Mac awake when you need it. |
| Calibre | All | Sadly the best book management software there is. Great to also send your ebooks to your reader, etc. |
| Reeder | macOS, iOS | The best RSS reader for the Apple ecosystem. |
| Raindrop.io | All | The best bookmark collection software around. |
Everything else (still great stuff!)
| Name | Platform | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CloudMounter | macOS, Windows | Lets you mount remote storage locations to your computer as if they were a native part of your file system. For example, I have a local FTP ‘server’ at home I connect to using this. |
| Rufus | Windows | The most stable way to create bootable USBs from Windows. |
| caligula | Linux | … and the same for Linux. |
| Aerospace | macOS | A tiling window manager for the Mac. Basically, it automatically tiles windows for you as you open them. It takes a while to get used to but for some people it can be a powerful way to organize your windows. |
| Komorebi | Windows | … and the same for Windows. |
| SunVox | All | Synthesizer + tracker to make music. Uses an interesting and innovative interface. |
| hw-probe | Linux | If you’re thinking of switching to Linux, it’s important to know whether or not your hardware is supported by the kernel. So, burn a Linux .iso into a USB and run this software from there. It will tell you if there’s something not supported. It’ll save you headaches later. |
| SketchyBar | macOS | A completely customizable and scriptable menu bar for the Mac. Some programming/tinkering experience recommended. |
| Cog | macOS | Free, open source, and lightweight music player for the Mac. For more basic needs, just use mpv or IINA though. |
| JankyBorders | macOS | Adds a border around the currently active window. That’s it. (minimal programming/tinkering experience required) |
| BGB Game Boy Debugging Emulator | Windows | Game Boy (Color) emulator focusing for those who are making games for it. |
| Foliate | Linux | An ebook reader for Linux that looks and works great. |
| Ollama | All | Probably the best and easiest way to run LLMs locally. |
| Kanshi | Linux | It detects when monitors are plugged in/out and helps you output to them (only useful if you’re using some esoteric window manager) |
| LocalSend | All, Web | ”AirDrop” for all devices. There’s also PairDrop which looks nice. |
| termscp | macOS, Linux | Connect to ftp servers from the terminal. |
Browser Extensions
| Name | Browser Support | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Auto Tab Discard | Chromium + Firefox | Either you have a computer with a ton of RAM, or you have Auto Tab Discard. |
| Bypass Paywalls Clean | Chromium + Firefox | … as the name says. |
| Control Panel for YouTube | Control your entire YouTube experience. Hide stuff like Shorts. | |
| Dark Reader | All | Essential to get dark mode for those few websites that don’t have it. |
| DeArrow | All | It replaces YouTube thumbnails and titles with less clickbaity ones. It improved my YouTube experience greatly, I can’t do without it anymore. |
| Hover Zoom+ | Absolutely essential, hover over any image to see it larger. To me this is basic browser functionality. | |
| Minimal Theme for Twitter | Default Twitter is super cluttered. This helps a lot. I don’t use Twitter/X without it. | |
| Return YouTube Dislike | As the title says. Essential. | |
| SponsorBlock | All | Another essential by Ajay. It automatically skips sponsored sections in YouTube videos. Can’t live without it. |
| The Camelizer | See price history for items on Amazon, and get notified when it goes above/below a certain threshold. | |
| uBlock Origin | Firefox | Need I say anything else? The Internet is literally unusable without this. The Chrome version has been nerfed to comply with Google’s requirements. (and this is why you should use Firefox) |
Things I haven’t tried yet but want to (backlog)
| Name | Platform | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Nala | Linux (Debian-based distros) | A front-end for the apt package manager. |
| LazyGit | All | |
| HammerSpoon | macOS | |
| Emacs Plus brew formula | macOS | Apparently the best way to install Emacs on the Mac. |
| Fizzy | Web | Smart kanban board. Open source. |