This is a cheap post to share some of the apps (macos, sorry Windows users) that I use on a fairly regular basis and think some of you might not have heard of before (whilst still being useful).
Aliento
For some reason macos, for quite a number of versions has made it really hard to dismiss notifications (heaven forbid you repeatedly flash a raspberry pi pico). The hot target is horrible and there's many notifications that don't bundle together (the unmounted drive springs to mind).
Aliento give me a single key binding that swiped all notifications away. A daily use for me.
Muzzle
Speaking of notifications, if you've ever given or seen a talk or video call when a distracting notification appears then this the app to solve it.
It's a toggle that muzzles your notifications. Once turned off, they'll all pile in - and you can review or use Aliento.
Shottr
I'm sure most of us have our goto screenshot tool. I've been using Shottr for quite a few years now. The base functionality is good, but what it adds is a quick way to draw, point, annotate and even OCR screenshots.
One extra little feature I like is that I can then drag the screenshot to where I want to share and then the file is never saved (my screenshot folder is 'uuuge already!).
VoiceInk
As big as my phone is, I find myself dictating more and more (somewhere last year the voice recognition had a massive step change improvement).
Lately I'd been looking for a suitable voice to text on my desktop and laptop but ideally with the processing done on machine (rather than needing to wait for the roundtrip to some random server).
I use VoiceInk multiple times a day. Both for push-to-talk and for much longer sentences.
There's options to download different models, but I've found the Apple native STT to be suitable and usually the quickest (even though one machine is on Somona and the other is running Tahoe).
KeyboardCleanTool
It helps you do the thing it says. Though it doesn't clean your keyboard, it does trap all key presses so you're not randomly posting emails containing keyboard mashing.
Karabiner-Elements
This one has been installed on my machine(s) for years. It's one of those apps that sit in the background, do the work, and make things just a little bit more to your liking.
Primarily it's a key binding app. In my case, I wanted to swap my ctrl and alt keys, but only when using a specific keyboard. This does the job.
It also allows me to add much more complicated bindings (which historically have been tricky, but LLMs are pretty good at generating these if you need them too).
Better mouse
I've got a Logi MX (something) mouse. It's very fancy, and has more buttons than camo trousers have pockets.
Earlier this year, Logitech pushed a server change that somehow (I really don't understand how or why) borked the Logi mice/mouses(?!).
With that I immediately sourced an alternative that didn't bind my physical device to a cloud server 🤦
BetterMouse is that for me. Tonnes of configuration, specifically I can bind the buttons to perform custom tasks depending on the focused application.
What also stood out for me, the UI for finding the right button (that I wanted to bind) was much easier than the existing Logitech software.
Sim Daltonism
I can't remember quite when I first installed this app, but it's got to be at least a decade.
It's a window that sits above all else, and let's me quickly cycle through different types of colour blindness.
I know that some of the browser dev tools included this, but I found a standalone app the simplest (since it can also see beyond the browser, such as mock ups in Photoshop or Sketch and the likes).
It's an app they I always reach for once the colour system is in place for the website I'm working on.
Tahoe Electron Detector
Let me say this first: do not, if possible, upgrade to Tahoe. It's a total mess.
Still, if you unwittingly upgraded like I did, you might find that software becomes somewhat sluggish. For me I noticed hover effects in Firefox was firing log after I had left that target.
The issue is related (from what I understand) to some private libraries being used by Electron apps. A full reboot would resolve the issue until it raised its ugly head again.
So Tahoe Electron Detector checks your installed apps, and tells you which haven't been upgraded away from this particular bug.
Once I know what the list looked like it was easy for me to stop using those apps (Dropbox and Discord at the time, and I could use the web alternatives), and the sluggish problem went away.
Bartender
This is probably one of the most popular apps I'm listing, so I suspect many of you have already heard of it. Hopefully it helps a few of you though.
Bartender let's me pick and choose which menubar icons are visible, and which are tucked away. There's also a rule system that lets you show particular menubar icons depending on conditions (such as battery level or WiFi connection).
There are a few issues that I have with the latest edition (but are primarily due to macos rather than Bartender itself): there's a couple of system menubar icons you can't hide (like the notification centre), and I've found that some menubar apps don't open and stay open when Bartender is running (NordVPN being one of those apps).
There's many other apps I use, but they're much more common place. There's also apps that are very cool (notist) that I just can't make into a habit.
On that note, I'd love to read your favourites that might be hidden gems.