If you recently bought a new Mac and are looking for ways to make macOS and its apps the way you use your computer, don’t worry: there are utilities and applications available that customize the system Apple and show that not everything is as closed as often thought. Let’s see some of the most popular and useful ones.
Safari apps and extensions to personalize your macOS experience
- Nice is a utility that puts your Mac’s calendar in the menu bar so it’s easily searchable. It can be customized and has a dark theme. You can download it for free from its official website, although the developers accept donations as a tip.
- Tomito is another free app to put a Pomodoro timer on that same macOS menu bar. You can download it from the Mac App Store.
- VLC Media Player it’s a video player that doesn’t need much introduction. Its installation is practically mandatory on all Macs so that macOS has no problem playing any video format. You can download it for free from its official website.
-
If you think Spotlight is not as powerful as it should be, you can choose to install Alfred. This alternative search engine offers you access to all corners of macOS, whatever it is, from its text field. You can download it for free from the official website, although to use all its functions you have to pay a fee of 29 pounds.
- great agent is a Safari extension responsible for avoiding annoying cookie notices that appear on web pages due to European legislation. Additionally, you can also block cookies that may monitor your online activity. It’s free and you can download it from the Mac App Store.
- Search by keyword is the extension that intensive browser users have been waiting for in Safari for a long time: it allows us to search various services using keywords. It can be downloaded completely free from the Mac App Store.
-
Do you still need to unzip files in RAR, 7Z, or other formats beyond ZIP? Calm, The unarchiver It is a tool capable of decompressing the format you put in it. You can download it for free from the developer’s official website.
- App Cleaner is one of the utilities I install the most on my clients’ Macs. This is a small application that takes care of uninstalling macOS applications, deleting all their configuration files and caches, so that the system is clean and its performance remains optimal in the long term. It is also free to download from the developer’s official website.
- Amphetamine is a utility that allows you to choose an application from the menu bar. Once you do this, your Mac will not go to sleep while this application is open. Simple and efficient. You can download this utility for free from the Mac App Store.
- Rectangle is a utility for macOS that helps you easily organize your application windows. Open source and free, you can get it from its official website.
-
If you are one of those who depend a lot on the clipboard, Pastry can be useful to you. This utility takes care of backing up the last 1,000 items you copy to the macOS clipboard, ensuring that you won’t lose any information if you use the CMD+C and CMD+V keys a lot. You can download it for free from the Mac App Store, but you must subscribe (14.99 dollars per year) to be able to use all its functions.
-
We end up Bartender, an application that groups menu bar icons and simplifies them by being able to hide them. Perfect if you rely on a lot of these icons and have a MacBook Pro with notch which replaces some of the macOS top bar space. Your license costs 16.56 dollars.
