Alfred
It is fast, the first time I used it felt like a jumpscare. Files are searched at “speed of type”. And it has a single-purchase license for the Pro version.
Arc
I don’t love where this company is going, but the app still works well enough for me to prefer it to Safari.
Bear
It’s surprisingly difficult to make a good markdown editor. Bear does it by focusing only on the Apple ecosystem, and it does it very, very well.
Bike
Everyone needs an outliner, Bike is the nicest one out there.
Bitwarden
Open-source password manager.
Garageband
Someday I will learn to use an proper DAW, until then I will tap and swipe tracks in place on my iPad.
iTerm
Good terminal emulator.
The cool system stats graphics were created with neofetch.
Klokki
The free version of the more powerful time-tracker Klokki, but with all the excellent design choices and good-enough core functionality.
Marginalia
Independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content. It’s not one of those fancy LLM-based search interfaces, this an actual, honest-to-goodness, search engine. It has indexed a numch of small, relatively obscure sites, stepping in where Google and SEO failed.
Sitesucker
Mac app that automatically downloads websites from the Internet. Just enter a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), press return, and SiteSucker can download an entire website. This includes webpages, images, files, style sheets, etc.
I bought it because I wanted to browse throught Shalizi’s notebooks on the train. If you want it for the purposes of downloading a site and making a backup, I recommend using Transmit to connect to Backblaze’s cheap cloud backup storage.
It even has a “URL Constraint” setting to download one section of a site, so I could download just the /notebooks section of the site.
Stats
Menu bar app for keeping an eye on system stats, is an open-source alternative to iStats.
Sublime Text
I work on all my static sites here, it’s just much nicer to be writing markup here than a full IDE.
Telegram
Easily the best-designed messaging app.
tldraw
The nicest canvas app on the web.