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Christian Heilmann
Christian Heilmann

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The 10 tools I install on every new Mac I get

I am currently on a company trip with my brand new MacBook and here are the things I always install first to get started:

  • Homebrew - makes installing of low level stuff a breeze (free)
  • Node/NPM - many things rely on it (free)
  • Dropbox - still be best way to store and share content amongst machines, both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive drive me nuts with their file permission nonsense (paid)
  • VLC - plays everything, has excellent keyboard shortcuts and can in a pinch even record screens for you (free)
  • VS Code - coders gotta edit (free)
  • GitHub Desktop - much, much easier than installing and setting up Git yourself (free)
  • ImageOptim - file resizing and optimising images, even on the command line (free)
  • FFMPEG - converts anything to anything on the command line (free)
  • Handbrake - batch conversion of videos made easy (free)
  • Screenflow - my go-to screen recording and video editing tool (paid)

Other essentials are a VPN (I use Mullvad and ProtonVPN), but that's about it.

Photo by iMattSmart on Unsplash

Top comments (11)

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fyodorio profile image
Fyodor

Don't you use something like Alfred or Raycast?

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codepo8 profile image
Christian Heilmann

No, I'm OK with spotlight

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audioboxer217 profile image
Scott Eppler

I'm a fan of Raycast! :)

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irondsd profile image
Konstantin Mednikov

And also Script Kit. You can do a lot of really cool stuff with it if you can write typescript code.

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wraith profile image
Jake Lundberg

Raycast is so great! I love having such quick and convenient access to ChatGPT (as well as other plugins).

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manuartero profile image
Manuel Artero Anguita 🟨

Saved 👌

My 2 cents (maybe you use some alternatives to these?)

  • jumpcut: clipboard manager (free)
  • spectacles: resize and move windows using shortcuts (free)
  • iterm2: terminal (free)
  • Spotify (usually hits my brand new laptop before the terminal xD)
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codepo8 profile image
Christian Heilmann

spotify is on my TV and running in the background or on my phone :)

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zakriya7hashmi profile image
Zakaria Hashmi

Add docker desktop to it

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codepo8 profile image
Christian Heilmann

As I don't use it, I won't :)

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vuong profile image
vuong ⛈️

OrbStack is the one if you feel Docker is too slow and heavy on local env.

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evergrowingdev profile image
Cherlock Code 🔎

Thanks great tools! I've bookmarked this to remind myself to add some of these to devpages.io, a directory I built for finding developer tools and resources 🙂

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