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Ankur Biswas
Ankur Biswas

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Productivity tools for your MacBook

Hey guys, I'm back with another post where I'll be listing down some productivity tools for your MacBook which you may or may not know about. This list of tools has been listed down in alphabetical order. Without any further delay let's get started 🏃🏻‍♂️

Alfred

Alfred is an award-winning app which boosts efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more. Search your Mac and the web, and be more productive with custom actions to control your Mac.

BetterTouchTool

A great, feature-packed app that allows you to configure many gestures for your Magic Mouse, Macbook Trackpad, Magic Trackpad and also Mouse Gestures for normal mice.

Choosy

UI, URL API and a browser extension set for managing rules where and how to open links. It can prompt you to select from the browsers on your Mac, so you can decide which browser is right for a particular link.

Karabiner

Powerful and stable keyboard customizer for OS X.

Keyboard Maestro

Automate routine actions based on triggers from keyboard, menu, location, added devices, and more.

Keytty

App to keep your hands on the keyboard. Move, click, scroll, drag and more with a few strokes.

Mos

A simple tool can offer the smooth scrolling and reverse the mouse scrolling direction on your Mac.

OmniPlan

The best way to visualize, maintain and simplify your projects. Project Management made easy.

Qbserve

Time tracking automation: freelance project tracking, timesheets, invoicing & real-time productivity feedback.

SensibleSideButtons

Use the side buttons on your mouse to move forward and backward in many apps, like in Windows.

Timing

Automatic time and productivity tracking for Mac. Helps you stay on track with your work and ensures no billable hours get lost if you are billing hourly.

Trello

A collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards.

Ukelele

Unicode Keyboard Layout Editor.

That's it for this list guys. Hope you find it useful. If you like this post, then don't forget to share this with your friends and if you find apps you haven't heard before then don't forget to mention that with me on the comments below.

Top comments (19)

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anndd profile image
Anna Su** • Edited

This list isn't complete without Magnet: itunes.apple.com/pl/app/magnet/id4...

It's crazy that Mac doesn't allow you to arrange windows properly and we need third-party tools for that.

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jamesthomson profile image
James Thomson

But, but, Launchpad and Mission Control and all the other useless fluff Apple adds with each new release 🙄 I wish Apple had a power user/developer user version. I mean, why can't we do simple things like duplicate tabs in Finder ffs??

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anndd profile image
Anna Su**

Well, it has a power user version - it's called terminal :) But talking of "fluff" - is anyone here using those icon stacks or other groundbreaking features from the latest release?

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wtaylor45 profile image
Will Taylor

Dark mode is the ultimate power use feature and I'm only kind of kidding

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jamesthomson profile image
James Thomson

Haha. Yes, Terminal (iTerm2, which really should be on this list come to think of it) is a must. No, never use stacks or dark mode - I'd maybe use this if it actually made everything dark. Don't see the point when it doesn't make everything dark (Chrome, Slack, etc.). I do use Spaces though - 1 space for Sublime (swipe right), 1 for Trello (swipe left), 1 for Chrome and everything else (default, middle space)

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anndd profile image
Anna Su**

iTerm2 looks nice, thanks for the tip!

Spaces seem useful, but I somehow can't get used to them. I wish they had separate desktops and dockers.

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genta profile image
Fabio Russo

Magnet is very cool... luckily it’s less than 2€...

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iankurbiswas profile image
Ankur Biswas

Yeah, you're right 😁

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josef profile image
Josef Aidt

Don't forget Spectacle!

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iankurbiswas profile image
Ankur Biswas

Oh yes! You're right.

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jefrypozo profile image
Jefry Pozo

I recommend SlowQuitApps: github.com/dteoh/SlowQuitApps it shows a loading bar when you hit Command + Q, giving you time to think if you really want to close the app.

Another mention goes to Marta marta.yanex.org/, an alternative to Finder or TotalCommander.
For the command line I'd recommend mac-cli or m-cli for doing tasks with the console like restarting, locking, changing volume and so on.

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j23schoen profile image
Justin Schoen

thank you for mos! I use a separate mouse when working and I've missed the smooth scrolling that the Apple track pad provides.

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iankurbiswas profile image
Ankur Biswas

Glad you liked it

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olivier32621338 profile image
Olivier Chauvin

Loved the list! Haven't seen many of these software before but I'll definitely give them a try.
Not much of a fan of Trello though. It's a bit pricey when it comes to using all of their features, which seems to be a bit much. Currently using a free software called Quire, which is basically the free version of Trello. Highly recommend if you're on a budget and looking for a good task management software.

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Royce Cayden

Great list! Trello is my personal favourite. Would also recommend start.me as a starting point for your browser(s). It helps organise bookmarks, notes, feeds etc and saves me a ton of time.

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gwllmnn profile image
Grégoire Willmann

Great list thanks

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iankurbiswas profile image
Ankur Biswas

Glad you liked it

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julia_moskaliuk profile image
Julia Moskaliuk

I'd like to add TMetric to this list, it's worthy tool - tmetric.com/
App for those who is in search of time tracker, task and project management tool.

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iris_shelley_db9079c4f734 profile image
Iris Shelley

Another tool you can try is kanbantool.com/. It's a task management tool that's available for Macs.