iOS Apple Apps You Can't Live Without?

Hey everyone, what are your must have apps? Media players, productivity, image editors and so on. Thanks!

(We moved this to our lounge which is for off topic discussions.)

1. Mac Office

2. Logos

3. Carbon Copy Cloner

4. Just Checking

5. Path Finder

And many more.....

Gosh Jason, interesting question, but answers tend to reflect personal/professional/hobby interests.

Apps that are a great help to me:

1Password
TextExpander
PDFpenPro
DriveDx
Get Lyrical & BitPerfect (music)
Office for Mac
Affinity (photography)
Dropbox
OsiriX MD (professional)
EasyFind and Find Any File (vastly better than Spotlight, I think)
Toast Titanium (audio/data/video burn to CD/DVD)
SuperDuper! (SD!) - cloning software
Audio Hijack

More than enough to be going on with

Ian

Here are my third party apps;

Affinity Designer
AppCleaner
DriveDX
EtreCheck
Handbrake
Malwarebytes for Mac
Twitter
VLC

Finder
Dave's Remember?
Web Browser

Wow! You have opened Pandora's Box now. I have to go through everybody else's posts to avoid duplication as there are many that I use myself but to add to the list;
Smart Converter Pro 2 (batch media converter)
Snapshot Editor
Fantastical (a better calendar)
uTorrent
iMazing
Enpass (password manager)
VLC (a must have)

Thats just the stuff I have on my dock.

Others are;

Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro
OnyX
Yoink
Media Human Audio Converter
Google photos Backup.

Jason Samuelson said:

Hey everyone, what are your must have apps? Media players, productivity, image editors and so on. Thanks!

Click to expand...

I'm not sure that you "must have" anything, other than what you might require for your specific needs.

That said, there is a lot of stuff that is either free, or is very inexpensive, that is very much worth having, or at least checking out. Here are a few programs that I find really useful:

EasyEnvelopes ($10)
ambrosiasw/utilities/easyenvelopes-mac/ (bad link removed)
(The easiest, quickest and most fun way to address and print an envelope.)

Growly Notes (free)
http://growlybird.com/GrowlyBird/Notes.html
(A really nice program for keeping notes, snippets from Web sites, etc. If you work on big projects and need to keep all of your research/thoughts/citations in one place, this is it. It has a garish default interface, but in Prefs there is an option to change to a very Mac-like interface. Some prefer Evernote, but this program isn't Web-based, so it's more private. In very recent versions of the MacOS, Apple's Notes has evolved to do much of the same things.)

WordService (free)
http://www.devontechnologies.com/download/products.html
(Allows you to instantly do a number of text clean up chores without having to switch applications. Reformat text paragraphs, clean up tabs, quotes, line endings, change case. etc. Also allows you to highlight a Web address in a text document and instantly go to it in your browser.)

VLC (free)
Official download of VLC media player, the best Open Source player - VideoLAN
(Allows you to play just about any video format, including those that QuickTime Player can't handle.)

Spotify (free/pay)
Listening is everything
(Find just about any music and play it on your Mac, legally. Doesn't download songs; it's more like a radio by-request. The free version has ads that are easily ignored.)

Libre Office (free)
Home | LibreOffice - Free Office Suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft
(A Microsoft Office clone. Compatible with Office files and file formats. Also can open and edit WordPerfect files.)

GrowlyWrite (free)
Growly Write
(If you want a word processor that is more advanced than TextEdit, but less complex than Word or LibreOffice, this one might be what you are looking for.)

KoalaCalc (free)
Macropod Software - ODLog
(A really nice calculator. Much more advanced than the one that comes with your Mac. Includes tape and lots of conversions.)

FormulatePro (free)
Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.
(Allows you to fill in PDF forms on-screen and print them. Even locked ones! The latest version of Preview can do most of what Formulate can do, and more, but Formulate is really good at what it does, and makes it easier. )

PaintBrush (free)
Paintbrush | Home
(Basic painting program. Reminiscent of MacPaint or Microsoft Paint. There are free painting programs for the Mac that are more sophisticated. But this one won't overwhelm anyone. Recent versions of Preview have similar functionality, though it is well hidden.)

Gimp (free)
GIMP - Downloads
GIMP
(An advanced photo retouching, image composition and image authoring program, similar to Photoshop.)

DrawBerry (free)
DrawBerry
(Vector drawing program. Includes layers and other really nice features.)

EasyFind (free)
http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html
(Spotlight doesn't look everywhere on your hard drive for things. It's designed for speed, and to keep you away from things that might get you in trouble. EasyFind looks *everywhere* on your Mac. It can even look for invisible files.)

MalwareBytes (free)
Mac Antivirus | Malwarebytes Antivirus for Mac | Malwarebytes
(Looks for and eliminates all known adware. Will also remove some malware, but this isn’t a comprehensive solution for dealing with malware.)

Crypt3 (free)
‎Crypt3
http://dekorte.com/projects/shareware/Crypt
(Instantly encrypt and password protect your files. Open them with a double-click. Not even the FBI can break this encryption. Much of the same functionality is in Apple’s Disk Utility...this is easier to use.)

YASU (free)
yasuformac (bad link removed)
(Most of the routine maintenance that you need to do on your Macintosh, all in one place. Unlike other similar utilities, this one is easy to use and it doesn’t include a bunch of confusing and possibly dangerous options that you don't need.)

BlueGriffon (free, some extended features are only available if you pay for them, but none of them are terribly important)
http://bluegriffon.org/
WYSIWYG Web site creation program (there is also a built-in text editor if you choose to work with the raw HTML, and it helps you by allowing you to add HTML commands with one click), easy to use (if you know how to use a word processor you will take to this program quickly), and full featured. It's great for beginners and experienced Web designers alike.
Free video tutorial series to learn to use BlueGriffon:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC06B5890CFFF491C

Desktop Icon Manager - DIM (free)
www.parker9.com- Desktop Icon Manager
(A one trick pony, but a valuable one. It’s way too easy to accidently set the “View” for your desktop to something that re-arranges everything with no way to get back. With one click, DIM puts your desktop icons right back where they were when you last saved their arrangment.)

VideoLAN Client - VLC (free)
Official Download of VLC media player for Mac OS X - VideoLAN
(A Swiss Army Knife for playing any and every video format file.)

SuperDuper! (free/$28)
SuperDuper!
(This program creates a backup of your main hard drive onto another hard drive; a perfect, bootable clone. SuperDuper is dead reliable and super-easy to use. And it's fast too! Some folks prefer Carbon Copy Cloner, but I've had problems with CCC. SuperDuper, combined with an inexpensive external hard drive, can, and probably will, save your bacon when your hard drive fails.)

SpamSieve ($30)
SpamSieve: Easy-to-use Mac spam filter for Apple Mail, Outlook, Airmail, MailMate, and more
(The built-in anti-spam filtering in most e-mail programs doesn't work very well. You can waste an awful lot of time dealing with spam each day. SpamSieve does an almost magical job of sorting spam into its own folder to be looked at and erased at your leisure.)

Wow, thanks everyone for replying! Some of all listed above I already have installed, but the majority of apps is new for me. Thanks

] forgot to mention App Trap which is actually a utility. Gets rid of the leftovers from uninstalled (trashed) apps. Just don't get rid of the leftovers of updated apps.
And Clean, removes everything from your desktop except starred items every 24 hrs and places them in a dated folder.

A quick update.

Growly Notes is no longer free, it is now $5, and they have changed the URL for it:

http://growlybird.com/notes/index.html

wow.... what a wonderful list of apps tho bit outdated.

i just realized there is an app in the App Store for Mac forums which I will install and use instead of going to Safari each time.
A few of the apps listed I have an use regularly ...VLC, super Duper, malwarebytes free. some of the others sound interesting and I'll look into.

I have a question though about apps in the App Store are they all a safe download? and third party ones are from safe original sites? correct? I'm sure the answer is yes but I'll ask anyway.

and it seems some are only for mobile devices!

and bottom line... most of the time I just open up my Safari and use the shortcut that I have used for whatever function I want to do.
There are so many apps in the App Store.

What really is the benefit to using an app as opposed to the way I access apps and sites?
never understood that! Because apps do take up space I am sure!

does appTrap get rid of more left over files from trashed apps than App Cleaner does... which is what I have been using.

app trap developed no longer supporting this.

would also be interested in free app that allow you to fill in PDF docs..." formulatePro" not in App Store..cannot find developer safe site.

and then be able to encrypt it to send to recipient... have installed crypt3 and will try it out at some point. guess recipient would need pw to open!

have downloaded app from App Store -- easy find dup photos... I have a few drives with copies and more copies of probably the same photo. humungous task to clear out dups. only wonder HOW app determines what is dup.. certainly not by name as mine have varying names.
looking forward to testing that out.
online....could not find HOW it determines what is duplicated.

lori5060 said:

wow.... what a wonderful list of apps tho bit outdated.

Click to expand...

This discussion is several years old. Since then I've published this Web site:

Free and Low Cost Macintosh Software

That is up to date and which lists a lot of stuff that you might find very useful.

lori5060 said:

I have a question though about apps in the App Store are they all a safe download? and third party ones are from safe original sites? correct? I'm sure the answer is yes but I'll ask anyway.

Click to expand...

Everything in the Mac App Store has been vetted by Apple, so it should be perfectly safe. Stuff that you get directly from the developer will ordinarily be perfectly safe. Stuff that you get from open source sites is generally perfectly safe. Stuff from general downloading sites has become more and more iffy...some now include adware to make money.

Formulate can be downloaded from:

FormulatePro (free)
http://code.google.com/p/formulatepro/
That is the only site you can download it from. It's now open source. It is perfectly safe.
It won't run under Catalina and there will be no update. If you want a substitute, you will have to consider something commercial, such as PDFpen.

Many of us have eschewed MalwareBytes and instead now use:

DetectX (free)
https://sqwarq.com/detectx/

You can read old discussions here for why.

Many of use recommend against the use of apps that seek out and remove duplicates or otherwise act as "cleaning apps." Again, you can read old discussions for why.

thnx randy... i realized info on these apps was old but food for thought! many i already have and use thanks to tips from this forum.

for formulate pro...i run mojave I will have to stay with that because I have a couple of programs i purchased which will not run on Catalina and higher.

rarely, but in can be important to protect the info entered on a PDF document.

Has anyone used crypt 3 to encrypted any personal files?

most interesting about malware bites (i only use free version) and I will definitely check into the alternative.. detectx... ill go back and read more on malware bites.
what is difference using detecx swift.

any comments on easy duplicate photo finder app?

i sort of guessed apps in app store were safe but so nice to have that confirmed.
open source sites are safe also... good to know!

any other apps, i try my best to find developers site... not always easy!

just viewed your link to updated apps.... wow I feel like I'm in a candy store! One does get stuck in a rut using the same app when there are other new ones out there that could be much better. I will look into some of them and see if I change my way of doing things To make things easier for me.

lori5060 said:

Has anyone used crypt 3 to encrypted any personal files?

Click to expand...

Yes, I have and it’s a great little app. It was suggested by Randy B. Singer.

Ian

IWT said:

Yes, I have and it’s a great little app. It was suggested by Randy B. Singer.

Ian

Click to expand...

thanks ian.... Good to know someone is using it and likes it. I might have to send a document in an email soon and was wondering if there was someway I could protect it. I haven't looked at how this app works yet....how does recipient open if it is encrypted?

As far as I know - at least the way I use it, it is for encrypting and holding data on your Mac.

Sending encrypted emails is a different matter altogether. Worth googling for all the options and means available.

Of course, depending on the nature of the file or document, you could just create a PDF, and during the process of doing that encrypt it and password protect it. Then telephone or otherwise communicate the password to the recipient. You can do this on your Mac without recourse to any third party.

Ian

ok thnx ian... i wondered bout that.
I password protect some of my word documents but nothing else.
tho encrypting folders wuld be good too

Randy B. Singer said:

This discussion is several years old. Since then I've published this Web site:

Free and Low Cost Macintosh Software

Free Macintosh Software!

That is up to date and which lists a lot of stuff that you might find very useful.

Click to expand...

I'd like to suggest adding Seashore to your list. It's a free graphics editor based on Gimp. It's not as full-featured as Gimp is, but has all the basic tools available; is quite easy to learn to use for beginners; and great for basic needs. It's now distributed through the App Store.