Slant is powered by a community that helps you make informed decisions. Tell us what you’re passionate about to get your personalized feed and help others. The best change of DaisyDisk 3 is the ⌘R shortcut, which allows you to quickly rescan a folder without rescanning the entire disk. This is perfect if you, say, need to clean up the Downloads or Desktop folders (you know you do) but don’t want to wait for those extra 40 seconds to scan your Mac HD again.
I've owned a lot of Macs in my day, and I've gotten into a pretty comfortable rhythm when it comes to setting up new ones. When I got my new 21-inch Retina iMac, however, I decided to step outside my familiar box and ask my iMore and Mobile Nations colleagues what they consider must-have software on their computers.
Unsurprisingly, our lists overlapped quite a bit, but I also came away with a few exciting new apps to try. Here are our 10 favorite apps that every Mac user should own.
Dropbox
If you want to back up your files, share them with friends, collaborate with them, and access files across all your devices, Dropbox is an absolute no-brainer. Setting up a Dropbox account is simple: Once you install the app and sign up for the service, it creates a private Dropbox folder for you and your files. Anything you put in that folder gets automatically uploaded to Dropbox's encrypted servers when there's an internet connection; work on a file inside your Dropbox, and it will save changes automatically. You'll get 2GB of online storage space free, and can upgrade your space to a whopping 1TB for $10/month. Best of all, your Dropbox folder also saves locally to your Mac, so when you're offline, you can still access and change those files and it will re-sync with the server when you return online.
Your Twitter client of choice
Twitter may be weathering some rough seas at present, but it's still a must-have app for myself and my co-workers at Mobile Nations. It's the fastest way to keep in touch with our friends and colleagues, track news stories, respond to readers, and share the latest adorable BB-8 option.
For me, there's only one option for Twitter on the desktop: Tweetbot, Tapbots's fanastically quirky Twitter app. Tapbots also offers an iOS version of Tweetbot, and both versions sync with each other, so you can browse on your iPhone or iPad and switch to your Mac without losing a beat. Twitterrific's Mac client is also pretty great, and offers a slightly different style for your tweet viewing experience. If you don't have the cash to spend on a Twitter app, there's also always Twitter's official Mac client, but it's not nearly as full-featured as Tweetbot or Twitterrific.
3. Google Chrome
I have a very fond spot in my heart for Apple's web browser, Safari, but it never hurts to have alternative options on your plate. And when it comes to alternatives, Google Chrome tops the list. The Alphabet company's browser syncs with your Google account and offers access to a number of different plugins, and it's traditionally run Google Hangouts far better for me than Safari.
And, as an added bonus: It comes with a local Flash install, so you never have to sully Safari with Flash if you don't want to.
4. Fantastical 2
The default Calendar app isn't bad, but if you need to take charge of your calendaring on your Mac you want the best in the business. Fantastical has pretty much everything you'd want in a high-powered calendar client: A shortcut to your calendar in your toolbar, a beautiful, easy-to-read layout, support for reminders, natural language support, time and geofenced-based alerts, time zone support, and customized calendar views. Of all Fantastical's great features, it's the last one that I use the most — this lets me group all my work calendars and my personal calendars on separate views, so I don't have to see 10 events per day.
Gert hack auto tuning free. Best of all, Fantastical offers a 21-day free trial, so you can give it a test-drive to see if it fits for your workflow.
5. 1Password
You need a password manager on your Mac. You do. The days of remembering all your passwords or using one password for everything are gone: It's simply not smart or safe to do these things, and you put your financial and personal security at risk. Luckily, encrypted programs like 1Password exist to store all your hard-to-remember passwords in one place. You need only remember one master password to unlock your vault; inside your vault, you can keep passwords for sites, credit card information, passport numbers, and more. Add a simple extension to Safari or Chrome, and you can auto-fill those passwords right into your web browser when you come across the appropriate site.
I resisted 1Password for a long time, and last year, I finally took the plunge. I'm so glad I did: It got me off my stubborn 'I can remember 40 different 8-character passwords' high horse, and it saved my bacon when I had my passport card stolen and had to find the ID number to report it missing.
6. DaisyDisk
When you're setting up a new Mac, you almost never worry about disk space: A brand new hard drive feels like an opportunity for neverending file storage. But as time goes on, preference files and backups can fill your drive before you know it. DaisyDisk helps track down disk eating offenders and purge them from your Mac without a second thought. I've been using the app for four years since I stumbled upon it back in my Macworld days, and it's the easiest app I've ever used for eliminating unnecessary files. I love the way DaisyDisk color-codes your files for easier viewing, and you can easily view the offending files directly with a single mouse click.
7. Bartender
As you start to add apps and utilities to your Mac, you may notice an ever-increasing amount of tiny icons popping up in your right-side menu bar. While these can be super-useful shortcuts (as with Fantastical), too many of them can make your toolbar cluttered and hard to read. Enter Bartender: The utility lets you rearrange menu bar icons in the order that most suits you, and lets you hide any unnecessary icons within Bartender's More button. The app is a life-saver on my 11-inch MacBook Air: Without it, I'd have enough icons to run into my left-side menu bar.
8. Photo-editing software
When it comes to photo editing, everyone has their preferences and their favorites. Adobe Photoshop was king of my Mac's image mountain for a very long time before I switched to Pixelmator; others at Mobile Nations have a fond spot for Acorn.
Which app appeals to you will largely depend on what you require of your image editing software. Photoshop is one of the largest, most full-featured, and best image-editors out there — but it can be overkill if you're just trying to repair some dark spots or edit your brightness; Acorn is great if you need something like Photoshop without the full power of Photoshop. I like Pixelmator for its easy-to-use Repair brush, color correction tools, and Handoff support between iOS and Mac.
9. TextWrangler
Your Mac offers two great text editors for rich text: TextEdit, and iWork's Pages. But if you ever want to write in plain text (no bold or italics) or code, Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler will keep you comfy. TextWrangler is, in some ways, BBEdit Lite: It lets you edit plain text easily, but doesn't offer many of the advanced features BBEdit boasts. If you're a pro, BBEdit's what you want; for everyone else, TextWrangler is a great free accessory to have in your app arsenal.
10. Augment with your honorable mentions
I can't do any top ten list without mentioning some apps that almost made my list.
- If you need an excellent calculator app beyond what the standard Calculator app can offer you, you should check out PCalc ($9.99).
- If you need to record audio, you can't go wrong with Rogue Amoeba's Piezo ($19).
- Like to do a lot of cooking? Paprika ($19.99) is the recipe manager of your dreams.
- If you want to make copies of DVDs you own — or burn something on your computer to a disk — Handbrake (free) is the best app in the business.
- Own a Sonos speaker or two? Make sure you pick up the Sonos Controller (free) app for your Mac to upload your iTunes library and control your queue.
What are your must-install Mac apps, iMore readers? Let me know below — I'd love to discover a great new app or two.
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Running out of hard drive space is incredibly annoying. OS X needs a good amount of free space to function properly so as things get full not only will you be unable to download or transfer large files, you'll start to get panicked warnings from the operating system. While hard drives keep getting bigger and cheaper, solid state drives do not. If you have a 2TB HD in your machine you'll be okay for longer. If you have a 128, 256, or even 512GB SSD, however, things can get full and fast. So what do you do? If you can't or simply don't want to upgrade your HD or SSD drive to something bigger, the first step is identifying what's causing the problem, then figuring out what you get rid of to free back up that precious empty space!
How to find out what's taking up the most space on your Mac's hard drive
The best way to find out what's eating up space on your Mac is to download a third party program that can analyze and break down what's using the most space. There are several tools that can do this, both in and out of the Mac App Store.
The first two options I'd recommend trying are Mac App Store offerings. Disk Diag is a dead simple utility that shows you what's eating space and how much. It also estimates how much space you can free up. If you just need a few gigs or aren't in desperate need, it should be passable. Just don't expect to clear out hundreds of gigs with it.
- Disk Diag - Free - Download Now
DaisyDisk is more advanced and offers a much better breakdown. Not only can you analyze your entire hard drive, DaisyDisk tells you exactly what's eating the most space whether that's photos, applications, or something else. https://treelending712.weebly.com/download-vst-nexus-fl-studio.html. It's perfect for people who don't necessarily know what is eating space on their hard drive and have no idea where to begin.
- DaisyDisk - $9.99 - Download Now
Download folder
The first place I always look when trying to clear out my hard drive is my downloads folder. They're not always as large as media files but they're often much less important to you as well. I always find tons of disk images, large graphics files, and tons of other crap I don't need anymore. For most people the downloads folder is a temporary dumping ground for things. After you've got it cleared out, try and make a habit of cleaning it out regularly. (And yes, once you move things to the trash, empty it. Your disk isn't really cleaned up until you've take then trash out!)
Movie, TV, music, and app files
The most common offenders when it comes to eating up storage space are media files. Large videos like movies, multiple smaller videos like TV shows or home movies, or even massive amounts of tiny files like music and apps can all add up. One HD movie can take up 4-6GB. Rappers that use auto tune. A single HD TV show can take up 1GB or more (that can be 10-20+GB a season!). iOS game files can be 1-2GB as well in some cases.
If you've downloaded movies or TV shows from iTunes in the past and you're done watching them, you can also get back tons of space by removing the physical copies. You can either transfer them up to an external drive for safe keeping or, if you're not adverse to it, simply trust in Apple's iCloud service. That lets you stream content to your Apple TV or re-download it to your iOS devices or iTunes on your Mac whenever you want. (Sometimes studios pull their movies or shows from iTunes, so it's a risk, but it doesn't happen often and they usually return. If in doubt, however, move them to an external drive instead!)
Old iOS device backups and software updates
If you've ever backed up or updated an iOS device to iTunes, these two can save you gigabytes of space all on their own.
Mail attachments
If you use Apple's Mail app or another third party app, your Mac is saving email attachments and message archives unless you've told it not to or route attachments elsewhere, like to Dropbox. If you don't do any of that, pay attention to how much data is stored in Mail.app and see if you can do some house cleaning there as well. Sort by attachments and delete all those old, joke PPT files chuck full of images and movies you never wanted your friends or family to email you anyway!
Cache files
Sometimes apps you frequently use and web browsers save data in order to load things faster. They do it to speed things up and make for a better, faster experience when you go back to those sites again. While it never hurts to delete them, and they will be rebuilt, they're nowhere nearly as big as some of the other offenders and the system does a pretty good job at managing them nowadays.
How do you clear space out on your Mac?
Daisydisk 9.99 Once Upon
Have you ever run out of storage space on your Mac? If so, how did you remedy the problem? Let me know in the comments!
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? ❤️
This is how Apple will keep people safe when reopening Apple Stores
Daisydisk 9.99 Once One
Apple recently reopened its store in Seoul, South Korea. And it has measures in place to keep people safe.