My Mac Productivity Utilities for 2022, Part 2

I posted part 1 of this article earlier in the week talking about Mac apps: Bartender, Moom, Be Focused Pro, Dark Noise and Omnifocus. Here are the remaining 5 apps I had to install first and end up using daily to be productive:

And the second set of 5 are....!

1. Alfred
2. Hazel
3. Typinator
4. 1Password
5. Snagit

Then at the bottom there are a few more applications called out I use a lot.

Productivity Hacks, Time Savers

Alfred - a swiss army knife of productivity. If you like keyboard shortcuts, this is for you. For several years I didn’t really get the geek hype on Alfred and only used a fraction of its capability. In the last few months though, the lightbulb has gone on. I’ve begun to experiment with workflows like custom searches. For example, PwC has an internal training library so I mapped a short keyword to that, and now I can get results in a few moments without touching the mouse. https://www.alfredapp.com/shop/ - Free to use many features,?“powerpack license” one time fee, ￡29 via website (not app store - this means it’s not bound by app store restrictions).?

Hazel - strange little app this one, not terribly well known. It basically listens for creation, changes or other events of files and can invoke actions. So for example “Clean out files in the Downloads folder after 3 days”. “Archive PDFs dropped in this folder over in “/x/y/2021/12 folder in icloud”. I.e. “if X or Y happen then do A, B, C”. Very quiet piece of software that hides in the background but tidies up anything, great for archiving. It can do hundreds of things and it saves time by automating cleanup type operations. $42 via website. https://www.noodlesoft.com/whats-new-in-hazel-5/?

Typinator - this is one of those text expander apps you didn’t know you needed. So for example, when I want to type my phone number, I will simply type “?;074 “ and Typinator will automatically replace that with my full real number. Which is good as I can't remember my work phone number. Similar for my email address, and numerous other regularly typed phrases. So you can save yourself 5-10 minutes a week using this. I used to use TextEpander but ditched after they went to monthly subscription which seems a bit ludicrous for an app like this. One time purchase, https://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/ €25

Update: I didn’t really appreciate this until quite recently, but Alfred, mentioned above, also does this kind of snippet expansion, so perhaps I can drop this from my startup programs.?

Essential Utility Apps

1Password - i’m sure people live without password managers, but I don’t know how, I’ve been using this since 2014. A digital vault for logins, codes, keys, credit cards. Browser integration pops up to suggest complex passwords and can autofill on websites, saving time. A few years back they switched to subscription which wasn’t ideal, but the family license means my wife can use it too, and we have various shared vaults with critical logins. I’m sure the kids will start to use it to practise good security hygiene. The sync between desktop, ipad, phone etc “just works” and I’m comfortable with their security declarations. - https://1password.com but recommend to purchase via app store, then ￡55 annual subscription for whole family (multiple users)

Snagit - this one is new for 2022. I don’t mind paying small devs for good tools, but this one did feel a bit steep, but I use tools like this almost every day at some point. It basically does screenshot and small video clip capture. I used to use Skitch for this, but I’m moving away from Evernote and the two are tightly coupled. Essentially, this tool does a screenshot (which is perfectly do-able with built in mac functionality) but the editing of the image - adding arrows, highlights, callouts, cropping etc, plus the management of the images is where this tool shines. It does look good and is considered best in class, I might wait for an app store sale!

Other More General Apps

And finally, here is a bonus list of more general Apps I use (some only on my personal mac!)

Tweetbot - easy Twitter client - I don’t post much but do read it.

GoodNotes - as several folks will tell you at at my office, I love scribbling notes and drawing ideas out as visuals. I can do this on my ipad with a pencil and can send them to the Macbook. Some even end up in client presentations.

Reeder - slick RSS reader, I have dozens of technical feeds from AWS, Microsoft I skim read via this, it's miles easier than trying to follow single threads and tweets. I have an account on Inoreader that aggregates and organises the feeds (and has a nice web interface) but the mac, ipad and ios reeder apps work very well offline for quite reading.

Mindnode - clever tool to draw mind maps when I am thinking about ideas, gret for mining your associative memory.

Paprika - a recipe manager (no really). I am amazed how much we as a family use this app. It’s very clever at scraping recipes off sites to download. All of our goto recipes, a few dozen, are on here for quick reference. Anything new gets put in here and syncs everywhere. One time fee as well, no subscription ??

DayOne - a diary/journalling app, i usually jot down a?paragraph about the days ups and downs to help with mental health. In conjunction with Google Calendar, and my omnifocus "completed list" usually means i can recall with a degree of precision what happened on a particular day!

Screenflow - a screen cast recording piece of software. Probably the most expensive software on this list, I only use it occasionally and it is a slightly out of date version. But when I need to use it, it’s brilliant. Rather than do an expensive upgrade, I am hoping Snagit will do the same, as it can record videos.

And that’s it. Hope you found at least one interesting app to try!