2017 - An Overdue Retrospective, Part 1: Favorite Mac Apps

February 11th, 2018 |

#retrospective macapps

Welcome to my (much overdue) multi-part retrospective of 2017. First off, Mac apps!

Mac Apps I loved in 2017

I'm going to skip over the apps that everyone uses (i.e. 1Password, Alfred 3, Tweetbot, Fantastical) and jump to the smaller stuff (and notable updates).

Notable Updates:

First off, BBEdit 12. As always, Rich Siegel keeps the updates coming. There's something for everyone to love. Although I'm using Sublime Text again for Markdown, BBEdit is always in my arsenal because its search and other text manipulation magic.
Karabiner Elements: The Hyper Key hack died in Sierra because Karabiner stopped working. The creator has clawed back and has rewritten the app.
Transmit. Version 5 is gorgeous.

New Arrivals

Faviconographer: Gruber complained, and Daniel Alm, delivered. Favicons on Safari! A clever hack that makes life better.

Old Standbys

Deliveries: People know about Deliveries app on iOS, but the Mac app is great! Useful when you are at work and want to avoid looking at your phone for an incoming Amazon package.
Find Any File: Sometimes you dearly need that old Mac OS 9 style file name search. Not powered by Spotlight, so it's slower and more thorough.
MailMate: My go-to mail client.
Napkin: Great to show off bugs in apps to other developers.
Screenfloat: Probably my most used utility. Take a cross-hair screenshot, and it floats over all windows. A lot of the time, I use the gear menu in the window to open it in Preview or Napkin
Lingon X: The most affordable commercial app for managing launch daemons.