My Favorite Free Mac Apps

I had this post on an old blog, but since that's no longer viewable anywhere, I figured I'd tweak it up and repost it, since I know how useful it was for me to stumble upon some of these. I use most of them, but some I'm including because they just look useful, even if I haven't really adopted them. In the interest of time, I'm giving the name of the tool (in no particular order), the link to the author website, and a sentence or two about what the tool is/does.

- Cyberduck

http://cyberduck.ch/

A great, free FTP application -- simple, but with some nice features. And supports resume-mode on transfers.

- iGTD

http://bargiel.home.pl/iGTD/

iGTD is a great little free task management tool based on the 'Getting Things Done' methodology. You can create 'projects' and then tasks within those projects. You can assign dates and priorities to the tasks, and run instantaneous reports (e.g., show me all tasks due in the next 5 days). You can also add some notes and links to the tasks, and sync with iCal if that's your bag. It's incredibly easy to use, runs super fast, and is really immensely useful.

- Journler

http://journler.com/

Sharing some same features as iGTD (above) and Yojimbo (which I'll cover under paid software later), Journler is like a diary. Some people use it as a GTD tool, but I use Things (which I'll cover later as a paid app). But I like to use Journler to author, save and store blog posts. It's easy to add all sorts of media to your work, and you can also hook it directly into most blogs, so you can publish straight from Journler.

- Onyx

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

A free system utility. Some functions help you maintain your system (by forcing execution of cleanup and maintenance tasks) and it also exposes some options of the Mac operating system (I am particularly fond of the 'double scroll buttons at top and bottom of scrollbar', and the ability to change the format that Mac's screen capture saves in).

- SiteSucker

http://www.sitesucker.us/

Easily and quickly download entire websites to your hard-drive! One great example for this tool is pulling down the ActionScript help files from Adobe LiveDocs so that I can run them instantly, even if I'm off-line.

- DarkAdaptedX

http://www.adpartnership.net/DarkAdapted/index.html

Mac's color calibration tool can be really difficult and annoying. And sometimes you just want to quickly change your color settings to check something and then switch back. DarkAdapted X allows you to easily change your color space with three sliders: red, green and blue. And you see updates in real time. You can easily save several profiles to make it easy to switch between them. You do need to be running DarkAdapted X to have it control your color (i.e., you can't just set your color and quit, since you'll revert to the operating system settings).

- Perian

http://www.perian.org

Perian should have been called 'Wow! for QuickTime'. Install this QuickTime plug-in and suddenly you can view tons of additional video files on your Mac! This includes FLVs, as well as many AVIs and MPGs. And since it's for QuickTime, Perian also allows you to Quick View all these media files in the Finder.

- iCal Reply Checker

http://www.nhoj.co.uk/icalreplychecker/

Ever want to delete an iCal event and not let the whole friggin' world (or at least the invite list) know? iCal Reply Checker gives you the option of whether or not to send out that you are deleting an event, to which you have been invited, or to which others have been invited.

- Voodoo Pad

http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/

Voodoo Pad is a really cool text editor. I'm including it under free, since there is a free version that can open any Voodoo Pad Doc, and author them up to 25 pages. The paid version costs $30. What makes Voodoo Pad unique is it's concept of a document. In Voodoo pad, a document is more like a website, with internal links between the pages. It's incredibly easy to create new pages and link between pages (it will auto-detect when you type in the name of an existing page and automatically create the link for you). It also has great media handling -- just drop video, audio and images into the document and then they are a part of it (it will even automatically process PSDs into PNGs). And it has a great HTML export feature, so you can create a real website from your VPDoc file in seconds.

We use this to author specification documents, since we've found clickable websites to be a better format for that type of information, instead of standard, linear documents.

- AppDelete

http://reggie.ashworth.googlepages.com/appdelete

Ever wonder why Mac doesn't make it easy to uninstall applications? Some apps come with an uninstaller, but most don't. And it's really annoying. It's easy to delete the app, but then all those little files that the app created within your Library folder remain. Instead of deleting the app, just drag the application icon to AppDelete and it will remove all the appropriate files from your computer along with deleting the application.

- Butler

http://www.manytricks.com/butler/

Butler is the coolest tool that you didn't know you needed. It's called Butler because it's like a little helper for you, that lives in your menu bar, while you go about using your computer. It comes with lots of little Mac functions you might expect (multiple pasteboards so you can copy and paste several items at once, an easy macro recorder/player, etc) but what makes it really special in my opinion, is the ability to customize the menus in your menu bar. You can create as many menu icons as you want (I use only one) and then structure whatever submenus under it that you want. These can be aliases to existing folders on your harddrive, or virtual folders containing multiple documents. It's sort of hard to explain, and I'm not doing a good job of it, but in essence it allows you to create custom lists and aliases in easy-to-access menus. So, for instance, I use it to organize the lists of all my applications (sort of like the Windows start menu does), and have short-cuts to useful docs that I reference frequently (like the ActionScript language reference). It also has other built-in goodies (I particularly like the Google search in my menu bar).

- MAMP

http://www.mamp.info/

After the simple install process, you now have an application that enables you to turn on a local Apache/MySQL server on your Mac. One more simple click turns the server off. It's incredibly simple to use, and amazingly valuable for anyone who does internet application development on a Mac.

- Tomcat Controller

http://www.activata.co.uk/

MAMP doesn't have a Tomcat server, so it can't run Java. So, if you need to create a web environment with Tomcat, you can do that on your Mac. Unfortunately, the Tomcat install process is not simple (you can get more info here: http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/TomcatOnMacOS ), but once you've installed it, you can quickly turn Tomcat on and off with with Tomcat Controller.

- Houdini

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/Houdini.shtml

Houdini is a neat little app that enables you to quickly show or hide all hidden files and folders on your computer (this has been very useful for working with SVN on the Mac). And, you can quickly hide any files and folders by dragging them onto the Houdini icon.

- PDF to Keynote

http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/freesoftware/pdftokeynote.html

One-click conversion tool to turn PDFs into Keynote slides (very useful if you've lost/don't have the source Keynote but still have the slides exported as PDF).

- TextWrangler

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

The best free text editor for Mac, hands-down. From the makers of BBEdit.

- Validator

http://homepage.mac.com/rcrews/software/validator/

Drag any XML file onto Validator, and it will tell you if the XML is well-formed; if it is not, Validator will give you feedback as to where the structure is broken.

- iExtractMP3

http://mac.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/iExtractMP-Screenshot-29421.html

Ever have a SWF or an FLV and you needed the audio out of it? Well, iExtractMP3 allows you to gank the sound from Flash media as MP3 files.

- DiffMerge

http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/

A free diff and merge tool for the Mac. See the differences between files and folders, and merge them based on criteria. Very useful for source files that have gone out of sync.

- MacLorem

http://www.fika.org/davew/judebear/MacLorem/

MacLorem is a flexible, light-weight Greeking generator. Though I still like lipsum.org, I always appreciate local apps for when I'm working off-line.

- Adium

http://www.adiumx.com/

Everyone already knows Adium, right? A great instant messenger tool for Mac -- great, because you can add all of your IM accounts (Yahoo, AIM, MSN, etc) and have them accessible in one tool. And the interface is very customizable.

- Fluid

http://www.fluidmac.com/fluidnoise/index.html

This app is less and less useful, now with AIR apps like Snippage and the Mac Dashboard widget creator in Safari. But it's still cool. With Fluid, you can create a local application out of any webpage -- and it will run in its own instance. So, for example, if you track your time on a website, you can create a local Fluid app out of your web-based time tracking tool, and then launch, run and quit it independent of your web browser.

- VLC

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

The best video player for Mac. Plays a ton of file formats -- even many not supported by Perian.

- Audacity

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

A free, open source audio editor for the Mac. It's nothing when compared to advanced tools, but many of us don't have the advanced tools, and even if we do, sometimes we just need to do something simple, like trim a sound, or fade it out. Audacity is for you!

- Combine PDFs

http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/CombinePDFs.shtml

Neat little utility to combine all or parts of multiple PDFs into a single PDF. Really useful when you need it!

- InstantShot

http://projects.digitalwaters.net/index.php?q=instantshot

A screen capture tool. It lives in your menu bar and you have tons of capture options within a single click. What's really nice is that you can choose the format of the screen shot each time you take it, and you can save directly to the clipboard if you prefer that to saving a file. It saves tons of time.

- Camouflage

http://www.briksoftware.com/products/camouflage/

Back in the day, I'm pretty sure Mac OS allowed you to hide the contents of your desktop. That feature is long since dead, but I liked it. Camouflage allows you to do that. Create a keyboard command and automatically hide/show the contents of your desktop. If your desktop can get as cluttered as mine, and it can get distracting, or if you give presentations and don't want the world to see your stuff, then Camouflage is for you.

- Carbon Copy Cloner

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

One-click disk duplication. Great for imaging hard drives.

- Disk Inventory X

http://www.derlien.com/

Ever wonder 'where did all my hard drive space go?' Well, Disk Inventory X is for you. It analyzes any hard drive and generates a detailed report of what is consuming space. The results are usefully organized, and it also creates an interactive visual representation of size blocks on your drive.

- iBackup

http://www.ibackup.com/

This is way less useful now that we have TimeMachine, but it still has it's place. It's a powerful little backup tool. Create profiles that consist of rules of which folders to backup and where to generate the backup. You can also create simple restore profiles. And you can specify settings like whether to perform an additive backup, replace the backup, or generate an entire new backup.

- Monolingual

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

Running low on disk space? Well, did you know that every Mac application that's a universal binary has a bunch of data that's useless to you (because it supports both the old PPC architecture and the new Intel archictecture), and many apps have a bunch of content for dozens of languages that you'll never use. Run Monolingual and remove all of that extraneous data from your machine. Free up gigs of space.

- Pimp My Dock

http://www.malcom-mac.com/pimpmydock/

Did you know your Mac dock is really just a bunch of PNGs? Well, Pimp My Dock makes it easy to create your own Dock themes by creating/modifying those PNGs. And it comes with some default themes of its own. I'm not normally one to spend my time on things like this, but the Leopard dock was so awful, that I used it to change the Dock so it is actually usable.

- Service Scrubber

http://www.manytricks.com/servicescrubber/

Service Scrubber allows you to selectively and individually enable/disable the various services that run on your computer. Some are default MacOS services (and many of those can't be disabled) but many apps you install will also install services that you don't want/need/use.

- Smart Reporter

http://www.corecode.at/smartreporter/

Many new hard-drives, including every hard-drive in every Mac, is SMART-enabled. This means the drive has powers to measure/analyze the health of the drive. Just open Smart Reporter and check the status of any SMART-enabled hard-drive.

- YASU

http://jimmitchell.org/projects/yasu/

YASU stands for Yet Another System Utility. Macs are UNIX based, which means by default they are set to run maintenance tasks automatically at times that users mostly have their computers off -- so the maintenance tasks don't get run. With YASU you can run a variety of these tasks, individually or together, by checking which ones you wish to execute and clicking the button. Very simple, and don't underestimate the need to keep your Mac healthy.

- OpenOffice

http://www.openoffice.org

A free, open-source office program, compatible with, and similar in features to, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Runs a bit slowly on Mac, but who can complain with that price!

- RapidSVN

http://www.rapidsvn.org/

A free SVN gui for Mac that actually works! 'Nuff said. Not as easy or seamless as Tortoise on the PC, but really, at least it exists.

- RCEnvironment (Environment Variables)

http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCEnvironment/

This allows you to edit the variables in your ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist file. This is really useful, for example, if you're running Tomcat and you need to set your CATALINA_HOME and JAVA_HOME values.

- FFMPEGX

http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

A GUI for FFMPEG on your Mac. You need to download the codec libraries separately, but the tool makes it easy for you to do so by telling you where to get them and where to put them. And then you have a powerful multi-format encoder running on your Mac. Also does Flash 7 and Flash 9 video (not Flash 8 since it doesn't have VP6).

- RegExhibit

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25327

Ever needed a RegEx (regular expressions) calculator? Well, fortunately, someone made one for free for Mac.

- SimpleCSS

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/simplecss.html

A great little form-based CSS authoring tool, with live-preview of the text properties.

- Update Expired Podcasts

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=updateexpiredpodcasts

I hate being away from an internet connection, and then wanting to hear a podcast, only to realize Apple decided I hadn't wanted to update that one anymore. If you update using this AppleScript, which appears in the scripts menu in iTunes, *all* your podcasts will update.