My 7 macOS essential utilities for 2023

These are day-one-install utilities. I can’t use a Mac without them. And if I do then you’ll hear me say, “What is this? This is computer? No cannot be.”

These aren’t apps, as such. There are tons of those I install as well. These are the little additions that could be part of the OS but aren’t for one reason or another. There are 7 I use right now. I like to keep these to a minimum without inconveniencing myself.

I’m using this article as my own reference so I can remember what I need to install whenever I switch computers. So I’ll keep this list updated as they change. Which they don’t often.

Here they are in no particular order. I think they’re all either free or can be used for free but do donate or support the devs if you find them useful and can afford to.

1. Ears — Quick switch your audio devices. The more audio devices you have, the more useful this becomes.
2. SaneSideButtons — Adds support for back/forward buttons on your mouse without needing to run the software from Logitech or Razer or whatever. This makes the back and forward buttons work exactly as you’d expect without having to think about it or remap them for certain apps.
3. MonitorControl — Control the volume and brightness on external monitors with the buttons on your keyboard. Doesn’t work with every external monitor but essential if your monitor doesn’t have auto-brightness adjust and sometimes even if it does. (Remember when monitors had physical brightness wheels on them?)
4. Rectangle — Window snapping and sizing. No need to try to figure out how the green traffic light is gonna behave app to app.
5. Clipy — Multi-clipboard with snippets. Can hold hundreds of items, with a perfectly minimal UI. Really great for data entry or transfer. Also has snippets you can use if you tend to write the same thing over and over.
6. AdGuard — Ad blocker. You might want to allow ads on sites you use often and display ads responsibly. I don’t mind those ads. But for the oceans of clickbait-SEO-content-farm things you have to traverse to find what you’re looking for on a seach engine these days, an ad blocker is essential.
7. Hush — Cookie message blocker. Those cookie messages were annoying enough, but a lot of them have switched from a simple Accept/Reject to Accept/Options and you gotta dig through another screen to figure out how to say no to tracking cookies. Nobody has time for that.

That’s it for now. What am I missing?

Last Updated July 2023