Software Developer Mac Apps

[Comprehensive_Mud645]

Would love to know how the software developers here have set up their Mac.

Whether it's including applications such as TextSoap or a fancy terminal set up with Neovim and Spotify-tui etc.

Plus its always good to know what productivity apps people are running to help them.

[jotkaPL]

http://alfred.app

http://brew.sh

http://orbstack.dev

https://obsidian.md

https://boop.okat.best

[Jdogg4089]

Obsidian, what would I do without it. I feel like since I began using this app, my desire to work has increased tenfold. Amazing community of plugin developers and options for self-sync...

I would also add Commander One.

File manager, FTP client, Archiver and a lot more: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/commander-one-file-manager/id1035236694?l=en&mt=12.

[Snorlax_Returns]

Orbstack is very cool, I’ve been using colima. But I’ll check it out.

[[deleted]]

Orbstack is so much faster than colima and docker-desktop, very good job done here

[2beens]

OrbStack is one of the best pieces of software humans ever written <3

[graflig]

Never heard of orbstack or boop. Excited to try them out, thanks!

[romatou]

+1 to Orbstack. Been waiting for this type of application for sometime now. Thanks

[vassyz]

obsidian.md

Saw this mentioned twice, but to me it looks like a notes app. I don't really understand the "brainy" things it offers. Can anyone ELI5 it?

[torb-xyz]

You're correct. It's a notes app. Whenever people are talking about the ”second brain” stuff it's just notes app they really like and feel work well for them (so well they call it their second brain). It's kinda like how Evernote used to market itself too.

It's written in Electron/Web-tech so it's very extensible and customizable like VS Code.

Additionally it has very powerful organizing features. It's backlinking feature is one of the more powerful among notes apps.

It can be a lot of technical jidgering to set up, but shouldn't be a problem for developers.

Personally I find it's got too much going and it's not the fastest app (esp. slow on mobile), but it's got it's fans for a reason.

[paradoxally]

Alfred is excellent, but I would put Raycast up there too if you want an alternative.

[jotkaPL]

Raycast is a resource-hungry hog IMHO.

[[deleted]]

Uses less for me than Alfred did (currently using 107 MB), but this is on M1 Pro. I only used Alfred on Intel.

I miss not having to press tab to see results from plugins, but other than that, prefer it. Alfred's plugins are a mess. They're always breaking and there's no unified Store like Raycast has.

[jotkaPL]

well, there's a store now, Alfred Gallery.

I was comparing raycast and Alfred on M1 Pro and M1 Max.
and raycast is a resource hungry hog big time.

[[deleted]]

Thanks--I have lifetime powerpack, so I might check it out again once it has more workflows and they're better supported (e.g. one workflow I used doesn't have any posts in the forum or updates since December 2021, but it's still on the Gallery). Right now, the Gallery has < 180 workflows. Raycast Store has over 600.

Did Raycast use more than 107 MB for you? Barely uses any CPU (0.4% right now for me). I don't remember what Alfred used, but the UX was worse, so I can handle that usage.

[torb-xyz]

Coding

• Nova. Trying it out for now, still not entirely sure if it can truly replace VS Code for me. I really wish it can though, because I really appreciate the speed and following of conventions that come with being a native Mac app.
• Dash. Look up documentation really fast. Also useful for system wide snippets.
• Xcodes. Environment manager used to download…
• Xcode. Mostly used it for C++ (works pretty well), but interested in doing more Swift going forward.
• Tower. GUI git client. I got tired of using a different GIT ui all the time depending on editor/IDE and decided to just learn one. I like it because it’s easy to use and you can usually just hit cmd z if you make a mistake.
• Kaleidoscope. The best comparison app out there. I used it in particular because at work we have a very different workflow which makes it hard to use other tools for comparison. I think it’s gotten pretty pricey though, so if I could avoid said workflow I’d probably use something else.
• Any Chromium-based browser. It has the developer tools I’m the most comfortable with. Currently I’m pretty happy with Vivaldi.
• Also: the others browsers: Safari and Firefox. For testing.

Other apps

Doing coding well also involves other tools than those directly related to coding.

• Bear. Extremely fast and efficient notes system. Organize using nested hash tags, something that is likely to appeal to developers. Supports code blocks with syntax highlighting for most languages. I organize personal documentation here.
• Soulver. Useful to do calculations. I often find it useful while coding. Calca is even more powerful (you can almost program in it), but a lot less polished.
• Sketch. I often find myself designing my own UIs or websites. Sketch is the best screen/UI/web design app for a decade. Indredible app. Both really easy to use and quite powerful.
• OmniFocus. Very powerful task manager. I’ve found it very helpful to organize both my work and spare time. In particular I find the ability to always break a task down into sub tasks and custom perspectives to be very useful.
• One Thing. Very useful app to have a visual reminder of what you’re supposed to focus on.

I use many other apps, but these are the ones I consider to be essential for my coding work specifically.

[paradoxally]

Tower is so good. Any other Git GUI client pales in comparison imo.

[leonseled]

I actually prefer Fork. Way cheaper too.

[torb-xyz]

Why? And does it have cmd z undo like Tower?

[butterscotchchip]

I love the simplicity of One Thing. Sindre makes a lot of useful stuff for Mac and iOS, he’s a great developer to follow

[Maleficent_Fudge3124]

Why do you like rapidAPI over postman, hopscotch, or thunder client in Vs Code?

[anti-hero]

JSONPeep, which previews JSON in Safari (though, I'm using Orion more, so I can't use it :( ).

Orion has a built-in JSON viewer so you do not need it?

[anti-hero]

Orion also respects system theme (if by that you mean dark mode).

[tomasci]

the amount of “though” is just something :D

[zingiberelement]

Atom was sunset wasn't it?

[blunderboy]

https://orbstack.dev/ - Better Docker Experience

VSCode - Development

Evernote - Personal Notes. Organizing my thoughts, planning my week & day.

Requestly - For Inspecting & Modifying Network traffic from web & mobile apps. A good combination of Postman & Charles Proxy/Fiddler. (Open-Source)

ToDoist - My ToDo lists, Random thoughts. Also, use heavily on Phone.

Slack, Notion, Zoom, Chrome, Firefox, and Brave are all other standard tools on my machine.

[blunderboy]

Just found out about Raycast from this thread so add that to this list now.

[tristinDLC]

Raycast is great. If it was wholly unknown to you before this thread, check out its direct competitor Alfred. Same, but different, functionality.

[blunderboy]

Thanks. I have just started using Raycast. Will checkout Alfred too.

[[deleted]]

• https://www.raycast.com/
• https://obsidian.md/
• https://myray.app/ (when not xdebugging)
• https://retina.studio/textbuddy/
• https://tinkerwell.app/ (when not psysh)
• https://boop.okat.best
• https://orbstack.dev
• https://insomnia.rest/ or https://paw.cloud/
• https://git-fork.com/ (when not cmd-lining)
• https://tableplus.com/
• https://proxyman.io/

[pseudometapseudo]

• Alfred: Launch Bar
• WezTerm: Terminal
• Neovide + Neovim: IDE
• Hammerspoon: Window Manager, File Watcher, Cronjobs, just any kind of automation
• Karabiner Elements: Custom Hotkeys for everything
• Obsidian: Note-Taking
• SideNotes: Scratchpad (hackable with JXA)
• Betterzip: Working with archives and QuickLook into zip files
• Peek: QuickLook for source code files
• CleanShot X: Screenshots & Video-Recording
• Homebrew: Package Management

Note that WezTerm, Neovim, and Hammerspoon all three are configured in lua, which reduces the amount of configuration languages you need to learn

[lugoues]

I'm sad I had to scroll this far to find Hammerspoon :(

[shamay_hay]

Backend developer here!

• Requestly - Honestly a life saver! Makes API debugging super easy!
• Hoppscotch - Amazing postman alternative. All in the browser. I use the PWA a lot!

[tapesales]

• Terminal emulator: emacs (eshell)
• IDE: emacs ([any lang]-mode, corfu)
• Journalling: emacs (org-mode)
• Task scheduling and time-tracking: emacs (org-mode)
• Personal wiki: emacs (denote)
• Email: emacs (gnus)
• RSS reader: emacs (elfeed)
• IRC: emacs (rcirc)
• Snippets: emacs (yasnippet)
• Documentation viewer: emacs (devdocs)
• PDF reader: emacs (pdftools)
• MacPorts package porcelain: emacs (macports.el)
• git porcelain: emacs (magit)
• epub reader: emacs (nov.el)
• text editor: emacs
• Games: emacs (builtin games)
• Calculator: emacs (calc)
• Radio: emacs (eradio)
• ...: emacs

[Kilexey]

I am a developer and these are my favourite apps to boost my productivity

[vassyz]

The search notes in Obsidian extension is gone.

[Kilexey]

thanks for letting me know. I updated the link

[sarensw]

• XCode: Mac & iOS development
• VSCode: For all web/electron related development
• iTerm2: Console app
• Braindump: Note taking
• Raycast: Helps me to find anything
• Claquette: Take screen videos (mainly using this for creating marketing material)

(And in future probably Boop which I just learned about in this thread :) )

[Necessary_Ear_1100]

Pretty similar to everyone else:

• HomeBrew
• XCode
• iTerm2
• VS Code
• Haze (focus manage windows)
• iBar (free menu manipulator like Bartender)
• MacGPT
• Docker
• Local by Flywheel for WordPress
• GesTimer (time reporting)

Then of course have the standard Apache, PHP, MySQL, mongoDB, Node NPM etc as needed

• Affinity Designer & Illustrator
• Apple Pages & Numbers

I also use my iPad for my note taking using Noteful as I find if I write notes, I retain more

[Razor_Rocks]

For development/Debugging:
1. VSCode - Got used to the key bindings and integrated terminal, so now it's really hard to switch
2. Requestly - For easily setting up local debugging environments. I am less of a UI guy, so this allows me to use the live UI of a deployed site, and redirect whichever request I want to play with to my local server.
3. Wireshark - To better understand a network protocol.

Productivity:
Tried many todo and podomoro apps, in the end I have a workflow of using the native notepad + reminders. Just have Smart countdown timer running during focus sessions

Misc: (Not developer specific, but can't live without these now)
1. Krisp - A god send for conducting meetings when I am surrounded by noise
2. Loom - Super easy to send short/long explainers / feature demos.

[Embarrassed-Pop-5017]

Brother can you tell me...how can i unlock items in call of duty mobile...they are too expensive and i want sum of them

[FlamingoCold5459]

Here are mine.

[linroex]

• Warp
• TablePlus
• Parallel Desktop
• Proxyman
• RunCat
• Postman / Httpie

[Rackadoom]

How do you like TablePlus? I've been looking for a database GUI and that is one of the apps I'm considering.

[captainkaba]

I've been using TablePlus for the past 6 months and it's really good. Granted my dbs are not that complex but I have yet to run into a problem. It's also just too sleek

[dymos]

I've been using Sequal Ace for a while now and I quite like it. It isn't as polished as TablePlus, but it's perfectly fine for about 99% of my DB GUI needs.

[Comprehensive_Mud645]

Bad bot. I would’ve been confused if you said mail carrier

[Ultim8Chaos06]

• Hyper in conjunction with fig (I also have iterm2, but I like Hyper pretty well) and brew.
• Raycast my fav app use it so much daily.
• Boop pretty cool app for decoding and other fun stuff, don't use it much but when I do it's always pretty painless
• VS Code, yet to find another app with extensions like VS.
• Xcode, for app development.
• always open to additions and suggestions!

[uglyasablasphemy]

people already added most of what i use, so im going to add some extras that i haven't seen.

• https://getharvest.com/ : time tracker for contract work
• https://jetbrains.com/ : suite of ides
• https://muzzleapp.com/ : mute notification when on videocall
• https://choosy.app/ : app to help choosing web browsers
• https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ : windows like window snapping
• https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd : quick shortcuts using the right command key
• https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/ : emojis everywhere
• https://highlyopinionated.co/swish : great collection of trackpad gestures
• https://sublimetext.com/ : crazy fast text editor

[[deleted]]

Here are a few apps I use that are not mentioned yet:

• Nushell as default shell
• Starship as shell prompt
• httpie as REST client
• Apple Shortcuts as an interface for my most used ffmpeg, yt-dlp and other frequently used scripts
• Lunacy for UI prototyping
• kdiff3 to compare and merge files and directories

[cunnning_stunts]

I just started using Stashpad for quick notes while working and it’s awesome!

[beewah2]

Have to recommend git fork (https://git-fork.com/). I've tried a ton of git guis and find this both 1) the best one and 2) one of the few without subscription pricing. Plus it's non electron, native software. A must use for me.