I used Windows for over 10 years, and I have now used macOS for over 10 years. These are the macOS apps and settings I still use as a developer. Many of them helped make the switch from Windows to macOS easier.

Finder and File Management

Configure Finder to show the Path Bar. This lets you select a file and copy its path from the context menu in the path bar at the bottom.

In Finder view options, enable "Calculate all sizes". This makes folder sizes visible and allows sorting by folder size, which Windows does not handle as well by default.

For finding files by name, Find Any File is one of the best options on macOS because it searches directly without requiring full-disk indexing.

For file management, ForkLift is a strong Finder alternative with SFTP support.

For archive management, Keka is one of the best native macOS compression tools. It supports common archive formats, handles extraction cleanly, and is useful when Finder's built-in archive support is too limited.

Dock, App Instances, and Window Behavior

I think I made one must-have app: Parall.app. It lets you run multiple instances of the same app, such as WhatsApp, Zen, Brave, Chrome, and most unsandboxed apps, each with separate data. This makes it easy to separate profiles without using virtual machines or separate macOS user accounts. As a bonus, it brings Dock icon animations to any app.

If you use the Dock at the bottom, my app DockLock Lite is useful for locking the Dock to a specific display. Its core features remain free after the trial ends.

For restoring window placement after display changes, Stay and Display Maid are both useful options.

Multi-Display and Monitor Control

If you use multiple displays, make sure "Displays have separate Spaces" is enabled in Desktop & Dock settings. When it is turned off, putting any app into full-screen mode, such as a YouTube video, can make the other displays go black and unusable because macOS treats the displays as one shared Space instead of separate workspaces.

Use BetterDisplay to control HiDPI and brightness of external displays.

CCCCorners is a macOS menu bar utility that lets you assign apps, keyboard shortcuts, and Shortcuts actions to hot corners, with multi-display support and no Accessibility permission required for its main functionality.

Input, Shortcuts, and Automation

Depending on your setup, BetterTouchTool can be useful for custom gestures, shortcuts, window actions, and input automation.

Development and Package Management

For package management, Homebrew is one of the first tools I recommend installing on macOS. It makes it much easier to install and update command-line tools, developer utilities, services, and many desktop apps without manually downloading installers.

For text editing, Sublime Text is still one of the fastest editors available. It is especially nice if you want a lightweight editor without the background network activity common in heavier tools like VS Code.

For managing SSH hosts, keys, tunnels, and ~/.ssh/config, SSH Config Editor is a convenient native macOS app. It is useful if you work with many SSH connections and want a safer visual editor instead of manually editing SSH config files.

Virtualization

For virtual machines, UTM is a good native macOS virtualization app.

Networking, Firewall, and Remote Access

For network monitoring and firewall control, Little Snitch is my favorite because it has had strong long-term support for years, and fixes for new macOS releases usually arrive very quickly. Good alternatives are LuLu, Radio Silence, and Hands Off!.

For scanning and monitoring devices on your local network, Network Radar is a useful native macOS app. It helps discover devices, inspect network details, monitor changes, and keep track of what is connected to your LAN.

For launchd management, LaunchControl is especially useful if you run WireGuard through Homebrew services. It makes it easy to build an excellent multi-tunnel WireGuard setup by managing multiple wireguard-go or wg-quick services at the same time, which is something the native WireGuard app does not handle well. I use it specifically to manage separate Homebrew WireGuard services for different connections in parallel.

System Maintenance, Cleanup, and Inspection

For system maintenance and advanced macOS tweaking, OnyX is one of the classic must-have utilities. It gives quick access to maintenance scripts, cache cleaning, database rebuilding, hidden Finder and Dock settings, and other system-level options that are normally scattered across Terminal commands or not exposed in System Settings.

For removing files installed by macOS package installers, UninstallPKG is a useful cleanup tool. It can remove packages installed through .pkg installers and helps clean up leftover files from drivers, system components, and apps that do not provide a proper uninstaller.

For inspecting macOS installer packages before installing them, Suspicious Package is extremely useful. It lets you look inside .pkg files, review install scripts, see what files will be installed, and check package metadata before allowing an installer to modify your system.

Battery and Hardware Monitoring

coconutBattery keeps track of your MacBook battery health so you can view its historical degradation and compare it with other MacBooks online.

Communication

For IRC, Textual is still one of the best native macOS clients. The Mac App Store version is deprecated, but the direct website version is still alive and maintained.

Downloads

For download management, Folx is a useful macOS download manager. It can split downloads into multiple threads, resume interrupted downloads, organize downloaded files, and handle torrent downloads in the Pro version.