My MacOS Tool Collection
I’m writing this mainly to remember it in case I have to move to another MacOS system, but I hope some people will find it useful anyway. It is mostly about external keyboard and mouse, but also about window management, terminal, and other nice extra tools.
Change some settings first
“Caps Lock” as one-key language switch
I like being able to switch languages with a single keystroke, and I never use Caps Lock to lock the caps, I TYPE WITH SHIFT HOLDED EVEN IF I HAVE A LOT TO TYPE.
Switch desktops with Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, and Ctrl+3
Yes, you can do it with Ctrl+Left/Right, but the animation is slower that way.
Fix “Home” and “End” buttons
Next, we need to fix notorious “Home” and “End” buttons, which frankly don’t work consistently even with the Apple keyboard. Here is the workaround: https://medium.com/@elhayefrat/how-to-fix-the-home-and-end-buttons-for-an-external-keyboard-in-mac-4da773a0d3a2
Set a black color as your desktop image
This way, if you use multiple monitors, your peripheral vision is not distracted by blank screens.
Consider adding widgets
I mostly like to see battery levels at a glance, but feel free to explore.
Which tools do I use and why?
Rectangle Pro
Back in 2017, I used Spectacle. Now it’s Rectangle, because Spectacle is no longer supported.
This one is for window management using keyboard only. There are so many window management features I use that don’t even exist in Mac, let alone can be done with keyboard only.
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The regular free version of Rectangle doesn’t have these 2 features I use, so I’m evaluating Rectangle Pro:
- Move windows between desktops/spaces using keyboard only.
- Restore positions of all windows after lock/unlock and reboot. This one is a deal breaker. I mean, who wants to rearrange windows every time they unlock their screen?
NOTE: This does not fully work though. There are a bunch of ideas on how to make this work, I just hope it gets implemented one day. The current workaround is to create app layouts per space and use a hotkey to restore the window positions when needed. IMHO, this must be automatic at all times. I’m looking for a workaround to automate this now, so please leave a comment if you’ve already solved this :)
AltTab
I usually want the Alt-Tab experience to be restricted to the current desktop/space. This tool solves that for me. It also gets a bonus point for Windows-like previews, these were quite handy in Windows 11.
I use Option+Tab for it, and I keep Cmd+Tab for global alt-tabbing among all spaces.
UnnaturalScrollWheels
Nifty tool to fix the lack of a setting to have natural scrolling on the trackpad while having sane scrolling on a mouse with a wheel.
SaneSideButtons
Somehow most applications ignored the fact that my mouse has side buttons and refused to go back and forth. This app basically maps this to a gesture, which makes it universal.
Stretchly
Relieve eye strain and move your body.
I find the default timings a tad annoying, I have moved the short breaks to once every 30 minutes and the long breaks to once every 90 minutes.
OhMyZhs
A shell extension to have a nicer MacOS shell. The thing I hate the most about the default zhs is that it lacks colors. Let us add some!
I use these settings in my ~/.zshrc:
ZSH_THEME="cypher"
plugins=(git vscode)This is what the “cypher” theme looks like:
I never actually open a built-in terminal and I don’t use iTerm. Instead, I use terminal in VSCode, which also benefits from OhMyZhs. This is also why I chose a theme without Git augmentation. I simply use Git extensions in VSCode instead.
Conclusions
As always, there are little features that MacOS users miss here and there. Fortunately, the OS allows third party applications to implement most of them.
Thanks to all the hard work of the people who make and maintain these tools!
Please leave a comment and let me know what you use. I am always looking to improve my productivity.
Also, feel free to ask questions, I will do my best to answer them all.
