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Cinch - Like Aero Snap for Mac
Evernote - Just another “Catch All” bucket
Divvy - Great app for organizing your windows
Dropbox - Pretty standard
SizeUp - Another window management app (I really like my windows managed)
Knox - Secure my local files
Air Display - Uses my iPad as a second display
Transmit - FTP client
Breeze - One more window management app
The rest are iStat Menus and standard OS X icons
(From Steve)
From the right (since that’s the order they’re added to the menubar):
System defaults: Spotlight, Time (I’m a 24hr kinda guy), Battery, Input Language (for when I want to use Japanese characters), Volume, Network, Time Machine.
MenuMeters: RAM on the right, CPU on the left. I really only use this to keep an eye on how many more virtual machines I can open. There’s also iStat Menus, which has way more features, if you prefer that. MenuMeters is more limited, and I like it that way.
Sparrow: Can’t live without this one. It’s the prettiest and most usable mail application I’ve found as of yet. I tend to keep my inbox totally empty, and this helps manage that. I’ve got the dock icon disabled too…
Adium: I still prefer this for chatting, although I use Linkinus for IRC. I only use iChat for video chat or screen sharing.
: Did I mention I hate daemon apps that put icons in your menubar and/or dock? This is one of them, but I also really like having my music growling. Trade-offs, eh. It’s in the extras folder of the Growl disk image.
Cloud: Cannot live without this one. I use Cloud App constantly when I’m chatting with people, to send screenshots or things from Photoshop. It uploads it to their service and puts a shortened link to it in your clipboard. It also ties into the default screenshot shortcuts.
Linkinus: IRC Client. Keeps IRC looking good. Kinda has a daemon mode where you can quit the app, but it leaves the icon in the menu bar and keeps you connected and notified of highlights and messages. It’s 10 bucks last I checked. It’s €19.99 on their site.
(From Shelby Munsch)
()
I see most of the menu bars are quite short, so I’ve decided to submit mine:
xScope - To measure stuff on the screen when designing.
BetterTouchTool - The #1 utility if you own Magic Mouse / Magic Trackpad or MacBook.
Adium - #1 Mac Chat software. Allows me to stay in touch with my team via .
OmniFocus - The best GTD Mac software, I use it to keep my to dos and keep them synced between devices.
Pomodoro - Best Pomodoro Technique timer to stay productive by splitting task into chunks.
Emcee - Answers the “What’s playing?” question (Bit crazy that it’s $3 now, I got it for free before the Mac App Store).
Radium - Sometimes I just want to listen to something without bothering too much.
- To watch my stuff on iPad in bed.
Droplr - To quickly share screenshots with my team and other people in Adium.
Blast - Allows me to quickly access files and folders just changed.
Dropbox - Everybody knows Dropbox, right? Sync files between computers, devices and share with people.
Launch it! - Allows me to launch apps with a single hotkey. A very missing feature in Mac OS X.
Little Snitch - Firewall.
Size Up - To control windows from the keyboard. I am proud to say that I helped to develop it.
Evernote - Notebook synched between devices.
iStat Menus - RAM, CPU Temp, Fan Speed and CPU Load.
Time Machine, Bluetooth, Airport, Volume, Language - Built-in Mac OS X tools.
iStat Menus - Again this time to replace the flawed Mac OS X clock, this one gives me calendar access when I click it, not to mention a nicer menubar layout.
Fast Users Switching - Built-in.
Also I have KeyRemap4MacBook running to remap some buttons on the keyboard. Actually I switch Keyboard Layouts using single left/right shift presses and remap cmd-space to cmd-shift-space to get rid of that awful Snow Leopard language swtich. The icon for KeyMap is removed from the menubar because it has a nice Preference Pane built-in.
Phew. That’s about it.
(From Dear Apple)
Path Finder: Finder replacement. I like the dual pane file browser and the drop stack.
: I’m on it all day long, every day for work.
Dropbox
GeekTool: Display the output of shell commands on your desktop. My favorite customization tool.
TinyAlarm: Simple alarm. I’ve had it for years.
TinyCal: Another menubar item that I’ve had for many years. Like TinyAlarm, its simplicity charms me.
WiFi2HiFi: Stream music wirelessly to your iOS device.
GrabBox: Simple screenshot sharing. Syncs with Dropbox.
SimpleText: I use it in conjunction with Notational Velocity, an app that made me completely rethink how I write on a Mac.
Boxcar: Notifications.
Notify: I live in Gmail. Sparrow is nice but too simple.
CuteClips: Clipboard history manager. I need to change to something with more features but I haven’t gotten around to it.
BetterTouchTool: Customize gestures on your Magic Mouse and trackpad. Just started using it.
SlimBatteryMonitor: Good-looking space-saver.
Air Display: I use my iPad as a second monitor while I’m working.
Bluetooth: To connect to my Magic Mouse, an Apple product that I both loath and love.
Volume
Wi-Fi
FuzzyClock: Because in a world where everything is measured second by second, it’s nice to have a clock that reminds me time is relative.
(From Abraham Hyatt, production editor at ReadWriteWeb)
iScrobbler (Last.fm client), Dropbox (best backup and sync tool I think), (iTunes controller), ClipMenu (Clipboard manager), , Time Machine, AirPort, Battery, Japanese Input Method, Clock, and Spotlight.
(From )
Something perhaps a little different.
My menu bar has nothing in it—I don’t seem to be able to get rid of Dropbox, but I did find .
(From John Sutherland)
BetterTouchTool - Lets you define tons of gestures for your Macbook’s Trackpad, your MagicMouse and your MagicTrackpad. In addition to that it brings lots of new stuff to MacOS like Windows 7 like window snapping, window switchers etc…
Last.fm Scrobbler - To add the music you play to your profile.
Caffeine - Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers.
Wally - Wallpaper changer, using multiple sources like files, folders, FTP remote folders, Flickr, Yahoo!, Panoramio, Pikeo, Ipernity, Photobucket, Buzznet, Picasa, Smugmug, Bing, Google, Vladstudio and deviantART images.
Butler - To ease all those routine tasks you do every day: controlling iTunes, opening programs and documents, switching users, searching for stuff on the web, and more.
iMac (customized by system icon) - Open programs and documents.
The rest: Preference pane, Google, Bluetooth, AirPort, iStat Menus (Network, Disk Activity, Memory, and CPU), Time Machine, Date & Time, かわせみ, Japanese input method, and Spotlight.
(From )
moveAddict, nvALT, MenuPop, BetterSnapTool, Apptivate, Dropbox, Hyperspaces, Blast, LittleSnapper, CalendarBar, CuteClips, SlimBatteryMonitor, and .
The rest are standard Mac fair—WiFi, Time, and Spotlight.
(From Ammon Beckstrom)
QuickCal - Possibly my favorite application. Allows me add tasks and events to my calendar without ever opening iCal.
- I rarely visit Twitter.com these days. With this app, there is just no need to. Control/Option/Command/T (^⌥⌘T) opens up a new tweet box. The menu bar icon lights up blue whenever I receive a notification. Tweets appear in the bottom-right corner via . It’s as simple as that.
Sparrow - My personal and school email are consolidated into one Gmail account, which I access via Sparrow. Like Twitter for Mac, the menu bar icon lights up blue whenever I receive a notification.
Dropbox - An easy way to sync files online between multiple computers.
Droplr - The easiest way to share files online. Just drag a file to the Droplr icon in the menu bar and it spits out a URL that you can share with people.
F.lux - Automatically adjusts your computer screen’s color after sunset for optimal viewing comfort. Great app. Highly recommended.
- This menu bar icon lights up blue whenever I receive a notification. Then and only then do I visit Facebook.com. ^⌥⌘space allows me to update my status right from my desktop.
(From . Also posted on .)
Skitch: For capturing screen-shots.
QuickCal: I use less because I want to see my appointments and more because I was an early user of 30boxes on the web and loved the ability to write an english language appointment, e.g. Oil Change tomorrow at 9am.
TypeIt4Me:There are plenty of apps that do what TypeIt4Me does, but I’ve used this for a while and it never lets me down. I use it for two main purposes, shortcut typing and correcting my spelling on words that I often misspell. So if I have to type in my Gmail address, I created a shortcut and I just type m-y-g-m without the hyphens and it changes to my actual email address.
Dropbox: I think everyone has Dropbox at this point.
SizeUp: Easily size up your windows into half or quarter of a screen via keyboard shortcuts. Super handy.
Pastebot: I use this to paste something from my Mac that I want to use on my iPhone or iPad rather than type it out.
Spirited Away: Set which apps you want to fade away in the background after a certain period of not using them.
Pomodoro: I just started this a couple months ago and find it helpful. Work for 25 minutes, play for 5, repeat.
Hazel: Folder automated actions. I use this to monitor clean up my several folders including my downloads, desktop, and images.
Caffeine: I use this one constantly. Turns off all screensaver and screen shut-off actions.
LogMeIn: Log in to my Mac from my iPad.
: Turn my iPad into another display of my Mac.
: I attempt to send all my notifications through Growl so I can turn them all of at once when I wish and they all show up in the same spot when I leave them on.
MobileMe: I sync my contacts, calendar and assorted other mac pieces to mobile me, including my photos.
Time Machine: In addition to using Crashplan and Dropbox, I have at-home backup using Time Machine to a 500gb external hard drive.
Spaces: My on-again off-again love affair with Spaces is on again. I do most of my daily work in Space 1, leave Omnifocus by itself in Space 2, put all my music and chat in Space 3, and all my writing e.g. Scrivener, TextMate in Space 4.
Assorted Apple stuff: Bluetooth, Wi-fi, Volume, Battery, Time, Eject Drive, Accounts and Spotlight, which unlike many other people, works really well for me.
(From Kevin Farner)