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Posts tagged: Input
Dropbox — Probably the most brilliant gem. I use the 50GB Pro plan.
ClipMenu — My choice for clipboard manager. Pretty simple app with a lot of custom options.
Caffeine — Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers.
CloudApp — A well-known one. Allows you to share images, links, music, videos and files. Also, automatically uploads your recent screenshot and copies the link ready to share.
BaseApp — Helps you stay on top of everything that happens in your Basecamp accounts. I use Basecamp in my work and I’m tired of the inbox overflowed with Basecamp notifications. Let BaseApp do it. From creators of CloudApp.
— The one and only notification system for Mac. Should be built-in.
DisplayPad — Allows you to use your iPad as a second display for your Mac. There’s a variety of such apps, but this one seems to be the best.
— Official Twitter app.
LittleSnapper — Allows you to capture screenshots, organize them or annotate and share. This tool has a very nice and native interface and, as a UI designer, I use it a lot for capturing some inspiring elements.
The rest are built-in ones: Keyboard, Clock and Spotlight.
(From )
BetterTouchTool - An incredibly useful tool that helps me get the most out of my Magic Mouse/Trackpad. I currently have it configured for window-snapping (like in Windows 7), and pinch to minimize/maximize my windows.
- A very useful IM client, the one I use the most.
Twitterrific - My preferred Twitter client. I like it because of its clean, sleek, minimalistic interface; as well as the choice of colours. Helpful navigation buttons are also there to get me where I need to be quickly- whether it be messages, profile etc.
Last.fm - Scrobbles stuff I listen to; I only use it to scrobble music I’ve played on my iPhone or iPad.
ManyCam - Very useful webcam control. I can set this as 1 input to anything that uses video or webcam. I can then set the webcam source to a picture, video, etc. I use this a fair amount.
Dropbox - For syncing files on the cloud. Acts as a 2nd USB drive for me, useful for transferring and sharing files.
Bowtie - Clean, out of the way, minimalistic interface. I use this for scrobbling things I listen to in iTunes to Last.fm.
Alfred - Search for files quickly; much better and faster to use than Spotlight search. Also more minimalistic, key commands very useful.
CloudApp - I use this to upload screenshots, pictures etc. Very clean, sleek web interface. Auto-copies the picture link to my clipboard which is useful.
DisplayPad - A great app. I can use this to extend my display to my iPad; using it as a 2nd, 3rd etc monitor. Very low latency- even though it uses WiFi!
WiFi2HiFi - Brilliant streaming app. Sometimes can be out of time, but can be useful in a lot of situations!
LogMeIn - Remote Desktop app. Free, which is great. Works well with mac- speedy and responsive.
Facebook Notifications - I can see what’s going on on Facebook without opening my browser!
iChat - Set chat status, etc. Quite useful.
Bluetooth - I mainly use this just to connect my Magic Mouse, and it tells me whether the battery needs replacing.
AirPort - Default WiFi on the Mac, shows what base station I’m connected to + signal strength etc.
Volume control - I normally use this with the ‘Option’ key, so I can quickly change audio inputs/outputs.
Battery Indicator - I just stuck with the Apple indicator, with battery percentage.
Character/Keyboard viewer - helpful when entering characters with accents on them etc.
Time - Plain and simple- the time, with seconds and the day.
Fast User Switching - I don’t use this to fast user switch, but just to lock my Mac.
Spotlight Search - searching for things on my Mac. It still has its uses (ie a calculator), but I normally prefer to use Alfred instead (see above).
(From Jamie Goodliffe)
Most of my menubar icons are used as indicators for monitoring certain aspects of my system. I rarely click on any of them as I do almost everything via the keyboard.
From right to left:
Spotlight: I really should get rid of that one as I never use it. Instead I’m using LaunchBar for searching.
Clock: With weekday display.
iStat Menus Calendar: To keep an eye on the date. Also helps me keep track of several world clocks.
Input Method: I’m mostly using my Austrian (German) keyboard. Also gives me access to Kotoeri (Japanese) as well as keyboard viewer and character palette.
Battery: Obviously I’m on a MacBook Pro, so having charge status visible is vital.
Volume: To keep an eye on the audio output. I use the keyboard to actually change volume. Rarely used to check audio input and output (by holding ⌥ while clicking it).
AirPort: Mostly used for monitoring my WiFi connection. Rarely used to actually connect to a network as my MBP usually knows the networks I connect to. Even more rarely used to gain technical details about the associated to access point.
Displays: Put quite on the right hand side on purpose if a projector uses a very low resolution and my Mac decides to mirror displays. That way I can still easily get to it, just in case. Think of it as an emergency icon. (I could probably get rid of that one as I usually use LaunchBar to open the Displays PrefPanel anyway.)
Time Machine: I never fully trust Time Machine. This helps me to check if it is working properly.
iStat Menus CPU Bars: To keep an eye on my CPU’s load. Rarely used to spot a CPU hogging process. (I usually do that in a Terminal via Visor. (See below!))
MenuMeters: A paging indicator (to know of excessive swapping action) and my memory usage pie chart. (iStat Menus doesn’t have a paging indicator). Too bad I cannot turn off the chart and have only the paging indicator there, or have iStat Menus give me a paging indicator instead.
iStat Menus Memory: Memory usage graph to easily spot applications that suddenly grab a huge chunk of RAM.
VPN: To connect to my customer’s networks all around and to protect my connections when using untrusted networks. (So pretty much any network except for my own.)
Dial up: To connect one of those pesky USB UMTS/3G modems.
iStat Menus disk monitors: To keep an eye on disk usage. The leftmost is my system partition and usually way too full for my SSD to be comfortable.
iStat Menus disk throughput: To check for SSD/HD/USB stick speeds during lenghty copy operations or when recovering data from faulty media.
MenuMeters network graph: Gives more comprehensive info of my interfaces and a cubic root scaled graph which I prefer over iStat Menu’s way to display this data. Also shows connection status and IPv6 info.
iStat Menus network monitor: Doesn’t really work on my MBP, maybe I should get rid of it.
Bluetooth: I toggle Bluetooth via an AppleScript I run via LaunchBar so it’s just there to indicate Bluetooth is turned off as I usually don’t need it except for very rarely tethering stealthily to my iPhone (without a dock cable).
iStat Menus temperature: Of my GPU (right) and CPU (left) and many more sensors in the menu when opened.
AppleScript: Rarely used, I maybe should get rid of it.
iSync: Actually only used to access the “Sync conflicts” dialog when I need to. I don’t sync with MobileMe as I don’t trust my data to it.
Keychain: My indicator to make sure all my keychains are locked when I have to leave my machine. (I use the keyboard to actually lock my screen whenever I have to leave my screen, even if only for a moment.)
ClamXav: Open source antivirus to check the occasional download for malware so I don’t accidentally send something infected on to some poor Windows soul. Should catch the few Mac native malwares as well as macro nasties.
: Only to restart Growl when it has gone wonky again. I should be able to get rid of that one as the last update has fixed a lot of instabilities. Notifications themselves are to be kept at a minimum and for emergency information only.
Espionage: “Encrypts folders” by putting their contents into a .sparsebundle and automounting said image in place of the folder. Makes selectively encrypting data comfortable.
MacFusion 2: Simple GUI frontend to comfortably access remote filesystems via SSH or to mount FTP servers with write support in the Finder (which it still doesn’t do natively for no apparent reason).
Visor: The ultimate accessory to access a Terminal in the blink of an eye. (Yeah I know, one shouldn’t blink at any give time.)
SMARTReporter: Displays the S.M.A.R.T. status of all internal disks and goes red alert if a disk thing it might go bad in the not too distant future. S.M.A.R.T. is never guaranteed to tell you about impending disk failures. So please always have a least one good and current backup! Better more than that!
gfxCardStatus: Allows me to manually switch from integrated to dedicated graphics on my MacBook Pro to get some additional battery life when on the road (and I don’t need the graphics power).
Keyboard Maestro: To remap a few keys and have instant triggers for a few things like being able to control my iTunes volume via the volume keys (and being able to set the system volume with the same keys separately). Comes in very handy when using iTunes with AirPlay speakers. Haven’t yet found many other use cases for me yet.
: The Mac server part to watch movies from my MacBook Pro on my iPad via the corresponding iOS AirVideo client app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad (Universal). Does on-the-fly transcoding of video files that are in a format which cannot be played back directly on iOS devices.
TextExpander: The swiss army knife of text input manipulation. Saves me countless hours of typing action for boilerplate foo and also does a lot of practical stuff like URL shortening with j.mp for twitter or entering obscure Unicode characters. (Disclosure: I am the author of these free TextExpander snippets.)
Dropbox: For occasionally sharing a few files with the family. I don’t use it to sync files across my own Macs.
Dropbox: Another Dropbox account for the austrian chapters of Cocoaheads, the international Mac and iOS developer’s community. To better distinguish between them I use one icon in monochrome and one in colour.
SizeUp: Window manipulation with the keyboard to which I am seeking an alternative as it doesn’t allow me to assign the keyboard shortcuts I want to have. (Mainly using the fn key which is not an option with SizeUp.)
Degrees: A simple display of the current outside temperature and weather conditions. Very handy when working in the data center catacombs where you don’t have a window.
AeroFS: A privately synched filesystem not unlike Dropbox but without the cloud server to keep your data a little more confidenial than Dropbox. (Currently in private beta.)
OmniFocus: Shows the due and overdue tasks of my favorite todo management application. (Please don’t ask about the count…) Also available as OmniFocus for iPhone and Omnifocus for iPad which perfectly sync with each other over my private WebDAV server (or other ways if you prefer).
(From , Mac OS X Server systems administrator and iOS developer)
— Excellent Clipboard Manager
Divvy — Very handy window manager
— Best Twitter client I’ve found so far
The rest, VPN, Time Machine, Wi-Fi, Volume, Battery, Language, Clock, Fast User Switching and Spotlight are all built in.
(From Ole)
Jitouch - extended gestures for Magic trackpad and Magic mouse
Sparrow - native client for Gmail
Dropbox - no further comments needed, I think
Mail Unread Menu - unread mail count for Mac mail client - with custom icons
- communicator
Adium - communicator
Little Snitch - Internet connection rules for apps
Blast - frequently used documents and apps menu
Meerkat - SSH tunneling to my home NAS server
Sidekick - activates apps and settings based on my location (E.g. disables locking computer when I am at home, etc.)
ExpanDrive - mounts remote drive (FTP, SFTP, etc.) - has a plugin for Network location
BusyCalAlarm - latest calendar events
Sophos Antivirus - there are viruses and malware designed for all OSes
Evernote - great way to record notes
Caffeine - great for keeping the screen awake
The rest is just standard Mac stuff.
Here are few things, that I have hidden from the menu bar — there is way too much stuff already:
Alfred - quick access / search anything
TextExpander - replaces texts while typing for quick text typing
Moom - window management tool
Witch - replaces Cmd+Tab with extended features (mainly restores minimized windows when switching)
TotalFinder - extend Finder functionality
Visor - docks terminal Quake style
(From Ondrej Masek)
Dropbox - I use Dropbox to backup everything that I’m working on. I am a Pro User, with 50GB almost filled up.
Visor - I spend a considerable amount of time in the day in in the command prompt, and Vizor gives me a quick Quake-like hotkey to open up a command prompt.
Flux - When I happen to be working at odd-hours, I’d like to try and save my eyes as much as possible. Flux automatically changes the temperature of my display based on sunrise/sunset times.
Caffeine - Prevent my Mac from going to sleep, by giving it some Caffeine.
SSHKeychain - Painless SSH key management. Also, establishes SSH tunnels for me. Neato!
Bluetooth - I like to know what is connected to my machine at any given time.
Wi-Fi - Yup. I use it.
Keyboard - I have to keymaps setup - one for US English and the other for Russian. Quick toggle between.
iStat Menus - At a glance, I can see what is happening on my system. CPU/Memory/Clock shown, expands to show additional information about Disk IO/Usage/Network/etc. I like the World Clock provided by iStat Menus.
- OpenVPN management for OS X.
Spotlight - Typically, I use Alfred.
Watts - Neat little tool that tells me how and when to calibrate my laptop battery.
(From frymanet)
- GUI for OpenVPN on Mac OS X, for a secure connection to my company’s network
Dropbox - Simply brilliant, but still expensive for non-free packages (50/100 GB)
Skitch - For extremely convenient screenshots and annotations, everyone should install it
Divvy - Window management, useful for 13” screens, but further improvements are needed
CloudApp - Another gem for files in the cloud, this one being very useful while sharing them. It just can’t get any simpler than this
Remind Me Later - Quickly adds events to iCal. Similar to Fantastical's input, but it's free
Translator - A small app for quick drag n drop translations via Google Translate
Caffeine - For preventing the computer from automatically going to sleep. Although not necessary while playing movies or presentations since such applications have this function enabled by default
Quicksilver - This one is keeping me very productive every day
The usual suspects: Time Machine, Bluetooth, WiFi, Battery level
Display(s) - I keep it in the right since some projectors often have a low resolution causing most of the menu items on the left being “eaten” by the menu of the applications, after which it’s impossible to change the resolution or screen configuration
Keyboard - Most of my time I type in Croatian, however, the US keyboard is slightly better for coding
Clock - 24hr rules, can’t use the 12hr, it reminds me of other non-metric absurdities
Spotlight - it’s not that bad!
(From F)
BetterTouchTool, which is used to enhance gesture by trackpad (I basically use it to flick from spaces to spaces and trigger Exposé). You can also buy it from the App Store if you wish to fund the author.
CloudApp, a Dropbox challenger. A little bit different, though, it’s more about quick upload than managing a directory. With a simple shortcut, you’ll upload a selected file, and they’ll directly paste to the clipboard a short link. The biggest drawback for now is that this link is a link of a viewer, and you must go there to pick the direct link, which is not convenient. By the way, it also lets you know by clicking the menubar icon how many views an item has reached.
Dropbox, Apple should have done it.
Evernote, I use it sometimes, to store ideas that come to my mind, quotes I hear, it’s quite useful, but it probably needs to be more organized. But it’s free, and communicate from iOS to OS X, and the search engine is perfect.
gfxCardStatus, this little utility lets me choose which graphic card I want to use (Nvidia or Intel Chip), and trigger the behavior (I can activate one of them, or both like the original behavior).
Next to the Wi-fi icon, MenuMeters helps me to monitor my RAM use and CPU load (so I can see numbers dramatically increase when I launch Chrome and it displays Flash content). Next to it, it’s MobileMe’s sync icon.
And there is, of course, a launcher, but it’s invisible. I use Quicksilver, because my only need is to quickly launch apps, and I don’t like Alfred’s focus (when you use Alfred you lose your focus, it doesn’t act like a bezel, but like a separate app, and I don’t like this). Oh, and the right part is written in Mandarin Chinese, and as I’m French, I use my Taiwanese Mac with the American layout, so I can write French and English without missing a single character or accent, and switch to zhuyin when needed :). (From formose)
- The least lame Twitter client I’ve tried.
- Recently been trying out this slick little IMAP email client.
Dropbox (Flash Drives have now joined Floppy Disk and Zip Disk in the retirement home.)
Utility for the scanner function on the Canon MG5220 Multifunction machine. I actually use Image Capture to actually scan, but it breaks if I remove this.
controller - The device itself was designed for video editing, but I use it for brush resizing and zooming in/out in Photoshop and Illustrator. Buttons are mapped to key modifiers. (Way better than Express Keys on my Wacom Tablet.
- Necessity when working on multiple devices.
Jumpcut - Multi-item clipboard utility. Only handles text, but does it well.
Transmit - Nice FTP/S3 transfers
iChat, MenuMeters, Time Machine, Blutetooth, AirPort Signal, Keyboard/Character Viewer (for when I can’t remember how to type certain oddball characters), Media Eject, Clock, and Spotlight, which I pretty much use as an app launcher.
(From Mike Shoaf)
Scroll Reverser, Dropbox, Skitch, Adium, Hazel, Playback, Isolator, , Photo Desktop, ChronoSync, Boxcar, , iStat Menus, Spaces, Lock, Bluetooth, VPN, iChat, AirPort, Keyboard, Sound Volume, Date, and Spotlight.
(From )