This allows me to stream music from my MacBook or iPhone to my iMac. But Airfoil Speakers works in the other direction: it turns any Mac into an AirPlay receiver. Airfoil is designed to let you stream audio from a Mac to all sorts of devices, and it is an essential tool for doing this task. There are lots of other ways to do this, but I find Sizzling Keys the easiest and most flexible iTunes controller.Īnother utility I use with iTunes is Airfoil Speakers, part of Airfoil. Sizzling Keys lets me use a number of custom keyboard shortcuts to control iTunes, rate tracks, and even display a floating window showing what’s playing. I’ve never cottoned to using the media keys on Apple’s keyboard, since they’re just a bit too far too reach easily. When I want to pause music, change the volume, or skip tracks, I don’t like to have to switch to iTunes and click its buttons I prefer doing it more quickly. I listen to music a lot while I work, and iTunes runs all day on my Mac in the background. iStat Menus also offers better menu extras than Apple’s for my MacBook’s battery status and for the date and time.
For example, if I see that my Mac’s CPU is running hot, or there’s a lot of network throughput, I can click to view a menu and find which app is the culprit. Clicking any of these graphs displays more information. Whenever I want to check something, a quick glance shows me what’s happening. IStat Menus is always visible in my menu bar, but its display is small and unobtrusive. Left to right: RAM usage, network throughput, CPU usage, date and time. IStat Menus adds menu extras to the menu bar. To tame my email, I use SpamSieve, a simple utility that works in the background to filter all my email as it arrives, and sort the wheat from the chaff. I’ve tried using server-side spam filters, but there are too many false positives messages marked as spam that aren’t. I get lots of email, and much of it is spam. TextExpander 5 watches for and suggests ranges of text you type repeatedly. TextExpander also reminds me when I type something frequently and suggests that I create a snippet to save even more time. I have dozens of “snippets” set up in TextExpander, for quick replies to email (“Please remove me from your list,” for example, for all the junk I get from PR people), app names I type often (iTunes, iTunes Match), my address, my phone number, bits of HTML code, and more. TextExpander saves me a lot of time by allowing me to set up abbreviations that the app, working in the background, expands to longer bits of text. When you write a lot, anything you can do to save keystrokes saves time.
#Utility software for mac os x password#
The app’s integration into web browsers, using an extension to quickly fill in your login and password on websites, makes life much simpler and more secure. I also keep a number of secure notes in 1Password, containing essential banking information, and and other personal information.
#Utility software for mac os x install#
It’s a repository for software serial numbers, so it allows me to install other apps, those not purchased from the Mac App Store.