Useful macOS software and preferences

Hidden preferences

Disable Dock autohide delay:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.15;killall Dock

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0; killall Dock

Add a spacer to Dock (application side):

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

Add a spacer to Dock (document side):

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

In 10.14 Mojave, only use dark mode for menubar and Dock. First set mode to light, run the commands below, log out, log back in and then set appearance to dark.

defaults write -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool Yes

defaults write com.apple.notificationcenterui NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool No

Software

• Usability improvements
  • Keyboard Maestro - Macros, hotkeys, GUIs etc.
  • Divvy - Window mover & resizer, customisable hotkeys and grid to set window size and location.
  • SensibleSideButtons - fix mouse 5 & 4 usage on macOS.
  • MacsFanControl - set a custom fan curve & temperature limits on macOS
  • Littleipsum - copy customisable amount of filler text
  • XMenu - add items to (apps, documents, other folders & files) menubar
  • KeepingYouAwake - prevent system sleep for a certain amount of time
  • MenuMeters - show CPU, memory & network usage in menubar
  • Dozer - hide menubar icons
• Media & graphics
  • Fileloupe - preview and browse files
  • TinyPlayer - tiny audio player
  • IINA - mpv with a nice native GUI
  • Mpeg streamclip - encode video to a different format
  • Handbrake - encode video to a different format
• Office
  • PDF Expert - PDF viewer with markup and editing functionality (macOS’ Preview.app still has blurry font rendering)
  • iA Writer - good markdown editor with library & custom template support. The templates are simple HTML & CSS files and you can embed JavaScript into them for extra features, such as code highlighting.
• Development
  • iTerm2 - shell client
  • VScode - Text editor
  • BBedit - Text editor
  • Sequel Pro - SQL client
• Files
  • Keka - compress and extract common compressed files (7z, gzip, tar, zip)
  • NameChanger - batch rename items
  • SuperDuper - create a full image file of a drive or a bootable backup
  • AppCleaner - remove preferences, cache etc. when deleting an application
• Other
  • NetNewsWire - open source RSS reader

Screenshots

NetNewsWire

Keyboard Maestro

iA Writer

LittleIpsum

Divvy

MenuMeters