It's listicle1 time! What follows is a list of software I keep coming back to on my macs. You could call them essential. You could call them important. You could even go so far as to say that I ❤️ them.
Native
- Name Mangler - changes file extensions. This might not seem like a hard thing, and indeed it isn't. But when you need an app to change hundreds of file extensions, that can also support regular expressions, this will do the job. And do it well.
- ImageOptim - optimizes png and jpeg files.
- Tweetbot - twitter client
- MacDown - Markdown editor
- MacVim - Mac UI around vim text editor
- Fork - Mac git client extraordinare. I consider a great graphical user interface (GUI) to be one that teaches you how to use an app the more you use it. In that respect, Fork is exceptional.
- iTerm 2 - more customizable terminal
- Pixelmator Pro - image editor (better than Photoshop for my purposes).
- Graphic (née iDraw) - vector graphics editor
- Gapplin - SVG previewer
- Nova - integrated development environment (IDE) for web development (like VsCode, but native)
- Xcode - compile all the things
Cross Platform toolkit
- Firefox - non-Safari browser of choice
- Nextcloud - file sync between different computers (like DropBox, but better)
- Alacritty - a terminal built with rust (the programming language)
Electron
- Bitwarden - password manager
- VsCode - IDE for web development (I only use this on my intel macs still). Nova is quickly taking over. I have to admit, for an Electron app, vscode is pretty good.
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lis·ti·cle noun, a piece of writing or other content presented wholly or partly in the form of a list