Would it surprise you to learn that the coolest Mac software out there wasn’t created by Adobe, Microsoft, or even Apple? We expose the most useful but least-well-known apps you should be running on your Mac to get more done, have more fun, and make more of the time you spend in front of the computer.

When it comes to software, using a Mac is an exercise in irony. On the one hand, Apple famously includes 90 percent of the software most users need right out of the box. On the flip side, no other platform enjoys such a thriving, clever community of third-party software developers. Everybody knows about the Mac desktop heavyweights—Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office for Mac, and so on—but we wanted to uncover the best unsung creations from lesser-known developers. Some of these apps offer low-cost or free alternatives to Mac system defaults like Mail or iChat. Others improve system applications by tweaking existing features. And still more expand the boundaries of the Desktop by adding wholly new capabilities. So find a comfortable chair. You’ve got some downloading to do.

Productivity and Organization
We could all use a few more hours in the day. Until time travel becomes reality, however, you can turn to these smart apps to get more done on your Mac in less time. No garbage-guzzling DeLorean required.

1. Anxiety
Developer: Tom Stoelwinder
www.anxietyapp.com
Cost: Free
Requirements: OS 10.5 

Anxiety takes the dread out of task management with its smart design.

This clever task manager single-handedly converted us to using the task functions in iCal and Apple Mail. How? By keeping our to-do lists in front of us at all times. Anxiety plugs in to the task databases behind Mail and iCal, even when those apps aren’t running. Anxiety’s small translucent window respects your desktop space with a minimalist list of unfinished tasks—and nothing else. To add a new task, you press Enter, type a description, and press Enter again. Checked items immediately disappear from view.

Our primary complaint with this app is the way it handles due dates: We wish it were done within Anxiety itself, instead of within iCal or Mail, and it would be nice to have the option to let finished tasks remain, crossed out, in the window. But these are minor quibbles. Anxiety triples the convenience of OS 10.5’s task features, and it does it for free.

2. FileChute
www.yellowmug/filechute/
Cost: $17.95
Developer: Yellow Mug Software
Requirements: OS 10.4 or later 

FileChute makes sharing files online cut-and-paste easy.

Aside from the nonexistence of flying cars and jetpacks, one thing that still disappoints us about the 21st century is how difficult it is to send large files over the Internet. FileChute solves this problem by providing a drag-and-drop interface for uploading large files to your .Mac account or other Web space, and then by providing a download link for the file’s destination. It’s the latter half that’s the real magic. We know our way around FTP servers and such, but it’s easy to get discombobulated trying to remember the exact paths to files we want to share with colleagues and friends. With FileChute, you just copy and paste a provided URL. Setup for a .Mac account is three-click operation. Setting up an FTP account takes a bit longer, but it’s well worth the time it saves you in the long run.

3. Yojimbo
www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/
Cost: $39
Developer: Bare Bones Software
Requirements: OS 10.4.3 

Yojimbo’s ability to encrypt notes makes it perfect for storing passwords and other sensitive information.

The latest iteration of Spotlight is spot-on for fi nding standalone documents and email messages. But as anyone who spends a lot of time online knows, most of what you find on the Web isn’t part of an organized document—it’s in snippets. As good as Spotlight is, it’s simply not up to keeping track of all these bits and pieces.

This is where Yojimbo comes in. Though it supports image files, Yojimbo’s greatest utility is in its ability to store and organize text: serial numbers, to-do lists, reminders, instructions, driving directions—all the flotsam that inundates your Mac but can be difficult to search and organize. Yojimbo tracks entries with keyword tagging and Smart Folder–like tag collections that let you quickly browse text snippets by keyword (see our how-to on tagging, p24). You paste new snippets into a floating drop bar or quick-entry window (summoned by F8). There’s also a Print PDF To Yojimbo option in the Print dialogue. And users with .Mac accounts can sync their Yojimbo libraries across multiple Macs.

4. Scrivener
www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
Cost:$39.95
Developer: Literature & Latte
Requirements: OS 10.4 

Despite prescription meds, our attention still flags without Scrivener’s full-screen editing mode.

In the universe of plain-Jane word processors, Scrivener stands out for its uniquely project-oriented approach. The application encourages you to break long compositions into scenes or sections, and then makes it easy to rearrange those sections by dragging and dropping text. Targeted at creative writers and authors of book-length works, Scrivener also acts as a scrapbook for research material and a means of organizing PDFs, images, and other files. Full-screen mode hides the Dock and Desktop icons, leaving you alone with nothing but your text.

5. Celtx
www.celtx.com/
Cost: Free
Developer: Celtx
Requirements: OS X 

Put up your dukes! Celtx will fight—and probably KO—more expensive screenwriting apps with one hand tied behind its back.

Though less expensive than video-editing software, most professional screenwriting applications are far from cheap ($229 for market leader Final Draft, for example). Which is why our writer friends are incredulous when we tell them about Celtx. This open-source software helps you knock out screenplays, AV Scripts, and stage plays with ease—and it doesn’t cost a dime. You can cycle through typical script formatting such as scene headings, action, and dialogue with the tab and return keys, and all the standard word-processing niceties (spell check, text formatting, and so on) are included as well. Writing aside, Celtx can track character traits, break down scripts by scene, and, when you’ve finished your masterpiece, the software can organize storyboards and schedule production. Optional paid features enable online collaboration and other Web-only tricks.

6. Desktop Curtain
www.manytricks.com/desktopcurtain/
Cost: donationware
Developer: Many Tricks
Requirements: OS 10.4 

Choose a work-safe image, and all your desktop clutter disappears safely behind it.

Privacy is a funny thing in the laptop age. If your work involves giving presentations or taking screenshots, Desktop Curtain might help you protect yours—or at least avoid embarrassment and dirty looks. This app has a single purpose: It overlays an image on your desktop, concealing whatever clutter or weirdness you might normally keep there. Because the prospective clients watching your Keynote presentation don’t really need to know about your huge collection of American Girl dolls, do they?

7. Inquisitor 3
www.inquisitorx.com/safari/
Cost: donationware
Developer: David Watanabe
Requirements: OS 10.4

Save yourself unnecessary clicking with Inquisitor’s drop-down search results.

If you like Spotlight, odds are you’ll love Inquisitor, a Safari add-on that provides instant Google search results in a drop-down menu from the browser’s search bar. On a high-speed connection, results appear almost instantaneously, and we can’t overstate how refreshing it is to click straight through to the Web page you want, rather than being forced to visit an intermediary search results page. An icon installed inside Safari’s Preferences allows you to control the number of results returned and add search results from Amazon, Flickr, and many other popular sites and search engines.

8. Witch
www.manytricks.com/witch/
Cost: donationware
Developer: Many Tricks
Requirements: OS 10.3

Choose among all open windows (even minimized) and control selected window behavior with Witch.

Power users know to press Command-Tab to cycle through open applications. Witch takes this time-saving trick a step further by allowing you to cycle through all open windows with the key combination of your choice. Selected windows automatically maximize themselves if they’re minimized in the Dock when selected, and you can also control the order in which windows appear, and set aside some apps for Witch to ignore. Equally cool: Witch installs inside System Preferences, so there’s no additional application window to get in the way. 

9. A Better Finder Rename
www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/index.html
Cost: $24.95
Developer: publicspace.net
Requirements: OS 10.3

If A Better Finder Rename can’t handle your batch-renaming operation, you might be better off leaving the filenames alone.

On our list of favorite activities, renaming large numbers of files is right above a root canal. If you can relate, you need A Better Finder Rename, the atomic bomb of batch-renaming utilities. Forget tediously selecting filenames and keying in new ones—this single-purpose app will rename hundreds of files in no time, and it has a ton of automatic options. Rename MP3 files by ID3 tags, add an image’s dimensions to its filename—the list goes on and on.

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10. TextExpander
www.smileonmymac.com/textexpander/
Cost: $29.95
Developer: SmileOnMyMac
Requirements: OS 10.4

Spare yourself a punishing bout of carpal tunnel by letting TextExpander auto-complete often-used chunks of text.

If your workstation ergonomics are far from perfect, TextExpander could be a crucial weapon in your productivity arsenal. Once installed inside System Preferences, this utility allows you to create shortcut strings that automatically expand into entire blocks of text.

In our case, the string cinfo expands automatically into our phone number and mailing and email addresses in any text-friendly application on our Mac. You can set shortcuts to expand as soon as they’re typed or after a keystroke delimiter-like tab, return, 
or space.

11. ThisService
wafflesoftware.net/thisservice/
Cost: donationware
Developer: Waffle Software
Requirements: OS 10.4

Turning an AppleScript into a service with ThisService is a matter of selecting the script file and saving it to the Services menu.

There are two types of Mac user—those who use the Services menu, and those who’ve never even heard of it. If you’re in the former camp, check out ThisService, an app that allows you to create your own services using AppleScript, Apple’s English-like scripting language. (Ordinarily, creating services requires programming in Objective-C within Apple’s Cocoa framework.) ThisService also accepts any OS X–friendly scripting language.

12. Yep
www.ironicsoftware.com/
Cost: $34
Developer: Ironic Software
Requirements: OS 10.4

Yep is a lean, mean, PDF-organizing machine.

The paperless office promised to eliminate clutter and make it possible to find what we’re looking for faster. But as anyone with a hard drive full of PDFs knows, finding a particular one can be taxing, even with the help of Spotlight. Yep bills itself as an “iPhoto for PDFs,” and the comparison is apropos. Yep quickly locates PDFs in your home folder and displays them as thumbnails. Files are grouped by keyword tags, and the app gives you a head start by auto-tagging files based on their location and contents. Happily, Yep leaves files in their original locations.

Music, Photos, and Video

Between iLife ’08, the iTunes Store, and the Apple TV, Apple does its utmost to make sure we load up our Macs with digital media, and it does a slick job giving us a range of tools to edit that media. But as good as the iLife ’08 apps are, they have their limitations. And very few casual users need the firepower of Apple’s higher-end media apps, such as Final Cut Studio and Aperture. When it comes to editing and managing media on your Mac, you have a lot of excellent third-party options, many of which have refreshingly short learning curves—with affordable price tags to match.

13. Acorn
acorn.en.softonic.com/mac
Cost: $49.95
Developer: Flying Meat
Requirements: OS 10.4.9

Acorn offers a sophisticated selection of filters, Unsharp Mask chief among them.

We love the power of Photoshop CS3, but Adobe’s high-priced flagship image editor is not for everyone. Fortunately, several simpler photo editors have emerged in recent years to appeal to the cost-conscious hobbyist crowd. Chief among them is Acorn, a consumer-level app that blends immediately into the Mac OS thanks to its thoughtful design. Its editing tools are a huge step up from those included in iPhoto 08, including support for layers and levels, an extensive selection of filters, Web optimization settings, and integration with Flickr’s desktop uploader. Acorn’s tool selection seems guaranteed to satisfy the ever-growing army of point-and-shoot digital photographers, although it’s probably too lightweight for the DSLR crowd.

14. Connect360
www.nullriver.com/products/connect360
Cost: $20
Developer: Nullriver Software
Requirements: OS 10.3.9

Don’t hate us because we love our XBox 360. Connect360 enables our Mac to communicate with Microsoft’s game console so we can stream media files to our TV.

Until we make the switch once and for all to an Apple TV for all of our media streaming, we’ll stream movies, music, and photos to our television through our XBox 360 using Connect360. Once installed, Connect360 allows your Mac to appear within the XBox 360’s Dashboard, making it possible to browse and play the media files inside your Music and Movie folders via the Xbox 360. The app’s biggest limitation is its lack of support for FairPlay-protected files purchased through the iTunes Music Store, but given Apple’s lock on FairPlay, that’s hardly the developer’s fault. Besides, Connect360 supports a wide array of other formats, including H.264, WMV, 
and DivX video, as well as MP3, Apple Lossless, and unprotected AAC audio.

15. Audacity
audacity.sourceforge.net/
Cost: Free
Developer: Open-source community
Requirements: OS X

Audacity’s waveform editor and filters offer a level of fine-tuning that is unavailable in GarageBand.

While we prefer GarageBand for no-nonsense recording and editing, the free and open-source Audacity is hard to beat for fixing poor recordings. Its hefty filter menu offers powerful, flexible tools for removing background noise, making low-volume recordings audible, and compressing differences in volume. And Audacity imports and exports a range of formats with greater ease and grace than GarageBand, which seems to begrudge the fact that you might want to use another audio editor. Files exported to the high-quality AIFF format with Audacity are easily imported back into GarageBand. The zoom control on Audacity’s waveform editor can make it a much better choice than GarageBand for editing files that require a lot of fine cutting. On the Mac desktop, Audacity’s big failing is the design of its user interface—it’s obviously a port of a Windows program, and it doesn’t integrate very well with OS X. Aesthetics aside, though, its utility as an audio Swiss Army knife is vastly underrated on 
the Mac.

16. VLC

www.videolan.org/vlc/
Developer: VideoLAN
Cost: Free
Requirements: OS 10.3.9 or later

VLC’s footprint may be small, but it’s a more-than-capable video player, especially if you’re streaming files across your home network.

QuickTime’s hardiness and system integration makes it the go-to video player on the Mac. Still, there are video formats that QuickTime doesn’t support. For those files, we turn to VLC, a free, open-source application ported to the Mac. VLC’s specialty is playing files located elsewhere on a network, though it’s equally happy to play files from a local machine. Supported video codecs include AVI, MP4, FLV, WMV, MOV, and far too many others to name.

17. HandBrake
handbrake.fr/
Cost: Free
Developer: Open-source community
Requirements: OS 10.5 or later

The DVD we’re ripping with HandBrake in this screenshot is a home movie—we swear!

We’re willing to bet you have heard of this one. But we couldn’t live with ourselves if we left HandBrake off our list just to be sticklers for the rules. HandBrake is truly the best at what it does—copying the contents of video DVDs and converting that content to other formats. It builds on that basic premise with a wide array of options, including support for subtitles, chapter markers, and multiple audio tracks. Frame-rate and bit-rate controls allow you to adjust the size and quality of the resulting files, and the software can queue tasks to provide multiple rips from a single disc. Oh yeah, and did we mention that HandBrake is free? By the way, our lawyer would like us to remind you that ripping copyrighted motion pictures from a DVD is probably illegal. He also reminded us that in Oklahoma it’s still against the law to wear your boots to bed.

18. Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes
dougscripts.com/itunes/
Cost: Free
Developer: Doug Adams
Requirements: OS X, version varies by script

If you’ve never used AppleScripts, it might take a little while to get comfortable with Doug’s collection, but you’ll love iTunes all the more for your efforts (see our how-to below).

Technically, Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes can’t be classified as an application—it’s a collection of scripts—but it rates so high on the awesome meter that we’re including it anyway. Anyone with an extensive iTunes library knows how difficult it can be to manage all that music, and Doug’s scripts offer dozens of tricks for getting yours under control. Our favorite scripts remove dead tracks from a library, strip duplicates from a selected playlist, and reveal which tracks have not been added to a playlist. There are more than 440 scripts to choose from, so check them out and let us know which you like best.

Internet Applications
Remember back in the late ’90s, when authorities warned us about the perils of Internet addiction? Today, the Net is so tightly woven into the fabric of our daily lives that no one raises an eyebrow at the thought of spending many hours a day online. These apps help you get more out of the Internet so that the time you spend online gets you more than just fuzzy vision and a hand cramp.

19. Cyberduck
cyberduck.ch/
Cost: Free
Developer: David V. Kocher
Requirements: OS 10.3.9 or later

Uploading and downloading aside, Cyberduck can modify file permissions and send shell commands.

Browser-based uploaders are fine and dandy, but when it comes time for heavy-duty file transferring, nothing beats an old-fashioned FTP client. Cyberduck stands out first for its many capabilities: regular and secure transfer modes, bookmark syncing via .Mac, and support for AppleScript and external text editors, to name a few. Most remarkable, though, is that it’s free. Uploading and downloading are drag-and-drop operations, and the open-source community behind the application releases frequent bug fixes and updates. Some FTP aficionados swear by Panic’s Transmit ($29.95, panic.com), but for us Cyberduck hits the sweet spot with its low price—or should we say no price?—great performance, and an interface that Mac users will feel instantly at home with.

20. NewsFire
www.newsfirerss.com/
Cost: Free
Developer: NewsFire Projects
Requirements: OS 10.4

There are several smart desktop RSS readers for the Mac, and NewsFire is one of the best.

NewsGator’s NetNewsWire (free, newsgator.com) has been the big gun in the desktop RSS arsenal for some time now, but it’s not your only choice. NewsFire is an often-underrated alternative that combines a clean interface with a feature set that was obviously designed for folks who spend lots of time in their feed readers. Updated feeds automatically shuffle to the top of the list, and NewsFire can easily pass items to an email client, desktop blog editor, or a social bookmarking site, such as del.icio.us. The app also offers to discover any feed from whatever site is displayed in Safari.

The main argument for NetNewsWire is its ability to sync across multiple computers with the NewsGator service. Unfortunately, however, syncing doesn’t always work as advertised, which helps to level the playing field. NewsFire is a beautiful, capable desktop RSS reader that’s worth a look.

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21. AdiumX
www.adiumx.com
Cost: Free
Developer: Open-source community
Requirements: OS 10.4 or later

Unlike iChat, AdiumX never met a chat protocol it didn’t like.

Even with the help of Chax (see #22), iChat’s overwhelming limitation is its lack of support for several popular messaging networks, Yahoo and MSN chief among them. If you loathe switching between messaging clients just to keep track of your buddies, AdiumX may be the solution. With support for MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, Google Talk, and a host of others, you’ll never need to switch programs in order to chat. Unlike many open-source apps, AdiumX looks right at home on the Mac desktop. And it offers a long list of customizations for its appearance and behavior, including the ability to automatically accept file transfers. If you’re addicted to voice or video chat, however, you’re out of luck. AdiumX is messaging only.

22. Chax
ksuther.com/chax/
Cost: Free
Developer: Kent Sutherland
Requirements: OS 10.5

We like iChat. But we like it even more with Chax.

Since its release, iChat has gone from a capable if slightly uninspiring chat client to a video-streaming, screen-sharing wonder. Chax builds on that by fine-tuning some of iChat’s most popular features. For instance, Chax allows you to automatically accept file transfers and screen-sharing requests from selected contacts, resize the contact list to fit the number of contacts on the fly, and reveal message senders in the Dock. After installation, look for it inside iChat’s Preferences.

23. Twitterific
iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific
Cost: Free ad-supported version, $14.95 for ad-free version
Developer: Iconfactory
Requirements: Twitter account, OS 10.4

None of these people are actually our friends. We just like to know what they’re doing. Is that creepy?

We’ve given up on trying to explain to non-Twitterers what Twitter is and why it has such appeal. In case you don’t know, it’s a micro-blogging service that gives you yet another way to kill time online (as if you need one). The fact is, it’s great fun once you get a few friends signed up. Twitterific liberates the service from the browser by providing instant notifications through a menuless floating window. It also makes some of Twitter’s lesser-known features—replies and direct messages in particular—one-button operations.

24. Call Recorder for Skype
www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/email_chat/callrecorderforskype.html
Cost: $14.95
Developer: Ecamm Network
Requirements: OS 10.4, Skype 1.4

Recording Skype calls for podcasting purposes was a lot harder back in the days before Call Recorder for Skype.

In the early days of podcasting, recording a voice call over Skype and adding it to a podcast meant using three separate applications. So we overjoyed to discover Call Recorder for Skype, which installs inside of Skype, and handles video and audio with ease. Encoding options let you control the format and file sizes of recorded calls, and AAC-encoded audio is easily dragged into GarageBand for editing.

Email

We never thought we’d hear our grandma say, “Can you just email it to me?” But now that grandmas everywhere are hip to email, you might as well up your game in Mac Mail too. Downloading these apps is your first step.

25. MailTags
www.indev.ca/MailTags.html
Cost: $29.95
Developer: indev Software
Requirements: OS 10.4.7

Tag your messages with MailTags and never lose them again (for pointers, see the how-to below).

If you keep a large email archive (ours is 8GB), you know how frustrating it can be to find a single message, even with Leopard’s much improved Spotlight. MailTags makes your messages easier to search by allowing you to add Web 2.0–style keyword tags to individual messages within Apple Mail. Tags can then be added as filters within Smart Folders, making it easy to browse tagged messages, regardless of where they’re stored.

26. Mail Attachments Iconizer
lokiware.info/Mail-Attachments-Iconizer
Cost: $14.99
Developer: Adam Nohejl
Requirements: OS 10.4

Force Mail to neaten up attachments.

We can always tell when someone has sent us a large image attachment in Mail, because right after we select the message, our hard drive starts grinding and the dratted spinning beach ball appears. This is because Mail tries to render images inline in the message, which, given how strange some of our friends are, is rarely a good thing. Mail Attachments Iconizer forces images over a certain size to display as icons—a huge time saver.

Editors and System Utilities 

What these apps lack in glamour, they make up for in usefulness, keeping your data backed up, offering shortcuts to the Terminal, and helping you write code.

27. SuperDuper!
www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Cost: Free for basic features, $27.95 for scheduled backups
Developer: Shirt Pocket
Requirements: OS 10.4 or later

The first full backup with SuperDuper! can take many hours, but subsequent backups are much faster, thanks to its Smart Update feature.

We live on our Macs—for work and play—which is why we can’t afford to lose even an hour over a hard drive failure. SuperDuper! provides the gold standard of worry-free backups by making a complete, bootable copy of your Mac’s startup drive (called a clone). If the drive dies, you simply boot from your backup disk, and continue working with all of your applications and files intact. A free version is available, but only the paid version is capable of scheduling backups and reducing the time required for subsequent backups by copying only changed files. Other options include repairing permissions on the source disk before each backup (useful for preventing errors), and backing up to a disk image instead of an external drive.

SuperDuper! does one thing, and it does it well.

28. TextMate
macromates.com/
Cost: $64
Developer: Allan Odgaard
Requirements: OS 10.4.2

A good text editor should save you time and conserve brain power. TextMate does both.

When it comes to file formats, ASCII text is as simple as it gets. So it speaks to how discerning Mac users are that we have so many choices for text editors. Mainstays such as BBEdit, TextWranger, and SubEthaEdit all have their place, but if you’re looking for a hardcore coding platform, TextMate is hard to beat. Of course it has the basics: syntax highlighting for a dozen different markup and script languages, options for file encodings and line endings, powerful find-and-replace filters, and so on.

But TextMate becomes a coder’s dream with Bundles (preformatted chunks of code and common actions for different coding languages and environments) and with its easy handling of multifile projects. When we saw the pages and pages of keyboard shortcuts built into the Bundles, we almost wept for joy. It takes some time to discover all the tricks in TextMate, but it’s worth it. 

29. Coda
www.panic.com/coda/
Cost: $79
Developer: Panic
Requirements: OS 10.4

Eye candy aside, Coda offers an elegant, considered approach to coding websites.

Ever hand-coded a website on your Mac? Then you know how 
quickly the desktop disappears under a dozen different windows and apps. Coda replaces this mess with a remarkably clean, single-window environment that combines a tab-separated text editor, FTP client, and terminal window. The FTP function incorporates Transmit, Panic’s celebrated standalone FTP client, and the terminal function incorporates OS X’s own Terminal app. The text editor covers the essential bases (line numbering, syntax highlighting, etc), but it’s the one part of the package that feels a bit lightweight.

Function aside, Coda’s presentation is gorgeous. Imported websites appear as thumbnail images of each site’s homepage. And the interface enjoys a delightful consistency. The purchase price includes electronic reference books on HTML, CSS, Javascript, and more. In short, Coda offers a revolution in workflow.

30. GeekTool
projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/
Cost: Free
Developer: Tynsoe.org
Requirements: OS X

If you can’t live without knowing the latest output of your favorite shell script, GeekTool is for you.

GeekTool is aptly named, as its most useful feature is its ability to overlay the output of shell scripts onto the desktop. If that doesn’t sound impressive, consider that simple shell commands can provide an instant report on resources, such as remaining hard disk space, system uptime, or memory usage. True, you could bypass GeekTool by running these same commands in the Terminal (Utilities > Terminal), but nothing beats the convenience of having real-time output right in front of you. A good trick: install GeekTool, open its pane inside System Preferences, click New Entry, select Shell from the dropdown menu at the top, type df in the text box, and hit Enter. GeekTool will display a list of all mounted file systems and the available free space in each.