macOS tools 9 May 2018

As I had the unique opportunity to completely reinstall my MacBook I took notes while doing so to know what I actually installed and need on my system. May it help my future self (and maybe others) to get an idea what apps/tools make your life easier.

I will extend this list regularly once I notice missing pieces.

First I installed Homebrew - package manager for macOS. It keeps all your installed stuff up to date and easy to (un)install.

brew installs

The following is installed via brew install NAME.

• ack - ack! - nicer looking version of a recursive search on the command line - grep -Rni TERM
• diff-so-fancy - diff-so-fancy - nicer to read diffs on the command line - I use it as the default pager for git: git config --global core.pager "diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX"
• ffmpeg - ffmpeg - convert multimedia
• fzf - fzf - command-line fuzzy finder
• gpg - GnuPG - mostly for signing git commits
• hub - hub - command line wrapper around git to integrate GitHub (like git checkout URL-TO-PULL-REQUEST)
• hugo - hugo - static website generator
• iperf - iPerf - measuring network bandwidth
• jhead - jhead - tool to manipulate images based on their EXIF data
  • shift “picture taken” date by a given amount of time - jhead -ta+3:14:03 to shift by 3h 14m and 3s
  • rename images to something like 2018-03-04.13-45-34.jpg with jhead -n%Y-%m-%d.%H-%M-%S *.jpg
• jsonpp - jsonpp - JSON pretty print for the command line
• jq - jq - an easy to use command line JSON processor
  • curl -s https://example.org/api/info/queue | jq .stats to retrieve only the element stats
• python3 - Python - programming language
• pwgen- pwgen - CLI tool to easily generate secrets locally
• nmap - NMAP - looking around on the network
• tmate - tmate - sharing a terminal with someone else - nice for remote debugging and “screen” sharing (at least if “screen” basically refers to the terminal ;))
• tmux - tmux - a terminal multiplexer - an introduction how to use it
• tree - tree - a directory listing command to show a folder and its subfolders in a tree
• watch - watch - a tool to periodically execute a command and show the output - I often use it together with ls, tree, etc to check the filesystem content - watch -n 1 -d COMMAND to execute COMMAND every second and highlight the changed content
• wget - Wget - for fetching stuff from the internet
• youtube-dl - youtube-dl - download videos from YouTube (and many other sites) - used also to archive my YouTube favorites ;)

PHP

PHP - the programming language I use most of the time:

• brew tap homebrew/homebrew-php
• brew install php71 php71-imagick composer - installs PHP 7.1, the Imagick extension and Composer - remaining stuff is usually executed within docker containers to not clutter my main system

brew casks

Following apps can be installed via brew install --cask NAME:

• bitwarden - bitwarden - oepn-source password manager
• caffeine - Caffeine - don’t let your mac fall asleep
• dash - Dash - offline documentation for programming languages, libraries, APIs and RFCs that is easily searchable
• docker - Docker - container management
• dozer - Dozer - hide menu bar items
• foldingtext - FoldingText - simple text editor with outline features
• little-snitch - Little Snitch - firewall and network monitor
• imageoptim - ImageOptim - image optimizer (compression, metadata removal)
• insomnia - Insomnia - tool to organize HTTP API requests (mainly for testing/debugging)
• jetbrains-toolbox - Jetbrains Toolbox - Toolbox to install and update Jetbrains IDEs
• moneymoney - MoneyMoney - awesome banking tool
• phpstorm - PhpStorm - awesome PHP IDE
• raycast - Raycast - alternative to Spotlight
• slack - Slack - communication tool
• sublime-text - Sublime Text - a fast and reliable editor with nice features (keeps all unsafed documents, multi cursor editing, …) for everything where I don’t use PhpStorm
  • Package Control - to easily install following packages
  • DashDoc - dash integration
  • JSON Reindent
  • Predawn Twilight Theme
• timeular - Timeular - time tracking with a physical device
• tunnelblick - Tunnelblick - easy to use OpenVPN client
• tuxera-ntfs Tuxera NTFS - driver to write to NTFS disks
• virtualbox - Virtual Box - for running virtual machines (like the ones from modern.ie to test Internet Explorer and Edge)
• vlc - VLC media player - video player for many, many video formats

AppStore installs

Following apps are installed from the Mac App Store.

• Magnet - window manager
• Paste - clipboard manager - Cmd + Shift + V to search through the recent copied elements (bought in app store and thus need to install from app store, also available via brew cask)
• Shush - microphone manager to mute your mic with a specified keyboard key
• Tweetbot - Twitter client for macOS and iOS

Other apps

• Chrome - mostly for testing stuff
• Firefox - mostly for testing stuff
• Irvue - changes the wallpaper based on unsplash.com images on a configured interval
• Nextcloud desktop client - I use this to sync most of my local data to a Nextcloud server (documents, photos, desktop, …)
• Pixelmator - to manipulate pixel based images
• virtualenvwrapper - a small tool to make managing virtual python environment even easier (pip install virtualenvwrapper)

Configuration to backup

Locations of crucial configurations and state of apps/tool I use:

• git config - ~/.gitconfig - see my blog post for details
• gpg config - ~/.gnupg
• ssh keys & config - ~/.ssh
• Insomnia database - ~/Library/Application Support/Insomnia
• MoneyMoney database - ~/Library/Containers/com.moneymoney-app.retail/Data/Library/Application Support/MoneyMoney/
• Tunnelblick config - ~/Library/Application\ Support/Tunnelblick/Users/