Makes the frontmost application stand out and the others fade into the background excellent for when you have multiple windows that look alike, or too much screen real estate.

I have some deep misgivings about the decision of Homebrew to take exclusive ownership of /usr/local, but on a fresh install of OS X, if you’re prepared to let Homebrew have its way, there is no simpler/faster way of installing a bunch of necessary and useful command line packages ( here’s my current Brewfile).

Ok, so this one is not a GUI app, but it’s very important, as it is the primary way of getting all the not-GUI apps (and a few of the GUI ones too), so including it here. plugging in or unplugging an external display, or launching an app). I use it for positioning windows using hot keys and in response to events (eg. Programmable OS X automation and scripting tool. I actually use both Chrome and Chrome Canary the former for 'tools' (Gmail, Pivotal tracker, Airbrake etc) and the latter for development. Not as pretty as Apple’s own Safari, but despite the fact it shares many internals, 2012 was the year I finally had to recognize that Chrome had gotten the edge in features and stability. Software in this list is either open source, or otherwise freeware/donationware. I’m not mentioning here command-line apps like Git, tmux and Vim - which I also consider to be essential - but am instead confining myself to GUI apps only.īasically, this is the stuff that I end up installing on every machine that comes into my possession, and which I would be sad about if it ever became abandonware.

This is a list of software which I consider to be pretty much a 'must have' on any Mac I own.

Keyremap4macbook