Everybody I know has a set of little software tools that they use that make their work either slightly easier or slightly more pleasant.<p>What are the tiny tools that you use for your work?<p>Some of mine:<p>Skitch -- Little Mac app that makes it easy to take screenshots and draw/write on them<p>Be Focused -- A simple Pomodoro timer for Mac<p>"Remove Stickies" -- A URL bookmarklet I wrote that removes all floating elements from a page
bash, AWK, sips. A couple of bash commands I use daily:<p><i>cdf</i> - change directory to the folder open in (Mac) Finder<p><pre><code> cdf () {
currFolderPath=$( /usr/bin/osascript <<EOT
tell application "Finder"
try
set currFolder to (folder of the front window as alias)
on error
set currFolder to (path to desktop folder as alias)
end try
POSIX path of currFolder
end tell
EOT )
echo "cd to \"$currFolderPath\""
cd "$currFolderPath"
}
#dlm - "dlm filename" downloads filename.mp4 from URL in clipboard until its finished, resuming if interrupted
fname=$(pbpaste)
echo "Download $fname as $1.mp4 : "
until curl -C - -kLo $1.mp4 "$fname"
do
sleep 5
done</code></pre>
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Alfred App <a href="https://www.alfredapp.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.alfredapp.com/</a><p>I cannot give it enough upvotes!
The ‘z’ directory switching bash script is usually the first thing I miss when away from my own environment: <a href="https://github.com/rupa/z" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/rupa/z</a>
Colour picker: <a href="https://sipapp.io/" rel="nofollow">https://sipapp.io/</a><p>Download videos from YouTube and other sources: <a href="https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/" rel="nofollow">https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/</a> (was the only way I could get a video from the BBC site recently)<p>Chrome extension for taking a screenshot of a full web page: <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/full-page-screen-capture/fdpohaocaechififmbbbbbknoalclacl?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/full-page-screen-c...</a><p>Shameless plugs:<p>Script for renaming multiple files at the same time: <a href="https://github.com/ivanmaeder/vimv" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ivanmaeder/vimv</a><p>Button in macOS Finder for creating a file in the current folder: <a href="https://github.com/ivanmaeder/finder-touch" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ivanmaeder/finder-touch</a><p>That last one written in AppleScript which is craaazy.
Avid fan of <a href="https://htmlcolorcodes.com/" rel="nofollow">https://htmlcolorcodes.com/</a><p>However, since a while ago if you search "HTML color picker" google brings up a built-in color picker as the first result.
Caffeine - <a href="http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/" rel="nofollow">http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/</a><p>Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Right-click (or ⌘-click) the icon to show the menu.
Not precisely a tool, but YouTube channels actually have RSS feeds associated with them:<p><pre><code> https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<channel-id>
</code></pre>
From your subscriptions page, you can even download an OPML with feeds for each channel. Most RSS will let you import this just fine.<p>As I love the cli, my preferred reader is newsboat[0].<p>[0]: <a href="https://newsboat.org/" rel="nofollow">https://newsboat.org/</a>
A little alias that rewrites<p><pre><code> clone foo/bar
</code></pre>
into<p><pre><code> git clone --recursive https://github.com/foo/bar
</code></pre>
is one of my favorites.
Httpie - basically a nicer cUrl. Adding json and headers is super simple. <a href="https://httpie.org" rel="nofollow">https://httpie.org</a><p>Puppeteer Recorder - tooting my own horn, but is a Chrome extension that records Puppeteer scripts. <a href="https://github.com/checkly/puppeteer-recorder" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/checkly/puppeteer-recorder</a>
Video speed controller chrome extension. It lets you speed up videos on any site. I usually watch videos at 4x to 6x speed now (in addition to saving time I feel that I don't get distracted / daydream as much).<p>Sadly it's like an addiction and now I even watch Netflix at 1.5X speed too (which makes it impossible to watch with family)
ngrok: <a href="https://ngrok.com/" rel="nofollow">https://ngrok.com/</a>
expose local servers to the public internet (super helpful for building webhooks)<p>grpcurl: <a href="https://github.com/fullstorydev/grpcurl" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fullstorydev/grpcurl</a>
awesome tools for testing gRPC services<p>objective-see: <a href="https://objective-see.com/products.html" rel="nofollow">https://objective-see.com/products.html</a>
tons of awesome security tools for mac, for free!<p>f.lux: <a href="https://justgetflux.com/" rel="nofollow">https://justgetflux.com/</a>
great tool to adjust the color of your screen depending on the time of day
I extensively use [pngpaste](<a href="https://github.com/jcsalterego/pngpaste" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jcsalterego/pngpaste</a>)<p>Now I can copy any images from browsers/screenshot into any location in terminal I want
"paste" -- an unexpectedly useful data-wrangling tool. I used a hand-rolled version for years before discovering it was available "as standard".
Generic resource (mac/OsX):<p><a href="https://tinyapps.org/osx.html" rel="nofollow">https://tinyapps.org/osx.html</a><p>Cannot judge for Mac, but the selection of Windows little tools has traditionally been very good, the only Mac one I ever used (and it proved to work well) was WakeOnLan:<p><a href="http://www.readpixel.com/wakeonlan/" rel="nofollow">http://www.readpixel.com/wakeonlan/</a>
For me it's tmuxp (<a href="https://github.com/tmux-python/tmuxp/blob/master/README.rst" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tmux-python/tmuxp/blob/master/README.rst</a>). It allows to create scripts for tmux sessions. It easily shaves off about 1 to 2 minutes of my time everyday.
Scapple - by far my favourite brainstorming / mind mapping / thought collecting tool. I use it every day. Features are just perfect, simple and useful.<p>I combine this with monosnap screenshot tool so I can drag images into notes.<p>(It's from the maker of Scrivener)
I run <a href="https://serveo.net" rel="nofollow">https://serveo.net</a>. Lets you expose local services through a proxy server (a la ngrok), but uses SSH as the transport, so there's nothing to install.
BitBar (<a href="https://github.com/matryer/bitbar" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/matryer/bitbar</a>)<p>Allows you to create custom MacOS menubar items from the text output of any script.
Drafts 5 combined with workflow and Pythonista on IOS. For everything ranging from diary, personal crm, search adress/telephone number/e-mail in a given text, meeting notes and well almost anything.
Very usefull combo
I use kickstart to manage my templates, including projects (<a href="https://github.com/Keats/kickstart/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Keats/kickstart/</a>)
smcFanControl - makes my old '14 MBP with replaced-almost-everything tolerably warm.<p>menuBUS - for easy switching between built-in audio, Bluetooth, digital output + equalizing each of them in their own ways.<p>Spectacle - for window management and easy fullscreen, half-screen and whatever-part-of-screen shortcuts.<p>Karabiner - for complicated hotkey rebinding and controlling those Logitech presenter sticks where clever designer put a tiny "Close presentation and exit" key right next to "Next slide".<p>LICEcap - for capturing screen to GIF files for easy sharing.
Vanilla -- ‘hide Mac menu bar icons’ (<a href="https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/" rel="nofollow">https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/</a>)<p>Clocker -- ‘Menubar World Clock’
<a href="https://tab.bz" rel="nofollow">https://tab.bz</a> to share lists of links to other people as one link, or just across devices that aren’t synced