Hi, I made this list in comments to a post on this subreddit, and new, current and even powerusers of macOS seemed to like it and found it useful, so I decided to share it there with you guys. Enjoy! :)
APPS:
CleanMyMac X can save you lot of space by cleaning system, it is really useful if you have small storage
Magnet is helpful when you want to organise your windows
Mounty is a little app that allows you to mount NTFS drives in read and write mode
SofaPlay is another little app that allows you to easily stream media to TVs with DLNA feature
Bartender will help you declutter your menu bar
iStat Menus is an app that shows usage and other stuff of every component in your Mac
1Password is quite good password manager, that you can also sync with your iPhone
Unsplash Wallpapers allows to automatically change to random wallpaper from their top-quality choices once a day or whatever time period you choose
Scroll Reverser will come in handy when you want to have different scrolling direction set for trackpad and mouse
Android File Transfer allows you to transfer files from android devices if you have any
DaisyDisk shows in clear way what is taking up most storage on your hard drive
Coconut Battery shows your battery stats
Amphetamine allows you to stop your Mac from going to sleep for certain period of time or when certain app is running
Commander One is a Total Commander alternative
The Unarchiver allows you to extract arhives quickly
VLC Media Player plays what QuickTime can’t
Parallels Desktop is an app that allows you to run virtual machines to run Windows, Linux or any OS you want inside macOS (you can also use VirtualBox or VMware Fusion, but I like Parallels the most)
AppCleaner - little app that you should use to remove another apps, it is deleting lefovers from them to save space (CleanMyMac has this option too, but AppCleaner is free)
Launchpad Manager - you can edit app names, etc. in launchpad if you’re seeing it’s too clutered
BalenaEtcher - allows you to flash iso, img, etc. images to USB drives
CyberDuck - FTP Client
ShareMouse - if you have second computer with keyboard and mouse pluged into, you can share them with Mac, without having to unplug everything from second computer. It is helpful when I have gaming setup with PC and want to hook up my MacBook to monitor and use my keyboard and mouse which is plugged in to PC
TeamViever - allows to control other computer or phone with Mac and vice versa
Adobe Acrobat Reader DC - it is required for some PDF files to display properly, but the stock Preview app and quick look should be fine too
WiFi Explorer Lite - shows details about signal, etc. from networks nearby you
LuLu - fully customisable and free firewall, you can block any app you want from accesing the network
TouchBarServer - if you have a Mac without touchbar and want to see how it works, the app will display virtual and fully functional touch bar on screen
Duplicate File Finder - it does what the name says
Blackmagic disk speed test, AmphorusDiskMark - disk read/write speed benchmark
Brackets - Notepad++ alternative, but better. It is really helpful when coding for example in HTML, it automatically closes the brackets. It has themes, extensions, etc.
Google Earth Pro - kind of more advanced maps, it works in web browser too
Apple Configurator 2 - you can tweak more advanced iPhone settings here with profiles
Web browsers - choose anything you like, for me personally Vivaldi=best customisation, Safari=best battery life
Office suite - Personally I prefer MS Office rather than Apple iWork, just see which you like more
Photo editing - I’m personally using Photoshop for raster graphics, but if you want something cheaper you can take a look at Pixelmator or Affinity. For vector graphic I use CorelDRAW, but Illustrator is fine too. For RAW files, Illustrator is your choice
Video editing - I use FCPX and it’s great (previously used Premiere Pro, FCPX is better imo.) If you’re not doing professional video editing you can go for free iMovie and you’ll be good. Motion is something like After Effects, it is used to create some animations that you can use in your videos. For converting I use HandBrake
Music editing - If you’re professionaly making and mixing music, go for Logic Pro X or FL Studio. Otherwise, for recording, trimming, etc. Audacity, Audition or GarageBand will do the job
Gaming - There are plenty of platforms (ex. Steam, Origin, etc.), install which you have your games on. For basic games like LoL, Minecraft, Sims macOS will be fine, but for more advanced games like CS:GO, GTA V, I would suggest installing Windows on bootcamp for them
Coding/programming apps - install pretty much what you use, I can reccomend Xcode which is macOS exclusive, it allows you to code apps for Apple devices, and Brackets for HTML which I mentioned earlier. It support other coding lamguages too.
Cloud storage apps - if you have other Apple devices, iCloud is the best with the sync. The sync works well with Windows devices too. If you use other cloud services, go ahead and install them too if you want.
Chatting apps - install anything you use, Messenger, Discord, Skype, etc.
TIPS: (those are especially for beginners)
- Learn trackpad gestures, they’re really helpful
- Learn keyboard shortcuts too, and get used to Mac key layout with cmd, option, control. Pretty much you need to use cmd key to do most of shortcuts on Mac, like you used ctrl on Windows. Option button works like alt, and control is used for less shortcuts, like Windows key. Oh and there is no delete button, you’re deleting files with cmd+backspace shortcut
- When you install everything that you need, organise your dock and launchpad
- Enable iCloud sync in Desktop and Documents, it is really helpful to have your files for example on the iPhone to go
- Enable Handoff and AirDrop, it helps a lot too
- If you use yor Mac frequently, don’t shut it down, put it into sleep mode, it uses very little energy, it does some task in the background (ex. Spotlight indexing) so when you wake up your Mac, it is faster than when you would boot it up. It is recommended to reboot it for example once a month though, or shut it down when you’re not going to use it for more than a week.
- This question is frequently asked by new users, no, you don’t need antivirus on macOS. The chances that you get infected are 0,01%, and built-in virus scanner to CleanMyMac X will be just fine
- You don’t need disk partitions on macOS like you probably used to do on Windows. Mac works faster and has easier access to files when you leave them in their default directories (Desktop, Documents, Photos, Videos, Music folders)
- Spend your time on setting up Finder how you like, it has many customisation options, so that it will be more comfortable working with it
- You can also spend time on setting up widgets panel
- Play a little bit with customising menu bar. If you hold cmd you can rearange things there. Some of them can be disabled/enabled in system preferences. For more customisation, use Bartender
- Use quick look. It is faster and more intuitive than most of apps, and it can preview quite a lot of files
- Uninstall apps with AppCleaner instead of dragging them to Trash, AppCleaner will save your space and delete leftovers from app that you’ve removed
Hope I hasn’t forgotten anything, and you found something useful for you there :))
