HACKER Q&A
📣 onmyway133

What are some good open-source Mac apps you can't live without?


Hi, I think a question of this kind has appeared before. As both open source contributor and Mac users myself, I have tried many open sources apps and there are a few I find quite essential. Therefore I have curated https://oss.wiki/ to easily find and filter apps based on tech stack and topic.

A few apps I can't live without are:

- Rectangle: window manager

- Pika: color picker

- Kap: screen recorder

- Insomnia: Rest API testing

- Itsycal: calendar

- iTerm2: terminal

Would love to get to know more apps and I would love to add them to the list to spread the words

  👤 surrTurr Accepted Answer ✓
Amethyst: A tiling window manager à la xmonad

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

👤 luckman212
some of my top picks:

- Hammerspoon: https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon

- MeetingBar: https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar

- Stats: https://github.com/exelban/stats

- Syncthing: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-macos

- Bitwarden: https://github.com/bitwarden

👤 mtmail
MacDown https://macdown.uranusjr.com/ - Markdown Editor

VLC https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ - Media player

👤 tra3
- handbrake to transcode videos: https://handbrake.fr

- anki for spaced repetition https://ankiweb.net/

- Snipaste a really nice screenshot utility https://www.snipaste.com

there's also awesome Mac that's worth looking at if you're missing something: https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac

👤 albumdropped
+1 for macDown

maccy clipboard manager https://github.com/p0deje/Maccy/blob/master/README.md

👤 CtrlAlt
yabai - Tiling window manager https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

I use the basic feature set so it works well on my work laptop (no need to disable SIP).

👤 mobilio
Vienna - RSS Reader https://www.vienna-rss.com

SimpleNote - note https://app.simplenote.com/

👤 KolenCh
GUI only? Ie excluding some packages that has no GUI component such as OpenZFS?

- kitty

- VSCode (true OSS only is like VSCodium)

- imageoptim-cli & it’s dependencies (some dep are not open source)

- mactex

- mpv

- KeePass derivatives including keepassxc, keypassium, StrongBox

- zotero

- chromium

Also upvote Rectangle.

👤 quintes
How are you all vetting these, scanning for malware etc? How many are silicon native , may be a useful way to list as well
👤 hitsurume
Hammerspoon - AHK for Mac. Been great to use to set custom keybinds for different apps.
👤 deanmoriarty
Aldente for battery management.