The Mac tools I run, compared honestly, plus the parts of the clipboard nobody explains.
Chapter cards that work like YouTube timestamps, FFmpeg, and why autoplay ignores preload=metadata.
Every app here is free from its own repository, not a trial that expires.
The plain version, including the part where macOS 26 does some of this already.
One is the polish benchmark, the other is a speed obsession. I keep both, and here is why.
My bar reaches the notch, so every one of these had to earn its slot.
The Mac has a whole world of one-person tools that do one thing and vanish. These are the ones I use.
Each of these solved something that irritated me every single day.
Raycast ate half my utilities. These are the extensions that made that happen.
Rectangle is the first thing I install on any Mac. That does not make it the right answer for everyone.
Switching to on-device dictation was a privacy decision first and a money decision second.
I pay once and own it. That decision has held for real work, with two exceptions.
Three plugins and one habit that keeps a shared file from grinding to a halt.
Dragging across windows was the one Finder habit I never got comfortable with.
On a Mac, yes, and nothing asks your permission first.
A short list of things worth changing, and one class of malware most people have never heard of.
The polling itself is cheap. The things built on top of it are where cost hides.
The answer depends entirely on whether the app is always running.