What is Your Favorite App ... Ever

I’d have to go with BBEdit. I keep buying it, every version since 4.5. I have used it almost every day of my Apple programming career.

Even though everyone loves to hate it now, I’m gonna say…iTunes. Around 2004 I was fed up with the hideousness of MusicMatch Jukebox and WinAmp, downloaded iTunes for Windows, & was so impressed by the clean and elegant UI. Within a year I’d bought my first iMac—a computer that wouldn’t look awful in my small studio apartment—hooked it up to my stereo and ran it usually with the visualiser in full screen l. I ripped my whole CD collection and eventually moved everything to the Mac.

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For me it’d be Sublime Text. I started learning to code at age 18 (2011~) - since then it has been my code text editor of choice. I’ve spent hundreds of hours on it. It might not be a Mac application (cross-platform C++) but it looks and performs very well. I’m actually embarrassed to say that I am far from a power user of it even after all these years… but it’s been with me for almost ten years. Maybe I should read the official documentation one of these days.

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Probably the Brave (or Chrome) browser, with nearly three dozen extensions customizing the experience (and probably another 50 sitting unactivated until needed).

One other great thing about iTunes - 14 years of listening with 25k+ tracks have seeded enough info. for Apple Music to be practically flawless in its recommendations.

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@bowline That is a lot of extensions. What are the top ones you recommend?

I use them all regularly. Here’s A-J of what’s currently turned on (I have a lot more installed but not turned on until I need them, like Full Page Screen Capture, or dotEPUB, which turns a webpage into an ebook):

1Password
Allow Right Click: Re-enable the possibility to use the context menu on sites that overrides it.
Allow Copy: Allow Copy will re-enable select, copy, paste and right click in any webpage, overriding site settings
BehindTheOverlay: One click to close any overlay on any website.
Decentraleyes: Protects you against tracking through “free”, centralized, content delivery.
DuckDuckGo: “Privacy, simplified. Protect your data as you search and browse. Permissions are to block hidden trackers lurking everywhere.”
EXIF Viewer: Quick access to EXIF data of any image you view
Fontanello: lets you select text, see font/style
Google Translate
Google Voice
Imagus: Enlarge thumbnails, and show images/videos from links with a mouse hover
Improve YouTube!
Just Read: customizable reader extension duplicating Safari Reader mode

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Thanks @bowline for this list. There are some good ones here. I like the ‘Allow…’ ones, did not realise that they existed. Adding them now!

Are many of these available for Safari or is it a Chrome only thing?

Safari is more locked down, so there are only a tiny fraction of extensions compared to Chromium-based apps like Chrome and Brave. The extension situation on Safari is fairly dire anyway. There used to be (only) 2 extensions that let you see EXIF data on web pages, for example, but not only were they much clunkier than Exif Viewer but newer versions of Safari broke those extensions several months ago, they never got updated, and now there isn’t a single EXIF viewing extension that works in Safari.

For speed, privacy and compatibility I pretty much resort to Brave, which is most of Chrome anyway but with privacy enhanced plus its own ad-blocker built in (which you can of course supplement with other ad blocker extensions from the Chrome extension store).

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I forgot about WinAmp. Used to run it on my office PC. Terrible!

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I’m going to go with Evernote, even though I stopped using it a while ago. You could do everything with it. There are still capabilities I miss.

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I’ll go with 1password on all platforms. I use it on Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Windows. It’s on my Watch, too, but I can’t say I’ve found a use for it there. I’ll go so far as to say the Family Plan subscription because it is helping me make sure everyone else stays as safe as they can, too, from teenage son to my mother.

Runner-up awards to Keyboard Maestro and Hazel.

I’m going to concur with 1Password. Automation is great, but having impenetrable 64-character passwords is non-negotiable in this day and age. If I phrase the question like, “The app that I could least live without is…”, then it’s a nobrainer for me.

Overcast! How else would I be able to listed to MPU every week? The settings are excellent for a podcast app and allow enough detail to be able to listen to music followed by a sped up podcast without making any changes to the settings.

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Affinity Designer on the iPad and I use it for all my logo designs. Very powerful and easy to use. It makes forget that I have the app on the Mac too.

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I really need to force myself to use the iPad app.

The same goes for Affinity Photo. Using it feels. Ore natural on the iPad. I think both app are worth a shot. Although I prefer the Mac for UI design. For the rest it’s iPad.

I just installed BehindTheOverlay now.

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BehindTheOverlay is fantastic. I’ve been using it a few days on your recommendations. Thanks very much for suggesting it.

I have difficulty remembering keyboard shortcuts (it’s one of my chief frustrations in reading and listening to Mac power user advice). But Cmd-Shift-X is already embedded deep in muscle memory!

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Ha - I didn’t even know that command! I was clicking the menubar icon like a savage.

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