“Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers, and welcome to this collection of essential utilities for OS X El Capitan Macs,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld.
“Apple’s Contacts application is pretty good and integrates well with the rest of the OS,” Evans writes, “but for a contacts manager with more to offer check out CoBook, which adds powerful social media integration.”
Evans writes, “With over a million users, Disk Doctor ($2) is one of the very best disk cleaning utilities with numerous useful features – recommended.”
22 more essential OS X El Capitan utilities in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Also get yourself a good Clipboard manager (for example: Copy’em Paste ($9.99 in the Mac App Store).
If you don’t already use a Clipboard manager, try it, you’ll use it more than you think!
BetterTouchTool. Apple suppose to acquire this and embed on OS X. Especially the windows snapping part.
HyperDock.
Box: Fine, I use it. But keep in mind that you’re stuck with the Windows naming convention due to their servers all running Windows. That can be a problem.
DiskWarrior: Yes, it is over-priced. You are not hallucinating. But it is very handy.
Memory Clean: I highly recommend its precursor, ‘FreeMemory’. It’s the better app, simple, highly functional, I use it every day.
f.lux: I ended up preferring the ColorSync profiles I made myself for each time of day (using the Displays preferences). They’re far better than the not-so-good f.lux results.
VirusChecker: VirusBarrier by Intego is my favorite and easily has the best GUI. I find it worth the cost, but I always shop around for cheap deals for VB that I activate at the end of each year’s definitions subscription. Sophos Anti-Virus is fine, but digs a bit too deeply in to OS X for my tastes. AND everyone should have a copy of my pal Thomas Reed’s Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, formerly Adware Medic.
Backup: I like SuperDuper better and its cheaper.
Faxing: Who still faxes?!
Privacy: I don’t use Ghostery because they use their own user surveillance. Instead try:
– Cookie: An excellent cookie control app.
– Cookie Stumbler: Almost as good as Cookie.
– uBlock & uBlock Origin
– JS Blocker 5: Geekware, but I like it.
– Web of Trust – Good for protecting the kids from crap and malware.
– Self-Destructing Cookies: A joy to use with Firefox! Only the cookies from sites you are visiting are allowed.
VPN: There are lots of decent choices. I’ve used NetShade but currently use ProXPN. Just know that the NSA ad nauseam have cracked a lot of VPN services.
Maintenance: My fave is MainMenu Pro, my fave.
Other great utilities:
– Default Folder
– iStat Menus
– TechTool Pro
– Bartender
– QuickSilver
– SpellCatcher (Yes, it still works! But its orphanware).
– PopChar
– WindowMizer
– MacTracker
There are lots more, but I use all of the above every day (or so).