Tiny tools

A collection of useful, simple, single purpose apps and tools for everyday problems and tasks.

If you have any questions or suggestions please open an issue or send me an email.
Periodic URLs scans are made using Markup Link Checker to avoid broken links and dead projects.

Table of contents

• Apps management
• Audio
• Browsing
• Camera
• Developer tools
• Display
• Email
• Files
  • Sharing
• Images
• Miscellaneous
• Music
• Network
• Productivity
• Reading
• Security and privacy
• Shell
• Social
• Text
• Travel and maps
• Utilities
• Video

Apps management

• AltTab - brings the power of Windows’s alt-tab window switcher to macOS. It represents a big mosaic of all the minimized, hidden, fullscreen windows of all apps so you can instantly identify and focus on the window you need.

  Alternatives and similar apps:
  Contexts - a paid window switcher.
  rcmd - assign custom keys for your favorite apps.
  Witch - switch apps, windows and tabs.

• Apparency - get more details about any app: it's structure, used frameworks, result of macOS secuity check.

• Cork - a fast GUI for Homebrew with useful features.

• HazeOver - fade all open apps' windows out except the front one.

• Latest - checks if all your macOS apps are up to date.

• Menuwhere - pop up the frontmost app's menus at the current mouse location.

• Paletro - command palette to access any functionality of a currently opened application.

• Pearcleaner - apps uninstaller tool with leftover files search.

• Rapidmg - fast app extraction from a .dmg file with optional cleanup.

• Swift Shift - create shortcuts to move and resize windows from anywhere.

  Alternative: Easy Move+Resize, Rectangle, Tiles

• Swish - control windows and apps right from your trackpad with intuitive swipe, pinch, tap and hold gestures. Features easy-to-use titlebar, dock and menubar gestures and supports Magic Mouse and keyboard as well.

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Audio

• Krisp - AI-powered app that removes background noise and echo from meetings leaving only human voice.

  Alternative: Utterly

• MacWhisper - quickly and easily transcribe audio files into text with OpenAI's transcription technology Whisper.

• Micdrop - mutes your mic in any app with a global keyboard shortcut or a menu bar control.

• Recordia - lets you record audio directly from the menu bar or with a global keyboard shortcut.

  Alternatives: macOS voice memos or Piezo app.

• Wavacity - well known Audacity audio editor but for the web.

• XLD - a tool to decode/convert/play various 'lossless' audio files.

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Browsing

• Anybox - a modern native bookmarks manager for mac and iOS.

• Velja - open links in a specific browser or a matching native app.

  Open source alternatives:
  Browsers - cross platform. Hurl - Windows only.

• Link Gopher - a Firefox/Chrome add-on which can extract all links from a web page, sort them and remove duplicates.

• MenubarX - a browser in your menu bar.

• Min - a fast, minimal and open source browser.

• Noir - a Safari extension for iOS that automatically adds a dark mode to every website you visit.

• Opener - open links from the web in apps instead.

• Prevent Duplicate Tabs - prevent creating of repeating tabs.

• Svadilfari - an extension that lets you control mobile Safari with gestures.

• TWP - translate current web page in real time using Google or Yandex.

• uBlacklist - blocks specific sites from appearing in Google search results.

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Camera

• Hand Mirror - a macOS app that lives in the menu bar and gives a view from your camera when you click on it.

• Webcam Plus - use any camera on your iPhone as a webcam for your Mac.

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Developer tools

• Boop - handy scriptable scratchpad to transform plain text using basic operations such as JSON formatting, unescaping, base 64 encoding, etc.

  DevUtils - a paid alternative with a bit different set of tools, but native macOS UI.

• cheat.sh - unified access to the best community driven cheat sheets repositories of the world.

• Dash - an API documentation browser and code snippet manager. Dash instantly searches offline documentation sets for 200+ APIs, 100+ cheat sheets.

  DevDocs - a web based free alternative.

• Fig - adds autocomplete to an existing terminal so you can move faster.

• fx - a Terminal JSON viewer.

• Gitleaks - a fast and light-weight scanner for git repositories, files and directories for detecting and preventing hardcoded secrets like passwords, api keys and tokens.

• GitUpdate: commit and push all updated files with one command.

• Hopper - reverse engineering tool that lets you disassemble, decompile and debug your applications.

• Lite XL - cross-platform lightweight text editor written in Lua.

• Lorem Picsum - Lorem Ipsum for photos only.

  https://picsum.photos/200?grayscale&blur=2

• Pika - a compact native colour picker app for macOS.

• Proxyman - cross-platform debugger tool which enables developers to capture, inspect, and manipulate HTTP(s) requests/responses with ease.

• QuickLens - a powerful app to inspect the UI.

  PixelSnap - an alternative tool for measuring anything on your screen.
  Free Ruler - an open source, free ruler app for macOS.

• regex101 - a multilingual regular expression debugger with real time explanation, error detection and highlighting.

• Secretive - an app for storing and managing SSH keys in the Secure Enclave.

• Sysprof - allows you to profile applications to aid in debugging and optimization.

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Display

• MonitorControl - control external display brightness and volume right from your Mac.

• Shifty - expand capabilities of Night Shift and Dark mode. Disable for specific apps and sites, follow the schedule, adjust the colour temperature.

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Email

• followupthen - a simple but flexible way to schedule an email reminder.

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Files

• age - a simple, modern and secure file encryption tool, format and Go library.

• Broot - an alternative to the standard tree command, which allows you to view and navigate directories, perform fuzzy searches, run commands on the selected files or directories and etc.

• Collision - compares and verifies MD5, SHA-256, SHA-512 and SHA-1 hashes.

• Czkawka - a simple and fast app which finds duplicates, empty folders, similar images etc.

• Default Folder X enhances the Open and Save dialogs in all of your applications.

• Dropover - improves drag & drop by providing a "shelf" where you can stash, gather or move any draggable content.

  Alternatives:
  Mac: Dropzone and Yoink.
  iOS/iPadOS: Gladys and Yoink. Both provide iCloud sync.

• Everything - a free Windows search engine that locates files and folders by name instantly.

  Also check EverythingToolbar which adds Everything integration with the Windows taskbar.
  Linux alternative: FSearch.

• Folder Peek - quickly access documents, files, folders, and apps from the menu bar.

• Hat.sh - a web app that provides secure local file encryption in the browser.

• Hazel - create rules to automatically organize files in many ways: open, move, rename, archive and tag files based on their name, date, type and much more.

• Invisor - display and compare technical information of your media files.

• Marta - native, dual-pane file manager for macOS.

• nnn - a tiny, fast, full-featured terminal file manager.

  Alternatives: lf and walk - CLI file managers written in Go.

• OpenInTerminal - Finder toolbar app to open folders and files in Terminal emulators and other apps.

• QuickLook - allows to peek into a file content in lightning speed by just pressing the Space key.

• Transnomino - a batch rename utility.

• uPic - a simple pictures and files upload tool with support of different hosting services.

• VanillaTreeViewer - a minimalist file browser for compactly displaying several files at once.

Sharing

• LocalSend - cross-platform app for sharing files and messages with nearby devices.

  Alternative: AirDash.

• Snapdrop - a browser based AirDrop alternative. This handy app lets you share text and files between devices on the same network.

  You can also try sharedrop.io which works the same way.

• Transfer.sh - a free service for sharing files right from the command line.

  # upload
  $ curl -H "Max-Downloads: 1" -H "Max-Days: 5" --upload-file ./hello.txt https://transfer.sh/hello.txt
  
  # download
  $ curl https://transfer.sh/66nb8/hello.txt -o hello.txt

• Wormhole - a simple and safe way to send files and folders. All your shared data is end-to-end encrypted and is automatically expired after 24 hours. Upload size is limited to 10GB.

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Images

• CleanUp.pictures - remove any object, people, text or defects from your pictures.

• Clop - copy an image and paste it optimised to the smallest possible size.

• Downlink - get fresh background images of Earth.

• edit.photo - a free online photo editor. No ads/cookies/registration.

• ImageMagick - an open source free tool for creating, editing, composing or converting digital images of different formats.

  # merge images
  convert +append 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg best.jpg
  
  # resizing
  convert -resize 50% img.png img_resized.png
  
  # convert 3rd page of PDF to JPG
  convert input.pdf[2] output.jpg

• ImageOptim - makes images load faster by applying advanced compression and removing invisible junk.

• qView - cross-platform image viewer designed with minimalism and usability in mind. No cluttered interface, just your image and a titlebar.

  macOS alternative: Picview.

• Shottr - a tiny and fast macOS screenshot tool.

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Miscellaneous

• Animated Drawings - use this tool to create animations based on your own drawn characters.

• Carsized - compare car dimensions and design from a street perspective side by side.

• Drive and Listen - "drive" around cities while listening to their local radios.

• KeyPad - use your Mac's keyboard and trackpad as a bluetooth keyboard and mouse on a phone, tablet or TV.

  Alternative: Typeeto

• Mactracker - provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad ever made.

• RunCat - the more CPU load is, the faster the cat runs.

• Shadowmap - visualize solar shadows and the Sun in 3D. Anywhere on Earth, anytime.

• SiteSucker - an app that can download an entire website including images, PDFs, style sheets, and other files.

  SingleFile is an open source browser extension which saves an entire web page into a single HTML file.

• WindowSwap - open a new window somewhere in the world. Look through windows shared by real people from different countries.

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Music

• Amberol - a small and simple sound and music player that is well integrated with GNOME.

• Auxio - a fast, open source, local music player for Android.

• Meta - a professional music tag editor helping you manage your digital music collection.

• Music Decoy - stop launching the macOS Music app whenever you press Play key.

• Tiny Player - a minimalist music player for macOS with clean interface that supports MP3, FLAC, AAC, AIFF and WAV.

  Tiny Player also comes on iPhone and iPad with a TinyLoader to bypass iTunes.

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Network

• Airplane for Mac - turn off the wireless features on your Mac just like on iPhone.

• Bandwidth+ - a zero configuration app that tracks the network usage.

• Network Utility - a clean user interface of various shell commands for retrieving information about your network adapter.

• Sniffnet - a network analyser (packet sniffer) developed with the aim to let people have a glance into their network in a simple and clear way. Features: filtering, overall traffic statistics, real-time charts, custom notifications and more.

• WiFi Signal - lets you monitor your Wi-Fi network’s status and signal quality, notifying you about changes in your Wi-Fi connection.

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Productivity

• Flowchart - web app that lets you easily create flow charts just via typing. Every single line of text is a node, indentation makes a child node.

• Hyperkey - convert the caps lock key or any modifier keys to the hyper key, all four modifiers combined: ⌃⌥⌘⇧. The hyper key acts as an additional modifier key that you can use in any app with keyboard shortcuts.

• Itsycal - a tiny menu bar calendar: quickly have a month view and see your events with one click.

  Alternatives: Dato and Day-O.

• Soulver - a powerful but simple notepad calculator app for macOS that supports units, dates, currency and time zones conversions, variables and lines referencing what makes it easier than spreadsheets.

  # Examples
  $300 in Euro
  25% of 900
  June 9 + weeks
  6pm Sydney in Chicago

  Alternatives:
  Numi - a free calculator for Mac which works completely the same way: just type a string of what you need and get the result.
  Numbr - fewer features but works right in a browser.
  Caldy - a dynamic calculator for iOS. You can link values, add labels, drag the results and keep calculations in separate documents.

• Taskpaper - a plain text to-do list with outlining power.

• Voiceliner - a fast way to capture and store voice notes in a nesting structure.

• Wooshy - search and navigate the whole macOS UI with just a keyboard.

  Alternative: Homerow.

• Workspaces - store links to all the resources for a given project. Launch entire project with one click or individual items. Those can be files, folders, websites, apps etc.

  Alternative: Hookmark - link information across different apps.

• Wox - a free launcher for Windows. With an Alt + Space keyboard shortcut you can search for apps, files, folders and any queries on the internet.

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Reading

• Braille Scanner - take a photo of a piece of paper with Braille on it and convert to text.

• Foliate - a simple and modern book reader for Linux.

• Kill the Newsletter! - subscribe to a newsletter with a special email address and add a provided Atom feed. Each new email will become a new item in your RSS feed.

• NetNewsWire - a small and stable feed reader.

  yarr - a cross-platform alternative.

• RSSBud - helps quickly discover and subscribe to RSS feeds from websites or apps.

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Security and privacy

• 2FAS - simple, secure open source two-factor authenticator.

• Burner Note - ad-free service for sending secure text based notes that are completely erased from existence once they've been read.

• ClearURLs - this browser add-on removes tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browsing the web. Available for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers.

  URLCheck - open source alternative for Android platform.

• Consent-O-Matic - a browser extension which handles cookies pop-ups based on your preferences.

  Hush - a Safari only alternative.

• LessPass - a sync free password manager which uses site, login and master password to compute passwords on any device.

• Little Snitch - will show every single connection attempt of your computer so you can control your data.

  There are also alternatives for other platforms: simplewall - a less than a megabyte Windows tool for configuring network activity. And OpenSnitch - a GNU/Linux port of Little Snitch.

• Metadata Cleaner - allows to view metadata in your files and to get rid of sensitive information you may not want to disclose.

• NextDNS - lightweight and easy customizable tool to block ads and trackers on websites and in apps.

• Sloth - a system monitoring and inspection tool that shows all open files and sockets in use by all running processes.

  Alternative: TaskExplorer by Objective-See.

• Suspicious Package - inspect macOS installer packages, examine their contents and see what they actually do.

• Yopass - secure sharing of secrets, passwords and files.

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Shell

• Atuin - a shell history with additional commands context and optional fully encrypted synchronisation between your machines.

  # search for all successful `make` commands, recorded after 3pm yesterday
  atuin search --exit 0 --after "yesterday 3pm" make

• Dust - a more intuitive du alternative written in Rust.

• eq - provides examples of common uses of command line tools.

• fd - a fast and user-friendly program to find entries in your filesystem.

• fzf - a command-line fuzzy finder.

• LSD - a rewrite of ls command with features like colors, icons, tree-view, more formatting options etc.

  Or have a look at exa as another option.

• The Fuck - open source app that corrects errors in previous console commands.

  ➜ apt-get install vim
  E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
  E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
  
  ➜ fuck
  sudo apt-get install vim [enter/↑/↓/ctrl+c]
  [sudo] password for nvbn:
  Reading package lists... Done
  ...

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Social

• Chitchatter - a simple, private communication tool working in a browser.

• Cusdis - a lightweight, privacy-friendly, minimalist, embeddable comment system.

• Minus - a finite social network where you get 100 posts - for life. No likes, follows and noisy notifications.

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Text

• Bean - a small and easy-to-use word processor.

• Bike - a fast and fluid outliner for macOS. Simple but powerful tool for organizing thoughts, making lists, taking notes and saving ideas.

  A cross-platform alternative: WorkFlowy

• CopyChar - find and copy special characters to your clipboard.

• Copy Text Easily - a simple way to copy paragraphs, sentences and custom selections on web pages in one click.

• Easydict - quickly get translation from multiple services. Featuring words look up, OCR, auto translate.

• Espanso - a cross-platform text expander that detects a specific keyword and replaces it with something else.

• Exporter - export notes from Apple Notes to Markdown/HTML with attachments.

• MarkEdit - a lightweight Markdown editor.

• Markmap - a tool to visualize Markdown documents with mindmaps.

• OwlOCR - a handy text recognition app living in menubar. Just select an area and then paste text wherever you want.

  Alternative: TextSniper extracts text from images and other digital documents.

• PopClip - appears when you select text, giving access to a customizable row of +200 helpful actions.

• Runestone - a lightweight and fast plain text editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, theming and more.

• Showdown - quickly create presentations using Markdown.

• Simple keyboard - an open source minimalist Android keyboard focused on just typing some text. No emojis, GIFs, spell checking and word prediction.

• Strflow - a chat-style note-taking app.

• Sumatra PDF - a small and fast PDF and ebook reader.

• TableFlip - a fast Markdown tables editing app.

• Table Tool - a simple CSV editor for macOS.

  Version (fork) for Apple Silicon can be found here.

• TextPal - super-fast emoji picker for macOS. Works in any app.

• Tofu - an alternative documents reader which displays text in a horizontal array of columns what makes lines shorter and faster to read.

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Travel

• Organic Maps - wonderful detailed offline maps for travelers, hikers, and cyclists.

  Alternative: Guru Maps.

• TripMode - control your Mac's data usage on slow, expensive networks or mobile data. Monitor internet access, block unwanted apps.

• what3words - this app divides the world into 3 metre squares and gives each square a unique combination of three words which you can use to easily find and share exact locations.

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Utilities

• Bunch - a macOS automation tool working with plain text.

• Cursorcerer - hide the Mac's cursor with a global hotkey or automatically after being idle.

• Doll - monitor app badges from menu bar.

• Finbar - better Menu Bar Search with fuzzy filtering, tracking of recently selected items and other useful features.

• GrandPerspective - this small utility graphically shows the disk usage within a file system.

• Hidden Bar - hides menu bar items.

• HiDock - set custom Dock settings for different display configurations.

• HottestCorners - this app extends macOS built-in Hot Corners feature and allows to run any of your apps by moving mouse pointer to any of screen corners.

• KeyCastr - an open source macOS app for visualizing your keystrokes in realtime. Handy for screencasts and presentations.

  Keyviz - a free Windows alternative.

• KeyClu - press ⌘ twice and hold to see the list of any app's shortcuts.

• Klack - this app adds mechanical keyboard sounds to every keystroke.

• Maccy - a lightweight clipboard manager for macOS which does one job - keeping your copy history at hand.

• maclaunch - list and control macOS startup items.

  maclaunch disable plex

• MediaMate - alternative visuals for Volume, Brightness and Now Playing.

• Mos - a lightweight tool used to smooth scrolling which also separates the touchpad and the mouse scrolls independently.

• Muzzle - a simple app to silence embarrassing notifications while screensharing.

• OnlySwitch - a macOS menu bar app which provides a series of customizable toggle switches to simplify your routine work.

• Quick Cursor - control large Android devices with just one finger.

• RustDesk - secure, fast and simple remote desktop software. Doesn't require configuration and works on any platform.

• SaneSideButtons - simulate 3-finger swipes to navigate between pages using side buttons on third-party mice.

• Scroll Reverser - reverses the direction of scrolling in macOS, with independent settings for trackpads and mice.

• Shortcut Bar - a handy app that connects you to the files, folders, apps, web bookmarks, text snippets and color swatches that you need lightning fast access to.

• stts - a simple macOS app for monitoring the status of cloud services. stts can also send notifications when a service goes down or gets restored.

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Video

• Blurweb - a paid browser extension that hides sensitive information while screen sharing or video recording. Just click any element or select an area of a web page to blur it.

• CaptionMe - a simple way to add captions to your videos.

• Clickbait Remover for Youtube - browser extension which replaces thumbnails with a frame from the video, effectively removing any clickbait.

• LICEcap - a lightweight free tool that can capture an area of your desktop and save to a .GIF file. You can move the screen capture frame while recording and also make a pause any time and then resume.

• QuickRecorder - lightweight macOS app to record screens/windows/apps. With sound.

• Recut - automatically finds and cuts pauses and silence in videos.

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