5 MacOS tools that I use every day as a Developer

I recently bought a new Macbook and these tools were the first ones I installed.

My Mac is a workhorse and I want to get the most out of it. Over the years, I encountered many tools and little tips that boost productivity. But only a few are the true must-haves.

1. Alfred

Named after the legendary butler from Batman, this is a straightforward Spotlight upgrade. Spotlight is already insanely useful and loved by Mac users — Alfred takes it a step further.

• Noticeably faster than Spotlight.
• Better file indexing and file commands. If you don’t want to open the file you are looking for, prefix its name with find and it will open its parent folder!
• System commands like Sleep Displays or Shut Down are at your fingertips

These are just my favorites. Alfred does have a paid Powerpack which unlocks cool things like running scripts, but the free tier is plenty good!

Get your own Alfred!

2. iTerm 2 — Dropdown Terminal

The terminal is an extremely valuable tool to have at your disposal. I myself use it all the time — short command here and there, launch this, open this.. Having an always-open Terminal window is annoying because I have to switch to it, which breaks my workflow.

Enter iTerm with its killer feature always on — out of the way — dropdown window. It works like this:

With a single keystroke, you have your terminal always at hand! My favorite is Shift + Esc, but you can set that one yourself. It even works in fullscreen and gets out of the way when you don't need it anymore. Extremely useful!

Get iTerm2 — your terminal is just a keypress away!

3. Oh My Zsh