Essential apps for Mac, beyond the standard ones.

As a YouTuber, I’m also looking for a good screen recording app, but I am planning to go for audio hijack for recording voice over and my voice as well

For basic audio edits like what you would do on a podcast, Amadeus Pro is great. I think there is also a lite version, but don't hold me to that. It has a nice suite of effects, presets, etc, can do multi-track. I'm pretty sure you could do music stuff with it if you wanted, but I have no experience in that area.

Disclaimer: I do not know if this has been updated for Sequoia.

The first app I always used to recommend to people running macOS, was App Cleaner. By default, whenever you delete an app from the Application directory on your Mac, you are technically uninstalling it, but more oft than not, there are trace files left behind. These can clog up your system resources, slowing down your machine and taking up storage space.

App Cleaner will automagically remove these when you delete an app from the Application directory, thus freeing up space and keeping your machine running smooth.

Best of all, it is freeware. 🙂👍

https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/

I installed Homebrew, then used it to install various command line tools and Mac apps. It's a very convenient means of installing software.

I infinitely many times second homebrew. Nothing needs to be said, "the missing package manager" is its tagline and it's just so true. I know that homebrew is not the only one and haven't tried any other but people said that it follows linux standard more than most *from what I've read*.

This is a, far more involved, cleaner program than app cleaner, but it will get rid of junk files left over from uninstalled/deleted applications. You do have to pay for the service though. I can't remember if there is any part of it that's free. It's been a while ...

AppleVis link below. It's very similar to Clean My Mac X.
https://applevis.com/apps/mac/utilities/onyx

Clean my mac, the app store version at least, is inaccessible now. I had a wrangle with apple about getting a refund because I'd already subscribed to it. I'm not sure if the version from their website is any better, but I'd certainly not buy it before giving it a go.

VOCR is king, in my view. It is a bit fiddly to set up which may put some off, but it fills in the gaps, the gaping gaps, where voiceover isn't very well behaved.

TailScale is my new sweetheart. It's a VPN built on the wireguard protocol which you can add to several devices and access them at distance. For example, I have a mac mini running as a server, at my folks I can put TailScale on my apple TV and then use infuse to access my audio described movies.

ControlD is also excellent, though the website for sign up is a little fussy. It is a DNS rerouter so, in the UK, for example, I can set it to use a US location when I access Hulu. It's very much like a VPN, but more nuanced. It means I can choose where I get my content based on whether it has audio description. I can get HBO stuff here in the uk on sky, but because sky aren't pulling their finger out, they only have AD on live broadcasts. I can use ControlD to connect to Max instead where everything is audio described. It's all a bit involved and I'd be happy to do a walk through at some point of how I've got everything set up, though I'm not sure how our apple vis overlords would find such a guide. They have certain limitations and there is a bit of a grey area with legality of using VPN to access content elsewhere.

Thanks for the app cleaner suggestion. It's brilliant. Scratches that itch left by a bunch of pesky files.

I cannot honestly remember if I used to use the App Store version, or the website version, but I want to say I used to use the website version. Another website version of an app I used to use, was the trend micro antivirus for macOS. I liked it because it ran in the background, and with the exception of the little icon that appeared in the extra menu, it really kind of just stayed out of your way. Was very unobtrusive.
Regarding VPNs, I got a friend here, she is not blind, but she uses a VPN to watch UK based Netflix shows. Personally, I think she likes the fact that there are shows on Netflix over there that show a lot of nudity. As you all probably know by now, America is allergic to such content. 🤭

It is a mixer that allows for magic boost for volumes of apps. I love it as I can get media to be the volume in which I want.

Just looking through my backup drive where I keep apps for quick restore after cleaning off a mac, Open Audible is one. It's an app that downloads your audible library to your device and removes DRM. I've got a UK and US account so it's useful to have all the books I've purchased in one place. Also good should audible decide to remove books or replace them, as it has with the Terry Pratchett series. The old ones were getting long in the tooth but the newer ones, meh... I just can't get used to them.

re VPN, it's a strange conflict that violence is tolerated, but nudity isn't. I'm watching the Handmaid's Tale on Hulu, the only place with audio description, and it's rather worrying how prescient Atwood is.

I could not get past the first season of The Handmaid's Tale. That series is quite difficult for me to get through. 🫣

CleanMyMac has been very accessible however with the latest few updates the interface has changed pretty much and as far as accessible to the worst.
The app that I am always happy about is Scrivener. It is super accessible and very useful for me.
Also VLC is good.

MuseScore is a great free tool for creating print sheet music for sighted musicians. I used this to score custom exercises for my drum students. I had hoped to assemble those exercises into a beginner's drum book, but my eyesight tanked, and I never learned how to use MuseScor accessibly.

I prefer Onyx to App Cleaner or CleanMyMac.

MultiMarkdown Composer is a great way to proofread the appearance of markdown content before you post.

I recall this was a bear to uninstall. But if you never want to uninstall it, no problem.

Thanks for soundsource, I was using eqmac and will give this a try as well.
VLC is awesome.
@Paul musescore has horrible accessibility on mac from what I could tell but the windows version is getting better with each version in terms of accessibility and it was already kinda usable in 2020.
I tried openaudible on windows only will try it on mac too.
Tailscale has incredible accessibility on windows and mac and is the best vpn I ever tried on its own.

I just installed this yesterday. I swear, I found someplace where it was actually helpful. I guess the fact that I went right on with what I was working on, and completely forgot how I used it, is a testamony to what a great tool it is.

I installed it because I plan to get Parallels sometime in the future and install Windows 11. Hopefully I'll be a proficient VOCR user by time that happens.

I tried VOCR on the Apple's feedback assistant web page, which doesn't present the list of my feedback issues in an accessible format. I still couldn't read that list even with VOCR. I finally called in my sighted spouse, who ran into the room, quickly identified the feedback report I was after, clicked something, and left before I could figure out what she did. She's like my human VOCR. LOL.

For me, I never use the web interface of Feedback Assistant, preferring to use the fully accessible built-in app, located in /system/library/coreservices/applications. It can also be quickly accessed by typing "Applefeedback://" without the quotes, into a web browser.

Loopback, audio hijack, soundsourse, clean my mac, and I think that's my list.

Thanks, Tyler. After struggling with the web interface, I discovered the app was already on my Mac. and now it's in the dock, making it even easier to access.

Carbon Copy Cloner is quite nice for backups and mirroring. Sound Source is great if you have hearing issues. Malware Bytes is easy to set up and then it vanishes into the background. SuperAgent is quite handy for avoiding those "I am not a robot" moments we all know and abhor. Team Viewer is very useful if you need someone remote to be able to operate your Mac. Talking tuner is great for tuning up your musical instrument.

There are probably a few 0thjers, such as Sibelius which is accessible for those who wish to work with sheet music or to compose, but I don't remember you mentioning musical composing as one of yhour interests.

Hope this helps. Oh, and Brian? Avoid the handmaiden book. It's ten times more deadly dull/sickening.

For bootable, backups, etc., I use super Duper myself, however, I would like to know what is the difference between carbon copy cloner and super Duper? I asked because I thought about giving carbon copy cloner a shot, but given that I already have superduper, are there any pros from carbon copy cloner compared to superduper?

If your in to radio there is Triode and broadcasts that have both mac and iOS and watch and tv apps as well.

I use VOCR for the 3d printing apps I use, Bambu Studio and Prusa Slicer. I also need it for the Raspberry Pi imaging tool, and there are a few other bits and bobs where it is helpful.

Carbon Copy Cloner: Know if that will work copying from desktop iCloud drive to an external drive? I know things can be a bit touchy if they aren't actually present on the other drive, IE, my files on iCloud drive will be in the cloud. It's a bit of a pain to use to be honest as you can't create backups easily or change location of where it is stored on the mac, surprise surprise, meaning you need to buy more internal storage, which I refuse to do. It's a joke what apple charge.

Re, The Handmaid's Tale, yeah, compared with the book the show is a light hearted and playful dabble on the senses.

I love this app for capturing audio. It offers us incredible possibilities, from recording selected audio, modifying it, and outputting it to speakers. Describing everything Audio Hijack can do would be challenging.

You can use it to record conversations, rewind or fast-forward live-streaming podcasts, especially when the player is not very accessible for a screen reader. You can even schedule recordings, similar to what various types of decoders offer.

If a podcast's volume is too low, you can amplify it up to four times using the plugins provided with the program. I also use it to record podcasts, and I truly, truly adore this program—it offers so many possibilities.

You really need to explore it to understand its full potential.

And the best part? The application's developer puts a lot of effort into ensuring its accessibility for screen readers. This deserves high praise, as the accessibility is clearly well thought out. It even includes hints for screen readers and a user manual.

If garageband is overkilled for me (which it probably is) I might give ahj a try then!

Can't comment on your app. Never used it.

Carbon Copy Cloner works fine on my 2022 Mac Studio M1 ultra in MacOS Ventura, though, both internally and externally. I back up nearly 2tb automatically every day to both icloud and to a few external hd's/ssd's. (I'm paranoid.)

After I figured out how to set it up, Carbon Copy Cloner has been doing everything automatically on a schedule. You can do backups manually, too, if you want. It's easy.

As a Mac power user here is the list of the software I use daily. If you have some questions about a given software let me know
Airfoil: I use this app to play music to many speakers at the same time. It works with Airplay powered speakers so SOnos, Alexa, ETC.
Alfred: Its a very nice overall utility whose main task is searching files, web and applications but you can install many plugins for it. For example, I have a plugin that when I type quitall, it quits all open apps.
Anybox: I use it to keep various bookmarks from various browsers and search through them. It works on both MacOS and iPhone and even though I exclusively use Safari its much more convenient than Safari's bookmarks.
AudioHijack: It is a very powerful block-based editor. For example I have it set up to record my microphone, transcribe that in real time, record and save the files.
BBEdit: Its like Notepad Plus Plus but much more powerful.
Chrono Sync: A very nice, powerful backup utility.
COpy 'em: A clipboard history manager.
Devon Think: This is a very powerful program. Its best explained as a personal knowledge management system. Its just a database. I use it to organize my financial documents like reports, invoices, software licenses ETC.
Drafts: It is a drafting text editor. Its main advantage is that it has some very powerful actions. For example I am using it to post to my blog, Mastodon, Twitter at the same time.
Flow: Its just a simple pomodoro timer.
IINA: It is my media player of choice. Very Winampish in its design.
KEKA: It is my archiver of choice. There's also The Unarchiver.
Keyboard Maestro: It is a very powerful automation utility. It can rename files, execute scripts, manipulate apps and much more.
Loopback: Its a virtual audio mixer. You can create virtual cables and route app sound through them.
MacGPT: Its my GPT client of choice.
Mona: Its a Mastodon client.
Name Mangler: It is a multi renamer, similar to what Total COmmander offers.
Omni Focus: I use this app to plan out my days, remind me of things ETC.
RCMD: A very little but simple utility. Instead of doing CMD+Tab, CMD+Tab all over again I can press right Command plus first letter of an app name to jump to it directyly.
Rocket: It is yeta nother mega simple app. You can type Emoji by typing colon then the emoji name.
Script Debugger: I use it for writing Apple Script
Paletro: It adds a hotkey (CMD+SHIFT+P) to search through your menu bar.
Permute: A Very powerful media converter.
Soulver: A natural language calculator, instead of typing finicky symbols I can type 4 squared times 6 and I get the result.
Ulysses: I use it for writing my game project, stories and so on. IDK why, I just like its clean and doesn't have many functions.
Setapp: Its like netflix but for apps. You pay 9 bucks a month and you have access to over 200 apps.
Site Sucker: I use it for local archiving of websites.
SS-Mac: Its my app, its super simple, I can use COmmand Option F9 to switch soundcard on the fly.
Telephone: Its my SIP client.
Transmit: SFTP client
VOCR: An OCR plugin for VoiceOver.

Wow that is an interesting list. I will go through it in a bit of detail, but a couple of initial questions.

Airfoil - I have a load of Sonos speakers and can airplay to all at once. Well it does it to one then I can group the others in. What makes this one better? Is it just because it goes beyond Sonos? I find sometimes if I am air playing to many Sonos speakers it can be a touch erratic in performance but guessing that's just life.

BBEdit - is this accessible with VoiceOveR? I tried this a few years ago and it did not work at all. If they have made it accessible now I will definitely give it a go. I use Smultron. It's not free but dirt cheap. But it's not perfect so would be up for trying something else.
:

OK I could have spent another 5 seconds and Googled the answer to this one. I found some release notes and they have added VoiceOver support!

This makes me very happy - I will give it a go! I had no idea.

For ref, release notes - https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/notes-15.0.html

I wish this was available for me back in my college days. On a completely separate note, natural language calculators are awesome!

AirFoil can group devices, you can airplay to a specific group, and what's very awesome is that the apps are in perfect sync, so it seems like the speakers play everything at the same time.

I've been giving BB Edit a go the last few days in place of Smultron. I use it mainly for just dumping text, making notes and other stuff that I generally don't want to save anywhere.

The things I like about Smultron are that it's quite lightweight and simple. It has a built-in OCR text scanner which is handy. I like how it names the documents after the first line of text if you haven't saved them as per Sublime Text. What I like less is that it is very susceptible to stupid VoiceOver text editing issues. Possibly more than others but it is hard to say. And it does have a tendency to keep temp files lying around in random places on my Mac - I keep finding documents named after the first line of text in them which is annoying. I've also never liked the find/replace dialog with VoiceOver, but it would likely be fixed if I ever reported it. The dev is very receptive to feedback. It also annoys me that Home/End behaviour is different to PyCharm. I don't know why this has to be differnt in every single Mac app.

So my immediate problem with BB Edit, which feels quite stupid, is that I keep losing track of where the text editor is. I'll open it up, then get stuck in a table and will be just trying to type some text or find the last text I enter. Maybe this is something I'll get used to in time but I had a few moments where I was quickly trying to recall something and I just kept getting stuck with stupid VoiceOver pips. To start with I'd also encounter this because I'd instinctively use Ctrl+Tab to switch tabs which instead just moves the focus somewhere. I need to use Cmd+Option+braces I think. But doing that won't always give the new document focus. Neither will quitting and reopening. It seems it has Windows Spots which might be handy, but giving focus to the text area does not always allow me to type. Sometimes VO+Space activates it. I'm hoping I am just being dense here.

The Settings dialog also seems to be a touch erratic - sometimes it works as I'd expect, then other times I just can't quite get it to select the right category.

I'm also not sure I need VoiceOver to make a weird noise every time I move into a blank line.

That's the big selling point of the Sonos, and it's the thing I really love about them. Being able to hear music all round the house never gets old.

I find air play to Sonos can be a tad unreliable at times so it would be interesting to try this to compare. It's also pretty smart that you can include non--Sonos speakers within the group.

It's really interesting to know that these things exist.