Apple @lemmy.world prwnr @programming.dev 1 yr. ago

What are some cool niche applications you use and recommend?

Well, basically the title. I love trying out new apps across the whole ecosystem, but searching for them in the App store is not fun, and a bunch of apps I have used I found by accident in some posts or comments on the web.

So, the question is, what apps that are not widely known you use and recommend? Mac, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS.

From me: WatchOS: TimeGlance that serves as date and time complication.

iOS/WatchOS: Duffy that serves only as a glanceable steps meter, with no fancy additions that many apps there have, and simple clean complications in watch.

iOS: Ermine, mainly serves me as a calendar widget that is better than the built in one, showing dots over the days that have some events and highlighting holidays.

iOS: Wristy, a widget to show my wrist temperature (requires Watch 8)

MacOS: Numi, a somewhat “natural language” calculator.

MacOS: Warp, a rich wrapper on the terminal.

43 comments

Arc is and excellent browser for osx. And memmy is a cool iOS reader for Lemmy.
- I’m using it too, but I really mis a phone version. There is that companion app, but it’s not a real thing.
  
  I agree 100%. I’d love to see an iPad app for it.
Whenever I get a new computer I install these right away.

Used everyday:

Alfred: customizable productivity tool. It's a launcher, file searcher, web searcher, clipboard manager, snippet manager, script runner, etc with a robust community making scripts.

Textpander: a text replacer I've been using before Apple's and Alfred's solutions.

Bettertouchtool: customize keyboard and trackpad shortcuts

Notational Velocity/nVALT + Obsidian: note taking synced across my devices. NValt for quick notes while Obsidian is for long form and personal knowledge management. Just plain text files in a communal vault somewhere.

Dropbox: mainly used to sync settings for apps and notes across devices.

1Password: password generation and management for me and my girlfriend. A little pricey, but I love it. been researching alternatives.

Also handy:

Better Rename 9: rename files. Replace characters or strings, add in number sequencing, convert casing, etc. I have a lot of photos and work with a lot of images so this comes in handy

Copyqueue: file copy. Enables a queue for file copy.

Hidden Bar: menu bar management

For my watch:

App in the Air: is a nice airport companion that visually shows the airplane phases (boarding, flight duration) with accompanying info (like gates and delays)
- I've used a bunch of password managers over the years and 1Password is by far the best.
  
  Sounds like you haven't tried Strongbox yet. Uses a KeePass2 database as the backend and integrates into Apple's auto-fill system. So works everywhere where Apple's built-in password manager works. And you can use the same database with KeePassXC on other platforms.
  
  I’ve been a long time 1Password user, but it has been getting worse and more expensive at the same time. I’m using Minimalist, but iCloud Keychain is getting better every year and I‘m probably soon going to switch over. The only thing I’m missing are other secure things like passports, bank accounts etc.
  
  And having a dedicated app for it is would also be nice.
- +1 for alfred, 1password, and dropbox.
  
  I've been using Bear for notes forever, syncs across all apple devices, and is super nicely designed. My only gripe is that encryption doesn't work with files attached to the text.
  
  I use bartender to manage my menu bar. Not super happy, might check out hidden bar.
raycast as an alternative to alfred
Paprika

I recently discovered this app, and am thoroughly impressed by it. Basically, you collect and curate recipes with it. It removes all the nonsense fluff, life stories, and ads from recipe pages, and saves only the recipe, ingredients, and directions.
- sounds cool. tho I’m using app called “Mela” for recipes, it has free tier and works in similar way.
  
  I switched over to Mela as soon as it came out, it’s basically paprika but better in every way I care about and it looks really nice
- That sounds like the old macOS app “Sous Chef”. You could paste in a URL or the full text and it would parse the recipes. It was great.
LocalSend to transfer files of any size across various devices in your local network.
For macOS karabiner (keyboard config, especially caps lock remapping), homebrew, shkd (keybindings) and yabai (tiling wm) are essential.
- do you know how karabiner and shkd would compare to QMK/VIA enabled keyboard? any point in trying those two if I have keyboard with that and am able to do various mappings and macros with it?
  
  qmk should handle everything I'd use it for. That is unless you'll also need to use non-qmk keyboards with that computer at some point
- I use karabiner on my macbook so I can remap the fn key to command. So cmd + c is much more natural for me since I have long fingers and big hands. Stupid little cmd + c with thumb and pointer is just dumb
WorkOutDoors for phone and watch. My favorite feature is being able to offline maps on my watch when I’m somewhere new and it leaves breadcrumbs so you can find your way back. It’s liberating to not have to take your phone everywhere while on vacation and also not get lost.
Memmy
- wrote the post from this app ^^
  
  Nice 👍
I’ve recently fallen pretty hard for Anytype (http://anytype.io). It’s a knowledge store/second brain application like Notion except it is decentralized, end to end encrypted, P2P, and open source. It has a little bit of a learning curve, but now that I’m comfortable with it, I can’t help but keep dumping information into it. Even though it is still “beta” it is really solid, and I feel really comfortable relying on it more and more.
- I use Obsidian for this, with the added benefit that you can still access your stuff offline. Notion requires a connection last I checked, which put me in a bind a couple times. Obsidian also has a bit of a learning curve.
  
  Cool! While Anytype also works offline, it looks like Obsidian’s canvas and available plugins make it pretty compelling. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for pointing out Duffy. I was looking for something clean and simple as that.
Liftin (iOS, watchOS) is a new one I discovered recently. It looks and feels like an extension of the Apple Workouts app geared towards strength training
- looks very nice. but I dont go to gym :D tho I’m using Streaks Workout for some in-house functional strength trainings and it’s a cool simple all too.
- Love this one! Nice set of features, simple interface, cannot recommend enough
Depends on the watch face but Roughly is a cool one that shows you the rounded time of the moment.
Just wanna recommend MoneyStats as a personal income/balance forecasting app. It blows GNUcash or whatever other balance forecasting apps exist out of the water (looking at Dollarbird/Kualto etc, is beautifully designed, on iPhone/Mac/iPad, can be bought rather than subscribed to, and is private and respectful of your data.

Its more amazing than I can articulate.
For those in or visiting California, Your coast for iOS
there's a very old app on iOS (and hasn't been updated in ages as well) called Asphaltgold Fittingroom where you can enter your shoe size on a certain sneaker model and then it'll let you know what size you'd need for another model, even across different brands

i use it all the time when buying sneakers that are new to me it's great
iOS - Due (https://www.dueapp.com). The thing I love about this app is that you can set tasks to snooze and it will continually remind you anywhere between 1 minute and 1 hour after the snooze. It's great for time-critical tasks.

MacOS - Keyboard Maestro (https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/). I'm probably only using 5% of this app's capability. The main edge case that works well for me is that it will do text expansion in my Parallels Virtual Machines. I believe it's the only text expansion app that does this correctly/consistently.
- I can’t live without Due. Pairs very well with the Apple Watch.
Sip- samples colors on the screen

TripMode- lets you decide which apps can access the internet. Great to conserve bandwidth when you’re tethered.

SideNotes- adds a drawer on the side of the screen you can pull out to make some quick notes

Espanso- cross-platform text replacement

Amphetamine- keep the computer awake on a schedule or under certain conditions

FreeTube- privacy-minded YouTube client

Mona- Mastodon client

Session- best pomodoro app I’ve found
Blackhole: Allows you to split/duplicate/route audio between apps on your Mac.

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