macOS Tools To Help Make You (and your Mac) More Productive (Part 2)

In part two, I am going to explore some more really great productivity tools for your Mac.  Honestly, who doesn’t want their lives to be easier in some way?  I am always looking for tips and tricks on how I can make my life easier, but also more productive at the same time.  Like I always say, if you have apps that you think are incredible as well, send them our way.  We are always happy to get feedback.

Itsycal: A Tiny Calendar for Your Mac’s Menu Bar

Itsycal is a tiny calendar for your menu bar. If you want, it will display your appointments and serve as a companion to the Mac Calendar app. You can move Itsycal in the menu bar just like the built-in Apple menu extras by holding down the Command key and dragging.

CloudApp: Lightning Fast Media Sharing and Screen Grabs

With CloudApp, you can record your screen to explain something.  You can use your voice to create a walkthrough or add your face to make it more personal. You can turn any area of your screen into an animated GIF.  These can be great for training, documentation, on-boarding and sales emails. Not only that, but you can use annotations, lines, arrows and emojis to get your point across faster.  CloudApp makes it easy for you to explain yourself more clearly.

Gestimer: Mac Menu Bar App to Create Reminders with Drag and Drop

Do you constantly check the time while using your Mac because you don’t want to forget to leave the house in 10 minutes, to pick up the kids at 4 pm, or to turn off the stove in 3 minutes? With Gestimer you can create such short-term reminders quickly and easily. Gestimer is a beautiful Mac menu bar app for those little reminders during the day. Simply drag the Gestimer menu bar icon onto the screen.

Moom: Indispensable Window Management for Macs

Moom allows you to move and zoom windows — using either the mouse or the keyboard — to predefined locations and sizes, or to full-screen mode. When used via the mouse, all you need to do is hover over a green resize button, and Moom’s interface appears. When used via the keyboard, press your defined shortcut, and the Moom keyboard bezel appears; you can then move windows using the arrow keys and modifier keys.Moom can be run as a traditional application, a menu bar application, or a completely faceless background application.

Fantastical 2: The Calendar App You Won’t Be Able to Live Without

Fantastical 2 for Mac includes features such as a full calendar window (with day, week, month, and year views), an intuitive parsing engine, iCloud reminders support, light theme, time zone support, birthday reminders, and much more. Fantastical 2 has a beautiful all-new design and includes many OS X Yosemite features, including a Today Widget, Action & Share Extensions, plus Handoff support to provide continuity between Fantastical 2 for Mac, Fantastical 2 for iPhone, and Fantastical 2 for iPad.  iCloud Reminders are even better and users can now see their events and dated reminders together in the main list. Reminders can be quickly created by starting sentences with “reminder”, “todo”, “task”, or “remind me to.” Users can also add dates, times, and location-based geofences (when I arrive/when I leave) to their reminders.

Tripmode: Manage Your Mac’s Broadband Usage While on a Hotspot

If you travel at all and connect to a hotspot, then you are going to want to invest in Tripmode.  Tripmode allows you to easily block unwanted apps from accessing the internet.  Why do you want this?  Well, it’s going to shave you some money by not using as much data.  You can turn on which apps you want to specifically access your hotspot.  You can change which apps have access anytime.

Better Snap Tool: Manage Tour Windows Positions and Size From Your Keyboard

BetterSnapTool allows you to easily manage your window positions and sizes by either dragging them to one of the screen’s corners or to the top, left or right side of the screen. This enables you to easily maximize your windows, position them side by side or even resize them to quarters of the screen. If you need even more than those standard snap areas, BetterSnapTool now allows you to create your own, custom snap areas anywhere on your display. To be even more productive you can also set custom keyboard shortcuts in order to move and resize your windows. Because there are so many positions available, BetterSnapTool can also pop up an overview menu from which you can select the one position you want.

Little Ipsum: The Best Latin Text Generator for OS X

There isn’t a lot to say about this app, aside from – it’s free – and it is an incredibly quick way to generate latin text.  This is useful for designers, especially.  But if you don’t want to waste time trying to find some latin to put onto your page or into your design, Little Ipsum is the tool for you.

Monosnap: Fast and Easy Screenshot and Annotation Tool

Monosnap allows users to create screenshots and annotate them in a fast and easy way.  Monosnap has two modes of screenshot: the first one grabs the whole screen (or screens). The second mode grabs an area or window of the screen. In the latter mode, a magnifier is presented, showing the size of the selected rectangle and color of the pixel below the cursor. After taking a screenshot Monosnap opens its editor with such tools as pen, line, rectangle, oval, arrow, text and blur. Also, it has crop tool to remove unnecessary details if they that has not been done while capturing screen.