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Ask HN: What are some good open-source Mac apps you can't live without?

27 points by onmyway133 ↗ HN
Hi, I think a question of this kind has appeared before. As both open source contributor and Mac users myself, I have tried many open sources apps and there are a few I find quite essential. Therefore I have curated https://oss.wiki/ to easily find and filter apps based on tech stack and topic.

A few apps I can't live without are:

- Rectangle: window manager

- Pika: color picker

- Kap: screen recorder

- Insomnia: Rest API testing

- Itsycal: calendar

- iTerm2: terminal

Would love to get to know more apps and I would love to add them to the list to spread the words

19 comments

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surrTurr
Amethyst: A tiling window manager à la xmonad

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

onmyway133
Nice tool, I've already added Rectangle, but I will check this
KolenCh
It is a completely different code base however and even in a wrong language so it isn’t really monad. However it is their goal (to imitate that experience) and how they market it.
hitsurume
Hammerspoon - AHK for Mac. Been great to use to set custom keybinds for different apps.
quintes
How are you all vetting these, scanning for malware etc? How many are silicon native , may be a useful way to list as well
tra3
I trust brew. Until you asked though, I haven’t thought about it. Have no real reason to trust brew. Never even verified if their stuff is signed..
quintes
True, I trust brew as well, I was wondering about package downloads.

you can install vlc via brew?

edit: I meant vlc not vnc

quintes
I've never verified anything either. fail.
KolenCh
GUI only? Ie excluding some packages that has no GUI component such as OpenZFS?

- kitty

- VSCode (true OSS only is like VSCodium)

- imageoptim-cli & it’s dependencies (some dep are not open source)

- mactex

- mpv

- KeePass derivatives including keepassxc, keypassium, StrongBox

- zotero

- chromium

Also upvote Rectangle.