back to article Ten free apps to install on every new Mac

Apple provides plenty of free software to get you started with a new Mac. But there are some gaps, and a number of the firm's own freebies have been improved upon by some equally inexpensive alternatives. Here, then, is our selection of the ten apps you should download onto every new Mac you buy. RH Numbers Adium Adium is …

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  1. Matt K

    http://handbrake.fr/

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    HandBrake

    Free, open-source video transcoder. It just works and has some reasonable default template settings for the non-technically literate (like me).

  2. Sooty

    www.steampowered.com

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    Steam!

    Surely the day after it's launch this should have been included. The gaming "iTunes" has finally made it to the mac allowing easy access to a large catalogue of games.

  3. taguon

    http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html

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    The Unarchiver

    I haven't had to bother with the Stuffit signup annoyances ever since I discovered "The Unarchiver", which handles at least as many formats (if not more) and is free and open source. The author seems readily available on his site to take bug reports and feature requests too, not that bugs seem too common.

  4. spegru

    http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#tested-full

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    Openoffice

    Can't think why you left this off!

  5. Nick Fisher

    n/a

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    Monolingual - use with caution

    Monolingual is a great way to save some disk space, but beware, it can completely break your Office suite. After using Monolingual, Word 2008 became extremely unstable for me (crashing every few minutes), and the Auto Update procedure ceased to work.

    A Time Machine backup saved the day, at the cost of several hours productivity.

  6. G. Curt Fiedler

    https://www.dropbox.com/

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    DropBox

    Cloud storage for everyone. Cross platform, multiple folder sharing with other drop box users, up to 2.8 GB free storage. I just works.

  7. G. Curt Fiedler

    http://blacktree.com/?quicksilver

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    Quicksilver

    Keyboard shortcuts that work. This app learns your usage patterns and allows you to call up any app, file, or website by typing a few letters of the item's name or keyword.

  8. G. Curt Fiedler

    http://skitch.com/

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    Skitch

    Screenshots and annotation made simple, saved in the cloud. Awesome interface, easy to use, and free for now.

  9. Tim Walker

    http://handbrake.fr/

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    Handbrake

    If there's only room for one video-transcoding utility in this list, I would probably choose Handbrake over MPEG Streamclip - partly because it looks a little more user-friendly, but mostly because it includes a lot of device-specific presets (iPod, etc.), and does DVD ripping.

    That said, I haven't looked at MPEG Streamclip for a while, so perhaps it's time to get reacquainted :-) Many thanks for a very handy list, which I'll probably be working through over the next few weeks...

  10. G. Curt Fiedler

    http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/

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    Caffeine

    If you have a laptop and don't want it to go to sleep during that important powerpoint presentation - you need Caffeine. It's a menu app and one click will keep your mac from sleeping at inopportune times.

  11. Detective Emil

    http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net

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    Jumpcut

    I'd be less productive without Jumpcut, "a minimalist clipboard manager", which remembers the last dozen or so cuts and copies. Plain text only, but that's good enough for me.

  12. Mark 164

    http://www.clamxav.com/index.php?page=v2beta

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    ClamXav

    Free antivirus software - picks up Windows malware and the few Mac ones that exist too.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Going to say

    This article should be 5 things to install. since the first 5 are just obvious

  14. overloaded

    Why CCC Carbon Copy Clone

    Why use CCC when Disk Utiility lets you do the same.

  15. faibistes

    elan.plexapp.com

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    Plex

    A xbmc fork that's better than the original. VLC becomes irrelevant with Plex.

  16. faibistes

    aMule

    What's VLC/Plex good for without amule?

  17. faibistes

    http://www.blacktree.com/

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    Quicksilver

    Your producitvity goes through the roof. For keyboard lovers out there.

  18. Gulfie

    http://www.boxee.tv

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    Boxee

    Great integrated access to lots of web-based video sources including iPlayer, Nasa TV and loads more...

  19. Gulfie

    http://www.hanynet.com/waterroof/

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    Waterroof

    Advanced configuration for the OSX firewall - much more fine-grained control that the OSX control panel gives you.

  20. G. Curt Fiedler

    http://growl.info/

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    Growl

    Pop up notifier for system & application events. Useful in letting you know when that file has finally uploaded, among lots of other things. Integrates with many other apps to improve the user experience.

  21. G. Curt Fiedler

    VLC

    Unfortunately, the current iteration of VLC is buggy and suffers playback issues on both of my Macs.

  22. Gulfie

    http://www.istumbler.net/http://www.istumbler.net/

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    iStumbler

    Gives great stats on all available Wifi / Bluetooth connections.

    Particularly useful to make sure that your own WiFi isn't sharing a channel with somebody else's

  23. Tiny Iota

    http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/30315

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    Insomnia

    Allows you to shut the lid of your MacBook without putting it to sleep, which is really useful if you’ve got a download going or are sending a stream to the TV etc). Unless I have missed anything, I cannot find this functionality anywhere in the system settings.

  24. stu 4

    Time Machine

    eh ? You can use time machine to restore onto a fresh HD no problem.

    In fact, not only that, but i have even restored a mac mini time machine backup onto a freshly formatted macbook air drive (to save me the hassle of sticking all my apps onto it again).

    including 'everything' as you say - apps, updates, my data, etc, etc.

    Was surprised with with different underlying hardware it worked at all, but work it does with no issues whatsoever.*

    I tried CCC and it failed twice, and since then I've stuck with time machine.

    you just book off osx disk - select disk utility, restore from time machine, and 10 minutes later all is well.

    stu

    * I've even restored the same backup with all my apps onto a snow leopard MBP (the mac mini is leopard), and told it just to move apps across - rather optimistic this, as they are all being moved across to a different OS entirely (64 bit, etc)... and blow me, if that just didn't just work too - saving me hours and hours of reinstalling and configuring all my apps and utilities.

  25. G. Curt Fiedler

    http://www.evernote.com/

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    Evernote

    Great collector and sorter of information, from personal notes, web cam shots, random images, screen shots, web pages, and scanned text - with limited OCR function. Your data is stored in the cloud and the app is cross platform, with several mobile versions. Free account gives you 45mb monthly upload allowance.

  26. G. Curt Fiedler

    Adium - huh?

    C'mon - who uses this anymore. For most folks it's either Skype or G-chat. These other clients are increasingly irrelevant, in addition to the app like Adium that corrals them.

  27. G. Curt Fiedler

    http://www.google.com/chrome

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    Chrome

    Fastest Mac Browser available. Easy to use and great interface.

  28. RichyS

    Handbrake

    Another vote for Handbrake here. You need to install VLC for it to work fully, but once that's done, it's fantastic.

    Handbrake can rip from DVDs or transcode from most other video formats. Where it scores over MPEG StreamClip is in ease of use. In particular, the presets will give you great quality output for iPods, iPhones, Apple TVs, whatever in a single click. With MPEG SC you have to know a bit about what you're doing.

    There are certain things that MPEG SC is useful for (which is why I have it too), such as joining two H.264 movies into a single .mov or .m4v container (without hours of transcoding). Plus, a few MKV or other source files will crash Handbrake but work with MPEG SC. But, outside of these rare occasions, I use Handbrake every time.

    I'd also pair it with MetaX for correctly tagging (including chapter names) your TV and movie files. They integrate quite nicely (and your Mac moos when it finishes -- what more could you want?)

  29. fritz from london

    Onyx, Also, agree with Quicksilver.

    Quicksilver is the FIRST thing I install when I get a new mac.

    Onyx does what TinkerTool does, and more.

    Disk Inventory X, Cyberduckj, and Smultron are also must haves

  30. Dave Fox

    http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

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    Neooffice

    Version of OpenOffice.org for the Mac that has a better "native" look and feel.

  31. Neil 13

    http://members.ozemail.com.au/~pli/x-assist/

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    X-Assist

    Puts the application switcher drop down menu back on the right hand side of the Finder's menu bar (along with a few other goodies). Invaluable if, like me, you're old school.

  32. hexx

    http://www.panic.com/transmit/

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    Transmit

    i guess this is the best ftp client for mac - FTP or SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDAV

  33. hexx

    http://perian.org/

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    Perian

    Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.

  34. hexx

    http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=1722

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    Better touch tool

    this utility is amazing, allows you to customize gestures for touch pad and magic mouse and also few bits on tom, can't live without this as i'm using few spaces and flicking through them using three fingers :)

  35. I_am_Chris

    http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/

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    Firefox

    I can't get on with Safari.

    Actually Camino is also a nice OS X friendly port of Firefox, but doesn't use the same extensions :(

  36. Grifter

    Macports

    Macports and opera.

  37. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD

    http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

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    Firefox

    One of the first things I install on a new mac. To each their own, I never liked Safari.

  38. Robin Layfield

    http://www.getsongbird.com/

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    Songbird

    Free iTunes music player replacement with plugins for cover art, video-clips, phone syncing, gigs and even song lyrics.

    Bonus feature: it can play FLAC audio files.

  39. Dave 129

    A few others

    Keka (http://www.kekaosx.com/en/): for decompressing files, just runs in the background.

    Cyberduck (http://cyberduck.ch/): for SFTP chores

    Flip4Mac (http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm): play WMV on mac, also has a paid for pro version for doing other stuff.

    Perian (http://perian.org/): codecs galore for QuickTime

    Opera (http://www.opera.com/): Opera web browser :)

  40. justkyle

    http://nightly.webkit.org

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    Webkit

    It's Safari, but not directly from Apple.

    And, more up to date vis a vis security patches.

    Chrome is for people who don't mind Google's impending takeover of the interwebs...

  41. justkyle

    http://p7zip.sourceforge.net/

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    py7zip

    7zip archive for Mac OS X command line.

    Enough said.

  42. Anomalous Cowherd Silver badge

    http://code.google.com/p/subler/

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    Subler

    I wouldn't put it in my top ten, but Subler is a great accompaniment to Handbrake and allows you to mux in subtitles to the original MP4 file. This frees you from the yoke of VLC, especially when you use Perian...

  43. Anomalous Cowherd Silver badge

    http://perian.org/

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    Perian

    Perian adds support for loads of video formats to Quicktime - DIVX etc - and given Quicktime is a lot more reliable than VLC on the Mac I'm amazed this didn't make your top 10. It's indispensible.

  44. This suggestion has been deleted by its author

  45. anonymous superhero

    Transmit isn't free, you know

    besides, real men do their ftp business in the Terminal

  46. windywoo

    http://glimmerblocker.org/

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    Glimmerblocker

    Not quite as effective as adblock plus for Firefox, but stil very effective if you aren't using that browser. Works system wide as a proxy, so works with Opera, Chrome, Safari and whatever browser you like.

  47. windywoo

    http://clicktoflash.com/

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    Click2flash

    Flash is crap on Macs. The newest beta improves that but still it won't make any difference on unsupported graphics cards. So click2flash blocks flash and offers the option to playback flash movies using Quicktime.

  48. mafoo

    http://cyberduck.ch/

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    Cyberduck - FTP

    Best free (But asks for a donation once every new version), open source, FTP client out there for the mac. Supports FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and rackspace+amazon cloud uploads. Has a pretty advanced feature set without imposing a complicated user interface.

  49. Nexox Enigma

    @Tiny Iota

    Insomnia is pretty awesome - I close the lid of my laptop all the time, and I'd rather that my ssh sessions stay connected.

    To fully correct the bizarre power behaviour on your average mac laptop, this command:

    sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1

    Will turn 'sleep' mode into suspend-to-disk, instead of suspend-to-ram. You'll want to use that one w/ Insomnia to prevent a hibernate every time you close the lid, however.

  50. Jan Hargreaves

    http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

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    SuperDuper

    i found carbon copy cloner to be a bit annoying. superduper is really easy and the paid version allows you to do stuff i have never needed.

  51. Ian Ferguson

    www.utorrent.com

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    uTorrent

    Tiny, efficient torrenting app. Can't live without it!

    I'm confused by your claim that Time Machine can't restore apps, though - of course it can! When I got my new iMac, I simply used Time Machine to restore from my external HDD that had a backup from my MacBook (with a previous version of the OS, no less). Restored files, OS setup, applications, everything - but with the new OS.

    Absolutely amazing in my opinion. Sure, Time Machine is short on options - but after using it for a while I now understand why; it just works!

  52. Hans 1

    http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14414/mactheripper

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    mac the ripper

    Just rip any dvd with this thing of beauty ...

  53. Aaron 10

    http://perian.org/

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    Perian

    This free plug-in gives codec support to QuickTime for all major video formats, including OGG and MKV, as well as subtitle support. While it is a close second to VLC for its formats, the fact that it integrates into QuickTime and therefore exports videos is a huge boon.

    Side note: The Squared 5 MPEG Streamclip download link is broken.

  54. Oscar

    www.microsoft.com

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    Windows 7

    Biggest productivity improving move I've made with the mac mini I've got at work :D

  55. Steven Walker

    http://blacktree.com/?quicksilver

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    Quicksilver

    I cannot take this list seriously as it does not include Quicksilver. I put it at number one. It is quite brilliant and has completely changed how I use my mac. I ignore the Dock and have no desktop icons. I can open any file, program, address, mail recipient or just about anything else with half a dozen keystrokes.

    If you have a Mac install it now and soend a few hours playing with it and learning. If you have Ubuntu 10.4 there is a very passable clone.

  56. Graeme Hayes

    Monolingual......

    Great idea but it completely screwed my MacBook. Luckily, I had a backup of the data and it only took a short while to undo the damage.

  57. MrHorizontal

    http://code.google.com/p/tunnelblick/

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    TunnelBrick

    OpenVPN client for Mac OS X, allows you to use an OpenVPN server without knowing anything about OpenVPN and just double-clicking on the .ovpn config file provided by VPN providers. In the days of increased spying activity - which even though Labour are out of government will still linger for too long, privacy is important.

    TunnelBrick is free, while the better Viscosity (http://www.viscosityvpn.com) is $7.

  58. Johnny Thrust

    http://store.steampowered.com/

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    Steam

    Not a Mac user, would rather claw my own eyes out, but it's nice to see Valve have implemented their Steam platform on Mac, making having fun on the little white gits should be a little easier to do!

  59. runebinder

    http://blog.boastr.net/

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    BetterTouchTool

    If you have a multitouch trackpad or magic mouse you can program extra gestures, makes the user experience so much better. As an added bonus it enables Windows 7 snap features for OS X as well, an essential download and free.

  60. John H. Maw

    Little Snitch

    Little Snitch controls what information can be sent from your machine to the internet. All sorts of things try to phone home on your bandwidth. With Snitch, you get the say about which do and which don't. It should make it much harder for people to get into from your computer. Not free, but not costly either.

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