Macs come bundled with a lot of software out of the box. While most of it is at least passable, much of it lacks the feature set power users need. We’ve compiled a list of our favourite replacements for the usually-workable-but-sometimes-lacking OS X default software.
Everyone’s familiar with the idea of using a bookshelf wallpaper to help sort your desktop icons into a ordered mass, but a simple clean up or view sort can ruin all your good work, and rearranging or moving your setup isn’t as easy as it could be. DesktopShelves solves this problem by allowing you to bind folders to “shelves” that can be arranged on your desktop however you like.
If you have lots of time, you could go rummaging around your drives in Explorer (or the command-line if getting nothing else done in the next few years doesn’t bother you) in an effort to reclaim space. Alternatively, you could do what the rest of us do and fire up WinDirStat or SequoiaView, which display the files and folders of your hard drives as coloured blocks of various sizes. With these visualisation tools, it’s easy to identify where your space is going.
If you’re using Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard or a laptop, you might find yourself occasionally in need of a number pad. NumPad Remote is a download for iOS and Mac OS X that turns your iOS device into a portable number pad.
While the Lifehacker US team is stuffing itself with Thanksgiving turkey, we can all be thankful for high-quality free software. Here’s a roundup of our favourite free apps.
Evernote users, are you vigilant about manually exporting your notes for backup or has it been a while? Evernote Exporter is a simple utility that schedules regular exports of your Evernote data in the app’s proprietary .enex file format.
