title: Useful Mac OS programs
tags: macos, computers
date: 2022-03-11 00:00
---

Somewhat recently I got a MacBook Pro for work. I already use other
Apple products and I figured that being a UNIX based system it is
going to be very much useable for work related things. And, of course,
I was curious about their new M1 soc. At the end, I was a bit
dissapointed with the user experience and the desktop environment,
coming from Linux/X11.

After some rudimentary research, I found the following programs to be
very useful, and I highly recommend them for improving your
interactions with the Mac OS. All of the programs below are free
software and can be installed using Homebrew.

For GUI/DE:
- [Hammerspoon](http://www.hammerspoon.org/) for configuring keyboard
  shortcuts for maximazing windows, snapping them around, etc. It is a
  general-purpose "automation" tool, and it is scripted in Lua. You
  can really do a lot of things with it, and I barely scratch the
  surface with my [very modest configuration file](https://git.groupoid.moe/dan/dotfiles/src/branch/master/hammerspoon/.hammerspoon/init.lua).
- [Easy Move+Resize](https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize)
  for moving and resizing windows like in Linux/X11 by using
  Ctrl-Shift-right mouse and Ctrl-Shift-left mouse and dragging the
  window. Super useful.
- BackgroundMusic for per-app sound
  control. I was really surprised this is not implemented by default
  in Mac OS.
- [Mos](https://mos.caldis.me/). A tool to fix the broken mouse
  behavior on Mac OS. In Mac OS you can use two scrolling directions:
  "natural scrolling" (which is great for touch pads) and the standard
  scrolling (which is great for standard mices). Unfortunately, you
  can only select one direction which applies to *all* of your
  devices! So, you need to install Mos to implement the scrolling
  properly.


For LaTeX workflow:
- Mitsuharu Yamamoto's [emacs-mac port](https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/src/master/),
  also available [via homebrew](https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport).
  It beats the other Emacs ports for MacOS by integrating some
  Mac-specific niceties like smooth scrolling, correctly registering
  fullscreen, etc. You you install it from source, and you gcc and
  libgccjit, you can enable native compilation for elsip.
- [Skim](http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/) for PDF viewing. Works
  flawlessly with Emacs/SyncTeX. Backwards search with
  Shift-Command-click.

Other useful utilities:
- [Stats.app](https://github.com/exelban/stats) for monitoring
  resource usage, fans, temperature, etc.
- [IINA](https://iina.io/). Basically a frontend to `mpv`. Great media
  player.
- [iTerm2](https://iterm2.com/). Easy to use terminal emulator.
- For unknown reason, stock MacOS does not support per-app volume
  settings. Even as a frequent hater of the audio on Linux, I have to
  admit that this just puzzled me. You need to donwload a separate
  app, BackgroundMusic, and route all of your audio throught it.