Three Free System Utilities
Mac Apps
Deeper
In the spirit of old standbys like Onyx and TinkerTool, Deeper provides a GUI to tweak multiple system settings, including a few I haven't seen before, including:
- Make TextEdit open with a new document instead of the file dialog box
- Turn off the verification of disk images. I've probably opened 10,000 disk images in my life and I don't remember one failing to verify. I've wasted hours!
- Make the "Save As" dialog box open in extended form
Pester
Similar to the paid app, Due, this alarm/timer app will keep reminding you to do something until you kill it. It's full of thoughtful touches, like showing the amount of time left on a timer in the dock icon. For alerts, you can choose any combination of an onscreen message (which also displays the time), a bouncing Pester Dock icon, a spoken version of your message, or to play an alert. When creating alarms you can use abbreviations like 20m for 20 minutes, 11a for 11:00 A.M. or tomorrow, next Saturday etc. The alarms are reusable, which is convenient if you use Pester to remind you to check laundry or take a break at a certain time of day
Übersicht
Widgets have become more useful as more and more developers have added to them to their apps, but there is still a use for widgets not connected to apps to provide information at a glance for all sorts of system functions and external information. This app lets anyone with developer chops use JavaScript + React's JSX to roll their own widgets. The rest of us can choose from a gallery containing widgets like:
.