I’ve put together a comprehensive list of my favourite (non-science) applications that I think everyone (especially those working in science) should be using.
I will be writing about each of these Apps in more detail soon, including a breakdown of the alternatives I’ve tried and reasons why I have settled on these particular choices. I also plan to write up articles on each of my favourite Apps, describing tips and tricks for setting them up and using them to get the most out of each program.
For now, here’s a simple list of some of my favourites. I hope it will be useful for other people out there looking to either set themselves up on a brand new Mac (e.g. new PhD students or Postdocs), or for people interested in discovering new Mac apps. For each category, I have tried to list my favourite options in rough order of personal choice. In many cases I use more than one option (depending on what I need to get done). I encourage you to give each of them a go, see what works for you and let me know how it goes (or if you think I’ve missed anything off the list!).
💬 KEEPING CONNECTED
📨 Email application
Microsoft Outlook (or Mail.app/Spark/Browser-based)
💬 Communicating with your team, collaborators & friends
🧑🏽💻 WEB BROWSER
Google Chrome (or Safari/Brave/Vivaldi/Firefox)
Essential Chrome Extensions
I will cover these in a future article.: Password manager (e.g. Bitwarden) | Cold Turkey Blocker | Full Window Youtube | Grammarly for Chrome | Honey | Hypothesis | Loom for Chrome | News Feed Eradicator | Paperpile extension | ReClipped | RescueTime | Save to Pocket | Speechify for Chrome | uBlockTIME MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTIVITY
🗓 For organising your calendar
Fantastical (or native Calendar.app/Microsoft Outlook)
📌 A To-do list app (i.e. Task Manager)
Todoist | Monday | Trello | Notion
⏱ Time trackers & blockers
Toggl | Rescue Time | ColdTurkey Blocker | SelfControl | Be Focused
✍️ NOTE-TAKING, WRITING & HANDLING TEXT
📝 A decent text editor (or four)
Sublime Text | Atom | GNU Emacs | Vim
✍️ Note-taking
Roam Research | Notion | Evernote | Bear | Notes.app | Drafts | simple text editor (see above)
⌨️ A word processor
📄 A reliable reference manager (or several)
🗣 For presentation slides
Keynote | Google Slides | Microsoft Powerpoint
🖌 MAKING FIGURES
Illustrator | Indesign | Photoshop | GIMP | InkScape | BioRender
💻 OTHER
☁️ Backup & Cloud Storage System
CloudStor | iCloud | Time Machine (external harddrive) | OneDrive | DropBox
🌏 Remote Desktop Applications
🔐 Password Manager
Bitwarden (or Lastpass/Dashlane/1Password)
🎬 A decent media player
🎙 For recording talks & tutorials
👾 Terminal alternative
✅ Grammar check
📚 For keeping up with literature
Feedly | I follow The Fraser Lab Method of following the scientific literature
🤯 Apps that you didn’t know you needed
BetterTouchTool or Magnet | For window management + more.
Amphetamine | For keeping your Mac awake.
Alfred | Spotlight search but better + more
TextSniper | For copying text from images/PDFs.
TextExpander | Saves you retyping common phrases.
f.lux | Blue-light filter