1:13 Window managers Window management on isn't particularly great. Sure, you can make optimized apps completely full-screen or have two apps side by side in a split-screen view. What if you don't want the full-screen experience and want to organize a handful of floating windows on your desktop? Well, without a third-party app, you'll be dragging floating windows around freely and manually resizing everything to fit. If you want a similar window snap experience like you get in Windows, consider one of these four apps:.: $0.99 (£0.99 or AU$1.49).: $2.99 (£2.99 or AU$4.49).: $9.99 (£9.99 or AU$14.99).: $13.99 (£13.99 or AU$21.99) Franz Taylor Martin/CNET. If you're tired of having a different application or browser window open for all the different chat services in your life, is the answer. Franz is an aggregator of all sorts of services, but primarily chat.

Inside the one Franz app window, you can have a tab each for services such as Slack, Discord, Google Inbox, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Trello and many more. When you install and run it for the first time, you'll need to create a Franz account and add (and log in to) all the services you want to use. Then when you open Franz in the future, all those services will open automatically. Franz is free to use, but there is an option to upgrade to premium for 35 euros (about $40, £30 or AU$55) per year. This upgrade adds support for services such as HipChat and removes ads, as well as giving access to future premium services.

2:07 Dropbox or Google Drive 's iCloud Drive is a great cloud storage system if you're totally invested in Apple's ecosystem. But if you're more cross-platform, a service such as or is probably a better fit. Their applications for Mac are just as seamless. Install either Google Drive or Dropbox and your files and folders will be two-way synced. To upload a file to a specific folder in your Dropbox, just drag and drop the file into the corresponding folder in the Dropbox directory that's created when the app is installed. Also, like iCloud Drive, you can setup selective sync so not all your Dropbox or Google Drive accounts are synced with your computer.

And unlike iCloud Drive, you can disable Google Drive or Dropbox when you don't want them to sync by pausing or closing the apps. The Unarchiver is a power file extractor tool for Mac. It can unzip ZIP files, extract RAR files and much more. Best of all, it's completely free and super simple to use.

When you come across a compressed file that needs to be extracted, right-click on it, hover over Open With and select The Unarchiver.app. If the file type is a bit more obscure, make sure you've enabled all the necessary file types within the app settings. Bartender 3 Taylor Martin/CNET Useful menu bar apps are plentiful on the Mac ecosystem, which is problematic for, well, your menu bar. It can get crowded and cluttered in a hurry, so is an absolute must-have app.

What Bartender 3 does is simple: It hides seldom-used menu bar apps and icons under its own icon. When you click on the Bartender icon, all of the hidden icons will be revealed. In preferences, you can choose which icons are shown in the main menu bar and which are hidden in the Bartender menu.

You can also customize the appearance of Bartender and setup hotkeys for displaying the hidden icons. You can try Bartender 3 for free for four weeks, but after the trial expires, you'll have to cough up $15 to continue using it.

Hocus Focus If you're prone to having a bunch of windows open at once but would rather your desktop stay neat and tidy, does just that - automatically. When you click to change focus into another app, Hocus Focus will automatically hide the other app after a short timeout period. You can whitelist apps that you don't want hidden, or you can have apps hidden as soon as the focus is changed away from them.

It's a powerful organization tool and it's dead simple to use. The best part is it's completely free, though you can opt to support the developer via a PayPal donation on its website. Alfred Taylor Martin/CNET Apple has taken strides to make the Spotlight function on MacOS better, but is still the more powerful tool. Alfred looks and operates much like Spotlight, letting you search for files, launch apps, perform quick calculations and much more without ever lifting your fingers off the keyboard.

It's also free to use. However, if you buy the Powerpack, for a one-time £19 ($25 or AU$33) fee, you will have access to so much more, such as a built-in text expander, extensive clipboard history, 1Password support and custom themes. Arguably the best part of Alfred is workflows, third-party plug-ins that blow the doors wide open for what is possible with the program. Read our breakdown of some of the to learn more about what they are capable of. Amphetamine Tired of constantly having to adjust your Mac's Energy Saver settings to keep it from powering off in the middle of something important?

Open Source Mac Os

All you need is. Once it's installed, just right-click the menu bar icon and your computer will stay on indefinitely (or for a set amount of time). That's simple enough, but Amphetamine can get much more complex if you wish. Paradise cove aquatic for mac.

You can make it so your Mac doesn't ever power off if it's connected to a specific wireless network or so that connected storage drives won't go to sleep. Best of all, Amphetamine is completely free. Reeder 3 Taylor Martin/CNET To stay on top of your RSS feeds directly from your Mac's desktop, you need.

It works with services such as Feedly, Feedbin, NewsBlur, Inoreader and more, and will let you view all of those different feeds and services side by side. The interface is highly customizable and can be altered to suit your needs for easier reading, whether that means a serif typeface or a low-contrast interface for night reading. Reeder 3 used to be a premium application but recently went entirely free. Bear Taylor Martin/CNET MacOS has a built-in text editor (two, actually, if you count the iWork suite). But if you're not a fan of TextEdit or prefer a more simple interface for distraction-free writing, there are a number of options available in the App Store. One of the better options out there is.

It has a completely distraction-free interface, supports Markdown right out of the gate and has a no-nonsense way of organizing your notes with hashtags. Bear is free to use, but if you want premium features such as seamless sync with, premium themes and more exporting options, you'll need to subscribe to Bear Pro for $1.49 monthly or $14.99 annually. Similar options to Bear include,.

Finding new software is a breeze for Linux users. The Linux desktop offers powerful, easy-to-use open-source applications for everything you need, just a few clicks away in. The programs are free, too—and you don’t have to dodge the installer crapware you do on Windows. But which of those programs are right for you?

We have answers. The applications highlighted here are the pick of the litter for the average Linux user looking to stock up on software. Heck, these particular applications are so good that almost all of them are available on other platforms and are popular even among Windows users. Say what you want about the Linux desktop—it’s a much more capable, mature environment than in Windows 8. Still can’t match Linux's power, either.

Most Linux distributions include Mozilla Firefox as their default browser, but we like Chromium. Chromium is the completely open-source version of Google Chrome, and it has almost every single feature you’ll find in Chrome, including syncing with your Google account. You probably spend a lot of time in your web browser, so this choice really matters. Chromium is still more responsive due to its multi-process architecture, which runs each tab individually. That’s especially handy if you have quite a few web pages open—a web page that crashes won’t bring down your entire browser.

Firefox is good, too, and it’s certainly improved over the years. But Chromium still seems better. Google Chrome is basically the same as Chromium, but with some closed-source bits.

LibreOffice is. There’s a good chance your Linux distribution of choice already includes this software, as it’s the most powerful, fully featured office suite you can get for Linux. It’s the gold-standard. Sure, most people don’t necessarily need all these advanced features. But LibreOffice includes powerful applications for writing text documents, working with spreadsheets, creating presentations, working with databases, and more. It also offers the best compatibility you’ll find for opening and working with Microsoft Office documents in an open-source package. Outside of a web-based office suite like Google Docs or —which aren’t open-source software, obviously—these are the office applications to use on Linux.

Mozilla Thunderbird is the ideal desktop email program for the average Linux user. Email clients are a dime a dozen, and there are a lot of options here. But there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Mozilla Thunderbird., but Thunderbird still does everything it needs to.

Together with the official Mozilla Lightning extension, Thunderbird becomes an email, calendaring, and tasks application. (Just open the Add-ons window in Thunderbird and search for Lightning to install it.) This is a solid alternative to Microsoft Outlook for basic desktop productivity. It allows you to keep your calendar and tasks entirely on your own computer, or sync with online services like Google Calendar. Most Linux distributions have shifted away from the venerable Pidgin instant messenger application and towards alternatives like Empathy that offer more desktop integration. But Pidgin is still the most solid, reliable, and well-functioning instant messenger for Linux.

It can connect to Google Talk (Hangouts), AIM, Yahoo!, IRC, and various other networks, including anything that supports the open XMPP (Jabber) standard. The biggest problem with Pidgin is just the shift toward more closed messaging networks. Facebook is shutting down its XMPP gateway, so Pidgin won’t support Facebook chat anymore., replaced by the closed Skype network—which Pidgin can’t connect to. Even anymore.

What more is there to say about? It’s, and it’s great on Linux as well. Your desktop environment probably includes its own simple video player, and that can work well for you. But you’ll have to install the relevant codecs to make it work—and you’ll probably end up with fewer features than VLC offers. Install VLC and it’s guaranteed to play practically anything without any additional codecs required.

It’s also packed full of useful features you won’t find in your average simple media player. And, if you’ve used VLC on Windows or Mac, you’ll immediately feel right at home with VLC on Linux. This is the application you need for managing your digital photos. Shotwell can automatically import photos from a connected camera and let you manage your photo library on your desktop. The software also includes easy editing tools for touching up and working with your photos.

It’s simple, but it will do everything you need it to. Shotwell also offers support for publishing your photos and videos to online services, including Facebook, Flickr, Google+, and YouTube for videos. This application is very GNOME-centric, so you may prefer an application like digiKam if you’re using a KDE desktop.

Every other application on this list runs on Windows, but this particular application is only for Linux desktops. The old GNU Image Manipulation Program is widely considered the open-source community’s answer to PhotoShop. For simple image-editing and touch-ups, stick with something like Shotwell. If you need a more advanced image editor, go straight to GIMP. GIMP’s interface has long been considered complicated and arcane, but let’s be honest: Even Photoshop can be daunting to new users.

GIMP has improved over the years, though—it now to help reduce all that window clutter. Switch to it by clicking Windows Single-Window Mode in GIMP. If you want to do something image-editing-related, GIMP can probably do it. You’ll just have to figure out how. UTorrent isn’t available for Linux, but that’s fine—uTorrent has on Windows. Deluge is one of the best open-source clients, offering a powerful plug-in system and an interface that will feel familiar to uTorrent users.

Your average BitTorrent user will love Deluge. Transmission is another solid BitTorrent application, and it’s generally found installed by default on Linux system. It has a nice simple interface, but lacks some of the more powerful features found in Deluge. Both are solid options, depending on how many features you want and which interface you prefer. Oh boy, here’s a tough choice: The Linux desktop has always had many, many awesome music players. In the end, which you prefer often comes down to which interface you like best. Rhythmbox, Banshee, and even Amarok are all solid choices.

But we’re going to go a bit out of left field here and pick Clementine. Inspired by the original version of Amarok, it’s packed with features for listening to your local music library, online radio services, podcasts, and the ability to move files back and forth to mobile devices. Give it a try if you want a powerful desktop music player. Do you need to?

VirtualBox is the most reliable open-source way. It’s an open-source virtual machine program that can run the Windows operating system in a digital box on your Linux desktop, though you’ll still need installation media and a product key for Windows. Sure, Windows itself (and most of the programs you might want to run) are closed-source, but there’s at least something poetic about a Windows system running trapped in an open-source virtual machine on an open-source Linux desktop. Wine is a completely open-source way to run Windows applications without even needing a Windows installation, but it can require a lot of fiddling. Short of dual-booting, VirtualBox is the ideal way for average users to run Windows applications on Linux. Now if only Microsoft would!