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TUAW's Daily Mac App: DTerm
The Terminal is a Mac power-user's best friend. When you need to get something specific done, access the underlying system, modify files or change some settings, command line is often the best and only way to get it done. Instead of having to go to it, DTerm brings the command line to you. Working in the command line normally means stepping out of your current workflow and stepping into Terminal. Although it can affect anything on the system, and helps you get the job done, it's a very separate process. DTerm, which we covered back in 2008, makes Terminal access context-sensitive. From anywhere in any program you can invoke DTerm using a user-configurable global hotkey, from there you can run commands on the files you're currently working with. No need to manually go through and navigate to the correct file directory, DTerm takes your command line session right there, already set to your current working directory. You can even insert the currently selected documents directly into the command line making it quick and easy. You can run your commands as you normally would, right from the floating DTerm window and even copy them straight out of the prompt. Once you're done you can just hit escape, use the hotkey combo again or simply ignore DTerm and it'll automatically fade out. DTerm brings the command line to you, integrating it more effectively and quickly into your work flow. It's a free download from the Mac App Store and is compatible with Lion. If you ever find yourself in Terminal as part of your workflow, give DTerm a whirl and see whether it speeds up your command line sessions.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Bejeweled 3
Fancy an addictive, fun, casual game for your Mac? Look no further than the classic Bejeweled, now back in its third iteration on the Mac. Played either in full screen or windowed, the standard game hasn't changed, you still match three or more gems in a row to clear them from the board. There are four different play modes to choose from: classic, which you just match the gems until you can't make any more moves, levelling up as you go; Zen, where the board is shaken up if you can't move; Lightning, where you have to match against the clock; and Quest, where you have to complete a set task or puzzle to progress. Four secret modes are also available to unlock like Poker, a cross between gem matching and the classic card game, which are unlocked by playing the four regular game types. Bejeweled 3 has all sorts of fancy gems, which explode, zap and annihilate the gems, while the explosions and sound effects are joined by an announcer who blasts out "Excellent" and "Awesome" when you get on a roll. The game even has a fairly decent midi sound track to it. If you're a fan, the whole experience really draws you in so be prepared to waste a good hour or two before you know it. As with most modern games Bejeweled 3 also comes with achievements in the form of 20 badges to collect, including five "Elite" badges, while you can level up with experience points gained from playing each of the games. Bejeweled 3 is available from the Mac App Store for the rather dear US$19.99, but if you've played the free online version and want the ads gone and a native experience, Bejeweled 3 for Mac delivers in droves and there's even a free trial to test it out.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Producteev
Task management is something most loathe but have to do to keep productive. Producteev, a previously web and iPhone app focused task management service has just launched a Mac app. Producteev focuses on creating and managing tasks with the ability to connect those tasks with other people, other services and sync them to the web. You can create tasks in different categories, arrange them by due date, attach notes and files to them, and even comment on them. You can set up alerts for deadlines and get notified through the app itself, Growl, the Menu bar or Dock icons, or even via email and Gcal with a little help from the web app. You can also apply customizable color coded labels to your tasks to help you differentiate them from one another, as well as "Star" them with a rating from one to five. For an individual, Producteev could be a little over complicated for what you need unless you're a serious multi-level task manager. But for a team, Producteev allows you to share tasks, create and assign them to others (individuals and groups of people) and has the potential to make collaborative tasks just that little bit easier. Comments and file attachments allow adjustments and additions to a task, while everyone can monitor progress and pitch in if needed. The Mac app portion of Producteev is free and so is an individual account with up to two users sharing workspaces. If you want more plans start at US$5 per month and reach up to $30 a month for unlimited users and 1.5 GB of file storage (with a two-week free trial).
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Moonlight Mahjong
There are few games quite as relaxing to play as Mahjong solitaire. Moonlight Mahjong is a great free solitaire game for the Mac, that's tuned for using a trackpad. Not to be confused with classic game of mahjong, Mahjong solitaire is a tile matching game where you're presented with a pile of tiles taken from mahjong (hence the name), with the task of matching pairs to whittle down the pile. The tiles are stacked on top of each other, making only a limited number available for matching at any one time. Moonlight Mahjong gives you the choice of four different playing modes: Scramble and Challenge modes, where you compete against the computer, aka "Tilebot" to clear the board; Puzzle, which is classic mahjong solitaire without Tilebot; and finally Relaxation, which is like Puzzle mode but there are no time limits and your tiles are automatically reshuffled. The 3D tiles give you a bit of depth perception, while the pile is displayed atop one of its gorgeous backgrounds. You've got the choice of some beautiful Hubble images, paintings or photos, while the sound effects have a wind-chime style to them. Having come from iOS, the developers have given the game a touch-like feel by implementing decent multi-touch trackpad controls. You can select a tile by just lifting your finger off the trackpad, while you can move the pile about with standard gestures (pinch-to-zoom etc). Moonlight Mahjong looks great, plays well and adds a little competitive element with the introduction of your Tilebot playing partner. If you're looking for a relaxing game for your Mac and like matching tiles, the free Moonlight Mahjong is definitely worth a look.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Stuffit Expander
Being able to decompress the plethora of archive types that are flying about the intertubes these days is essential. Stuffit Expander, the free extract-only part of the Stuffit suite is a great utility to have when Finder, or even the Unarchiver, just can't help you out. There are quite a few free extraction tools available for the Mac. We've got the Unarchiver and TinyExpander just to name a few, but Smith Micro's Stuffit Expander handles several file formats that most others just can't, including Smith Micro's .sitx files, with aplomb. It's simple to use, either open the archive from Finder with Stuffit Expander, drag-and-drop the file onto the Expander program or open the archive directly within the app. You can even just drag-and-drop your file onto Stuffit Expander's dock icon to quickly extract the file. If you're going to use it as your primary archive extractor you can also assign various different archive file formats to Stuffit Expander from within the program preferences. When other extractors just can't cope with that unusual archive type, Stuffit Expander steps in. From MIME, StuffitX and yEncode, to AppleSingle, ARC and .btoa files, Stuffit Expander can get you what you need and for that reason, regardless of whether you use the Unarchiver or its kin, it's an essential free Mac app. Stuffit Expander is available for free from the Mac App Store.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: GrandPerspective
Finding large space hogging files in a complex file system like that on your Mac can be difficult. GrandPerspective, a small open source program, aims to help you find and remove space wasters quickly and easily. GrandPerspective first scans a target folder, be it your entire disk or just your iTunes folder for instance. It can then build a treemap based on the file size and type, color coding the files in a user configurable mapping scheme, showing you your file system visually. From there you can identify those files and folders that are taking up the most space. Once you've found an unusually large file you can find out what it is by hovering over it or clicking it, with file information such as name, size and file type displayed in the right hand draw. You can then either delete that file directly from GrandPerspective (if enabled in the application preferences), or reveal that file or folder in Finder. You can also zoom the treemap in or out to get more detail, as well as re-scan at any time, either just the folder selected or the whole drive to update for any changes you've made. The color mapping can be changed to color like file types, extensions, names, levels or folders, which makes grouping similar files easy. Filters can also be used to scan your files for all sorts of things like file type, size, name -- you name it, there's a filter available. If you're looking to free up disk space on your drive, GrandPerspective makes it easier to find unwanted space hogs and is certainly worth the free download. Thanks to aliasnexus0 for the suggestion.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: TrashMe
Deleting unused programs to make some space for Lion? You need an app like recently updated TrashMe. It's an app uninstaller with both drag-and-drop to uninstall and application listings that will handle any program you have installed, widgets, Preference panes and even plugins, moving them to the trash with their associated files. TrashMe will also scan user configurable folders for applications, places like the Downloads folder, from which you might have fired up a program once, but never really used it and forgot about it. You can set certain apps as protected, with the Apple default apps protected as standard, just so you don't accidentally delete something important. Like AppCleaner and AppTrap, TrashMe also supports intelligent Trash monitoring (Smart Detection), allowing you to just delete an application the way Apple intended. It will then detect the trashing of an application and offer to find any files that might be associated with it. With the help of a little add-on that can be downloaded from the developers site, TrashMe can also delete files and applications that you don't have write access for. There are also some "hidden" OS X preferences TrashMe can change too, which include the suppression of .DS_Store files on network volumes, a setting to show or hide hidden files and folders and also the ability to disable the warning that OS X pops up when you launch downloaded applications for the first time. TrashMe version 2 is a highly polished uninstaller app that is currently available for US$4.99 from the Mac App Store. Thanks to topherrjames for the suggestion.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: DaisyDisk
Trying to find space hogs on your various disks can be a nightmare. DaisyDisk makes it easier by letting you visualize your hard drives with beautiful circular sunburst maps. There are quite a few disk space visualizers out there, Disk Inventory X, which we featured recently on the Daily Mac App recently, is a good example that uses classic treemaps to display your data. DaisyDisk, which we reviewed in March, uses a variation on the theme, by representing you disks as circular interactive maps. Zoomed out you see the whole disk at once, from there you can identify any large folders that likely harbor space wasting files. Clicking on one of the folders from the side menu or directly on the map will then take you into that folder and give you another map of the data this time just in that folder. You can quickly drill down and find large files, with gorgeous looking and well animated maps generated each time you click through. Once you've identified a possible candidate for deletion, you can use Quick Look to check out the file by hovering over it and hitting the space bar. If you think it's a file you can do without, you can delete it right from DaisyDisk by hitting delete or dragging it to the target in the lower right-hand corner. DaisyDisk is simple to use, scans your disks really fast and makes hunting for junk files quick, easy and fun. It's an incredibly slick program that's a must-have if you're doing a serious clear out. DaisyDisk is available for US$19.95 from the developers site and will run on Leopard and up, or is currently on sale for half price at $9.99 in the Mac App Store. Thanks to Niko JP 12 for the suggestion.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Wren
Today's Daily Mac App, Wren, helps you stay your productive by giving you distraction free tweeting right from your desktop. Twitter is a fantastic time sink. You can spend hours reading people's tweets, following links, commenting and having conversations. That's great if you've got time to waste, sitting waiting for the bus or at the doctors, but what about those occasions when you're working hard and can't afford to get distracted? Sometimes the perfect tweet springs into your mind when you're getting work done. Wren helps you express that tweet without the distractions of the rest of twitter. It's a one way broadcasting app that shows you only the previous tweet you sent and the one you're writing now. No stream, no @replies, no direct messages, photos, videos or links -- nothing but a box to send your tweets out to the Twitterverse from. Wren does an admirable job of getting the message out. It's well designed, has a pleasant interface and can be shown or hidden with a global keyboard shortcut. You can write a couple of tweets and save them as drafts to be recalled later, shorten links via a variety of services including Bit.ly and Goo.gl, auto complete Twitter usernames and simply get your thoughts tweeted out. Distraction free tweeting isn't necessary for everyone, but if you feel the need to tweet even when you can't be distracted, Wren will get the job done quickly and easily. Wren is available from the Mac App Store for US$4.99 of your hard earned cash.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Time
Do you ever watch Star Trek and think, I wish my computer just had a little bit of the LCARS theme to it? You need Time. OK, it's not going to turn your Mac into a futuristic Star Trek-style computer, but Time authentically replicates the visual style and feel of the LCARS interface displaying a clock complete with a stopwatch, count down timer and an alarm. You can choose from 27 different color themes to suit your decor, have the app full screen or windowed and adjust the brightness of the app by dimming the entire interface -- handy if you're using it as a display at night. On the clock front you have the option of 12 or 24 hour display, the option to display the seconds as well as the day and date, which can be displayed as a star date. All the settings are accessible via large buttons that make up the interface, with each button click emitting a satisfying LCARS sound. Speaking of sounds you have the option of 15 alarm sounds from beeps and chirps to warnings and hailing frequencies, which can be used for both the alarm clock and the count down timer. If all the sounds get a little much for you, there's a button to mute the whole lot too. Time does what it says on the tin. It gives you a clock in the style of LCARS, and is great for any 24th century Star Trek fans out there. It's free and available from the Mac App Store.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: IceClean
OS X does a pretty good job of maintaining itself due to its Unix core, but there are times when you'd like to run some of its self maintenance tasks manually, and that's where IceClean comes in. Just using the built-in Unix System Tasks that underlay OS X, you can clean out system caches for both the user and root, delete temporary files and remove log files all from IceClean's menu-orientated UI. If you feel your Safari is a trudging a little, there's even an option for a Deep Safari Cleanup, which should go someway to helping speed up your experience. IceClean isn't all about cleaning though, it features a whole host of maintenance options including the usual verification and repair of your system disk, disk permissions and .plist files, as well as database optimizations including Launch Services. You can run the whole lot with one command or even schedule the maintenance tasks to be run daily, weekly or monthly at a time to suit you. IceClean can also poll the system for all sorts of information like system, disk and kernel information. Whois and network lookup tools are there too for network diagnostics. You can also force a Time Machine backup, kill Dashboard, speed up Spotlight indexing, force empty the Trash, modify screenshot settings and perform many other small tasks using the Utilities menu. IceClean is a one stop shop for most of your maintenance needs. It's not as user friendly as other options like Onyx, but for the sheer utility built into one app, IceClean is worth the free download.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: AppTrap
With the imminent release of Lion, perhaps it's time to clear out all those apps you don't need anymore. AppTrap is an app up to the task, which integrates nicely into the OS X way of uninstalling apps. We all know that the Mac way of uninstalling apps is just to delete them. The size of the preference files, settings and other cruft left behind is so small in comparison to modern disk sizes that you shouldn't have to worry about them. But what happens when you want to clear out your hard drive properly after each uninstall? Installed as a Preference Pane, AppTrap runs in the background watching for when you trash an application from your Applications folder. It will then locate any files associated with that application and ask you whether you want to trash them as well, removing the need for you to hunt them down manually. Other uninstaller apps that we've featured on the Daily Mac App before primarily work along the Windows way of uninstalling. Select the app you want to uninstall from a list of installed programs and hit delete. But AppTrap enables you to continue deleting apps the way Apple wants you to, without leaving all that cruft behind. It's fast, effective and free. If you install and delete loads of apps the Apple way, then the free AppTrap is a must. It's downloadable from the developer's site and supports Snow Leopard and the soon to be released Lion. Thanks to hispidignoramus for the suggestion.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Bowtie
Have you ever thought iTunes was just a bit plain? Want a customisable controller that you can theme to match your mood? You need Bowtie. We've covered Bowtie before, but it's basically a replacement for the iTunes Mini Player, giving you track information, controls and the ability to rate the currently playing track. The "Bowlet" is the part of the application you see when in use, which can sit on top of other windows (dependant on theme) and is themeable using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. There are some 12 pages of skins available for free download directly from the app, meaning that there's something for almost everyone (some examples can be seen above). If you don't see one you like you can always set about writing your own Bowlet themes with a fairly extensive guide available. Bowtie also has a menu bar icon, which accompanies the Bowlet and allows you to show or hide the Bowlet, access the preferences and change the source that Bowtie is controlling. Using a companion iOS app (US$0.99), Bowtie can also control music playing on an iDevice, allowing you to control music playback on your stereo if you happen to have it hooked up to an iPod, iPad or iPhone. Bowtie will also let you scrobble the current playing track to Last.fm, providing a nice lightweight alternative to running the Last.fm client itself. Bowtie is available from the Mac App Store for OS X 10.6.6 and up, but there's also a version available for Leopard and up that can be downloaded directly from the Bowtie site. If you've been looking for a fancy yet lightweight iTunes controller, then give the free Bowtie a try.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: TinyExpander
Every Mac comes with a built-in file compression utility, but its decompression support is limited. We've featured a perennial favorite, the Unarchiver before on the Daily Mac App, but today we'll take a look at a new kid on the Mac App Store block, TinyExpander. Just like the Unarchiver, TinyExpander is ready to expand whatever archive you throw at it. It'll handle over 25 different formats, with the highlights being Zip, 7z, RAR, TAR and XAR. TinyExpander is also able to extract encrypted archives, so it's pretty safe to say that it'll get the job done for almost any archive you're likely to have on a day-to-day basis, save for the really obscure formats. There aren't many preferences to change in TinyExpander (as you can see above), but you can set archives to expand to a custom folder, should you want everything extracted to the same place. You can also change whether it'll trash the archive or not when it's finished extraction, and also whether it'll show you the results in a new Finder window. If you expand an archive to a folder that already exists, TinyExpander will give you the option to overwrite it or cancel your action, which should help make sure you don't accidentally overwrite something important. TinyExpander is a great little utility that gets the job done without a fuss. If you're not enamoured with the Unarchiver, then the free TinyExpander is a worthy replacement.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Onyx
Cleaning up a Mac is something many users never do, but if you want to squeeze all the performance and disk space you can out of your Mac, you need a tool like Onyx. A free multi-purpose utility, Onyx lets you run a myriad of system tasks such as disk maintenance, cache clean-up and index rebuilding. You can use Onyx to clear away the cobwebs that collect in things like the browser cache, font caches, boot, kernel and extension caches, as well as logs from crash reporters, system diagnostics and Software Update. If that wasn't enough, you can also get Onyx to delete previous iTunes libraries, the QuickTime Content Guide, recent items lists and even Mail downloads. OK, you can do most of these things yourself manually, but Onyx makes it fast and easy to do it all from one place. Cleaning isn't the only talent Onyx has -- it's able to do quite a few maintenance and repair tasks such as verifying your startup disk, which it will do on it's first run automatically. By rebuilding the Spotlight Index or LaunchServices, you can often cure small corruption issues with your Mac. You can check the S.M.A.R.T. status of your internal disks, verify file structure and fix disk permissions without having to open Disk Utility. Onyx will also let you change some hidden preferences in Finder and other Apple programs such as iTunes and Mail, allowing you to tweak a few things here and there. Onyx is a great free system utility that we've covered many times in the past and which allows you to perform a load of different tasks all from one application. If you're interested in cleaning out OS X, download Onyx today. By the way, Onyx also works well with OS X Lion.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Disk Inventory X
With Lion on the way, maybe it's time to give your Mac a bit of spring cleaning. The best place to start is always the hard drive, and Disk Inventory X is a great tool. You let Disk Inventory X scan your hard drive and it creates a visual representation of the used file space on your disk called a treemap. Each of the colored blocks represents a file on your hard drive. They're color-coded by file type, allowing you to visually distinguish documents from media files, applications from fonts. The size of each of the blocks is proportional to its file size, meaning that the bigger the file is the larger the block, which allows you to quickly identify large space hogs. The large purple square in the image above represents the sparse bundle used by FileVault, but you can easily see the digital copies of Inception, Star Trek and Tron Legacy I have stored in iTunes outside the FileVault. Once you've identified an errant large file, click on the block to display information about the file including size, creation and modification date, owner, permissions, file path and format. You can then either reveal the file in Finder or trash it straight from Disk Inventory X. While you can find large files manually with Finder, Disk Inventory X streamlines the process. Download the free Disk Inventory X today and reclaim some of that valuable hard drive.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: HandBrake
Open-source software is a beautiful thing. It's free, community driven, and more often than not, incredibly useful. HandBrake, one of the best video converters around, is a classic example of great open-source software. The Swiss army knife of video converters and a perennial TUAW favorite, HandBrake is a Mac users best friend. Using libavformat and libacvodec, it'll take almost any video format or container you want to throw at it and convert it into something more useful. Want to convert a video for playback on an Apple TV? No problem. Open the offending video file, select "AppleTV" (version 1 or 2 depending on your model) from the preset list under "Apple" and click the "Start" button. If you want to get a bit more involved than simply using presets you can tweak almost every video and audio conversion setting available. From bitrate, FPS and target size, to video and audio codec, embedding of subtitles and breaking-down the video into chapters, you can do it all with HandBrake. HandBrake is available for the Mac, Windows and Linux, but on a Mac it's 64-bit, multithreaded and will use all of the available resources of your modern Intel-based machine. That means conversions are fast and efficient. If you've got a video file and you need something to covert it then HandBrake is the tool you need. It won't decrypt things, so if you're trying to rip a DVD or something similar, you'll need a tool to remove the copy protection first, but that video of your mate jumping the gate you shot won't know what hit it. Download HandBrake for free from the HandBrake Project website.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Mactracker
If you're an Apple fan and you've owned several Macs over the years, but can't quite remember what specs that Power Mac G4 Cube had, or whether the late-2006 MacBook Pro came with a Core 2 Duo or the previous generation Core Duo? You need Mactracker. The ultimate in Apple product reference, Mactracker, which is also available for iOS, is a searchable database of specifications, prices, configurations, names and OS versions that covers everything Apple since the Macintosh XL from 1983. You've got all the Apple desktops, laptops, servers and OS iterations from System Software 2.0.1 to OS X, each with detailed entries recording their introduction, history and specifications. Each device has an icon showing you want they looked like too, just incase you've never seen one. Mactracker doesn't stop there though, all the hardware Apple has ever created is listed, from the humble iPod to cameras, scanners, mice, keyboards and more are listed. Want to know the dimensions of the Apple MessagePad 110? Or how long the Apple Color OneScanner 600/27 took to scan a page? Mactracker has you covered (that's 20 seconds per scan for those who are interested). You can browse listings by device, model and age, or using a timeline from 1983 through till the present. If you're looking for a particular strata of devices you can use Smart Categories using search terms like all models with a G5 processor. You can also set up a list of all the models you own or have owned, helping you keep track of AppleCare, serials, purchase dates and networks. Mactracker is available for free from the Mac App Store and is a must have for any Mac fan.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: QuitAppsMBI
Quitting apps quickly can be a pain. If you've got loads open, but you want to quit them all fast, the best way has been Cmd+Tab then Cmd+Q. Now, the free QuitsAppsMBI app makes quitting some or all of your apps a breeze. A menu bar utility, QuitsAppsMBI sits patiently waiting for your command. Click on the icon and a drop-down menu featuring all the currently running apps allows you to quickly quit individual apps or quit them all at once with one click. QuitsAppsMBI even allows you to quit apps you couldn't normally. Things like the Adobe Update notifier (a personal bug-bear of mine) and other unquittable menu bar and background apps can all be quit from the drop-down menu. This is both a feature and an issue for QuitsAppsMBI, because there aren't any settings for excluding apps from the "Quit All Apps" command, which means if you have things like tablet support programs, Xmarks or other background apps, they will all be terminated as well. If you need more functionality such as excluding some apps from the "Quit All Apps" command, Limit Point Software offers a paid-for version of QuitsAppsMBI simply called QuitsApps, which is available for US$9.99 from the Mac App Store (trial available on the Limit Point Software website). But for just quickly quitting a few or all of your apps the free QuitsAppsMBI gets the job done.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: UnPlugged
The Magsafe is a fantastic innovation, but it has made it slightly easier to disconnect your Mac from the AC outlet by accident without realising it. UnPlugged is a little free utility that notifies you via Growl when the power cord is disconnected. Now it's true that if you're running a portable Mac the screen is set to dim automatically on battery power by default, plus the power icon in the menu bar is set to change between a battery symbol to one with a AC plug. But if you happen to be running your Mac solely with an external display, it could be easy to miss the warning signs that you're now running on battery power. UnPlugged runs in the background keeping out of your way till its called upon. It'll also display updates on charge status, notifying you on changes in power percentage intervals, which you can set with a slider from 1% to 50%. Just like apps like DiskAlarm, UnPlugged doesn't do anything that Mac OS X doesn't do for you already, but it does make it more obvious and could be the alert you need to keep you from running out of juice when you thought you were plugged in. If you need a simple power notifier, give UnPlugged a whirl and download it for free from the Mac App Store.
