Today I want to lead your attention to some apps that optimize installing software that is in beta testing, like some of the goodies we see at AudioZ, or when cracks are not complete. Additionally, Mac users have trouble sometimes with cracks that run on Windows only. The four apps I'm going to list here are my personal toolset and they help me get back to music work ASAP.

1. Permissions Reset
http://www.ohanaware.com/permissionsreset/

If the app you downloaded or copied from another Mac doesn't run, chances are permissions of that file need repair. This free app does just that on a file basis. Unlike the disk repair utility that comes in your operating system, which repairs permissions for optimal operation of your Mac, this freebie sets just the troublesome app ready for install/use. Another common utility is BatChmod. I have never tried it, but people say Permissions Reset is simpler to use. It's only one drag-and-drop window and the button to reset.

2. The Big Mean Folder Machine
http://www.publicspace.net/BigMeanFolderMachine/

Scene releases come packed in many small .rar and .zip files, which optimize file transfer and/or replacement should a file be corrupted. However, for the end user, unpacking stuff is tedious and time consuming, especially when you are desperate waiting to test out your new piece of software, right? Enter TBMFM. This program has two uses: Either it brings together all the files of different folders to a single folder (which we need in this case), or it spreads one file across many folders. And this awesome app does it automatically. It gives you options for handling duped files and the like.

3. Crossover Version 13
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-mac/

When it comes to Windows-based cracks, we think it twice. Rebooting into Bootcamp is a task we'd rather avoid. There are several sandboxing programs that let you run Windows within Mac, being the key players Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. These apps really deliver, but at a cost in system efficiency, and DAWs and other audio-related apps are suckers for computing power. However, Crossover is light on the system and it doesn't need to be on all the time unlike Fusion and Parallels. Crossover ports a Windows program and wraps it to be recognized as a Mac ware. I had personally used Crossover before and it was kind of buggy sometimes, but version 13 is smooth and silky so far. Of course, I only use it for cracks, which are not processor-hungry after all. TIP: to save space, I don't actually install anything. I start the porting process, and when the Windows app opens, it use it and close it with Crossover still running. Then I cancel the install and no trace of the Windows-based app remains in the system.

4. Bigasoft Audio Converter
http://www.bigasoft.com/audio-converter.html

There are numerous apps on the Mac side that convert audio files, even iTunes does it (BTW, if you hate iTunes, you are not alone). However, not many of them can handle WMA.You might say, who on earth might need a Windows Media File on their Mac? And I agree, but if you ever do, you might want to have a converter that has your back. Real-life scenario: certain pack of RealTracks for Band in A Box appeared for Windows only. I copied the files on my Mac and the .wma files that those performances were based on were not readable by BIAB so I converted those .wma files to .m4a, the file type used by the Mac version of BIAB. I tried different apps and .wma was not supported. Switch (free app) made me download extra files to be able to decode WMA, the process was hell slow, and about 30% of the files were found to contain errors and remained unprocessed. Bigasoft Audio Converter did the job fast and error-free.

I hope this list helps you have a more pleasant experience when installing files. I'm sure many of you know and use these utilities and maybe you have better ones. If you can think of more or better goodies, add a comment and maybe we can make this post the Swiss-army-knife of Mac installs.

 

Thanks mercurysoto for putting this together for the forums.

 

MercurySoto, nice list. Thanks.

If you don't mind I'd like to add a few apps that Mac users should also consider.

1. X Lossless Decoder - free - encode, transcode and play various music file formats. I use this one a lot for converting music formats.

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder
Developers web site: http://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html

2. xACT - free - audio compression toolkit. It compresses lossless to FLAC, SHN or APE. You can also create MP3's if you desire.

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/14246/xact
Developers web site: http://xact.scottcbrown.org/

3. Split&Concat - free - splits large files and concats same, such as a group of ".rar" files.

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/9545/split&concat
Developers web site: http://loekjehe.home.xs4all.nl/Split&Concat/

4. MacPAR deLuxe - free - manage and decode .par and .par2 files from newsgroups. Also un-rars a group of files.

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11858/macpar-deluxe
Developers web site: http://gp.home.xs4all.nl/Site/MacPAR_deLuxe.html

5. Progressive Downloader - free - if you have a lot of files to download and you don't want to sit at your Mac and download each file you just point this app to the URL's of the files you want to download and it gets them for you.

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33754/progressive-downloader
Developers web site: http://www.macpsd.net/

6. Do you need to un-rar or un-zip files? There are two apps I like for that. Sometimes, for whatever reasons, one works better than the other. It's worth getting both.

A) The Unarchiver - free - Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, RAR, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other old and obscure formats - other supported formats listed here: http://unarchiver.c3.cx/formats

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/22774/the-unarchiver
Developers web site: http://unarchiver.c3.cx/unarchiver

B) Keka - an app many people here swear by and it does a great job too!

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/32512/keka
Developers web site: http://www.kekaosx.com/en/

7. Pacifist - not free, but you know how to work magic - a great app to open up and look inside installer packages and to manually install an app or plugin if you have issues with an installer. You can also install individual files from an installer package if you need to.

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/6812/pacifist
Developers web site: http://www.charlessoft.com/

8. Do you ever need to search your Mac for files? Here are a couple of free apps that will find anything you are looking for - even the ones Apple hid from Lion to Mavericks. OS X's Spotlight works good - but - it doesn't always find exactly what you are looking for.

A) EasyFind - free - file, folder and text contents search utility. One of my favorites because it finds everything and then some!

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11076/easyfind
Developers web site: http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html

B) iFileX - free - sophisticated file searching (their description not mine). It works great.

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41289/ifilex
Developers web site: http://www.osxbytes.com/page3/index.html?forcedownload

C) HoudahSpot - not free, but you know how to work magic - its an advanced front-end for Spotlight. I have it and it also finds everything.

Get it here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21333/houdahspot
Developers web site: http://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot/

Note: If you are running an earlier version of Mac OS X such as 10.6.8 and if some of these apps are 10.7 or later you can usually search the net and successfully find a previous version that will run under your installed version of OS X.

 

VirtualBox for running .exe is quite good.

 

And it's free!!!

 

I'll give it a shot. Thanks dudes. I set out to share some and got a lot in reply. Very much appreciated.

 

and Little Snitch to block outgoing connections.

 

Really nice post here.

Thanks

 

I like:

#Entropy for archive/unarchive (almost) just like I do smoothly with WinRar in Windows.

#VLC for playing FLAC files.

#AppDelete for clean uninstall app

#XMarks for Safari for sync my bookmarks

#SafariSort for sorting Safari Bookmarks

#ShowHiddenFiles

#TeamViewer for easy cross platform remote access

#SoundFlower for (easy) recording of internal audio streams directly from the Mac's built-in soundcard

#TuxeraNTFS for easy write on NTFS (Windows) format drive

#CarbonCopyCloner for drive cloning

#PathFinder a much more better finder

 

winebottler / wine as alternative for crossover.
superduper to clone drives
Smart Scroll: https://www.marcmoini.com/sx_en.html

 

I would like to add in my two cents: First let me say that I run a Mac Pro 1,1 with a hacked / custom 3.0 Ghz quad processor and 32 GB of ram w/ El Capitan aka: EL Crappy, (Installed with Piker's boot.efi) This means that you will have issues with certain apps like soundflower and menu meters. From what I know so far, running those two will give you really bad memory leak issues on either Mavericks or EL Capitan. Soundflower is cool, but I really don't need it, since I do all of my special routing with a secondary laptop and a nice 16 channel Firewire Alesis mixer (made before Alesis was bought out and they started making crap equipment). That being said here is my list:

1. EasyFind - http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html - as mention above, probably the best search / finder utility out there, now granted since I am a Logic Pro user: I am then held hostage by apple's finder processes, I'm testing right now to see if I can find a way to disable all finder processes and just symlink to the default EXS24 sample directory, I'll update this as soon as I find a work around or if I can disable the finder, but I am really doubtful that I can.

2. MediaHuman Audio Converter - http://www.mediahuman.com/download.html - very nice, simple clean and will convert any kind of audio file or files, except for vorbis and webm.

3. Name Changer - https://mrrsoftware.com/namechanger/ - probably the best free file rename utility out there, I just love this one and will be on my top list for a long time. It's great for working with Logic Pro and the EXS24, b/c I can import in a text file with a list of key notations like C1, C#1, etc.. and sequence it to match perfectly to my exported audio files, that were just numbered samples and then rename it and then import back into the EXS24. This app works beautifully, I made a video tutorial that shows off the sampling /rename process here:

4. Microsoft Remote Desktop 8.0.35 for Mac - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-remote-desktop/id715768417 - I use to use an app called Cord, but it has not been updated in a while and will crash in El Capitan; so now, I use this version and I have to say it's now part of my favs list. Like I said earlier, I use a 2nd laptop with windows 7 to route and sample youtube audio or run windows only VSTs . Since I am one that likes to use only one Mouse / keyboard, it makes perfect sense to me to remote into the laptop and control it from my Mac. I use to have the laptop next to my monitors and I would use a mouse / keyboard network utility called synergy, but that was giving me issues too. The newer version is really smooth and very low on resources. A great app to use if you have multiple PCs to connect to from a Mac. This is also nice, b/c you then do not have to install parallels or VMware Fusion on your Mac, which then uses less CPU cycles . Also, great for running those windows only Keygens. ;-)

5. SymLinker - https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41493/symlinker - a very nice Gui App to symlink directories, especially useful if you don't like to mess with the command line. I very nice gen of an app that is great for moving your sample libraries to a 2nd SSD drive and then symlink the folder back to the apps default location. I use this to organize my EXS24, Omnisphere and Kontakt sample libraries.

6. Audacity - http://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac/ - I am going to throw this one in b/c I feel it's great for those special projects like generating dial tones, WTF!! Yes you can do this with this app and this is the only app I know that will do it. And Yes, I had a project that I needed to generate F'n dial tones and no I was not phone phreaking, maybe the client was... LOL! There are ton more features this cool program will do, like up mixing a stereo file to 5.1 or 7.1, yes, I had to do that too or converting those special formats like vorbis or webm that mediahuman can't do. Just a great app.

7. FLv Crunch - https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/43682/flv-crunch - This one is a very neat gem of a free app b/c it will convert any flv video file to audio and will it will do it in batches. I am one that likes to listen to video tutorials while I drive in the car and this app makes it very easy to extract the raw audio file and convert to MP3 format.

8. TextWrangler - http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/ - Free as in free beer! I love to take notes on everything I do and I hate MS word, b/c it is very memory intensive and seems like overkill just for a note taking, while open, plus it will add in extra stuff that I just don't need. Yes, Mac has a default note taking app, but you can't save it to a shared drive and open it up in gmail. And the default Mac text app IMO is crap too. I am a web designer and IT dude by trade, so it makes sense to add this to my arsenal, now if you want a nice one that is not free then Sublime is the ultimate god of Text apps. and worth it if your into coding. due to how it will color each code syntax and format everthing. Granted TextWrangler can do the same, but takes a little work, b/c you have to go into the prefs to get it right. And if you don't have a NFO viewer, this app is perfect for viewing any NFO files or download text help files, just control click and use open with...

9. NFOViewer - https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23794/nfoviewer - very low on resources and perfect for those weird NFO files ;-) (note: I have not tested the latest version on EL Crappy yet)

10. Cyberduck - https://cyberduck.io/?l=en - since this post is about file mgmt tools. I have to list this one . I have to say this is my favorite FTP / SFTP mac app, b/c it's easy to setup and just easy to use and very quick, plus it will work with Amazon AWS. The only downside is it tends to be a little more memory intensive than I would like it to be; basically it can be a memory hog, which depends on how many connections you have open.

11. smcFanControl - https://www.eidac.de/ - I decided to list this one here b/c if you have an older mac with lots of upgrades and you like to run those powerful intensive DAWs with lost of plugins. Then it is imperative to install and run this app. It's has very low cpu / memory footprint and works great keeping your old ass mac very cool.

12. UnRarX - http://www.unrarx.com/ - yes we all know that Keka is the sh#t, plus other zip utilities mentioned above are really nice too. However, I decided to list this one b/c there are times that the UnRarX will just work better, for ex: those separated numbed rar files. Now keep in mind I have not played with the "The Big Mean Folder Machine" zip utility, to see if it could replace this tool, but I thought hey, it's a very nice free option.

OK, this is all the time I have for now, I will try to list more as I think about it later on. I plan to just edit / update this post here, if I do. I hope this will help someone out there and at least give an idea, that are many ways to skin the proverbial audio cat! ~Ch33rs M8s!

 

Memory Clean: https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/memory-clean-monitor-free/id451444120?mt=12

PATH FINDER 7: http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/

 

IMO Memory Clean is just plain rubbish and somewhat of a resource hog, I don't care for it at all. Some out there like it b/c the gui is nice. I found it to be annoying and it just gets in the way , if I really needed to see what app is running how much memory, I just clicked on activity monitor, which can be found in the utilities directory. The memory cleaner part would just run some bad scripts the basically accessed your processes and disabled them, which was kind of weird and did not work that well.

I use to love this app, but later on discovered they installed some kind of a custom nasty nmap scanner in their F'n code and they won't get rid of it or give you the option to disable it. They say it is used to access SMB/CIFS shares on the network, but I smell BS. There is no need to let it constantly run on your home network and ping like every other minute. F'n A-holes! see link here: http://support.cocoatech.com/discussions/problems/36544-mnmap-process

 

Great post! Thanks for the tips everybody, spread the knowledge!

Here are some of mine:

• Free Download Manager for downloading all the things.

• Jump Desktop for remote accessing the other machines on my network.

• Xee is a good alternative to the mac picture viewer. It's nowhere near as good as Fastone Image Viewer on windows but it's passable.

• Shady for dimming my external monitor and Flux for cutting out the blue light that messes with your sleep-cycles.

• An extra vote for Sublime Text and MediaHuman Audio Converter (all of their stuff is great actually)

• Anybody that's frustrated with using SoundFlower for audio capture needs to check out Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack. Those guys are doing great work so I always throw them a few bucks here and there where I can. Check out their other software too.

• Calibre for managing ebooks for iOS (which reminds me, Book Mower is a great audio book reader for iOS. I have an off-and-on Audible subscription and I hate using the Audible app in comparison.)

• Waterfox/Cyberfox are good 64bit versions of Firefox, but lately I find myself using Chrome because the combination of Chrome Side Tabs and Toby have revolutionised my workflow. I also like The Great Suspender for optimization and Toggle Dark Theme because I'm a night owl. I could get a pretty good workflow with TabMixPlus on Firefox but it requires way too much fiddling and ultimately I found myself going back to Chrome every time, as much as I would prefer to be using shiny Waterfox :/ Make of that what you will.

• This may be obvious to most Hackintosh people, but Clover Configurator is, in my humble opinion, the only way people should be configuring Clover (unless your name is tonymacx86 or Pikeralpha).

• I use Acronis True Image for weekly backups of the whole system with a Time Machine drive running for twice-daily backups of my work folders.

• InsomniaX for keeping the mac awake (more useful for laptops, also has a good function for keeping awake when the lid is closed but don't forget your mac is on! I've pulled my mac out of my backpack with a dead battery on one or two occasions due to that error.)

• Avira Free Antivirus and another vote for Little Snitch firewall.

• And last but not least, Dukto R6 is a great free app that lets you quickly send files over the network. It's cross-platform and doesn't require permission on the receiving end (joke withheld). It's great when you want to send smaller files immediately without grabbing a flash drive or whatever.

Honourable mentions: BetterTouchTool (with iOS companion for extra sass,) SteerMouse and Intel Power Gadget.

Keep the suggestions rolling.

 

Last edited: Dec 5, 2016

here's my "core" apps list I love to have on every mac or hackintosh:
1) Tuxera NTFS (because MacOS cannot write on NTFS drives)
*Paragon NTFS is an alternative, but for me it caused issues with consistency of secondary Windows boot drive
2) HyperDock (hover-over window previews of running apps, particularly useful when having multiple Finder windows open to quickly go through them, and basic efficient window management with hot screen edges)
*High Sierra requires beta builds of this app
3) Little Snitch (ultimate behavior-based firewall, must-have!)
*Hands Off! is an alternative, no experience with that one though
4) Keka (actually the only app capable of zipping and unizziping even huge 64bit archives - a functionality not available in MacOS by default at all)
*Archive Browser does allow seeing the content of archives without extracting them, but I had some archives it failed to open, hence why not my primary choice anymore
5) Permissions Reset (easy drag&drop utility to reset file/folder permissions in case an app refuses to launch or file refuses to open)
6) Xee (easiest very sleek and quick image viewing app)
7) IINA (free video playback app, can handle literally everything, used Elmedia Player before which is also very solid but paid solution)
8) Nulloy (free music player, with very convenient waveform display, pity it can't play .cue sheets, but at least it can handle flac and other formats not friendly in MacOS by default, eventually VOX is a very decent free music player for MacOS)
*VOX is a worthy alternative to free versatile music player on MacOS
9) Reaper (very cheap, best multiplatform DAW but also a quick audio editor, batch audio processor)
10) DaVinci Resolve (free incredible video and other multimedia editor, since recent version 14 I'd say it may even outperform PremierePro, FinalCut and other top video software)
11) FreeRapid Downloader (because it can download practically anything from anywhere, requires Java though, make sure to download the "All platforms" version, which is way more reliable)
12) CrossOver (lets you run windows-designed .exe files, but isn't as resource heavy as fully-featured virtual-OS solutions such as Parallels or VMWare Fusion)
13) Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer (because fck greediness of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and welcome truly next-gen image tools)
Affinity Publisher is available now too (fck Adobe InDesign)
14) Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (not aware of any other simple and free utility capable of quick disk benchmark utility for MacOS)
15) Smooze (finally an utility which allows regular mousewheel click to be treated as vertical AND horizontal scroll as if it was a finger on touch screen, and other cool stuff like additional mouse keys mapping, scroll acceleration and speed settings etc....
*another alternative is Smart Scroll which I used before, but doesn't work that good
16) Invisor (based on MediaInfo, BUT IT CAN COMPARE two files)
*MediaInfo (because default "Get Info" in MacOS can't tell any useful metadata info about media files)
17) PlistEdit Pro (most advanced property list and JSON editor written for macOS)
18) Brave Browser (Chrome-like web browser, can "replace" ads instead blocking them, which often overcomes anti-adblocking triggers on websites)
19) Duplicate File Remover Pro (handy duplicates finder and removal utility - it can detect your choice patterns to speed up the cleanup process, puts files into trash, so relatively very safe to work with)
*another option is Gemini, but it crashes in newer MacOS versions for me
20) BlueHarvest (can automatically remove the annoying useless hidden mac files such as DS_Store, _AppleDouble and others)
21) BBEdit (powerful text editor which can automatically detect and read also hex, html and other stuff)
22) Lingon X (utility to manage startup processes and items in MacOS, very convenient)
23) Easy New File (right-click contextual menu for Finder, adds the "add new file" functionality, custom configurable
24) Karabiner (free utility to adjust or remap keyboard keys, especially when using non-Apple keyboard this may prove really useful)
25) Double Commander (free app, basically Total Commander for Mac, very handy to copy/move/delete 10's of thousands of files which Apple's Finder cannot handle on its own)

 

Last edited: Aug 5, 2019

Will add a few myself...

Cleaning organizing and sorting of files:
Tidy Up - http://www.hyperbolicsoftware.com/TidyUp.html
This is probably the most used app for me outside of Ableton on my computer. U can use it to find duplicates, Find a certain file type, Move files but maintain folder structure. It has helped me get my samples and presets super organized!

I will download a new pack of samples with presets and I can have it pull out the presets and put them in my presets folder. and pull out the samples and put them in my samples folder all while maintaining the folder structure. The program goes waaaaay beyond that! Check it out!


Hazel - https://www.noodlesoft.com/
Watches folders like download or desktop and moves files accordingly to destinations to help remove clutter.


Renamer - https://renamer.com/
what the name says its a batch renamer. I use it in conjunction with NameChanger - https://mrrsoftware.com/namechanger/

 

Terminal.app, best app on mac :o) what it does? EVERYTHING, except music.

 

updated my post from 4 Dec 2017, so now it's High Sierra certified, just in case someone would consider upgrading to some recent MacOS..

 

A lot of outdated Apps in this lists… so here are some more recent alternatives and additions:

1. Unzip/Unrar: BetterZip (the fastest, most reliable unpacker) https://macitbetter.com/
2. Resetting Permissions (free): BatchMod https://lagentesoft.com/batchmod/
3. Uninstalling Apps (free): AppCleaner http://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/
4. Uninstalling .pkg Files: UninstallPKG https://www.corecode.io/uninstallpkg/
UninstallPKG is probably the most important and overlooked wrench in the mac toolbox to keep the system clean and completely remove an pkg installation without residues. I'm wondering while it wasn't on the list yet.
5. Analysing Hard Disk Space Useage: DaisyDisk https://daisydiskapp.com/
6. Tag Editor (the best): Meta https://www.nightbirdsevolve.com/meta/
7. Video Transcoder (free): HandBrake https://handbrake.fr/
8. Code Editor (free): Brackets http://brackets.io/
9. Light/Dark Mode Switcher (free): Nightowl https://nightowl.kramser.xyz/
10. Find Root Key of Songs (free) KeyFinder: http://www.ibrahimshaath.co.uk/keyfinder/
11. Reroute Internal Audio: Loopback https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/
12. Rip Videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc: ClipGrab https://clipgrab.de
13. Remove unnecessary Languages (free): Monolingual https://ingmarstein.github.io/Monolingual/
14. Maintenance (free): Onyx https://titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
15. Update Apps: MacUpdater https://www.corecode.io/macupdater/

Not working in Catalina or unnecessry:
• Hazel (not working)
• Renamer (unneccessary for basic renaming tasks. Catalina has a renaming tool integrated in Finder now)

 

Last edited: Jan 19, 2021

5teezo! how much difference exists between AppCleaner and UninstallPKG? ? They seem to do a similar thing right?

I like to use Joplin app as an alternative to Evernote and I started using SuperDuper to do backups. Both have free versions as well!