My goto apps as a web developer using Mac OS in 2023

Visual studio code

Probably the most used IDE at the moment and for a reason.

I primarily use VS Code myself as it has a really great extension called 'Visual Studio Code Dev Containers'.

Cool tip, if you click on the full stop button on your keyboard whilst in a public git repo it boots up a browser based version of visual studio code. (which is technically the same as your local version as it's just an electron app)

CRON

Cron is a great little calendar tool for Mac, at the moment it only integrates with Google calendar, however I'm sure I've read that future support for other calendar providers is on the cards. I particularly like the menu bar integration which highlights upcoming calendar events.

1password

My favourite password app, it syncs seamlessly across all my devices, including IOS, Mac OS and windows. I have a greater peace of mind knowing that I have unique passwords for each of online accounts.

Chrome

Ideally I'd like to go anti establishment and use something like Firefox or Arc, However I always end up finding myself back using Chrome, I think this is because the dev-tools are 2nd to none in my opinion and the feature updates always have me coming back. I'm also subscribed to the @ChromeDev team on YouTube and their content always gets me excited to tinker.

Table Plus

Nice simple database client which I use primarily to connect to MySQL servers running on docker containers on my local machine. Recently realised that it's also great for connecting to Oracle databases which has been a great help whilst working on some legacy applications recently.

Rectangle

While I think Mac OS is a great operating system, the native windows management tools leave so much to be desired. However with Rectangle, things have been made so much smoother. It basically incorporates the snap functionality from Windows 7 onwards making it far more effortless to snap windows to half-screen, quarter screen and more.

Lunar

Another one that brings in what should be basic functionality into Mac OS, this tool enables you to change colour temperature and brightness on external displays. It also has additional features that allow you to set this up to adjust automatically based on time of day etc.

Figma

Cloud based design and prototyping tool which is free (I'm looking at you adobe with your horrible subscription models) I use this to whack together quick prototypes of things that I want to build. For example this site was prototyped in Figma.

Docker

I use this with vscode docker containers, having small environments that I can quickly dispose of and rebuild is great for quick development where you don't feel so afraid of messing up your environment. Additionally with the config files stored in docker hub me and my colleagues are able to work within the exact same environment regardless of operating system and local computer settings. I've also got this installed on windows, but was a little more of a faff to get installed (basically having to enable virtualisation on my AMD CPU)

Transmit

A paid for app which I bought several years back, it's basically a server connection tool that you can use to connect to different protocols such as FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 etc. I paid because the interface is great and it's tonnes more satisfying to use than filezilla.