Handy Free Utilities and Applications for MacOS

[mathepac]

Once installed, MaxMenu lives in your menubar and gives you ready access to a bunch of useful functions.

The developer has several free and useful applications on his website

For peace of mind, you can download his software from the App Store as well as from his website.

No connection or affiliation other than as a happy customer.

 

[mathepac]

PiPad, more than a calculator from the App Store

No connection or affiliation other than as a happy customer.

 

[mathepac]

Free MacOS Apps - 22 of them!

I believe these are also available for Android, etc.

Handy little things and I use the Groceries application regularly. I'm probably the world's worst shopper. I go out for dog food and come back with 5 or 6 things but no dog food! Please don't call the dog warden on me.

No connection or affiliation other than as a happy customer.

 

[Zenith63]

Free MacOS Apps - 22 of them!

I’d be cautious installing apps like this where the source code is not public, it is a very common tactic for threat actors to release useful pieces of software that people install on their computers without realising the app is also harvesting contacts, passwords, cookies, searching for cryptocurrency keys etc. If at all possible you’re much better off using web based tools which will not get any meaningful access to your local machine as they’re running within a browser.

This applies to Windows as much as macOS, but it’s much more on to download macOS apps from random websites and also not to be running an anti-malware tool.

 

[mathepac]

I’d be cautious installing apps like this where the source code is not public,

So if Microsoft doesn't publish the source code for Windows, Word, PowerPoint, etc. for public perusal, you won't install their products? Pull the other one please!

macOS has powerful anti-malware tools built into the OS as highlighted by @ClubMan and discussed elsewhere in this forum already. I trust them as I trusted their predecessors back to pre-System 6 days and have had no reason to doubt their effectiveness in almost 40 years. System 6 was released in 1988. I was using Macintosh computers before then.

Thanks for voicing your concerns but I don't share them.

The Main Man at GrowlyBird

This applies to Windows as much as macOS, but it’s much more on to download macOS apps from random websites and also not to be running an anti-malware tool.

I'm not sure I understand this sentence.

 

[Zenith63]

So if Microsoft doesn't publish the source code for Windows, Word, PowerPoint, etc. for public perusal, you won't install their products? Pull the other one please!

To get malware onto somebodies computer this way a threat actor might offer the developer of an existing piece of software say €10k to insert it or sell the software to them quietly so they can do it themselves (very common with Chrome plugins for example), create a unique piece of software people want but hide malware in it (torch apps, shopping list apps, calculators etc) or compromise the development environment of an existing piece of software and insert the malware. Only the latter is feasible if the target is a Microsoft and compromising the development environment of an organisation like Microsoft versus a single developer machine is mostly a nation-state only game. So yes there is a massive difference between closed source software from Microsoft/Google etc compared to Joe Bloggs from Clonmel. I’m not really a big open source fan, but when it comes to these tools from solo developers it does offer a degree of protection.

macOS has powerful anti-malware tools built into the OS as highlighted by @ClubMan and discussed elsewhere in this forum already. I trust them as I trusted their predecessors back to pre-System 6 days and have had no reason to doubt their effectiveness in almost 40 years. System 6 was released in 1988. I was using Macintosh computers before then.

Thanks for voicing your concerns but I don't share them.

Does this interest you?
Malwarebytes State of Malware 2021 report: "In 2020, we identified 75,285,427 detections on Windows endpoints and 674,744 detections on Mac endpoints. When accounting for the number of endpoints, Mac detections per endpoint were higher than those on Windows."

I'm not sure I understand this sentence.

Hmm yeah that is unintelligible sorry! What I was trying to say was that Windows is not immune to the same risks, but that it is much more common for Windows users to run anti-malware tools than macOS users might.

I should say I am a macOS user and work in endpoint cyber security, so this is not mac-bashing, it’s just a reflection on what I’m seeing daily.

 

[mathepac]

Malwarebytes State of Malware 2021 report: "In 2020, we identified 75,285,427 detections on Windows endpoints and 674,744 detections on Mac endpoints. When accounting for the number of endpoints, Mac detections per endpoint were higher than those on Windows."

But I wouldn't expect a vendor of anti-malware software to say anything else, even if those numbers are from 5 years ago.

Just for the heck of it, I've suspended my anti-malware software and I'm giving Malwarebytes 14-day free trial a run with all my freebies and open-source software installed. 89% complete and so far so good.

 

[mathepac]

Nothing was found by Malwarebytes software. Uninstalled, binned, and re-installed my original malware protection agent.

Re-booted and installed macOS 15.4 (24E248) fresh out of Cupertino.

Onwards and upwards, back on topic.