Five Small and Useful Mac Utilities

There are plenty of lists with the best Mac applications floating around the web, but some great apps almost aren’t full fledged applications. You’re probably reluctant to plunk down the cash for the ones that cost money, but once you do, they make everyday tasks so effortless, and become so transparent in your workflow, that you couldn’t function without them.

AppZapper is one of the sleekest apps around. Everything works exactly as it should: Drag an app onto its dock icon or into its window and a list of related files slides in. From there, you can easily check which ones to send to the trash by pressing the Zap button. All those handy features and more are fit perfectly into the tiny window. It may seem crazy to spend money on something you can do yourself for free, but if you have a few extra bucks to spend, AppZapper is a fun app to have.

Awaken is another one of my favorite little apps. Its function is even simpler that AppZapper’s, and it keeps things just as sleek too. Press the + button to add a new alarm. A sheet comes down where you choose when it goes off, whether it repeats, and what song it should play. Other than that, it hides itself neatly in your menu bar, just waiting to pop open when it’s time.

CoconutBattery does what Leopard’s new battery menu item will do. It tells you all about your laptop’s battery, from its capacity to its current charge. It even lets you save your current capacity, so you can track your battery’s health over time. It was really nice to be able to track just how fast my old iBook’s battery went off the deep end towards the end of its life as my main machine. Luckily, my MacBook shows 98%.

Twitterific is a must-have app for anyone who used Twitter. Personally, I’m not a twitterer, but this app makes me want to be one. The window is all styled like iPhoto’s black panels, and it fits all sorts of functionality in a very small spaces. Like Awaken, it can also hide away in your menu bar if you like. Newly released version 2.0 adds even more features to the already well recieved 1.0 version.

YASU, or “Yet Another System Utility” runs a bunch of scripts to keep your Mac running to the best of its ability. I run it whenever my machine gets a little sluggish; it once cleared 2 GB of junk from my old iBook, and whenever I run it things seem a bit “snappier”. There are tons of apps in this same vein, and I’m sure they all work just fine, but YASU is so simple and easy that it’s my top choice.

What are your favorite little utility-type apps? Do you use any of the ones I mentioned?

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