Utility Software Applications For Mac
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By. 4:00 am, January 7, 2011. Working as a Mac consultant brings me in contact with several dozen different Macintosh systems every month.
Many needs and tasks are common – OS upgrades, backups, system slowdowns, troubleshooting startup or WiFi problems. Like any good mechanic there are a few items in my toolbox which I favor above others. From built-in tools like Disk Utility, Network Utility and Console to third-party tools like DiskWarrior, FileSalvage and iStumbler, these items help get the job done. Mac OS X Built In Utilities Apple provides a slew of utilities as part of Mac OS X, many of which are useful for troubleshooting and maintenance. All of these items can be found inside Applications/Utilities on your Macintosh hard drive. Disk Utility Most Mac users are familiar with Disk Utility.
It’s used to format hard drives, create RAID arrays, mount volumes, burn disk images (.dmg files), and fix basic disk problems. The Repair Disk function can be used on any non-startup drive and can fix simple volume or filesystem errors. Repair Permissions is the other kind of maintenance Disk Utility can do. While less important in solving problems than with previous Mac OS X versions, this operation can help when you can’t open certain files or programs on your Mac. Disk Utility also monitors the basic S.M.A.R.T. Status of any internal hard drives, providing a (potentially) useful indicator of pending drive problems.
Network Utility An all-purpose application to check basic connectivity status, Network Utility lets you check Ethernet, Airport or Bluetooth Port Info, Ping, Lookup, and Traceroute internet addresses, and scan for open ports and vulnerabilities. Using these tools can help determine where a problem lies when you can’t get online. Does your ethernet or Airport card (port) have an IP address? If not, you aren’t on the network at all. Can you successfully Ping or Traceroute the name or IP address of the website you’re trying to reach?
If not, it’s a problem somewhere between you and the remote site. Where things fail provide clues for network troubleshooting. Airport Utility Airport Utility is used to control Apple Airport equipment: Airport Express, Airport Extreme, Time Capsule. It is the only utility available to control this gear, and does not work with non-Apple equipment.
Therefore this program is something you either must use or never use, depending on your WiFi setup. Airport Utility will allow you to add new or items on your LAN or reconfigure existing equipment, check for and apply firmware updates, and find out why the light keeps blinking yellow on the front of your Airport Extreme. Keychain Access If you’ve forgotten the password for something you previously entered on your computer, there’s a good chance this item has been saved to your keychain. WiFi passwords, email accounts, server logins, most of these items can be found in the system keychain.
Keychain Access is the utility used to view, change or delete these stored items. The fastest way to access this utility is to double-click on your user keychain file: /Libary/Keychains/login.keychain If the item you’re looking for doesn’t appear in the list, use the search box. Double-click on the item you need, then click Show Password. You will need to enter your current keychain password before viewing the item, this is the same as your Mac user password. Console Your Mac keeps track of normal and abnormal operations in a series of system and application logs – startup, network activity, installations, errors and crash details. When problems occur it can be helpful to look through these logs for clues as to what’s happening. Console is the log viewer for OS X. After launching it click the Show Log List button.
You will see items grouped by System and User tasks. Logs which are often useful are the system.log, any crash logs, and anything generated by apps you’re having problems with. Apple HW Test ( on disc) Since the days of the original iMac Apple has provided a hardware test utility on the CD or DVD bundled with your Mac. This utility can check memory, graphics hardware, disk performance and basic Mac operation. I find this most useful for finding bad RAM. If your Mac plays a series of tones at startup instead of its usual chime, Apple HW Test is what you want to have. Restart with your restore disk in the optical drive – or Flash drive, for new MacBook Airs – and hold down the D key at startup to boot into the Apple HW Test Utility.
Note that these discs are specific to the machines they shipped with, they will not work with other models. Third Party Utilities My Go-To utility for disk related problems is DiskWarrior, hands down.
Directory errors ( e.g., file not found), permissions problems, copy problems, systems which won’t boot (flashing question mark at startup), DiskWarrior is the thing I reach for first. This works similarly to Rebuild the Desktop from the Classic Mac OS days but in a much more advanced way. I’ve found the best way to use this tool is to boot a troublesome Mac in FireWire target mode, then run DiskWarrior from a second Mac.
It’s important to use the correct version of DiskWarrior which supports your Mac model and operating system. A more complete alternative to the Apple HW Test Utility is TechTool Pro. This virtual stethoscope can test RAM, hard drives, graphics and other Mac subsystems, with detailed hardware tests and reports. TechTool Pro has been around for many years and is a reliable way to see what’s going on inside the case at the hardware level. This program (as with others) can be loaded on a bootable USB Flash drive, a handy troubleshooting tool for Intel Macs when your full toolkit isn’t at hand. And (tie) Cloning a hard drive is an essential part of backing up a system, particularly before doing an upgrade.
Having a permits you to downgrade to your system to an earlier version if something goes wrong, or import data and applications as needed if you are doing a Manual Mac System Migration. Cloning utilities can also be useful in copying data which the Finder balks at, such as items with mixed permissions or disk errors. If you’ve already run DiskWarrior or Apple Disk Utility on a drive and you still can’t copy some files, try using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! These tools can utilize several different methods of copying, and if errors persist will move on to other files without bombing out of the copy operation – unlike the Finder. And (tie) Accidents happen, and hard drives crash.
Sadly, most people become religious about backups only after the first catastrophic loss of data has occurred. Having a good data recovery utility is critical. Data Rescue and FileSalvage both, scanning your hard drive for recoverable data then retrieving this data in a second pass. Recovered data is sorted by file type.
Recovery programs can also be useful to move data as a last resort, when copying or cloning doesn’t work. Both these utilities can find unique files when scanning the same drive, so it is sometimes helpful to have both on hand for an emergency. Solving WiFi issues can get much easier when you can really see what’s going on in the neighborhood. IStumbler is a WiFi scanner that samples local networks every few seconds and displays network names, signal strength, signal to noise, channel numbers, etc. This information can help you determine optimal channels to use for network setups, and discover many local WiFi networks that don’t even show up in the Mac’s Airport menu.
IStumbler also scans for bluetooth networks and can list all gear broadcasting itself via Bounjour on the local LAN. Versions are Operating System specific, so download the one needed for your Mac. If you’re looking to find out how much RAM your Mac can take, what kind of hard drive it uses, the maximum supported OS or many other specs, Mactracker is the app for you. Listing every model of Mac made along with many peripherals and iDevices, this free app (donationware) is a little gem for anyone who upgrades or repairs Macs. The key piece of information to know about a Mac is the Model Identifier as displayed in System Profiler, e.g., MacBook1,1 or iMac5,1. Using this unique hardware ID you can determine exactly what model Mac you have and what parts are needed for repairs or upgrades.
—- What’s on your list of Essential Utilities?
There's little doubt that macOS is a fully-featured platform that come with a lot of built-in features to help you get your work done. But by adding a few extras in the form of utilities you get an awful lot more from the platform with very little extra effort. Here's my list of top utilities that I have installed on my Macs. Some are free, others are going to cost you a few bucks, but all of them are superb.
These utilities are all compatible with the latest macOS release, as well as many earlier releases. For exact system requirements check out the vendor's website.
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I've tried and tested a number of VPN solutions, and Freedome is, without a doubt, the best, most reliable, easiest to use on offer. Price: $49.99 per year for 3 devices (free 14 day trial). Apple is pretty good at keeping Macs running cool even when they are under heavy loads, but when I'm pushing my hardware hard I like to keep it a little cooler than the limits Apple's engineers have built into the system. To do this I use TG Pro. This is a simple utility that sits in the menu bar that not only gives me a complete overview of system temperatures, but also allows me to set temperatures at which the system fans kick into high gear. No other app shows more temperature sensors or has as many options for notifications and fan speeds.
I love this app because it allows me to geek-out of a massive amount of system information! IStat Menus is an advanced Mac system monitor, covering an enormous range of stats ranging from system temperatures to CPU performance. IStat Menus puts an awful lot of important and useful information right at your fingertips.
How detailed is it? Well, it can show you the battery levels of your Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad and Apple wireless keyboard. That's pretty detailed in my opinion. Not only does iStat Menus display a lot of vital information, but it does so in a stylish manner that fits in well with the macOS look and feel. Price: $15.59. I have a lot of apps installed, and that means I have a lot of icons cluttering up my menu bar. Bartender 3 allows me to take control of the menu bar back by letting me control how they are displayed.
Best Mac Utility Software
Bartender 3 lets you organize your menu bar apps, by hiding them, rearranging them, or moving them to the Bartender Items. You can display the full menu bar, set options to have menu bar items show in the menu bar when they have updated, or have them visible in the Bartender Items whenever you want. Price: $15 (one month free trial).
This updated suite of easy-to-use tools streamlines all routine computing chores that you do many times a day and turn them into actions you can carry out with a click or two, massively boosting their productivity. Here are just some of the features it offers: - Screenshot Page - Capture and print lengthy web pages that don't fit into your screen - Free Memory - Reclaim RAM memory and optimize its consumption on your Mac - Resize Images - Batch convert images to your desired file size and format Price: $19.95 per user.
Amphetamine is a little app that lives in your menu bar. Amphetamine allows you to quickly and easily override your energy saver settings and keep your Mac awake. Here's one of those utilities for those days that just go from bad to worse. With a single click, DiskWarrior reads the damaged directory and finds all salvageable files and folders and builds a new error-free, optimized directory for you to use.
DiskWarrior works not by patching corrupted directories but by creating new ones, and it verifies that the replacement is error-free before saying the job is done. If you're serious about your Mac and the data that's on it, this is the tool for you. Price: $119.95. If you juggle a lot of volumes on your Mac then Mountain is the tool for you. It allows you to fast and intuitively work with volumes from the menu bar, letting you eject and remount volumes without having to unplug cables or turn off devices.
It also supports automatically ejecting all external volumes when the system is going to sleep and remounting your favorite network drives when recovering from sleep. One of the features I really like is being able to identify apps that are preventing volumes from being unmounted, and allowing me the option of either closing those apps or forcing unmounts. This is an absolute must-have app. Price: $5.99. There's little doubt that macOS is a fully-featured platform that come with a lot of built-in features to help you get your work done. But by adding a few extras in the form of utilities you get an awful lot more from the platform with very little extra effort.
Utility Software Applications For Macbook Pro
Here's my list of top utilities that I have installed on my Macs. Some are free, others are going to cost you a few bucks, but all of them are superb. These utilities are all compatible with the latest macOS release, as well as many earlier releases. For exact system requirements check out the vendor's website.