The 10ish Tools I Install on Every New Mac I Get

Published on September 14, 2023, filed under Development (RSS feed for all categories).

Piggybacking on the idea from Christian, this is the software I typically install on new Mac machines:

1. WebStorm (paid)—my favorite IDE which at some point replaced the for all (my) practical purposes identical IntelliJ IDEA
2. a few browsers (free)
3. GIMP (free)—my preferred image editing software ever since Photoshop went for a subscription model; acquired taste
4. ImageOptim (free)—convenient image compression tool; usually excluding SVGs and opting for aggressive optimization for all other formats (for automated lossless compression, I use Imagemin Guard)
5. Transmit (paid)—still favorite SFTP client, using it for my shared-hosting providers (ALL-INKL, DreamHost)
6. Oh My Zsh (free)—useful shell configuration tooling
7. Node/npm (free)—wonder who in our field wouldn’t need to install it
8. Homebrew (free)—useful and necessary for some tooling
9. Xcode (free)—not actively sought (and not quite liked), but usually needed (right at the beginning even, for Git?)
10. BBEdit (paid)—my favorite text editor which I have constantly open on all machines, and with which I manage intake and draft documents
11. LibreOffice (free)—backup office suite for the few cases I need to work with local document files
12. Proton VPN (paid)—the VPN I trust most (conveniently included in my plan with Proton)
13. Little Snitch (paid)—main tool to monitor and tailor network activity
14. BlockBlock (free)—non-critical system installation monitoring (not sure I make effective use of it though)

(Given for how long I’ve been using most of this software, I believe this list to age better than my Android favorites—cf. Top 15 from 2009 and Top 10 from 2017.)

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m a contributor to several web standards, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (Please be critical, interpret charitably, and give feedback.)