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- vimium
- magnet (although maybe https://ianyh.com/amethyst/ is better? haven’t tried it) (or https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai ?)
- homerow
- sync contacts with computer
- cron notion calendar
- command tab
- karabiner elements — pretty powerful keyboard mapping tool. requires some simple scripting, but nothing that LLMs can’t easily handle.
- remap CAPSLOCK to CTRL (or whatever, but remap it to something useful)
- set up hotkeys to open frequently used apps (that you endorse frequently using! you might want to intentionally add some friction for apps you don’t want to be using too much)
- set up sequential hotkeys for frequently used actions (e.g. setting timers of different lengths, or running loads of custom scripts)
- example of “sequential hotkeys”: for me, pressing CTRL+Q, releasing, then pressing 1-9 causes a timer to start for 1-9 minutes. so if i want to set a 5 min timer (which i do a lot), i just press CTRL+Q then 5. much more seamless for whatever context i’m in + quicker to do in extremely high-time-pressure situations.
- for more on sequential hotkeys: Sequential hotkeys
- alfred, in a hundred ways. particularly:
- have a better search for your mac (spotlight-but-better)
- easy way to build surprisingly powerful custom little macros without coding anything
- clipboard manager!!!!
- i have it set up that typing in `ss` will show all of my screenshots (ordered by datetime they were taken), which means i can then e.g. paste them into something, or open them and edit them, or move them somewhere else — all from the alfred search bar (!!)
- generally — see if you can get the app version of whatever webapp you’re using. they’re often much faster, more seamlessly integrated into the rest of your workflow, and generally just work better. examples:
- chatgpt
- airtable
- whatsapp
- fb messenger
- macwhisper
- superwhisper
- vivid
- [CMD + ,] opens settings in basically every app
- CMD+SHIFT+CTRL+4 takes an ephemeral screenshot and stores it only in your clipboard
- cotypist
- 1pass
- some text expansions (e.g. address, email, etc) — can do this easily with alfred, or with some simple scripting with karabiner, or with something like “textexpander” (which i’ve never used)
- cotypist
- superhuman, just obviously straightforwardly the best email client
- (iff you have good vision) make the screen resolution bigger, scaled up proportionally to your screen size — this is native to macos in your system preferences > display, and it effectively just gives you extra screenspace
- make your mouse bigger (esp if you made your screen resolution bigger)
- pdf24 tools just fucking works at doing basically all of things you’ll ever need to do with PDFs. https://tools.pdf24.org/en/
- https://euangoddard.github.io/clipboard2markdown/ — lets you paste things into it, spits back the markdown version. useful if you’ve e.g. typed something out in notion with some formatting, then want to send it as a discord message or something.
- InstantSpaceSwitcher — lets you instantly switch between different spaces on your mac, instead of the extremely annoying ~0.5ms delay when you use the trackpad/etc
- TextSniper — lets you take copy text from a screenshot immediately. incredibly helpful when you want to e.g. copy a filename, or from an image, or otherwise copy text that’s not actually easily selectable
- CMD+` — cycles through open windows of a particular app
- ollama, and download a couple different sized models. lets you run LLMs locally from your terminal, which is useful eg if you don’t have internet, or go to a firewalled country (i’m literally typing this from china after realizing i couldn’t use claude or chatgpt).
- quitter, so that your mac doesn’t keep various apps open in the background.
- setting up hotkeys (i have ;p and ;q set up) to paste the 2nd and 3rd most recent clipboard items
- learn how to type fast! crazy that some people type at like 40wpm — i suggest using for like 20m/day for a week. my guess is that you start hitting diminishing marginal returns at like 80wpm, but i think for most people it’s almost definitely worth getting up to at least 60wpm
- also is really fun — i used to just take breaks from work by doing a few monkeytype sessions (and i think doing this for a few months brought me from ~90wpm to ~105wpm)
- icloud backups + time machine
- set up notifications for when your mac goes below 50%/25%/10%/5% battery — i find that one notification at 10% isn’t enough
- set up scripts that automatically quit background apps that take up a lot of battery (e.g. vivid, cotypist) when your battery threshold dips below a certain threshold, and reopens them when your battery rises above the same threshold
chrome extensions
- 1pass
- some generic good adblock. any of them are fine
- adblock for youtube — just skips straight to your videos
- control panel for twitter — removes all of the ugly stuff, makes it clean
- Instalamb — same as Control Panel for Twitter, but for Instagram
- Curius (note spelling)
- Dark Reader — fairly powerful, great dark mode for any site, hotkey to toggle it on and off
- GoFullPage — useful for taking a screenshot of a long page all-at-once
- Google Dictionary (by Google) — just straightforwardly good for looking up words quickly by double-clicking on them
- New Tab Redirect — i just have it redirect to whatever habit i’m currently aiming to build, which means i’m constantly reminded of it. e.g. as of my writing, it’s redirecting to mathacademy.
- Postlight reader — good for reading articles with annoying ads/elements/etc
- RocketReach Chrome Extension [edit: I now use ContactOut instead of RocketReach] — good for finding contacts for people. i use this a lot when trying to reach out to speakers for events i run.
- ShowPassword — sometimes websites cause your password, as you’re typing it, to look like *****. i find this annoying. this extension makes it so you can see your password when you hover over the field.
- SwiftRead — useful for skimming long passages of boring text
- UnDistracted — my favorite generalized blocking tool for chrome. not insanely strong, but provides enough friction for me to stop using most distracting sites.
- Vimium. i now basically don’t use my mouse at all on chrome, just my keyboard. also, this has (so far) helped me get slightly used to Vim, before i diving into actually learning it.
- Video Speed Controller — lets you watch any video at any speed. e.g. YT typically only lets you go up to 2x speed, but sometimes i want to do 2.2x, or 3.5x or something.
- Wayback Machine. means you can more-quickly find archived versions of websites, and more-quickly archive the website you’re currently looking at.
phone
- make siri talk faster, like 2x or smth
- 1/4 grayscale at all times (edit Oct 9, 2025: i no longer do this, i think problems with stuff like social media are downstream of e.g. emotional dysregulation etc, and prob just can’t be solved by bandaiding)
more speculative, i haven’t tried them yet:
other lists
caveats
- much of the work that my mac is optimized for is “make this work EXTREMELY FAST for extremely high-pressure environments, where wasting a few moments is actually quite costly” — or alternatively, for environments where wasting a few moments is pretty costly for your working memory.
- for example: if i’m running a meeting, taking 3-4 seconds to set a 1 minute timer is a lot worse than taking 1/4 of a second (which i can now do!)
- for example: if i’m coding, setting a timer for when i should take a break could involve switching to a new app, cutting off context for 3-4 seconds, then trying to swtich back — but with a hotkey, i can do this without leaving my IDE, and in 1/4 of a second.
- some of these cost money. e.g. alfred premium is $40, superhuman is $35/month, 1pass is $2/month, etc. i’m in a fortunate position to be generally happy to trade that size of money for speculative gains in effectiveness, but you might not be.
- some of these require some skill in programming. i really don’t have much skill in programming at all, but you might have even less (or be less interested in getting better).
- some of these might have security vulnerabilities that i’m not aware of