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Utilities

Miscellaneous macOS utilities for managing apps, files, and system behavior, plus text-input helpers like dictation and OCR.

  • Applite — GUI front-end for Homebrew Cask; browse, install, and update third-party apps
  • PureMac — free, open-source (MIT) app manager and system cleaner; heuristic file matching for complete app removal, cache cleanup, Xcode artifact removal; SwiftUI, macOS 13+
  • Mole — open-source (MIT) shell-based CLI that bundles CleanMyMac/AppCleaner/DaisyDisk/iStat-style features in one binary (mo command): deep cache cleanup, smart app uninstaller with leftover removal, disk analyzer with TUI, live CPU/GPU/memory dashboard, project build-artifact purge; --dry-run previews destructive actions
  • Sensei — Mac performance and maintenance tool with disk cleaner, app uninstaller, and hardware monitor
  • ImageOptim — open-source image compression tool that strips metadata and reduces file size losslessly
  • Clop — on-device optimizer for images, videos and PDFs (macOS 13+); compresses anything copied to the clipboard automatically, plus drop zones, hotkey downscaling, cropping to aspect ratios, GIF conversion, speed-up and audio stripping for screen recordings, and HEIC/TIFF/MOV conversion; uses the Apple Silicon Media Engine and bundles pngquant, jpegoptim, gifsicle, ffmpeg, libvips, gifski and ghostscript; integrates with Shortcuts, Dropshare and shelf apps (Yoink, Dockside), and ships a CLI for batch work
  • Ejectify — automatically ejects external drives when your Mac sleeps to prevent “disk not ejected properly” errors
  • Hazel — rule-based file organization automation; watches folders and applies actions on matching files
  • Open Screen — share your Mac screen to a phone or tablet over the local network via a browser
  • Wispr Flow — AI voice dictation that transcribes speech into edited text in any app; works from intent rather than word-for-word, so it drops filler, resolves mid-sentence corrections and punctuates on its own; learns personal vocabulary and snippets, supports 100+ languages with auto-detection, and runs on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android
  • Uttero — free dictation utility for macOS 14+ from Czech developer Daniel Gamrot; hold a key, speak, and the text lands straight in the active app; transcribes locally via WhisperKit or streams in real time through Soniox, then has Claude or GPT fix punctuation and adjust the wording to context
  • Field Theory — clipboard-based context capture for AI workflows on Apple Silicon; offline voice transcription via Parakeet, screenshot annotation, stacking of images and markdown, and portable commands that work across Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor
  • mac-ocr — CLI that reads text from images and PDFs and builds searchable PDFs using Apple’s Vision framework; runs fully on-device (nothing uploaded), installs via npm, and ships an agent skill so AI agents can OCR locally instead of spending vision tokens

Curated app lists

Section titled “Curated app lists”