Mac OS X Utilities

By: Scott Doenges - Revised: 2006-07-03 devin

Introduction

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ASM 2.0

ASM is the reincarnation of the application switcher menu. It's highly customizable and
offers some nice extra features, such as "Classic Window Mode" (orders all windows of an application to front when it becomes active) or "Single Application Mode" (automatically hides applications other than the front-most one). Adds a pane in the OS X System Preferences panel.
  • Features "Dock Hiding," which automatically shows or hides the OS X dock on a per-application basis.
  • Applications can be set to hide automatically.


ASM brings back the familiar Application Switcher menu...


BrickHouse 1.1b6

BrickHouse is designed to make using the network firewall built in to Mac OS X quick and easy. By using BrickHouse to enable your computer's firewall, you can help prevent unauthorized villains from gaining access to your computer via your internet connection. BrickHouse has many advanced features which allow you to completely control all types of information going to or from your computer, for many different protocol types. Allows you to stop many types of system hacks and service attacks.
  • Create rules for TCP, UDP, and ICMP protocols
  • Create rules for ranges of IP addresses and ports
  • Create rules that apply to source and destination ports
  • Log events and receive regular notifications of events
BrickHouse is $25 shareware, and can be downloaded here.


CronniX 1.4.1

CronniX provides a GUI frontend for your crontab. Cron is a powerful unix tool that allows scheduled execution of shell scripts and applications. It allows you to set individual run times for any application, by minute, hour, day of the month, month of the year, and day of the week. We use an OS 9.x version of this program called Cron to schedule RevRdist run times in our labs.

CronniX is freeware, and can be downloaded here.


Dragthing 4.1

DragThing is an application dock designed to tidy up the icons littering your desktop. Simply drag an application from the Finder onto an empty square in a dock and then drag documents onto it as normal. Click a docked application to launch it or bring it to the front. Set up separate layered docks to help manage/organize your dock items. Set key combinations to launch your most frequently-used items. Very very cool program, probably the most useful utility on my Mac.

DragThing is $25 shareware, and can be downloaded here. (link dead)

Example of DragThing docks, layers, and hotkeys

Example of a DragThing application dock (shows open apps)

File Buddy 7b9

  • View and edit a wide range of file and folder information.
  • Create droplet applications that automatically apply changes to items dropped on them, including the contents of folders.
  • Find files and folders using an extensive set of search criteria. Enhance file searches with plug-ins that extend file search capabilities. Conveniently perform a wide variety of actions on found items.
  • Modify the names of multiple files at once. For example, remove ".txt" from the names of a group of files.
  • Use contextual menus to accomplish many tasks in a single step. Contextual menus are supported on all versions of the Macintosh operating systems.
  • Create custom icons: from PICTs on the clipboard; from other icons; for folders using a variety of templates; with blank icons; using only small icons.
  • Find empty files and folders, orphaned files, duplicate files, broken aliases, and unused preference files.
  • Automatically repair broken aliases.
  • Move, delete, and copy files. Even copy invisible files and use the Replace Different option to skipping copying files that already exist.
  • Delete data and resource forks from files.
  • Erase files and unused disk space.
  • Create snapshots that can be used to track the changes on a disk, such as files installed by an installer. Particularly useful to track down all components needed for applications so you can distribute it to multiple machines using RevRdist.


A few examples of the useful things File Buddy can do...

Advanced Get Info features

FireWalk X 1.3.8

Firewalk X is a featured firewall manager for Mac OS X. Firewalk X gives you an array of controls to the integrated firewall within Mac OS X. Here's what you can do with Firewalk X:
  • Create rules for TCP, UDP, and ICMP protocols
  • Create rules for ranges of IP addresses and ports
  • Create rules that apply to source and destination ports
  • Log events and receive regular notifications of events
  • Preserve your NAT to keep routing active



Get Info 0.75

Get Info is a file attribute editing system. It eliminates the need to use Terminal, and makes changing attributes on file(s) a breeze.
  • Open Multiple Batch/Info windows at once
  • Change the UNIX Permissions and Owner/Group of a file or folder
  • Change Macintosh Type and Creator codes associated with a file
  • Work on multiple files at the same time using Batch mode
  • Get Info supports authenticating as an Administrator to perform all actions
  • Recursive Owner/Group and Permission setting.



MacArmyKnife 2.6

MacArmyKnife integrates the useful features of many different apps into one app. It has advanced find file options, a file attribute editor, a file path editor, a process viewer/killer, advanced network stat options, Mac error code reference tables, ASCII reference tables, and more. It seems a bit under-ripe, but it has potential.



Super Get Info 1.0.2 (demo)

Super Get Info 1.0 is a utility designed to serve as a replacement for the Mac OS X Finder's Show Info command. From the makers of BBEdit. One thing this app has that Get Info 0.75 doesn't have is the ability to preview the file. Not particularly useful, but neat.
  • Super Get Info allows you to do the following:
  • Open more than one info window at a time
  • View and edit the Macintosh type and creator codes associated with a file
  • View and edit the Unix owner, group, and permission settings associated with a file or folder
  • Change a file or folder's creation and modification dates
Super Get Info is $20 shareware, and can be downloaded here. (link dead)


TinkerTool 2.0 (Preview Edition)

Do you want to control anti-aliasing of fonts? Would you like translucent terminal windows? Do you want to have all hidden files and folders displayed in the Finder? All that and many more hidden options of Mac OS X can be activated with the TinkerTool utility. This preview edition is 10.1 compatible, and features a Preference Panel that shows up in your System Preferences pane.
  • Without using the command-line, you can activate the following preference options:
  • Enable or disable the Mac OS desktop
  • Disable the animation effect when opening files
  • Show hidden and system files in the Finder
  • Set the Dock position
  • Select the Dock animation effect
  • Use transparent Dock icons to mark hidden applications
  • Select the default fonts used in Cocoa applications
  • Activate transparent Terminal windows
  • Control font-smoothing in all types of Mac OS X applications