A few cool Mac apps I use

It’s been a few years since I wrote about the Itsycal calendar app that I use on my Mac. It still is the default time and calendar app on my Mac’s menu bar.

Here are a few more cool Mac apps that I use and love.

Clocker

Clocker displays time from additional time zones on Mac’s menu bar or as a floating panel. In my work, I look up UTC time a lot, and so I set up UTC time on Clocker to show it on the menu bar. You can also click on the menu bar to expand the locker to show preset additional time zones.

A section of my Mac's menu bar showing Clocker on the left displaying the UTC time. Itsycal on the right. Both are set to show time in the same format.
A section of my Mac’s menu bar showing Clocker on the left displaying the UTC time. Itsycal on the right. Both are set to show time in the same format.

You can read more about Clocker in this review, and download it from its developer’s website.

TextSniper

TextSniper extracts text from images and other places on the screen in seconds. You can activate it using a preset keyboard shortcut and screen-grab text from any part of the screen. TextSniper then copies the text from that part of the screen to the clipboard using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). You can then paste the text anywhere using the regular Cmd + v keys.

Popular Apple commentary website 9to5mac.com reviewed TextSniper here. You can see TextSniper in action and purchase it for a small price (License for 1 Mac $6.99 and License for 3 Macs $9.99) from their website here.

CleanShot X

CleanShot X is a nifty Mac app for grabbing, annotating and sharing screenshots. It also captures GIFs and screencasts. I use a lot of annotated screenshots and screencasts in my line of work and so it is important to have a handy app for that. I used Droplr for about five years but it was getting stale. Droplr’s annotation tools were lagging and inadequate at the time I stopped using it in favour of CleanShot earlier this year.

As an aside, it is great to see the Licecap software that I used years ago (circa 2014) for simple animated screen captures as GIFs is still being maintained. If you want a no-frills, simple app, try that one!

I discovered CleanShot X from Jason Fried’s tweet earlier this year and liked it after trying it for a few weeks.

You can learn more about CleanShot X in the following video review and check its pricing here.


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