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30 Free System Tools for a Better Mac

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It's not an easy task to maintain our Mac system clean, healthy, and appealing with just relying on built-in applications. We will end up scratching our head just to delete some unnecessary binary files to clean our disk.

Therefore, we all here decided to make a good compilation of free system tools for Mac. With many varieties of applications, from system cleaner to system tweaker, from data organizer to system display manager, we have those all collected in this article.

Click on the application title to get to application homepage.

Internet Updater

AppFresh

If you want to keep all of our applications, widgets or preference panes up to date, you will definitely need AppFresh. AppFresh shows all information on application updates on one single easy-to-use window.

System Notification

Growl

Growl is a system notification tools. Growl allows applications with Growl support to send notification on any updates made.

System Monitoring
iStat Pro, iStat Menus, WhatLCD

iStat Pro

iStat pro is a highly configurable widget that lets you monitor every aspect of your Mac, including CPU, memory, disks, network, battery, temperatures, fans, load & uptime and processes. iStat pro can do it all.

iStat Menus

With 8 separate and highly configurable menu extras, iStat menus will let you know exactly what’s going on inside the system of your Mac. These menu extras can be used to monitor : CPU, Memory, Drives, Network, Temps, Fans & Power, Bluetooth, and Date & Time.

WhatLCD

WhatLCD is a convenient way for user to see what kind of LCD they have in their Mac. Simply put it, WhatLCD just executes the command to query the information from the system and displays it to the end user.

System Maintenance & Cleaning
iBackup, Preference Cleaner, Permissions Reset

iBackup

iBackup supports scheduled backups of files, folders and applications. Furthermore, it uses plugins to backup your settings like the dock, desktop picture, time, firewall, bluetooth and other system preferences. It is also able to backup Application Settings.

Preference Cleaner

Preference files can become corrupt and cause an application to become unstable. Alternatively, if an application has a large array of preferences you might find it simpler to delete the files than to locate a setting which has enabled an undesired behaviour.

PreferenceCleaner is a utility which aims to simplify the task of deleting preference files.

Permissions Reset

Permissions Reset is simple, free application developed to solve one of the most annoying problems with Mac OS X computers, Permissions problems, such as not being to save your own work into your Documents folder and not being able to update files that others have sent you.

System Tweak
smcFanControl, Secrets, Lab Tick, etc

smcFanControl

smcFanControl lets you control your fan power with a preferences pane right from your menubar. Though this application isn't compatible for some of the Macs, but if you can use it for your Mac, it will be very useful to cool down your hot Mac.

Secrets

Secrets is a simple Preferences Pane to unveil all the hidden settings of your Mac.

Lab Tick

If you've been annoyed by your Mac's backlit keyboard, which you don't a control on, you can use Lab Tick. Lab Tick can be used to control the luminosity of your backlit keyboard.

iTool

Download Page: Link

iTool is a free multifunction utility for a complete system maintenance and cleaning. Its GUI will help you choose quickly the needed task. Not only maintains system healthy, iTool also lets us tweak hidden functions of our Leopard system.

DejaMenu

DejaMenu will display the current application's main menu as a context menu when a key combination is pressed. For lazy-mouse users, by using DejaMenu we can save the travel time of our mouse to menubar, because the menu is just in the tip of the pointer upon pressing key combo.

Screeni

Screeni is a free Mac applet which allows you to display your screensaver as your desktop background!

However, as screensaver might take quite amount of CPU resource, it's better to use one of these low-resource screensavers: Computer Name, Flurry, Spectrum, or Changing Pictures.

Or maybe you want to try with another screensavers, we have a good compilation of forty+ free screensavers, feel free to take a look.

Dock Spaces

Dock Spaces is a tiny application that allows you to have up to 10 different docks and swap anytime you want from the menu bar.

System Display
Hide Folders, Menu Eclipse, HotBox, etc

Hide Folders

Hide Folders is a freeware program for Mac OS X dedicated to protect documents and folders. With a click, we can conceal files and folders with all their contents. It's simple to use this application. And with this, you can avoid your important files being modified, seen or erased by others.

Menu Eclipse

Upon activation, Menu Eclipse will add the layer of transparent gray to avoid distraction from menubar and also avoid burn on that part of LCD.

HotBox

HotBox is a background application that allows you to make anything on screen full screen! Just press a keystroke and drag a box around whatever you want, and it'll fill your entire monitor.

The usage is really simple, upon pressing keystrokes, a crosshair cursor will appear and you should select a region with that. And the result is: the region of your choice will be zoomed to full screen. HotBox is most suitable for watching video or flash.

MagiCal

MagiCal is a FREE menu-based clock and calendar. It features a huge range of configuration options for how the time and date are displayed, and can operate either in conjunction with, or as a replacement for the built in system menu clock.

In addition to this, MagiCal features a handy drop-down calendar that can be torn off and placed anywhere on screen.

Screen Shade

ScreenShade is a tool for further dimming a screen (or screens) past the capabilities of the OS X brightness display settings. This utility is especially useful for people who find themselves using their computer in a low-lighting situation.

Data Organizer
File Actions, The Unarchiver, SyncTwoFolders, etc

File Actions

A small, one-trick app that moves files from one place to another automatically to keep your computer organized and clutter free.

Running through a set of user defined rules at regular intervals, File Actions will find misplaced files and automatically move the file to a new home. Its the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to keep yourself organized!

The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for "BOMArchiveHelper.app", the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X.

Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats.

SyncTwoFolders

SyncTwoFolders simply synchronizes two folders.

I feel that this application will be particularly useful if you have two different accounts, where you can synchronize the content of two folder (usually User Desktop).

XShelf

You can drag files or folders from Finder into the shelf and they will sit there until you drag them out. Once you drag them out, the drag operation will finish as if XShelf were never involved. You may drag individual or multiple files or folders, as well as text clippings and URLs to XShelf.

With XShelf, you no longer have to shuffle windows so that both the source and target of a drag and drop are onscreen at the same time.

Permanent Eraser

When you delete your files, Permanent Eraser provides an even stronger level of security by implementing the Gutmann Method. This utility overwrites your data thirty-five times, scrambles the original file name, and truncates the file size to nothing before Permanent Eraser finally unlinks it from the system.

Once your data has been erased, it can no longer be read through traditional means.

DMG Canvas

DMG Canvas builds disk images from template documents that you create. Simply design your disk image's appearance using the graphical editor and click Build.

iDMG

iDMG is an easy to use application to create DMG files of a folder with a simple drag and drop. It supports encryption, various file systems, permissions and AES128 or AES256 encryption.

SnapNDrag

SnapNDrag lets you take a screenshot by just clicking a button and dragging off the resulting screenshot.

NameChanger

NameChanger is designed for the sole purpose of renaming a list of files. This is the solution for free batch renamer application!

Categories: Applications, Popular, Utilities
Tags: Application, Free, system, System

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