Utilities Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for your favorite iPad utility app

by Steven Sande (Jan 1st, 2012)

The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing ...

Daily Mac App: FlashMount quickly mounts disk images

by TJ Luoma (Dec 30th, 2011)

DMG files are often used when distributing Mac software outside the Mac App Store. While DMGs can be confusing to new users, I like them because they allow me to keep an original, unmodified version of whatever program I have downloaded. About the only drawback for me is that some DMGs come with ...

Nominate your favorite iPad utility app for TUAW's Best of 2011

by Steven Sande (Dec 29th, 2011)

During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each ...

TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPhone utility app

by Steven Sande (Dec 24th, 2011)

Nominate your favorite iPhone utility app for TUAW's Best of 2011

by Steven Sande (Dec 19th, 2011)

Alfred: TUAW Best of 2011 winner for Mac utility apps

by Steven Sande (Dec 16th, 2011)

The readers have spoken, and they've agreed -- Alfred, the awesome free app from Running With Crayons, is the winner of the TUAW Best of 2011 award for Mac utility apps. Alfred is a veritable Swiss Army knife of an app. It's an application launcher, a quick web search tool, a calculator, a ...

TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best Mac utility app

by Steven Sande (Dec 13th, 2011)

Daily Mac App: NameChanger

by Samuel Gibbs (Dec 7th, 2011)

Batch-processing files is a great way to save time. Automator scripts work will for simple jobs, but if you're trying to do something complex like remove or alter the filename of a great many files, a free tool like NameChanger could be a useful addition to your armory. NameChanger takes on ...

Best of 2011 Nominations: Best Mac Utility Apps

by Steven Sande (Dec 7th, 2011)

Daily Mac App: Keka

by Samuel Gibbs (Dec 6th, 2011)

Great free archive utilities are pretty hard to come by on the Mac. Keka is the exception. If OS X's built-in compression utility doesn't do enough for you, Keka could be the answer. Keka's been around since 2009, but only recently made it into the Mac App Store. Unlike Growl, Keka is ...

Daily Mac App: Quick File Renamer

by Samuel Gibbs (Dec 2nd, 2011)

Bulk renaming files can be a time consuming pain without the right tool. If it's a problem you face often, you've probably already got a favorite batch-renaming app residing on your Mac, but if not, Quick File Renamer might be a good place to start. It has a user-friendly interface with ...

Daily Mac App: Brightness Slider

by Samuel Gibbs (Dec 1st, 2011)

Using a Mac laptop at night is great thanks to automatic-brightness controls and a backlit keyboard. Trouble is that sometimes even the lowest setting is too bright for midnight screen gazing. That's where Brightness Slider comes in. It's a menu bar utility that lets you adjust the screen's ...

Daily Mac App: Memo

by Samuel Gibbs (Nov 30th, 2011)

I've written about quite a few note-taking apps in my pursuit of the best one. Most shy away from the Post-It note paradigm because OS X comes with Stickies, a pretty decent representation of the repositionable note, but Memo takes it head-on. Memo is basically Stickies with iCloud and ...

Alfred 1.0 offers enhanced global hotkeys, URL handling, more

by Dave Caolo (Nov 29th, 2011)

One of my favorite Mac utilities, Alfred, has been updated to version 1.0 with a long list of super new features. The biggies include greatly enhanced global hotkeys and my favorite, an option to remember URLs for quick use in the future. Note that the new features require the optional Powerpack. ...

Daily Mac App: FormatMatch

by Samuel Gibbs (Nov 28th, 2011)

Copying and pasting text is something everyone does. In OS X you have two choices by default -- copy and paste, which retains formatting; or paste and match style, which strips out the source formatting. If you're like me, you almost never want the source formatting. Cmd+V is the shortcut for ...