Gadgetory

so in this processor video series we've talked a lot about the future of computers but honestly most of the time I just end up going back to my Mac or a Windows PC and I do that because you can really customize the way that the operating system works but here's a question why would anybody bother doing that in the first place so the reason I like customizing my computers and I know that this makes me sound really really corny is that it makes me feel like I have superpowers if there's something that annoys me about the way that my computer works I can just go out on the Internet and somebody else is inevitably annoyed by the same thing and there's usually a utility that I can download it install that fixes that annoyance and I'm talking specifically here about utilities and not app so I'm not talking about stuff like one password which I love and you should go and install or even Dropbox which I also love it's my favorite cloud utility app now I'm talking about utilities things that change the way your computer actually works that kind of a deep level and so in this video I want to talk about my favorite Mac utilities we'll do windows in another video later on so let's get into it so one utility that basically everybody who has a Mac tends to install when they get into this thing is a window manager and there's a million of these but my favorite is called flexi glass and it does all the standard stuff that a window manager does so you can hit a key combo to move your one or the left or the right or fullscreen it or whatever but the reason I like it if we look at the preferences for it you can see that it has this thing called a window mover and what lets you do is you can hold down buttons on your keyboard to adjust the placement of your windows so let me explain normally if you want to resize or move your window you've got to move your mouse to a specific point like down here in the corner and it's really hard to hit but with the window mover you can just have your mouse anywhere in the window hold down a key combo and you can start moving your window around or another key combo and resize your window and so for 9.99 which is the cost of flexi glass it gives you a way faster way to move around or adjust your windows on your Mac another utility I really like especially if you're on the latest update of the Mac operating system heis here which you really should be is it's got a weird name actually look it up here it's high sierra media key enabler this is a free utility and it puts a little dot in your menu bar and what it does is it makes your play pause next previous buttons on your function bar actually work so normally if you hit that it might start itunes or it might pause video and safari you never really know but with high sierra media key enabler you can set it to prioritize spotify so when you hit that play pause button it's just gonna send that command to spotify and it will always work another utility that a bunch of people install is a screen shot utility now i know that you can hit shift command 4 on a mac and it'll record a screen shot but I use this app called annotate it was recently acquired by cloud app but it's still free and when I hit shift command 4 take a screenshot I can then draw on it I can put a little arrows on it I can put some text on it I can even like blur out certain section of it and then when it's done I can just hit the Twitter button to tweet it I can save it or I can even hold down the option key and drag it directly to another app if I just want to put it directly into another app it's way more convenient than the built-in screenshot utility and I really recommend if you don't use annotate at least some kind of screenshot utility so the next utility you want to talk about is when I've talked a ton about it's called Alfred and I've made a whole other video about it it's basically a better version of spotlight you can hit a key combo and when you do a search box pops up and it's better at internet stuff than spotlight is and you can even do stuff like clipboard history and snippets of text and all kinds of customizations but the tool that I use with Alfred is just as important it's called carabiner elements which is a funny little tool and it lets you assign a button on your keyboard to something else so for me I've assigned caps lock to the f16 key because if I want to shut on the internet I'm gonna hold down the shift key like I really mean it so instead when I hit the caps lock key it pops up my Alfred search box and then I can search for something on the verge really fast and that's great now for Alfred to get the most out of it you got to pay 19 pounds for the app but carabiner elements which remaps your buttons is free now this utility is the sadist nerdiest thing because it literally saves you like one click but I still love it it's called tooth fairy and here's how it works in your menu bar puts a little icon shows you whether or not you're connected to Bluetooth headphones so these are my beats X headphones and they're currently paired to my iPhone I want to listen to on my Mac so a tooth fairy I just click this button and then it will connect up to my Bluetooth headphones and it'll even turn dark to show me that I am connected to my Bluetooth headphones and you can set it up for multiple pairs of headphones now I know it just saves you one click but that click makes a big difference to me okay so last utility you may have noticed that I've got a million menu bar icons and it looks there's a couple of utilities that let you hide most of them the one that I like is called the vanilla and it's really simple it just puts a little caret in your menu bar and you can just tap it and it hides all of your icons and then you can just hold down the command key to drag icons in or out of the hidden section it just makes your computer feel more comfortable it's nice so those are my favorite utilities for the Mac and I've talked about this a lot but I really do think that being able to customize your computer makes a huge difference it makes it feel like it's yours and not just thing that got handed down to you if you're using an iPad or a Chromebook if there's something that you don't like you basically just have to deal with it but with a manic or with a Windows PC if there's something you don't like you can change it and most of the time I prefer the platform that you can change hey everybody thank you so much for watching and I want to know what your favorite utilities are cuz I'm always on the lookout for new ones basically all the time because I'm an obsessive nerd and while you're down there leaving a comment you could also hit that subscribe button it really helps us out