Boom
My Macbook Pro's sound has become very low. I don't know why. Perhaps, there is a problem with the speaker. I use Boom as a workaround. It boost the speaker's volume above the allowed maximum.
PleaseSleep
When one of these applications: Chrome, Firefox, and Safari is running, your computer won't automatically sleep, only the display that will sleep even if you already configure it in Energy Saver. But, if you manually put it to sleep for example by pressing keys command + option + eject, it will. Note that in my case, the command "pmset -g assertions" does not say those programs are preventing my computer from sleeping at all but I figured it out myself. PleaseSleep will force your computer to sleep after it's been idled for a period of time as configured in Energy Saver even though those programs are running. IT STILL CAN'T HELP, IF BOOM IS RUNNING.
Sleepwatcher
It's a freeware and can be downloaded from http://www.bernhard-baehr.de/. I let me run command an event is triggered. In my case, Boom prevents my computer from sleeping after defined idle time. It's Boom's bug. I configured my machine to sleep 10 minutes after the display has slept so I use Sleepwatcher to exit Boom when the display has slept and start Boom when the display has woken up. I created 4 script files and put them in /Applications/MyApps as followings:
> sudo nano /Applications/MyApps/boom-sleepwatcher.command
#!/bin/bash
# check if sleepwatcher is running; it might have been running from previous login session
# cause it's not killed even if you log out
RUNNING=""
RUNNING=$(ps axu | grep -v grep | grep sleepwatcher)
echo $RUNNING
SCRIPTNAME="startboom.sh"
# if the content of RUNNING variable contains 'startboom.sh', the process is already running
if [ "$RUNNING" != "${RUNNING%$SCRIPTNAME*}" ];
then
echo "sleepwatcher is already running..."
exit
else
echo "Starting sleepwatcher for Boom app..."
fi
/Applications/sleepwatcher/sleepwatcher --daemon --displaysleep /Applications/MyApps/exitboom.sh
/Applications/sleepwatcher/sleepwatcher --daemon --displaywakeup /Applications/MyApps/startboom.sh
> sudo nano /Applications/MyApps/exitboom.sh
osascript -e 'quit app "Boom"'
> sudo nano /Applications/MyApps/startboom.sh
open /Applications/Boom.app
> sudo chmod -R 777 /Applications/MyApps/
Note that if the terminal window is not closed after the command has run, there might be the problem with Terminal's shell settings. Open Terminal, go to Preferences..., select Settings then Shell and choose "Close the window" item in "When the shell exits" combo box.
Then, I put boom-sleepwatcher.command in login items.
Related article: http://myt8chnote.blogspot.com/2015/09/display-sleep-but-computer-does-not.html
XtraFinder
It's free. It provides multiple tabs in a single window of Finder application.
Carbon Copy Cloner
It's commercial. I use it clone the OS drive to the external hard drive. It works the same way as Norton Ghost (for Windows) does. Hence, my OS disk fail, I don't have to reinstall the OS and applications. I can just restore the OS clone.
Perian
It allows me to play a lot of media file formats on QuickTime Player such as MP4, MP3, FLV, etc.
TextWrangler
It's a good text editor. It allows me to open multiple files at the same time.
Paint 2
Microsoft Paint alternative for Mac
