5 macOS mini-apps to help you work more efficiently

1. PreForget

We have a lot of small ideas throughout the day, and keeping them in our heads requires energy and attention. The best thing to do is to write them down and continue working immediately to keep you focused. The miniature task manager PreForget will help with this.

Click on the icon in the menu bar and add an idea that you should not forget. If you wish, you can attach a more detailed description, mark the entry as important, and also assign a due date and set a reminder.

However, all these details are not so significant, since the records will always be in front of your eyes, just one click away. In the drop-down menu, you can mark tasks as completed and activate reminders.

2. Noize

A calm environment is important for effective work, but, unfortunately, it is not always possible to find one. With Noize, you can create it yourself - by putting on headphones and blocking out the surrounding noise with more pleasant background sounds.

Raindrops or thunderclaps, the whistle of the wind or the chirping of birds, the purring of a cat or the splashing of sea waves - choose any sounds from the drop-down menu. Combine them by clicking on the icons to make them louder or quieter.

To quickly turn off sounds, there is a button with a speaker. By clicking on the one next to it with a magic wand, a random combination is activated. The next button is needed to “zero” the sound stage with one touch, and the last one is used to exit.

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3. Day Progress

Often in the morning it seems that you can do everything in a day and nothing will happen if you spend a few minutes on social networks. After lunch, the feeling persists, and only in the evening comes the realization that a lot of time has been wasted, and the tasks are not yet ready.

If this sounds familiar to you, then Day Progress should help. Thanks to the application, you will always have a melting scale or graph in front of your eyes, showing how much time is left until the end of the working day.

If desired, you can display the rest of the day in the menu bar as a percentage or hours and minutes. There are several scale options. Of course, you can customize the working days of the week and the time you start and end.

4. Camera Preview

To avoid getting into an awkward situation, before a video conference meeting you need to check how you look and what is in the background in the frame. Usually for this we open the settings Zoom, Skype or Telegram and watch the camera preview. However, there is an easier and faster way.

With Camera Preview, you can see yourself and everything your webcam captures in one click—and that's no exaggeration. Clicking on the icon in the menu bar displays a preview window. The image can be reflected horizontally and enlarged to the desired limit (in case you use zoom in the messenger).

The extended menu will allow you to take and view a photo, switch to another camera if there are several of them, and pin the preview on top of other windows. There are also hotkeys that can be set in the settings.

5. BrowserSwitch

When using multiple browsers on Mac It can be inconvenient to follow links in applications when they strive to open in a standard browser, and you need a different one. To avoid copying links and pasting them into the address bar manually, you can use BrowserSwitch.

The application does exactly what is reflected in its name, and as quickly and simply as possible. The menu bar displays the icon of the current browser, which is assigned by default in the system. By clicking on it, you need to select any other one installed on the Mac, and then confirm the replacement in the system pop-up window.

If desired, you can activate the display of shortcuts in the settings, and then you can switch directly from the keyboard. You can get there by clicking on the butterfly in the drop-down menu.