I rely on a handful of small, inexpensive utilities to speed my workflow and keep my Macs running smoothly. Today I’ll introduce you to three I use often.
Endurance
Endurance is an app that helps your laptop battery last up to 20% longer per charge while improving overall battery health. With six options to help extend your battery time per charge—Slow Down Processor, Pause Web Browsers, Pause Services, Monitor Apps for Significant Battery Use, Hide Background Apps, and Dim Screen—you can create a low-power mode that suits your needs.
Take charge of your battery (haha) with Endurance.You can enable or disable Low Power Mode from Endurance’s menu bar icon, or trigger it automatically when your battery drops below a specified level (I have mine set to 70%).
If you wish your laptop battery lasted longer between charges, try Endurance.
Better Touch Tool
Face it, the Mouse and Trackpad System Preferences panes are OK as long as you don’t care to coax more performance out of your pointing device. But, if you wish your mouse or trackpad had more and better options, check out Better Touch Tool.
Better Touch Tool offers nearly a dozen useful options for a wide variety of pointing devices.
It lets you configure buttons (mouse) or gestures (trackpad), but it also does much more. For example, you can use it to trigger actions from a trackpad, Magic Mouse, third-party mouse, keyboard, Touch Bar, iPhone, or iPad (with BTT Remote—free for iOS and iPadOS), Siri, or Apple Remote. It also includes a multi-clipboard manager and a powerful screenshot tool that lets you adjust images on the fly.
What’s remarkable is that it does all that for just $8.50.
ToothFairy
ToothFairy is a Bluetooth enhancer. I use my AirPods Pro with my Mac more than any other headphones or earbuds. And although they already pair easily with my Mac, ToothFairy makes it faster and easier by letting me connect or disconnect with a single click or keystroke. That may not sound like much, but if you connect and disconnect as many times a day as I do, you’ll appreciate how much time and effort ToothFairy can save you.
It works with most Bluetooth devices, including Bluetooth headphones, speakers, mice, and trackpads, to name a few. Each device can have a unique menu bar icon and keyboard shortcut, making it fast and easy to connect or disconnect any Bluetooth devices you use regularly (just my AirPods Pro so far).
The ToothFairy icon for my AirPods (top); its preferences pane (below left) and its icons (right).
As a bonus, ToothFairy allows you to enable macOS’s higher quality AAC codec, which sends higher-quality audio (than usual) to your earphones or speakers. It’s sweet and only $4.99.
There is one more thing: All three useful utilities are included in Setapp, the subscription service I call, “Netflix for Mac apps,” which gives you access to 170+ apps for $9.99 a month. With its 7-day free trial, you’ve got nothing to lose and a chance to try all three (and more than 170 other useful Mac apps).
…and that’s all he wrote.
One thought on “A Trio of Low-Cost macOS Effort-Savers”
Thanks. I do not know if Endurance (or Turbo Boost Switcher) are better than the macOS Battery Health Management, but Better Touch Tool is awesome. BTW, such application and ToothFairy have wrong-interchanged names-icons in the top graphical abstract of this article.
Thanks. I do not know if Endurance (or Turbo Boost Switcher) are better than the macOS Battery Health Management, but Better Touch Tool is awesome. BTW, such application and ToothFairy have wrong-interchanged names-icons in the top graphical abstract of this article.