Mail

Mail

I’m quite content with the default OS X mail app. It handles all my non Gmail email addresses and it’s very stable. If I remember correctly, it only crashed once during the whole year.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text

A joy to work with. I’m actually writing this blog post in Sublime and I’m using the MarkdownEditing package to do so. Just shows that it can be used for more than just writing code.

Sketch

Sketch

I used it this year to design both Sketch Repo and PSD Repo, along with a few other things as well. And although there has been some controversy around the 3.4 release, Sketch remains a solid app and gets my recommendation.

Transmit

Transmit

My favorite FTP client, without a doubt. I use it daily for uploading images to Amazon S3 and I really appreciate that it allows you to set custom headers for each file type.

ImageAlpha

ImageAlpha

I think it reduces my CloudFront bill by 50%, if not more. I use it every day to convert fat PNG32 images into bandwidth and performance friendly PNG8 images. Awesome tool!

ImageOptim

ImageOptim

ImageAlpha’s older and more popular brother. This app, as well, has become an important part of my daily workflow. And it’s a pleasure to use.

1Password

1Password

Removes the hassle of logging in to websites almost completely. A good example of an app that doesn’t get in the way.

Plug

Plug for Mac

An awesome OS X player for The Hype Machine. They just released version 2 for El Capitan, but I haven’t tested it yet since my main machine is still running Mavericks.

Mailplane

Mailplane

Last year, I think, it was on the top of this list. But as my email habits have changed, I now open Mailplane maybe twice a day and close it quickly afterwards.

Evernote

Evernote

This was a pretty disappointing year in regards to Evernote. Most of the time whenever I would start the app the whole UI would become unresponsive until the synchronization with the server would be complete. But lately I noticed this issue is gone, so in 2016 I hope to use Evernote more than I did this year.

CodeKit

I wanted to use Sass, but not learn how to use Gulp or Grunt or other task automation tool. CodeKit fit the bill.

SourceTree

SourceTree

My Git client of choice. Does a lot more than I need, but without getting in the way.

Skype

Skype

The only video calling app that still works on my parents’ first generation iPad. And I use it mostly to talk to them.

Integrity

Integrity

A pretty handy app if you’re running a website that links to a lot of external content. I use it once a week to check for dead links and other issues.