The Lifehacker Pack is a yearly snapshot of our favourite, essential applications for each of our favourite platforms. For our always-updating directory of all the best apps, be sure to bookmark. Mac, Linux: Copying or pasting content could crash the applications. 37843: Mac: Files on network drives could only be opened 'read-only'. 37874: Mac, Linux: The setting 'Print in black & white' in the Print dialog box was ignored. 38211: Mac: Sorting ignored the country settings. 38125: If you send a password-protected file by e-mail, the password is now retained.

Lifehacker Pack For Mac 2018 Collections

There are so many Windows apps out there, that picking a list of the very best, most must-install software for your desktop or laptop feels daunting. We’ve pored over pages of recommendations, countless forum posts, and lots of comments to come up with this year’s Lifehacker Pack for Windows, a list of software champions across four categories: productivity; internet and communications; music, photos, and video; and utilities.

The Lifehacker Pack is an annual snapshot of our favorite, essential applications for each of our favorite platforms. For our always-updating directory of all the best apps, be sure to bookmark our App Directory, where we profile amazing apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS each week—browser extensions, too.

Jul 18, 2016 Note unfortunately, the Ninite pack is missing a couple apps from the listmost notably CCleaner because they dont want their software innbspFeb 21, 2018 When you throw in Windows, Mac, Linux and myriad browser Lifehacker Pack for Windows Our List of the Essential Windows Apps Our List of the Essential Windows Apps 2019 2018. Lifehacker Pack for Mac: Our List of the Essential Mac Apps 2018. 2 months ago No Comments. Facebook; Prev Article Next Article. There are a bunch of nice apps you may set up in your Mac—no query there. The best USB-C power packs for iPhone, iPad, and Mac Anker PowerCore+ The Anker PowerCore+ features a 26,800 capacity with 30W USB-C support, as well as two traditional USB-A ports.

Productivity

Wox (free)

Sure, Windows 10 comes with its own search feature—the Cortana search that you access by poking the Windows button on your keyboard and typing in an app, file name, or anything else you feel like finding on your system (or learning more about).

We think the open-source app Wox is a great alternative, because it’s a speedy app launcher that’s also great for finding files and folders scattered across your system. More importantly, it makes it easy to quickly search the web by tapping just a few keys on your keyboard—whether you want a simple Google search or would rather use your own customized prefixes to load your query in a different search engine. Wox also supports third-party plugins, so you can do everything from find out your current IP address, to searching YouTube and Twitch streams, to controlling your Spotify playlist.

OneNote (free)

Since our previous favorite, Evernote, tightened up what you can do on its free plan—and its cheapest paid-for plan now costs $8/monthly (RIP Evernote Plus)—we think OneNote is the best, cross-platform note-taking app for Windows users. It’s completely free, you can grab OneNote apps for iOS and Android in case you want to synchronize your notes across multiple devices, and it’s already installed on Windows 10 by default. Easy as that. If you have a fancier Windows tablet, you can even write out or draw your notes with a stylus (or finger).

We recommend grabbing the OneNote Web Clipper extension for Chrome or Firefox so you can save interesting web pages you’re looking at, too. Also consider installing Office Lens for Android or iOS, so you can send photos of documents, whiteboards, and other items you’ve “scanned” directly to OneNote.

PhraseExpress (free)

As Lifehacker alum Patrick Allan wrote in 2016:

“Text expansion is one of the greatest improvements you can make to your productivity. Think of any tedious typing you do during the day—addresses, canned email responses, bits of code, or anything else—and imagine being able to type it all with just a few keystrokes. That’s what text expansion does, and it can save you hours of typing. PhraseExpress is [...] our go-to for folks new to text expansion.”

For a new, no-frills, open-source alternative, you can also give Beeftext a try. A number of other text expansion fans also swear by Breevy, which you can also use to launch applications via tiny text shortcuts. That said, the app will set you back $35. We’ll stick with PhraseExpress, first.

Todoist or Microsoft To-Do (free-ish)

The age-old battle continues. Todoist is one of our top choices for task management, and its core functionality is completely free for you to use. (You’ll pay $36/annually for extras like automatic reminders, backups for your tasks, customized labels, and a way to review all of your tasks for a given project.) Todoist is also incredibly cross-platform: You can pull up all the tasks you’re putting off via Chrome or Firefox, macOS, iOS, Android, and both watchOS and Android Wear—Gmail and Outlook, too. You now, officially, have no reason to put off your tasks any longer.

Microsoft To-Do—built by the team that developed Wunderlist—is worth keeping your eye on. You can track tasks, drop in reminders, and color-code your various task lists. You even get a helpful little “intelligent reminder” service, “My Day,” that can encourage you to get stuff done with useful suggestions of what tasks you might want to tackle first. We still prefer Todoist for now, since it works on even more devices and browsers than Microsoft To-Do, but the latter might eventually eclipse the former... just not yet.

Also, if you’re tempted to check out Wunderlist, don’t get too attached. As Microsoft mentioned in a 2017 blog post, “Once we are confident that we have incorporated the best of Wunderlist into Microsoft To-Do, we will retire Wunderlist.” There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to port your reminders and settings over to another app (like Microsoft To-Do) when Wunderlist disappears, but you at least you can play with all of Wunderlist’s pro features for free during this awkward transition.

Office Online or LibreOffice (free)

If you don’t want to pay Microsoft for Office 365, there’s always Office Online—a free way to view and create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. (As always, you also should give Google’s office suite a try if you want comprehensive document-, spreadsheet-, and presentation-creating apps that you don’t have to pay for.)

If you need an offline (and free) solution, consider the open-source office suite LibreOffice. For the basics, LibreOffice is a great alternative. But if you find yourself switching between Microsoft’s apps and LibreOffice when working on work spreadsheets or presentations, for example, you might find it a lot easier to just pay Microsoft’s price. LibreOffice can be a little fussy when you’re bouncing between the two platforms.

Sumatra PDF (free)

Finding a simple PDF reader that doesn’t feel bloated or ugly can be a challenge, but Sumatra PDFis the best we’ve come across so far. It’s just for reading, not editing, but it’s a lot better than Microsoft’s solution: reading all of your PDFs in its Edge browser. We’re fans of Sumatra PDF’s clean interface and speed, and it even has a portable version, too, if you want to quickly look at a PDF file without installing a new app.

Internet and Communication

Google Chrome or Firefox Quantum (free)

Firefox has alwa