I really like raycast. It’s similar extension to Spotlight just like Alfred, but feels much better somehow.

If you like the integrated touchpad or planning to get an external one, better touch tool is also great productivity app which lets you create custom gestures.

There is also preinstalled application called shortcuts, which lets you easily create kind of scripts which you can use daily.

Bartender. Menu bar manager.

aText. Text shortcut expander. I use the pi symbol to prefix my shortcuts (Opt-p).

eMacs shortcuts work in the GUI, btw.

I’ll try to remember to add more when I get home.

• AdGuard for Safari
• Amphetamine (to keep the Mac from sleeping when you need it, also check out caffeinate which is a CLI tool that comes with the OS to do the same)
• bsdtar from libarchive for a universal (un)archiver (Archive Utility doesn't unpack nearly enough common archive formats unfortunately and can create even fewer)
• Mac Mouse Fix (if you want to use a button mouse with it)
• Nix instead of docker, it actually bothers with native Mac packages instead of being a glorified VM
• Raycast (this one is also enhanced spotlight)

Some UI settings I've changed (these are up to taste obviously but I like them more):

• Mission Control -> Group spaces by application: ON
• Dock -> Minimize windows into application icon: ON
• Keyboard -> Press fn key to: Do Nothing (the default of I think Show Emoji & Symbols was driving me crazy because I kept hitting it by accident)
• Control Center -> Automatically hide and show the menu bar: Never (works especially well with the camera because it leaves blank space otherwise)
• Keyboard Shortcuts -> Function Keys -> Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys: ON
• probably more that I forgot but these should be the major ones

Coming from i3wm my personal must have before installing other softwares like the ones in your list are :

• Tilling window manager with Yabai
• Ubersicht for building a gnome look
• Alfred, but I discovered another one in this thread so I'll try it.

I also like Keyboard Maestro a lot for generating text with a simple 3 or 4 keystrokes (like ,,d = date. ,,id = DDMMYYHHMM etc etc.)

(And not really related but I'm trying Asahi Linux at the moment (native linux on Apple silicon) and this is dope !)

Didn’t see it here, but either VLC or IINA. I used VLC forever, but have recently mostly switched over to IINA.

Also an app uninstaller. I use AppZapper b/c I paid 99¢ for it forever ago (anybody remember maczot?) and it still works.

Privacy.sexy

Amphetamine is the Mac version of Caffeine. It basically keeps your display on for a set amount of time without having to modify system settings.

If you have the ARM silicon chip your VM options are limited but possible. VMWare Fusion is free for personal use but since this is work you can likely get reimbursed easily. You can get Ubuntu running by downloading the ARM Ubuntu server iso and installing apt package ubuntu-gnome-desktop and you’ll want open-vm-tools-desktop, open-vm-tools, and likely build-essential. You can also cross compile a distro you like but only that, Kali, and Manjaro have ARM ISOs to my knowledge

my favorite app is Parallels so I can run a Linux VM as my main environment and never touch the Mac stuff