Keep your Mac awake — great for presentations and long downloads. Free on the App Store.

Hide and organize menu bar icons. Bartender (paid) or Ice (free)

Docker Desktop for Mac — menu bar icon shows engine status, running containers, and resource usage. Used on Mac Studio for local containers (Paperless-NGX, etc.).

Detailed system monitoring: CPU, GPU, memory, disk, sensors, weather. bjango.com

NetBird mesh VPN client — menu bar icon shows connection status. Connects Mac Studio to the homelab mesh network (hpve, VPS, farm). Replaced Pangolin in April 2026. See NetBird page for full configuration.

Clipboard manager that lives in the menu bar — stores clipboard history, supports pinned snippets, and organizes frequently-used text clips. Free and open source.

Email notifications filter — shows unread count only for important messages. Reduces inbox noise by filtering newsletters and automated emails from the badge count. Works with Gmail, iCloud, and other IMAP accounts.

Free system monitor in the menu bar — CPU, memory, disk, network, battery. GitHub

Peer-to-peer file sync — menu bar icon shows sync status. Hub-and-spoke topology through Proxmox (always-on relay). Syncs ~/Sync/ED across Mac Studio and other devices. Web UI at localhost:8384.

Text expansion — type abbreviations and they expand into full snippets (email signatures, code blocks, frequent phrases). Faster than macOS built-in text replacement. Supports rich text, images, date math, and scripted expansions.