9 UNREAL File & Media Management Apps for Mac!

About this video

Jeff Su’s part two of his Mac apps series covers nine file and media management apps. One, backup archivers: macOS’s default Archive Utility does a good job about 80% of the time, but a firmware update zip from Sony recently failed to extract with it, so he keeps free archivers The Unarchiver or Keka installed for the remaining 20%. Two, IINA, a free open-source video player that, unlike VLC, looks built for this century: buttery trackpad fast-forwarding where VLC is laggy, picture-in-picture, a one-click playlist panel, and intuitive settings for aspect ratio, playback speed, and toggling and recoloring subtitles; his preferences set initial volume to 100 and maximum volume to 250 and enable quitting the app when all windows close — a pointed contrast with VLC, whose equivalent settings he used for five to six years but found buried in menus. Three, System Color Picker (free on the App Store): press Command+P to pick any on-screen color and get its hex code, already copied to the clipboard with his preference settings (show in menu bar, uppercase hex prefixed with the # sign, HSL and LCH unchecked, automatic copy in the preferred format, Command+O toggles the window); combined with the clipboard manager from part one of the series, multiple picked hex codes accumulate in one place, and colors can be dragged into the system color palette, where they sync across Mac design apps like Final Cut Pro — removal is only by dragging the color to the trash. Four, Bartender for a clean menu bar: paid, with Dozer and Hidden Bar as free open-source alternatives; in Menu Bar Layout he keeps Wi-Fi, the CleanShot app he is recording with, and Dropzone always visible and hides everything else until he clicks the menu bar, and his favorite rule is Show for Updates — a WeChat icon appears for five seconds when a message arrives (the ‘item has a change’ condition), then hides again so he isn’t staring at unread counts.

Key takeaways

Keep a backup archiver installed: the stock Archive Utility handles about 80% of files, but The Unarchiver or Keka opens what it can’t (his trigger was a Sony firmware zip).
IINA beats VLC on feel, not features: smooth trackpad scrubbing, one-click playlist/subtitles/picture-in-picture, and quit-on-close — set initial volume to 100 and maximum to 250 in his configuration.
Use System Color Picker with Command+P to grab any on-screen color as an uppercase, #-prefixed hex code copied straight to the clipboard; drag colors into the shared palette to reuse them across Mac design apps.
Bartender’s ‘show for updates’ rule is the focus trick: icons like WeChat appear for five seconds when something changes, then hide again (free open-source alternatives: Dozer and Hidden Bar).
Let built-in Automator folder actions do Hazel-style filing for free: Filter Finder Items (extension contains PDF) into Move Finder Items, saved once, files every future download automatically.

Episode details: published May 3, 2022 · 10:48 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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