If you are someone who uses Safari and uses a mouse that isn’t the Magic Mouse, you may have noticed that Safari doesn’t actually “smooth scroll”. What I mean by this is that Safari doesn’t render scrolling like Chrome, Firefox or Edge but instead, only works well with the Magic Trackpad and the Magic Mouse.

This unfortunately is a bummer as Safari works incredibly well when used across other Apple devices (i.e. iPhone, iPad).

To resolve this first-world problem, I came across a free program called “Mos” which allows you to implement smooth scrolling across all macOS applications.

The result is truly remarkable as it means whenever I scroll in Safari, Xcode and any other application for that matter, the experience is amazing.

I’ve made my scrolling behaviour feel almost like Microsoft’s Edge browser (subjective but I think it feels AMAZING).

My Settings

Here is a quick look at my settings

Installation

This is a fully free and open source application and to install it, you can simply run the command below (assuming you have “brew” installed):

brew install mos

I highly suggest also checking the project page for more information on all of the other features it offers.

Having switched to macOS for my day-to-day computing as Xcode is a requirement for me, I naturally use an external display along with my MacBook Air as I need the larger display from a productivity and ergonomic perspective.

I currently use a Dell 27″ “S2721DS” 1440p display which has been serving me well for the past few years. It’s no Studio Display but it definitely gets the job done and the colours are fairly accurate and has good viewing angles thanks to an IPS panel.

When I was using Linux, the display was as you’d expect, pretty normal and font is rendered just fine however, after using a Mac, I realised that macOS is very picky when it comes to what resolution is being output as anything that isn’t a “Retina” display is typically a hit or miss.

The Dilemma

According to various sources online, if you want the ultimate external monitor experience, you need to go for something that is 5K due to how macOS handles scaling. So if you can afford it, I’d go with a Studio Display as it also comes with really good speakers from what I hear (pun intended 😉

If you go with any other monitor like myself, most folks recommend 1440p as it scales really well at native resolutions without any modifications.

However, I quickly found out that if I want sharper and smoother text and also fix the dredged pixelation when gaming at a lower resolution (yes, I play ETS2 on my Mac :D), then you need to use a tool called “BetterDisplay”

What is BetterDisplay

BetterDisplay is a tool that lets you convert your displays into fully scalable screens, create custom resolutions, control your brightness/HDMI audio (e.g. CEC) and much, much more.

It’s an extremely extensive program which is frankly, overpowered but I use it for two things:

• Scale my 1440p display down to view text more comfortably + gain “Retina” feeling text
• Control external monitor brightness via my keyboard

You can actually adjust a lot and even enable HiDPI (Retina display experience), on just the standard 1440p but I found that this resolution is the sweet spot for me.

I also find myself working at night and having the ability to control the displays brightness via my keyboard is very convenient.

If you’re after a way to spice up the way elements are rendered on your external monitor, I recommend giving BetterDisplay a go!

I have recently moved to a MacBook Air M1 for mobile app development as it allows me to develop for both iOS and Android and is a solid upgrade to my ThinkPad E480.

I come from a Linux background so naturally, I like to make things work for me and because of this, macOS at first felt very un-natural to me however, there are a few apps I have discovered that make the experience much more enjoyable and to the point where it surpasses my Linux experience in many ways.

In this article, I will be sharing some of the apps (mostly open-source) that I found which helps make macOS more for power-users. Some of this is not necessary for a lot of people out there however, for me personally, they make a world of difference.

Clipboard Manager – “Maccy”

Having a working clipboard manager is a must for me. It needs to be one that allows me to paste without formatting, is efficient on resources and ideally open-source as it would hold sensitive data (e.g. passwords) albeit temporary.

I have found one called Maccy and it works really well! Give it a go.

Mouse Optimisation – “LinearMouse” and “Mos”

These two apps are a must-have for me. I have tried to use the Apple Magic Mouse and I do keep it around for on-the-go use however, the sensor and shape is less than ideal for me. I have tried some Logitech Mice too which work well on other operating systems however, the Bluetooth connection tends to lag on macOS (i.e. the polling rate is less than 90Hz which makes it feel sluggish).

I am currently using a SteelSeries Rival 3 Wireless which can be used in both dongle and Bluetooth mode and it works really well. I run it on the lowest polling rate to save on battery with LEDs off, I get a max polling rate of 145Hz which is perfect for daily use in macOS (I am not a big gamer).

However, there is one caveat of using a non-Apple mouse and that is the side-buttons won’t work and mouse acceleration. These two issue are resolved with the use of LinearMouse which allows you to adjust acceleration, sensitivity but also enable universal forward/back buttons which is a must for me.

I also discovered Mos recently which allows me to implement smooth scrolling in all apps and it works really well. It was sad knowing Safari would only have smooth scrolling if you use a magic mouse but I want to use something else and Mos allows me to make Safari absolutely perfect. 👌

Moving windows around – Hummingbird and Rectangle

Rectangle is an app that allows you to snap your windows to corners on your desktop — something that macOS should be able to do by default (even the iPad can do this). It’s a free and open source app and it’s the first thing I install.

Hummingbird is a new discovery for me which allows me to move windows around without having to click on the top bar (i.e. I can put my mouse on the window, press “CTRL+OPT” and simply move it around, no clicking required. And if I press “CTRL+OPT+CMD” together, I can resize the windows.

The reason why I love this app is because I am very used to resizing and moving my windows around with “SUPER+Left Mouse” in Linux but macOS doesn’t have this feature out of the box. Hummingbird is a game changer for me and makes window management even easier.

I also wanted to try out Yabai but having used tiling window managers in the past, it breaks my workflow so I prefer the floating.

Keep Mac Awake – Amphetamine

This is a simple app that works like “caffeine” on Linux (e.g. a GNOME extension) but allows for more granular control (e.g. set up timers for how long you should have caffeine) — simple but effective.

Windows-like Alt-Tab Behaviour – AltTab

I normally use “CMD+TAB” but the default behaviour is to not bring the application to the foreground which is annoying and I have to do “CMD+TAB,OPT”.

This is fine however, there is a nice addition that also allows me to switch to multiple windows of the same app with ease (akin to using “CMD+TILDE”) — and this is AltTab!

It also comes with a load of additional features so it is a nice addition to my Mac workflow.

Status Bar Management – Bartender 5

This is a paid app but I believe it’s a must-have, especially if you decide to install everything mentioned here! 😀

Bartender allows you to clean-up your status bar and keep it looking minimal, similar to how Windows has a “tray”, macOS doesn’t have one by default so in order to have a clutter free top-bar, Bartender comes to the rescue.

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So these are some of the apps I use on my Mac and it’s made the transition from Linux much easier and dare I say, more enjoyable. There are things I miss daily that I could do on Linux but Mac being a UNIX system underneath means that everything feels mostly the same aside from the desktop environment. So there really isn’t much to brag about macOS but when you have nice Apple Silicon powered hardware and have a few Apple devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad), it works wonderfully.

I will also share some of my favourite extensions for Safari too in an upcoming article, thanks for reading, hopefully it has inspired you to spice up your own macOS installation.

I use terminal emulators daily on my main machine and my go-to has always been GNOME Terminal however, that is until I found a new program called “Black Box”!

This is a short article to shed some light on the new contender as I believe it’s worth checking out if you’re on a GTK/GNOME-based desktop environment.

I am a long-time GNOME user as I’ve had a soft-spot to how things work and have been loving the keyboard-centric workflow. I also really enjoy KDE Plasma and other desktop environments however, GNOME has always had a special place in my heart due to how things work. While there are a lot of things that need improving in the GNOME world, the terminal has always been adequate for my needs but seeing how other

Terminal Padding

As GNOME Terminal is a GTK 3 application, I would place the following CSS file into my ~/.config/gtk-3.0/ and it would give me some aesthetic terminal padding.

/* gtk.css
 * Add padding to terminal.
 * Place this into the "~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css" file
 */

VteTerminal,
TerminalScreen,
vte-terminal {
    padding: 10px;
    -VteTerminal-inner-border: 10px;
}

While this doesn’t add anything from a functionality stand-point, it does make the terminal a nicer place to be in. However, there are other appearance related things that are a bit lacking (e.g. coloured CSD/titlebar, seamless scrollbar). These are just purely cosmetic but if I was to spend many hours in the terminal, why not have something nice to look at? 🙂

Black Box vs GNOME Terminal

Here is a quick look at the difference between Black Box and GNOME Terminal.

On the left, you can see Black Box which can be themed very easily and also colour’s the CSD (i.e. titlebar), similar to what iTerm 2 looks like on Mac. 🙂

As for GNOME Terminal, it still looks very good however, the plethora of options available in Black Box is a bit nicer.

Here is a quick look at some of the settings it offers:

It should be available on most distribution repositories but if not, you can always download it from Flathub as a Flatpak.

That’s all for now. 🙂

Just wanted to put it out there, if you’re someone who grew up with Winamp but you’re on Linux and want to experience the same good-old feels, then look no further than Audacious!

Out of the box, it looks pretty standard but once you enable the Winamp classic interface and apply the Winamp skin, it’s simply awesome!

How to apply the theme?

Firstly, install Audacious from your desired package manager. I went the default RPM route on my Fedora install so for me, that would be:

$ sudo dnf install audacious

Once installed, open the application so the configuration files are all loaded, and now download the following XMMS skin:

Also, for those on KDE Plasma and other Qt based desktop environments — you may want to consider QMMP but do note that Audacious also has a Qt mode. 🙂

Once downloaded, move/copy the file into the following directory:

/usr/share/audacious/Skins

For me, it would look like this:

Now, you can enable it:

Enjoy! 🙂