Great free system tools for Mac OS X

Deeper

Deeper takes you further that System Preferences and provides access to a number of extra options such as Finders graphical effects, layout, spacing and menus, as well as some extra options for Dashboard, Dock, Expose, Login and more.

As an extra cool treat you can also select a screen-saver to be your desktop background just to show off how smooth, slick and system-deep the transparency, scaling and hardware acceleration go in OS X.

AppTrap

I’ve commented before on how I like the Mac’s simple installation mechanism that involves just dragging a folder out of the disk image to where you want it, or in some cases running a package but uninstalling should be just as simple. Thanks to AppTrap it is.

AppTrap watches your Trash and if it detects an application being disposed of asks you if you would like to remove the support files. Great.

0xED Cocoa hex editor

Every hardcore user needs a hex editor from time to time and 0xED is free and very capable.

Features include unlimited file size, interpreting bytes as strings in a variety of encodings, or as integers, floats, doubles and support both big and little endian bytes.

0xED also supports a plug-in mechanism so you can write your own custom data types. The plug-in page includes one for interpreting four bytes as an IP address (v4).

TrimTheFat

Until I can get my hands on a Hitachi’s 200GB/7200 replacement internal drive for my MacBook Pro I’m stuck having to prune my photo, music and applications in order to make space.

Most Mac applications now ship in Universal format which means they contain binaries for both PowerPC and Intel architectures. Drag one of these applications to TrimTheFat and it will remove the part your current machine doesn’t need.

SafariStand

SafariStand is a plug-in that lets you tweak tweak Safari’s behavior such as applying alternative style-sheets, disabling JavaScript, Java or images, modifying encoding and minimum font sizes on a site-by-site basis as well as enhancing the bookmarks with colors and categories, disabling animated GIFs and FavIcons.

If you need a reason to install this try Hicksdesign’s Google Reader Theme to make Google Reader look much more like a Mac application.

The Unarchiver

The Mac’s built-in BOMArchiveHelper is a useful de-compressor for archives but for when it can’t handle a format turn to The Unarchiver.

Thanks to the libxad library it uses formats include: Zip .zip, RAR .rar, 7-Zip .7z, LhA .lha .lzh, StuffIt .sit, BinHex .hqx, MacBinary .bin, .macbin, Gzip .gz, .gzip .tgz, .tar-gz, BZip2 .bz2, .bz, .bzip2 .tbz .tbz2, Tar .tar .gnutar, Unix compress .z .taz .tar-z, ACE .ace, Microsoft CAB .cab, Comic Book .cbz .cbr, Linux RPM .rpm, DiskDoubler .dd, Self-Extracting .sea .exe, CPIO .cpio .cpgz, Pax .pax, HA .ha, Amiga disk image .adf, .adz .dms .dcs .pkd .xms .zom, Amiga archive .f .lzx

[)amien

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