Learning to Live With Mac OS, Any Tips?

[RONOTHAN##]

So for context, last night I just bought a Macbook Pro 14" (2021 M1 Pro) to replace my Thinkpad L13. For a variety of reasons (the two biggest ones were that I was constantly maxing out the 8GB of RAM and the battery life on it had gotten significantly worse in the past few months) I was considering replacing it for my daily driver laptop, I came across this machine on Facebook Marketplace for what I'd consider a good price, so I decided to go for it. I had already gotten an M1 Air for my mother a few months ago, knew she loved it and the battery life, so figured getting the step up model was going to be borderline overkill for what I do (coding, homelab management, YouTube, responding on here, etc.). 

 

So far, I am liking it to a degree. Hardware wise it's spectacular, the screen is amazing, the keyboard is about on par with my old Thinkpad (different, but I was up to speed instantly), so much trackpad, and everything about it is near perfect. The problem I'm having is more to getting used to Mac OS and all it's particularities, plus trying to figure out what the analogous software is for some of the things I'm used to using. Past few years I've been dailying Linux on my laptops, so I figured it would mostly transfer over single they're both Unix based, but apparently that's not entirely true. 

 

The first major pain point I'm having is window and virtual desktop management. For reference, my Linux distro of choice was Fedora with only a couple Gnome extensions (dash2dock, vitals, and not much else), so I'm in the uncanny valley where a lot of the things I'm used to doing like dragging Windows from virtual desktop to virtual desktop and snapping windows to halves just don't work, plus the annoying quality where it will shift them around if I click on one of them in the dock. The virtual desktop management I could learn to deal with, though if anyone has any tips or settings I could use to make it more like Gnome that would be very much appreciated. Window management, on the other hand, is very annoying. Right now I'm making Windows their own dedicated virtual desktops by dragging them up to the top and leaving them there, and dragging others directly next to them to auto half the screen, though that is quite a bit more clunky to being able to drag a window to the edges of a screen to do it the way Windows does. In my bit of Googling, I've seen a few recommendations for software like BetterSnapTool and Rectangles, though was wondering if there were any others that people can attest to? I've tried rectangles so far, It did OK though in my 5 minutes of messing with it I haven't gotten it to auto start after a reboot (I'm probably just doing something wrong) and it doesn't handle multiple windows very well (only moving the individual window and not the seam between two apps). 

 

Next up, it would be nice to know of some soft of hardware monitoring alternatives, basically replacements for task manager and hwinfo. I'm just used to monitoring stuff like that for troubleshooting, so being able to do that again would be nice. 

 

There are a couple other small annoyances, like the lack of a delete (Windows style), home, and end keys (these might have a keybind replacement that I haven't figured out yet), the removal of a keyboard backlight control shortcut, the fact that Finder feels clunky at best, Snap to grid is disabled by default and the setting seems to be per directory, and some other things that I haven't found since I've only had the machine for about 24 hours. 

 

 

Basically, I'm just looking for some tips and hopefully some good software tools that would work on here that will help grow more accustom to Mac OS. Realistically, all of those things are just some annoyances, it doesn't affect the usefulness of the laptop, it just makes me slightly less productive than I was before and I'm hoping to get back to the same rate I used to be. Any suggestions welcome and very much appreciated. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

[DrMacintosh]

Some key apps:

Magnet or Better Snap Tool (lets you have a Windows like window management system with custom key binds, zones, etc. I use Better Snap Tool, its old and hasn't really been updated much, but it doesn't need to bc the technology hasn't changed. BetterSnapTool lets you do things like change the line weight of the "snapping" UI effect and is overall extremely customizable, I'd get it over Magnet, but Magnet just works so it's up to you.

 

MacsFanControl. I use this mainly as a means to monitor temperatures in the menu bar, but I also use it to blast the fans on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro while gaming/rendering.

 

Activity Monitor (included with the OS), this is basically task manager, however the way macOS reports resource usage such as memory is different than Windows. macOS really likes to cache data, so its common to see your memory being near full but your memory pressure in the green. When your memory pressure goes into the yellow or red, that is when you actually have a memory usage problem.

 

Disk Utility (included with the OS) is where you manage disks, create RAID volumes, image drives, etc. It's very powerful and I suggest looking around at all the features it has to offer. Learn the benefits of APFS vs HFS+ (HFS+ for HDDs, APFS for SSDs), volumes vs. partitions, running first aid, formatting drives, etc.

 

Finder (included with the OS). First off, pin your user folder to your side bar! It will save you lots of time! Also open the Finder Settings to customize it! Btw, if you want to change the size of thumbnails you have to right click blank space in the folder, click show view options, and crank the item size slider. Selecting a folder/file and pressing cmd + i will bring up the "properties" (macOS calls it info) of a given folder.

 

Terminal (included with the OS) is your command line interface for your Mac. Very powerful with cool UI customization options, I like to use a black background with green text.

 

Time Machine (included with the OS) this is Apples built in incremental backup feature. The architecture of macOS is so well refined that when you restore a Mac from a Time Machine backup it will be like nothing ever happened. Time Machine can also keep a version history for most Apple File types like .pages, .numbers, .keynote and takes local snapshots so you can go in and recover lost work.

 

Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie, and Garageband (included). All free and pretty powerful productivity apps. Pages is great, numbers is ok, keynote is amazing. iMovie is basic but will let you cut a rough video together. Garageband is fun if you like to tinker with music.

 

Preview.app (included) is a pretty powerful PDF editor even though that is not its main focus. You can add/remove pages, rotate pages, markup, etc. pdf documents with ease.

 

QuickTime.app (included) is not only your default video file player, it can also record audio and screen record your desktop. Though if you need to record desktop audio, you need OBS and a third party audio driver called BlackHole and need to use the built in Audio MIDI Setup app.

 

Shift+cmd+5 will bring up the macOS screen shot toolbar

 

Transmission is the go to macOS torrent client so you can download all the Linux ISOs you need.

 

Parallels is a must have if you need to visualize Windows. There simply isn't any other software that can make a VM perform as well as Parallels. The Graphics drivers and scaling support is second to none.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Magnet or Better Snap Tool (lets you have a Windows like window management system with custom key binds, zones, etc. I use Better Snap Tool, its old and hasn't really been updated much, but it doesn't need to bc the technology hasn't changed. BetterSnapTool lets you do things like change the line weight of the "snapping" UI effect and is overall extremely customizable, I'd get it over Magnet, but Magnet just works so it's up to you.

I will look into these. The main issue I have is I don't want to spend $10 on something that I will try using once, decide it doesn't work for me, then just be out $10. I'll see If there's a way I can get a free trial to give them a shot, but I am a bit of a cheapskate and will try to get a free option if possible. 

 

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

MacsFanControl. I use this mainly as a means to monitor temperatures in the menu bar, but I also use it to blast the fans on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro while gaming/rendering.

Definitely will look into getting this, looks like a direct replacement of vitals that I had on my Linux setup. 

 

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Disk Utility (included with the OS) is where you manage disks, create RAID volumes, image drives, etc. It's very powerful and I suggest looking around at all the features it has to offer. Learn the benefits of APFS vs HFS+ (HFS+ for HDDs, APFS for SSDs), volumes vs. partitions, running first aid, formatting drives, etc.

I had heard of this one before, basically a direct replacement for diskpart on Windows. I doubt I'll ever really need to use it, I've got a system with a Linux install and a HDD toaster for this exact thing, but it is good that it at least exists. 

 

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Finder (included with the OS). First off, pin your user folder to your side bar! It will save you lots of time! Also open the Finder Settings to customize it! Btw, if you want to change the size of thumbnails you have to right click blank space in the folder, click show view options, and crank the item size slider. Selecting a folder/file and pressing cmd + i will bring up the "properties" (macOS calls it info) of a given folder.

I had figured out a couple of things from this, though I still stand by saying that it's not really fully featured by my standards. I did figure out how to default auto snap to grid, but the thing that's really annoying me is the fact I can't seem to have a text based file location bar (there's almost certainly a better name for this, but it's kinda late and I can't think of it), instead just the name of my current folder and right click to get some of the parent directories. I know there's a keyboard shortcut to open up a "go to file" window, but that should just be the default behavior. Most of the customization settings I've seen more affect just the overall look of the software, not the actual functionality that I want as I don't really care about the color or thumbnail size (I'm pretty good with file naming that for the most part it's quicker to look at the name than it is to look at the thumbnail), I just want it to be able to get to the files I want so I can move them around quicker than I could poking around in the terminal. 

 

This one unless there's some major functionality I seem to be missing I'm almost certainly going to have to look for a third party replacement for, I can't really see myself getting used to the fact I can't just enter in or quick edit a file location. Maybe there's a 7zip or Thunar port for Mac OS, I'll look in the morning. 

 

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Terminal (included with the OS) is your command line interface for your Mac. Very powerful with cool UI customization options, I like to use a black background with green text.

I have seen this, I have already used it to homebrew my Mac. I haven't poked around that much with customization, though quite frankly as long as the text is a distinct shade from the background I don't really care. I just want something light-ish and at my fingertips in seconds. 

 

I am kinda used to a drop down terminal on my laptops (again, I'm coming from a linux machine where half my time was spent in the terminal), so it would be nice if I can get an alternative to that. I'm sure there is, I just haven't gotten around to finding one yet (it's pretty low on my priority list).

 

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Time Machine (included with the OS) this is Apples built in incremental backup feature. The architecture of macOS is so well refined that when you restore a Mac from a Time Machine backup it will be like nothing ever happened. Time Machine can also keep a version history for most Apple File types like .pages, .numbers, .keynote and takes local snapshots so you can go in and recover lost work.

This was already pretty high on my priority list to setup. I just wanted to configure it to backup to my server first, setup its own specific share to backup to, and that was something I planned to setup over the weekend. 

 

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie, and Garageband (included). All free and pretty powerful productivity apps. Pages is great, numbers is ok, keynote is amazing. iMovie is basic but will let you cut a rough video together. Garageband is fun if you like to tinker with music.

I have already installed Garage band. Don't really see myself tinkering with it too much, but it is nice to have. For all the others, I'm pretty glued to the MS Office equivalents and would rather not have to relearn them, same with Davinci resolve. Not that I really use any of them except for Word very regularly. 

 

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Preview.app (included) is a pretty powerful PDF editor even though that is not its main focus. You can add/remove pages, rotate pages, markup, etc. pdf documents with ease.

Good tip with Preview, thought it was just for viewing photos and I'd have to have something like Acrobat or just use a browser for PDF viewing. 

 

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

QuickTime.app (included) is not only your default video file player, it can also record audio and screen record your desktop. Though if you need to record desktop audio, you need OBS and a third party audio driver called BlackHole and need to use the built in Audio MIDI Setup app.

Did not know you needed BlackHole in order to use OBS on desktop audio. That'll save me an hour or two in the future when I eventually need to record my desktop. 

 

I will probably swap QuickTime out for VLC, it is just what I'm more used to, though I'll probably use it for a week or so before finally making the switch. 

 

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Shift+cmd+5 will bring up the macOS screen shot toolbar

First thing I Google'd, and the first thing I figured out how to change the shortcut to so my previous muscle memory will just work. It'll annoy any mac user who tries to borrow mine, but I won't have to learn something new for that. 

 

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Transmission is the go to macOS torrent client so you can download all the Linux ISOs you need.

Got it, it's already the software I was used to on Linux. Not that I use it much, if at all, but I'll have it in the background for the once every 2-3 months when I need to use it. 

 

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Parallels is a must have if you need to visualize Windows. There simply isn't any other software that can make a VM perform as well as Parallels. The Graphics drivers and scaling support is second to none

I had heard of Parallels, and it was one of the first things I installed. Then I saw the $100 a year subscription fee. I get it's the best, but there are other ways I can virtualize hardware that are free, and again, I'm a cheap bastard. 

 

 

 

Thanks for all the suggestions though, I'll keep them in mind. 

[DrMacintosh]

6 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I can't seem to have a text based file location bar

Here’s how to get the file path 

https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-show-a-file-path-on-mac

[RONOTHAN##]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Here’s how to get the file path 

https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-show-a-file-path-on-mac

I mean, it's better than nothing, but it's still not what I'm talking about. You can't edit it directly to change your file path, and with how I have my directories setup that is a pretty important functionality. 

[DrMacintosh]

9 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I mean, it's better than nothing, but it's still not what I'm talking about. You can't edit it directly to change your file path, and with how I have my directories setup that is a pretty important functionality. 

Yeah, its not like Windows, all you can do is copy the file path as text and edit it that way. Also, pro tip, if you try to save a document and Finder asks you where you want it to go, it will pick some recently or commonly used folder. If you happen to have another Finder Window open with the directory you want, just pick any file in that directory and drag it into the save dialog, the save dialog will then go to that directory.

[RONOTHAN##]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Yeah, its not like Windows, all you can do is copy the file path as text and edit it that way

And that's the exact reason I want to replace it. I'd consider it basic enough functionality that it should be included no matter what. There are some other smaller gripes like no refresh button as well that make it so unless there's a ton of extensions that exist, I'll just replace it with a better aftermarket alternative. 

 

Right now I'm looking at using MuCommander, it looks like it adds the functionality that I want as well as some useful additions (native SFTP is pretty useful, same with the dual tab layout), though I'm gonna look around a bit more for alternatives before I settle on this. 

[BondiBlue]

If you haven't been using it already, Spotlight! Press command and the space bar at the same time and you'll see Spotlight. You can also access it by clicking the magnifying glass in the menu bar. Spotlight is how I launch apps 95% of the time. CMD + space, type the first couple characters of the app name, and enter. It'll also let you quickly look things up online, and it can be used for calculations and conversions. It's not super crazy or anything, but it's a handy shortcut that I use all the time. 

 

17 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

MacsFanControl. I use this mainly as a means to monitor temperatures in the menu bar, but I also use it to blast the fans on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro while gaming/rendering.

Completely agree with this. I have it installed on all of my Macs, even my two M1 MacBooks. @RONOTHAN## shouldn't need to use it for fan control very much since they have a 14" M1 Pro MBP, but it could still help to keep the overall temperature down when charging or something. The palmrest area of my 16" M1 Max gets pretty warm when charging at 140W through MagSafe (warm enough for the fans to kick on automatically at their lowest speed), so sometimes I'll speed the fans up a little bit to keep it cooler while charging. 

[RONOTHAN##]

9 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

If you haven't been using it already, Spotlight! Press command and the space bar at the same time and you'll see Spotlight. You can also access it by clicking the magnifying glass in the menu bar. Spotlight is how I launch apps 95% of the time. CMD + space, type the first couple characters of the app name, and enter. It'll also let you quickly look things up online, and it can be used for calculations and conversions. It's not super crazy or anything, but it's a handy shortcut that I use all the time. 

Yup, it really is nice, much better than the Linux and windows alternatives I was using. I'm still getting used to that particular keybind, I still keep going to just hit the CMD key and wonder why a search bar isn't coming up, but I'll get used to it at some point. 

 

45 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

Completely agree with this. I have it installed on all of my Macs, even my two M1 MacBooks. @RONOTHAN## shouldn't need to use it for fan control very much since they have a 14" M1 Pro MBP, but it could still help to keep the overall temperature down when charging or something. The palmrest area of my 16" M1 Max gets pretty warm when charging at 140W through MagSafe (warm enough for the fans to kick on automatically at their lowest speed), so sometimes I'll speed the fans up a little bit to keep it cooler while charging. 

Good to know about the fans with the charger. Right now I'm just using the 65W one the guy included with it, where the laptop doesn't even get warm, but if I ever upgrade in the future that'll be good to know. 

[float]

My recommendations -

 

iTerm2 is the killer app for dev work on a Mac, specifically its tmux integration - ssh into a remote box, run "tmux -CC", and the windows will feel local. Too many other features to go into, but it does have the dropdown terminal you were missing.

 

Try the free 7 days SetApp gives you, the following apps on there might address some of your pain points: iStat Menus, BetterTouchTool, Mosaic (draggable window manager), uBar, and Path Finder (finder alternative, Forklift seems to be more popular.) I'd also try Bartender (OSS: Dozer) and Paste (OSS: Maccy) from there as well.

 

Highly recommend getting either Raycast (free) or Alfred (pricey but with other nice features) as a Spotlight replacement.

 

Other nice apps: Deliveries, iina (OSS mpv-like app), xbar (OSS), Fantastical (apparently $5/mo now and probably not worth it, but nice), fsnotes (OSS, note taking), rewind.ai, Hammerspoon (OSS, can do window management, key mapping, and much more), skhd (OSS, simple key mapping), karabiner-elements (OSS, use the caps lock -> hyperkey mapping from https://github.com/Vonng/Capslock.) My setup for window management is just: bring up Spotify with hyper+s, then snap it to the left side of my screen with hyper+left.

 

I'd install these through "brew install --cask" when you can for ease of upgrading. Macs use some Emacs shortcuts, so the home/end buttons are ctrl+a and ctrl+e, and others exist, like ctrl+k which deletes to the end of the line. fn+delete to delete rightwards. Anything you don't like, just remap. In addition to using Hammerspoon/skhd/Alfred, you can map any menu item to a key through System Settings->Keyboard->Keyboard shortcuts->App shortcuts.

 

Hopefully that list wasn't too scattershot to be useful. There's a pretty vast ecosystem of apps out there. Check out https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp too for one of the neater reasons to own a Macbook M1/M2 right now, since it sounds like you've got one with a decent amount of RAM.

[Jaxrebel]

Id recommend to try UTM , for virtual machines, not sure how good it is if you want to game on a windows wm compared to parallell but its free and its easy to install .

https://mac.getutm.app/

 

I also like bear , for markdown app for ios and macos, its not free for sync but the yearly cost is cheap.

https://bear.app/

 

For web browser im really starting to like arc, its closed beta atm but you can join the waiting list 

let me know if you want a code thread starter only as of now.

https://arc.net/

 

 

[RONOTHAN##]

7 hours ago, float said:

iTerm2 is the killer app for dev work on a Mac, specifically its tmux integration - ssh into a remote box, run "tmux -CC", and the windows will feel local. Too many other features to go into, but it does have the dropdown terminal you were missing.

Really great suggestion, thanks. First thing I did was download and setup the dropdown terminal. 

 

7 hours ago, float said:

Try the free 7 days SetApp gives you, the following apps on there might address some of your pain points: iStat Menus, BetterTouchTool, Mosaic (draggable window manager), uBar, and Path Finder (finder alternative, Forklift seems to be more popular.) I'd also try Bartender (OSS: Dozer) and Paste (OSS: Maccy) from there as well.

iStat Menus and Path Finder seem really good, though I really hate the idea of software as a service. There are some free alternatives I'd try first, though Path Finder does really seem to be the best out of all the ones I've seen bar none (at least for my use case), and looking through their subscription tiers I might be able to just pay for one month then keep using it without updates (as said above, I'm a cheap bastard). Maccy I've got no problems with, I'll set it up later today.

 

7 hours ago, float said:

Other nice apps: Deliveries, iina (OSS mpv-like app), xbar (OSS), Fantastical (apparently $5/mo now and probably not worth it, but nice), fsnotes (OSS, note taking), rewind.ai, Hammerspoon (OSS, can do window management, key mapping, and much more), skhd (OSS, simple key mapping), karabiner-elements (OSS, use the caps lock -> hyperkey mapping from https://github.com/Vonng/Capslock.) My setup for window management is just: bring up Spotify with hyper+s, then snap it to the left side of my screen with hyper+left.

I'll take a look at some of these. 

 

7 hours ago, float said:

I'd install these through "brew install --cask" when you can for ease of upgrading. Macs use some Emacs shortcuts, so the home/end buttons are ctrl+a and ctrl+e, and others exist, like ctrl+k which deletes to the end of the line. fn+delete to delete rightwards. Anything you don't like, just remap. In addition to using Hammerspoon/skhd/Alfred, you can map any menu item to a key through System Settings->Keyboard->Keyboard shortcuts->App shortcuts.

Thanks for the tips about Emacs shortcuts, I'll keep those in mind. It'll still probably take me a month to get used to hitting ctrl+a and ctrl+e instead of going off muscle memory to where I'm used to the home/end keys, but at least I know roughly where I need to go for those to start getting used to it rather than constantly hitting volume up and down. 

 

7 hours ago, float said:

Hopefully that list wasn't too scattershot to be useful. There's a pretty vast ecosystem of apps out there. Check out https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp too for one of the neater reasons to own a Macbook M1/M2 right now, since it sounds like you've got one with a decent amount of RAM.

Don't worry about the scattershot nature, I've seen far worse before. Thanks for the tips though.

 

4 hours ago, Jaxrebel said:

Id recommend to try UTM , for virtual machines, not sure how good it is if you want to game on a windows wm compared to parallell but its free and its easy to install .

https://mac.getutm.app/

Thanks for the tip, it looks like what I need from a VM manager. Just something to occasionally run a Windows or Linux VM, both in x86 or ARM native. 

[float]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

though I really hate the idea of software as a service.

It's become extremely prevalent, and yeah, I'm also loathe to stacking up monthly expenses like that. The golden age might've been 5-10 years ago, when companies like Panic were pushing out high quality software for a one-time fee which far surpassed Windows/Linux offerings. Now the gap's somewhat closer and half of everything is Electron, but imo macOS still remains the best environment for coding and daily use.

 

Looking again, Fantastical has a free version so I'll push that rec higher. It lets you easily enter events ("remind me 5 days pickup mail", "phone call 5pm tomorrow".) And I have no idea what Gnome window management is like, but Yabai and Amethyst are two others to look into if you're used to the tiling kind.

 

Couple last brain dump tips:

- Searching "awesome macos github" will pull up some curated lists of apps

- HN search and https://camas.unddit.com/ are my go-to for gut checks on alternatives. Typing in "forklift path finder" or "istat menus" quickly gets you a sense of the landscape. Reddit just cut the latter off from access to new data, so tragically it's going to become less useful a few months from now, and then it's back to "site:reddit.com istat menus"

[sodapone]

On 5/6/2023 at 12:14 AM, RONOTHAN## said:

I will look into these. The main issue I have is I don't want to spend $10 on something that I will try using once, decide it doesn't work for me, then just be out $10. I'll see If there's a way I can get a free trial to give them a shot, but I am a bit of a cheapskate and will try to get a free option if possible.

Try Rectangle then--it's free and open-source. It's what I use, although to be honest lately I've just gotten more used to having windows stacked on top of each other.

[RONOTHAN##]

52 minutes ago, sodapone said:

Try Rectangle then--it's free and open-source. It's what I use, although to be honest lately I've just gotten more used to having windows stacked on top of each other.

Yup, I think I mentioned it somewhere in this thread it's the one I've been using so far. It's functional and does everything I really need it to. I wouldn't say it's the best, it is a little clunky to use and I wish it had the Windows 10 style "fill the gap with one of these applications" menu as well as adjusting both windows simultaneously, but it works OK enough that I'll get used to it and don't really feel like putting effort into finding something new. 

 

6 hours ago, float said:

And I have no idea what Gnome window management is like, but Yabai and Amethyst are two others to look into if you're used to the tiling kind.

I'll take a look at those, though for reference the Gnome window management is very much like Windows 10's window management, at least with the extensions I had running. It had drag to the top for full screen, corner for quarter, sides for half, and bottom for bottom half, and had the auto populate empty space options (by default I'm pretty sure it's just full screen and halves, no quarters or bottom half, as well as no auto populate). It's mainly configured around the idea of virtual desktops, with it being very easy to quickly throw one application from one to another and get around them very quickly, that way you don't have to have everything tiled to see everything. I can kinda emulate that workflow with Spaces (Mac OS's name for virtual desktops), especially after figuring out the setting you need to turn off to keep it from moving them around randomly, though if there's something to have to auto open and close spaces like Gnome's default that would be much appreciated rather than having to keep 5-6 spaces open at all times and scroll past 2-3 if I leave one empty for some reason. 

 

Not really needing something like i3wm or another tiling window manager if that's what those are like (I'll look at them later tonight). 

[maplepants]

If you've got AirPods, I recommend AirBuddy. It's truly excellent.

 

I also second @float's recommendations of Maccy and Dozer.

 

And once you've got Dozer going and have full control of your menubar you might want to add some custom info. For that I recommend SwiftBar. I've got scripts 3 swiftbar scripts I wrote myself in my menu bar at all times. One combines the temperature from my outdoor thermometer and conditions from openweather.