this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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Hammerspoon and Alfred are way better automation utils than alternatives in Windows or Linux. The absence of these two makes me weep regularly.
Karabiner might be the best too, haven't looked into third-party Linux remapping utils yet. Both Cinnamon and KDE support only predefined remapping out of the box.
HyperSwitch and a dozen other utils allow customizing cmd-tab switching, namely add switching between windows instead of apps.
Native Clipy clipboard manager is way snappier than CopyQ. At least for Windows there's Ditto.
There's even an util called Mos fixing the fact that apps with foreign UI frameworks don't understand the mouse scrolling speed properly, and treat the mouse and the touchpad differently. Which is also present in Windows.
You know about the touchbar? MTMR allows custom buttons on the touchbar, with custom actions. I've used it to connect/disconnect bluetooth headphones or hand them over to the phone (which was also set up as an Alfred command and as buttons on the phone itself, with bidirectional logic everywhere).
Shortcat allows keyboard access to arbitrary UI elements in the active window: sorta like Vimium for browsers, but you type a bit of the text label instead of a two-letter shortcut.
Hazel automatically processes files saved in particular folders, with particular rules โ like the downloads. It can e.g. rename, move, or tag them. By the way, did you know that MacOS has tags for files while Windows and Linux have jackshit?
MacOS' Cocoa UI framework allows addressing any element in an app's window via xpath (iirc) and manipulate them, if given accessibility permissions from the user. Which permits doing a lot of UI automation without fiddling with mouse coordinates and faking clicks. And can be done with native AppleScript (although I'd prefer that they properly supported JXA instead). By the way, more than a few apps provide their own support for AppleScript, such that for example you can access notes in Evernote with it.
P.S. I also forgot about Automator, which is a first-party app by Apple, bundled with MacOS, that allows creating custom workflows for particular files, apps, or whatever. Neither Windows nor Linux ship with anything remotely like this, and even third-party apps in Win/Lin suck in comparison. iOS also has something similar with the Shortcuts app, while Google phones have the Assistant, which afaik can't work without phoning home.