购物车 (
Recent Favourite Tools, All Surprisingly AI-Related
数码荔枝编辑部
Ring ring... It's time once again for Lizhi to chat with you all about software!
If you've also been picking out suitable tools recently, or have a few pieces of software sitting on your list that you've been hesitating over, why not first take a look at the software Lizhi has been using quite a lot lately, and what actual problems they've solved.
Two Handy Uninstaller Tools
If you often browse WeChat official accounts and social media, you've probably noticed that new software claiming to be incredibly capable pops up every single day these days.
At first you might not think much of it, but after seeing enough of them, it's hard not to be tempted, and then you can't help downloading one to try it out.
Only after installing it do you realise it's just another shoddily made Vibe Coding product: not only are the features poorly done, but when you want to uninstall it, you also worry about whether it can be removed cleanly, leaving behind caches, configuration files and other leftovers that gradually eat away at your already limited disk space.
▲ Precious disk space
If, like Lizhi, you often can't resist trying all sorts of odd software, it's best to prepare an "escape route" for yourself — keep a tool on hand that can uninstall software cleanly, to avoid uninstall leftovers piling up.
Mac users can try App Cleaner & Uninstaller 9. It doesn't just delete the app itself; it also scans for leftovers such as caches, logs and configuration files generated by the app, which can be cleaned up together during uninstallation.
For people who frequently install and remove software, the biggest benefit of this kind of Mac uninstaller is sparing you the trouble of hunting down leftover files all over the place yourself.
Windows users, meanwhile, can try IObit Uninstaller 16 Pro. Besides regular software, it can also handle browser extensions, Windows apps and more, and it comes in handy for software that hasn't been fully uninstalled or that is difficult to uninstall normally.
Both tools come with verifiable genuine licences, so Mac and Windows users can pick whichever suits their system.
Parallels Desktop 27 [Mac]
If you feel that "uninstalling cleanly" isn't enough, you can go one step further — run software you're not entirely comfortable with inside a virtual machine.
Nowadays, more and more people are using AI tools for work, especially the various Agent-type tools. In order to read files, operate applications or carry out tasks, they frequently request all kinds of permissions from the system.
The problem is that, for most ordinary users, it's actually quite difficult to judge whether a given permission is really necessary.
When a pop-up appears, the usual response is simply "Allow, allow, allow...", and sometimes permissions as high as full access are granted outright.
In this situation, putting software that requires a lot of system permissions and that you don't entirely trust into a virtual machine is actually a rather worry-free approach. At the very least, there is an extra layer of isolation between the environment they can access and the main system you work on every day.
With Parallels Desktop, a Mac virtual machine application, you can create Windows, Linux, or even another macOS virtual environment directly on your Mac.
Simply put, it's like setting up a "separate computer" inside your Mac, dedicated to testing software, running Windows applications, or tinkering with all sorts of AI tools.
Parallels Desktop itself also offers related settings such as "isolating Windows and Mac".
If you're only testing software from unknown sources or that you don't yet fully trust, you can reduce the file, application and data sharing between the virtual machine and the main system.
At the lizhi.shop software store, you can learn about the editions and licensing options for Parallels Desktop 27, which is suitable for users who want to set up an isolated environment on their Mac for the long term.
Bartender 6 [Mac]
At first, Lizhi also wondered whether, after upgrading to macOS 26, there would no longer be any need for menu bar management tools like Bartender 6?
After all, macOS 26 now includes a menu bar management feature that lets you directly control whether app icons are displayed.
But after actually using it, I found that the built-in feature mostly solves "hiding icons", without truly solving the problem of "how to make the menu bar more useful".
Lizhi, for instance, keeps quite a few services running permanently, and needs to check things like network speed, hardware performance, remaining AI service quota, date and time in the menu bar.
If everything is displayed, the icons quickly get squeezed under the notch; but if everything is hidden, the menu bar loses its purpose of letting you check information at any time.
With Bartender 6, frequently used information can stay in the menu bar, and when needed, a single click brings up a pop-out area where you can quickly find the other icons that have been tucked away.
For notch-screen Macs, where menu bar space is already tight, this way of managing menu bar icons — deciding "which ones stay visible all the time and which ones appear only when needed" — works far better than simply hiding icons.
In fact, Lizhi has tried quite a few alternatives to Bartender, but after much tinkering, ended up going back to Bartender in the end.
The reason isn't that it can do something others absolutely cannot, but rather that for a small tool you use dozens of times a day, stability is itself a very important feature.
▲ Supports adjusting the menu bar's appearance
Some alternatives seem quite good at first, but over time all sorts of little problems emerge: menu bar icons occasionally flickering, the mouse position behaving oddly after opening a menu, or even the software crashing inexplicably...
For a tool like this that resides in the background long-term and is used frequently every day, having a few more or fewer features isn't actually the most important thing.
Being able to sit quietly in the background, ready to use at a moment's notice, and not interrupting your original workflow — that's what Lizhi cares about more.
Bartender 6 offers a perpetual licence, and for a tool of this kind that stays in the background long-term, choosing the right version once is far less hassle than repeatedly switching.
Beyond These Tools
Besides the ones above, we've previously introduced MarginNote 4, Zipic, CareUEyes and other software — all tools Lizhi has personally tried and found worth sharing.
If you've also got your eye on some software, why not visit the lizhi.shop software store to learn about their features and licensing options.
Before making a purchase, work out what problems the software can solve and whether it suits your use case — only then can you make the most of every tool.
这里空空如也，暂时~