In a previous post, I noted the loss of a built-in calculator for OS X 10.15, aka Catalina. As it turns out, there are a number of online calculators available which I found by searching DuckDuckGo for (oddly enough) “online calculators”.
Of course, the Apple Store has a large number of calculator apps available, but I decided that adding a browser bookmark was less intrusive than adding a new app to the MacBook. (I know I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?)
After a quick test drive of some of the more attractive sites, I settled on Calculator Pro based upon some UI-related features:
- Accepts direct keyboard entry (along with mouse clicks on the calculator’s key pad). Most of the calculators could do this.
- Functional backspace/delete key to erase entries. Not all of the calculators supported that.
- Reasonably clean UI. Pretty much everybody qualified on this feature.
Calculator Pro also has a History drop-down element that remembers your work. This may or may not be useful, we’ll see.
Note: My testing was done on the Brave browser, which has a wonderfully aggressive shielding system that removes web page clutter before it renders the page. Brave filtered out 16 elements on the Calculator Pro Basic Calculator page. Wow. So – do your testing on the browser you will be using, because for sure YMMV.
Shields Up
Shields Down, Captain!