Mac Os Essential Apps

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We’ve put together a list of some of the best Mac apps anywhere: if you’re looking for a new utility, web browser, or photo app, you’ll probably find what you need on this list.

Mar 25, 2016. Oct 08, 2019.

Whether you’ve been using a Mac for a very long time, or you’re unboxing your very first MacBook, it’s always nice to see the sort of software and tools that other people use.

While we don’t include them in our official best Mac apps list, since they’re free and from Apple, new users should always check out Apple’s apps that come with every Mac purchase.

Best Mac Apps: Utilities

1Password

Price: $49.99 | Link

1Password is the gold standard of password managers. With people cracking online accounts left and right these days, it’s more important than ever to use secure, complicated passwords – and never the same one twice. 1Password can keep track of all your passwords for you, and automatically enter them into your browser. The latest versions also keep track of sensitive data like insurance numbers, bank accounts, and credit card numbers, making it an important resource if your wallet or purse gets stolen. Apps are available for iPhone, iPad, and Android, making your data available wherever you are.

Caffeine

Price: free | Link

Have you ever started uploading a video to YouTube, walked away, and returned only to find your computer had gone to sleep (and thus corrupted the upload)?

While OS X is supposed to be smart enough to not do that, it doesn’t always work – and now, Caffeine will guarantee it.

Duet Display

Price: Free (on OS X, but requires a $16 iOS app) | Link

Built by a cadre of ex-Apple engineers, Duet Display lets you increase your screen space by taking advantage of your iPhone or iPad. With support for touch tracking and the full Retina display of your mobile device, Duet Display can be a godsend if you’re stuck editing on a cramped coffeeshop table.

There are a number of wireless iPad display options, but Duet Display is our top pick.

Dropbox

Price: Free (various premium service levels) | Link

By now, you’re probably familiar with Dropbox, but if you aren’t, this is the company that made cloud storage famous. These guys make sharing and storing files easier than ever, and helps make all your data accessible on each of your devices.

Viscosity

Price: Free 30-day trial, then $9 | Link

Viscosity is a great replacement for the built-in VPN tool in OS X. Designed to let you log on with just a couple of clicks, Viscosity will work with a number of VPN clients, whether you need to log into work, protect yourself at coffeeshops, or simply evade regional lockouts on media.

Chrome Remote Desktop

Price: Free | Link

There have been a number of tools over the years that let you log into your computer when you’re not at home, and one-by-one, they’ve all turned to a non-free model. Not so with the Chrome Remote Desktop. As long as both your home and away PCs are on, you’ll be able to log in and control the remote PC without paying a dime.

Note: both PCs will also need to have the Chrome web browser installed and allowed to run in the background.

Crashplan

Price: Free to external drives, 30-day cloud storage; $60 per year for backing up one computer; $150 per year for backing up between 2 – 10 computers | Link

Crashplan is backup made simple. If you don’t want to pay, the company will offer you free use of their backup software (if Time Machine is not to your liking) as well as 30 days worth of online backups.

Their paid plans are really compelling, however: $60 a year gets you unlimited online backups of your entire computer and network attached storage. You can retrieve individual files or, should emergency strike, pay to have a new hard drive with your backup overnighted to your house.

TextExpander

Price: Free trial, then $45 | Link

TextExpander is kind of like autocorrect, but for your Mac. You can program snippets of text into the TE interface, and when you type them into nearly any program, TextExpander replaces them with your pre-chosen macro.

For example, you could type ‘soon5’ in a meeting email, and TextExpander would replace it with “I’m running late, but I should be there in five minutes.” The new version is easier than ever, and TE includes a fun chart that will show you how many hours you save, based on a specific typing speed.

Airfoil

Price: Free trial, then $29 | Link

Airfoil lets you send any audio from your Mac to any Airplay source – speakers, Airports, AppleTVs, you name it. It offers granular, per-app control that the system option sorely lacks, and lets you send audio out to multiple sets of speakers.

Rogue Amoeba, developers of Airfoil, include a free copy of Airfoil Speakers with each purchase, which lets you receiveAirplay audio on your Mac (or iPhone / Android device).

One fun way to use both of these is to set up Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers on your Mac, then Airplay your iPhone audio to your Mac – this way you can send one phone’s audio out over multiple sets of Airplay speakers, something that is otherwise impossible to do.

F.Lux

Price: Free | Link

F.lux is based on the idea that seeing blue light late at night is bad for your eyes, and impairs your quality of sleep. The app works by changing the color temperature of your display (computer displays are typically pretty “blue”) as the sun sets; by the time you’re ready to call it a night, things can be looking pretty orange.

It definitely reduces stress on your eyes; if you don’t believe us, try quitting F.lux after you’ve used it for an hour – you’ll be scrambling to re-enable it.

GrandPerspective

Price: Free | Link

One of the most frustrating things about the Mac to this day (not that the PC is all that much better, frankly) is the inability to see your disk space. How much free space do you have, what folders and files are using it all, etc.

GrandPerspective is a free utility that gets rid of all that storage uncertainty by displaying information in an easy-to-read, blocky interface.

Little Snitch

Price: $35 | Link

This is the best firewall you didn’t know you needed. Little Snitch not only monitors for inbound connections, but also outbound connections. It’s a great program for finding out what apps on your computer are calling home and transmitting information; you can block any of them at any time, just by tapping a button.

The devs recently released a companion product known as Micro Snitch; Micro Snitch has a similar philosophy to Little Snitch, except it explicitly monitors your webcam and microphone, so you can be sure nobody is using them to record you.

Malwarebytes

Price: Free | Link

Worried about whether your Mac can catch a virus or worm? With the platform’s growing popularity, you probably should be.

Marlwarebytes is a trusted name in PC security, and with a recent acquisition, they’re bringing expertise over to the Mac.

The software itself is free, but you can sign up for premium service and support at a rate of just $25/year.

Capture Gif

Price: Free, or $6 | Link

It may seem like a strange addition, but the ability to quickly record your screen and make GIFs can come in handy. You can keep it simple with basic text GIFs, or record yourself doing full-screen actions (take a look at our El Capitan Split View overview for an idea).

Capture Gif offers a free version with limited settings, but the $6 full copy is cheap and offers you the ability to change the framerate of the GIF as well as innovative mouse tracking features.

Best Mac Apps: Internet

GoogleChrome

Price: Free | Link

Google’s internet browser has become the world’s most browser, and for good reason. Unfortunately, those reasons don’t really exist on the Mac – not only is Chrome slower than Safari, but it’s also a power hog and can drop your battery life by up to an hour!

Essential Apps For Mac Os

Still, it has its uses. Chrome comes bundled with an always-updated version of Adobe Flash, so you’ll never need to worry about updating a version for the Mac. Need to check out a Flash-enabled site? Just spin up Chrome, check it out, and shut it down. Given how many vulnerabilities Flash tends to introduce, it’s worth keeping exposure as limited as possible.

Skype

Price: Free | Link

You’re probably aware of Microsoft’s VoIP product by this point, but it’s worth pointing out. Despite competing alternatives, Skype’s sheer cross-platform connectivity and pervasiveness means that it’s always handy to have around if someone wants to call you.

Transmission

Price: Free | Link

When it comes to BitTorrent, the cat is out of the bag, and it isn’t going back in. We like Transmission for an OS X torrent client, because it’s cross platform and open source, and also because it isn’t constantly trying to get you to download things you don’t want (ahem, μTorrent).

Best Mac Apps: Music and Video

Spotify

Price: Free, or $10/month Premium tier | Link

Spotify is one of the world’s largest music streaming services, with over 75 million users accessing either its free or pay tiers. The software itself is completely free, supporting your listening with advertising inserted into the streams.

If you don’t mind ponying up, however, you can snag unlimited ad-free music streaming for just $10/ month, with the ability to skip around to whatever music you like, and cache songs to your device for offline listening.

Best Apps For Mac

iOS and Android apps round out the experience.

VLC

Price: Free | Link

If you keep any quantity of your own media, VLC will be well known. For everyone else, this app is the gold standard for watching videos from the internet. No nonsense codec downloads, nothing else to install, just download it, open, and play.

Best Mac Apps: Productivity

AirMail

Price: $10 | Link

Running just $10 in the Mac App Store, AirMail builds upon the basic functionality in the Mail app and adds some pretty nice integration and power user features (superior keyboard shortcuts, snoozing an email like Gmail’s Inbox does). You can import files directly from services like Dropbox or Google Drive, or send attachments that are too large to email by using Droplr. One of the best features over Mail, however, is how AirMail has worked to integrate itself into the best known third-party productivity apps – so if you use software like Wunderlist, Fantastical, and Evernote, you should take a look at AirMail.

Clear

Price: $10 | Link

Clear, like Mailbox, made waves for introducing powerful features paired with an extremely simple and intuitive user interface. Mailbox was for, well, email, but Clear is for keeping you focused at the tasks on hand. It works best when you pair it with the iPhone and iPad apps (which together cost a $5 one-time fee); there’s also an app for the Apple Watch

Fantastical

Price: $40 | Link

OS X’s Calendar isn’t bad, but it’s also not very useful if you need to track more than the very occasional event. Fantastical (now actually Fantastical 2) is extremely powerful, with a natural language engine that lets you remember events just by typing them out. It comes with a free trial if you don’t feel the need to shell out $40 quite just yet.

Microsoft Office

Price: $70 / year for 1 PC or Mac, $100/yr for 5 PCs or Macs, $150 one-time purchase for 1 computer | Link

There may be the free Google Docs and Apple iWork suites, but nothing can beat the powerhouse that is Microsoft Office. Aside from the fact that its omnipresence nearly requires you to use it (so that your files can all be shared between jobs), new versions for iOS and Android make it very easy to work on your projects on the go. While Microsoft’s attempts to send Office into the cloud with a monthly or yearly subscription, they do still offer standalone installations.

Best Mac Apps: Graphics and Photo Editing

Pixelmator

Price: Free 30-day trial, then $30 | Link

Adobe’s Photoshop CC might reign supreme at the top of the image editing heap, but if you’re not a professional, or very serious amateur designer or photographer, it probably doesn’t make much sense to shell out for it. For the price of less than one month of Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription, you can get a permanent standalone copy of Pixelmator. There are definitely Mac photo editing apps out there that can do more than Pixelmator, but few can match it on a features-per-dollar basis.

Best Mac Apps: Programming

Textmate 2.0 (beta)

Price: Free | Link

If you’re a programmer, you know that your choice of environment not only says a lot about you but can impact your workflow in drastic and unforeseen ways. Should Vim be getting you down, take a look at Textmate’s most recent version, a product of Macromates.

Textmate offers an easy way to work on a project’s many files at once without getting lost, and features powerful plug-in architecture should you need a tool that it lacks.

Best Mac Apps: Emulators

Andy Android Emulator

Price: Free | Link

If you’re on a Mac, chances are you probably prefer to use iOS over Android. Thinking about seeing how things work on the other side? The Andy Android emulator works extremely well to give you a virtual Android tablet. For the most part, this virtual model works exactly like you’d expect.

The only downside is that the most recent release – which came out in November – only goes up to Android 4.2.2, so some apps and features might not work. Hopefully, we’ll see an update to Android M or N before too long. If you just want to try things out, however, it’s more than good enough.

Disagree with the titles we’ve put on the best Mac apps list? Sound out in the comments with some of your favorite apps or tools that you think are the must-haves for any Mac user.

Starting with OS X Mountain Lion, Apple introduced Gatekeeper so users couldn't easily install downloaded…
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Apple developers make some useful tools for OS X that extend the usefulness of Yosemite, the latest version of Apple’s OS. We’re listing 18 essential Mac apps for Yosemite, including utilities, video apps, photo apps and productivity apps. Try them out and we’re sure you’ll want to download and install these awesome Mac apps for Yosemite to get things done faster, easier or cheaper than you would otherwise using built-in tools or well-known programs.

TextExpander

TextExpander beefs up keyboard shortcuts in OS X Yosemite.

OS X includes some simple keystroke shortcuts that let uses enter text quickly, but TextExpander ($34.95) gives us that feature and much more.

Macbook Essential Apps

Create a snippet of text to type. For example, use adr and tell TextExpander to automatically turn adr into a home address. It saves time with powerful shortcuts. Check out the video below that shows some of the really powerful ways users can harness TextExpander making it one of the best Mac apps for Yosemite.

Adapter

Adapter (Free) impressed us as one of the best file conversion utilities. It’s a drag-and-drop utility that converts audio, video and image files from one format to another. For example, drag a PNG file to the open app window and it will convert it to JPG or some other format. Use the drop down box at the bottom of the window to choose the resulting file format.

BitTorrent Sync

Most people think that people only use BitTorrent (Free) to share pirated movies or music, but it’s actually a great tool for transferring any content. BitTorrent Sync will make it easy to get the power of BitTorrent on your side. The app makes sharing large files, like a big video file edited by a group of people or a really large zip file of photos, easy. Criminals can use it, but honest people shouldn’t fear BitTorrent.

Why use BitTorrent Sync instead of Dropbox? There’s no central server that stores the files. People will rest assured they don’t need to worry about hackers going after Dropbox or one of the other cloud services. It’s potentially safer and more anonymous.

FilePane

The FilePane pop up lets users work with their files by dragging them onto the pop up.

FilePane ($6.99) makes it easy to handle files through a drag-and-drop interface. This makes it one of our awesome Mac apps for Yosemite because it starts up with OS X and runs in the background waiting for the user to select and then drag a file. The FilePane window pops up with icons that represent various things the utility can do with those files. Drag it on the Finder icon to move the file or the trashcan icon to delete it.

Forklift

Finder does what many of us need it to do, letting us find and manage files. However, it could do so much more so. Forklift ($19.99) jumps in where Finder stops, adding better file management to a Mac.

Here are a few ways it improves file management compared to OS X Finder:

Dual pane file manager window
FTP for transferring files to a server
Saved workspaces for repeated tasks
Folder sync
Delete apps and clean up files that stay behind when a person drags an app from Applications to the trash
Tabbed interface like Finder

Outline

Microsoft makes OneNote for Mac, but it doesn’t look like other native Mac apps for Yosemite. So some Apple purists would rather not use it, but they share notebooks with Office users. Outline ($6.99) offers a great note taking tool that syncs between computer and iPad and opens and saves OneNote notebooks. It also syncs with OneDrive. Use the Outline notebook format syncs and sync with Dropbox or Box. Use OneDrive when syncing OneNote notebooks.

TeamViewer

Lots of apps and services give users remote management features, including Apple’s built-in Back to My Mac solution, but TeamViewer (Free for personal use) does it better and lets users work cross-platform.

Let’s say someone wants to upload a file from their home computer running Windows to their Dropbox account so they can access it on their Mac while on vacation. The person forgot to save the file in their Dropbox folder. Log into the home computer via TeamViewer and copy the file over. To do this the person will need to install software on both computers. There’s also a version for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Window Magnet

Window Magnet brings Windows style window snapping to OS X.

Windows snaps program windows by dragging the window to the sides, top or bottom of the screen. To get this feature on a Mac use one of our favorite Mac apps for Yosemite, Window Magnet ($4.99). The app brings to Mac the cool Windows feature.

Drag the title bar of an app to the top of the screen and it fills the entire screen. Drag it to the right or left and it snaps into place on that half of the screen. Use keyboard shortcuts to move windows to each area of the screen plus the four quadrants of the screen.

DaisyDisk

See what’s cluttering up a Mac hard drive using DaisyDisk.

When a Mac hard drive starts to get full it can slow down the computer and keep users from installing apps or downloading files. There’s no easy way to find out what’s hogging the hard drive space in OS X. Use DaisyDisk ($9.99) to scan the drive and show the contents visually.

When a user finds a folder of content to move or delete, they can drag them to the icon in the lower left corner to “collect” them. Then right-click the icon to get rid of them.

Click on colored pie piece and it will expand and fill the screen with a new pie showing the file and folder sizes. Click in the center again to go back to the containing folder. See the video below for a demo of how it works.

Fantastical

The best calendar app on the Mac is Fantastical ($9.99). Like other Mac apps for Yosemite, it runs in the background and a menu bar icon shows the calendar when the user clicks on it (see above). To add an appointment type into the box in the top of the drop down box. Use natural language to enter appointments. For example, type “Meet with Donna at 2 pm next Thursday at Chipotle.” This will start to add the pertinent details to the appointment. The drop down also shows upcoming appointments, a month view and reminders from the Reminders app in OS X.

iA Writer

iA Writer ($9.99 or $19.99 for iA Writer Pro) offers a distraction free writing environment and adds markdown formatting. That means that writers can quickly add things like bold, italics and more without taking their hands off the keyboard. A # creates a heading, an * adds italics to text, and ** adds bold formatting. People who don’t like markdown can add formatting using the program’s menu.

Put the app into full-screen distraction-free to get rid of all visual distractions, like menus, the OS X Dock or anything else. The user only sees the text and the background. In the iA Writer Pro version users can also write in a dark background and white text.

Put iA Writer in full-screen mode using the green dot in the upper left corner.

Essential Mac Apps 2020

The developers created an iPad version that syncs via iCloud. There’s also an Android version in beta testing. It only syncs using iCloud.

Notability

Notability ($6.99) now runs on OS X, bringing the great iPad app to the computer. Use it to type notes in class, a meeting or any other time. Users can sync notes between Mac and iPad over iCloud. They can edit them or create on a computer and sync them back to the iPad.

Here’s a list of the key features of Notability, besides typing and writing text on the page. See the image above. The numbers below correspond with the numbered areas of the app in the screenshot above.

Toolbar – insert text, select fonts, and pick a pen, eraser or highlighter.
Notebooks – the notebooks one creates to organize their notes
Note Previews – small thumbnails of the notes in the selected notebook
Pen Tool – select colors, pen sizes and styles

Notability also includes the ability to insert pictures and audio notes recorded within the program.

NoteBurner M4V Converter Plus

If people want to strip DRM from their iTunes movies, NoteBurner M4V Converter Plus ($44.95) will do the job quickly and easily. The program grabs videos from iTunes removes the DRM so the user can watch the videos on non-Apple devices, or in programs like VLC Media Player (see below), also featured in this round-up of Mac apps for Yosemite.

Pixelmator

People who want Photoshop quality photo editing on a Microsoft Paint budget should look at Pixelmator ($29.99). It offers layer-based editing plus all the basic photo editing tools most of us will ever need. It handles text and layout for creating posters or fliers. Filters quickly add interesting looks to images.

The program interfaces with other apps using OS X Yosemite’s sharing feature. The Yosemite and iOS Handoff feature lets a user open a photo in the OS X version and then it will automatically open on the iOS version on an iPad.

VLC Media Player

VLC Media Play works better than QuickTime because it doesn’t come with any of the restriction. It plays any file format you throw at it. It also will capture from the Mac’s FaceTime camera. With some help from third-party codecs it can handle DVD playback as well. The program offers to install the third-party codecs when running the program’s installer.

Reflector

Reflector turns any OS X computer into an AirPlay receiver.

The iPad or iPhone can share the screen to any Apple TV using Apple’s AirPlay technology. Reflector ($12.99 for 1 computer) turns a Mac or PC into an AirPlay receiver.

Why would someone want to share their iPad or iPhone screen on a Mac? Maybe a user wants to demo an app in a tutorial video or for a class using a computer hooked up to a projector or TV. Reflector makes that happen as quickly as hooking up to an Apple TV. The app also lets a user take screenshots. They don’t need to transfer the screen shot from the iPad to the computer since it’s already on the computer.

Handbrake

NoteBurner strips DRM from iTunes movies. Handbrake (Free) does the same for DVDs. Load up a DVD into a USB drive on your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air and the program will read the DVD, let the user open it and convert it to multiple formats or sizes for viewing on an iPad, an Android phone or on a computer, to name a few formats it handles.

Ejector

Must Have Macos Apps

Use Ejector to quickly eject one or all removable disks in Yosemite.