If you want to get more out of your Mac, the best Mac apps will help you do more and fix things that aren’t working well. It is easier and more fun to use your Mac with these tools. They help you be more productive and get more out of your Mac, too.
Our favourite apps to use on new Macs have been put together in this list. These apps will help you get the most out of your Mac, whether you just bought a new 24-inch Apple iMac 2021 or are looking for new tools to add to your trusty MacBook Air 2020 (which is still one of the best Macs you can buy).
In the Mac App Store, you can find many of these apps for free. If you can’t find it, you can also open the Apple menu in the top-left corner and open the App Store from there. The App Store has a lot of different kinds of apps, so we used our own hands-on experience and other people’s reviews to make this list of the best Mac apps.
The best Mac apps you can get Right now
Tom’s Guide’s own Henry T. Casey says that Rectangle is the one Mac app he can’t live without, and global editor in chief Mark Spoonauer says it’s the best Mac app you haven’t heard of before. It’s also free, too. Which, in truth, it should be: When you have a lot of windows, Rectangle can help you manage and organise them. It has a long list of keyboard shortcuts and lets you snap windows to the corners and sides of the screen. These are all the kinds of things that Windows users get by default and have loved for a long time now. As long as there’s a Pro version of Rectangle that costs $10, most people should start with the free version that comes with it.
Bear
Bear is a free note-taking app that’s versatile, encrypted, and easy to use. It’s also free. Apple is still making big changes to its free Notes app, but Bear does a lot more of what Notes does better and with more attention to your privacy. There’s a free version of the app called Bear that lets you write notes and to-dos in Markdown. You can also organize your notes with nested tags, pull assets (like images and text) from web pages into your notes, and even draw or dictate notes with a stylus or Apple Watch (for dictation). There is a paid version called Bear Pro ($14.99 a year) that has even more useful features. These include the ability to sync notes between devices and encrypt individual notes with a password. You can also lock the Bear app with Face or Touch ID.
Fantastical
If you already have a calendar on your Mac, Fantastical does a better job than it does. One of the editors at Tom’s Guide swears by this app as a way to be more productive. This app has been an award winner for a long time. You can use Fantastical for free. It has a nice, simple calendar that makes it quick and easy to keep track of your tasks and see what’s coming up at a glance. Subscribe to the upgraded version of Fantastical if you’re willing to pay a fee each month. This version has more useful features, such as cross-platform access to Fantastical and syncing between your Mac, your iPhone, your iPad, and your Apple Watch.
Spark
You can do better than the built-in Mail app on macOS, and Spark is one of the best. This free email client has a lot of useful features that the competition doesn’t have, like a set of tools that make it easy for multiple people to manage an inbox together. They can do things like assign emails to each other or write emails together in real-time. In addition, it has great tools for organising your inbox, scheduling emails, and finding the exact message you’re looking for with a natural language search engine. You can also find great Spark clients for iOS and Android, which makes it a good way to keep your email organised on different devices.
Alfred 4
In Alfred 4, you can search for files on your Mac and on the web with ease. Alfred 4 is the most up-to-date and best version of Alfred. However, Alfred isn’t just a search tool. You can use it to launch apps, look up spelling and definitions, do the quick math, and more. The best thing? It’s free, but you can pay a one-time fee to buy a licence and get more powerful features, like the ability to play music from iTunes, make workflows and hotkeys, and more.
Daisydisk
The best Mac disc space manager is DaisyDisk because it is powerful, versatile, and beautiful to look at. DaisyDisk is one of the best Mac disc space managers. Quickly scan your storage drives with this $10 app, and it will show you an interactive map of how your Mac’s storage space is being used. You can move files around and free up some space with the drag-and-drop tools in this app. Also, the new version can now scan drives on cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and more.
Meeter
There is a little app called Meeter that sits in your Mac’s menu bar and makes it easy to keep track of all your video calls. They can be on BlueJeans or FaceTime or any of about 30 other video-conferencing platforms. In normal times, Meeter is great for people who work from home. The free version connects to your calendar and pulls in information about your upcoming calls, making it easy to see what you have coming up and join with a single click. You don’t have to search through your email to find the right meeting link again.
Cleanshot
Macs can use CleanShot X, which is a very good tool for taking screenshots of their screens. If you spend a lot of time taking pictures or videos of your desktop, it can be a real time-saver for you. For $29, you get a more powerful set of screen-capturing tools that make it easy to take a picture, edit or annotate it, combine it with other screenshots, and share it with anyone you need to. You can also record videos on your screen, even when you’re scrolling. You can choose to record your clicks, your keystrokes, or your webcam, and then quickly upload the video to the cloud or make it into a GIF. If you want unlimited cloud storage, custom domains, branding options, and more, you’ll have to pay $8 a month for the Pro version. The basic version is 1GB.
Pixelmator Pro
A photo-editing app called Pixelmator Pro costs $40 on the App Store. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s still one of the best apps. This app has more than 50 image editing tools, including a full set of vector tools. It also has some pretty cool features, like photo editing tools that use machine learning to make things look better. A strong rival to Adobe Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro costs only once, whereas Adobe wants you to pay a monthly fee to use its best photo-editing tools, which Pixelmator Pro doesn’t do.
iMovie
Isn’t the most powerful video editor on the market, but iMovie is one of the easiest to use. Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro are both expensive. It’s also important that it’s free because most full-featured video editors cost $100 or more. So, if you already have iMovie on your Mac, chances are it already is. If not, you can get it from the App Store and do some quick video editing at up to 4K resolution.
Grids
Is it true that you can log into Instagram through your web browser of choice? It is, but it isn’t the best way to use the picture-sharing service. Grid is a free app that makes it easier to use Instagram on your Mac. It makes it easier to use Instagram on your Mac. A lot of people like this app because it has a clean interface that loads quickly. You can use it to look at Instagram photos and videos in a lot of different ways. When you want to zoom in, there’s also a mode that lets you see things bigger. It’s only a problem if you pay for Instagram’s Pro version, which costs $2.50 a month on a month-to-month basis or $1 a month if you buy a year’s worth of service.
Tweetbot
You should have Tweetbot on your Mac if you use Twitter often because it’s a great app. Makes Twitter more fun by giving you access to a powerful set of filters that can help you block spoilers, sponsored tweets, and more. This $10 app makes Twitter a lot more fun. Hashtags can be tracked, you can switch between accounts, and you can write private notes on people’s profiles that only you can see.
Spotify
If you don’t already use Apple Music to listen to music, you likely use Spotify. Not yet? Spotify makes it easy to get a free account and listen to your favourite artists. The macOS desktop app gives you more control over your playlists than the web version, and it has a sleek, easy-to-use look.
Steam
To play games on your Mac, you should get Steam. For more than a decade, Valve has been making games for PCs with Steam. It’s now one of the world’s most popular platforms for PC games. You can’t play every single game on Steam if you have Mac OS. Steam makes it easy to search through its 50,000+ games to see which ones work on Macs. It’s not just Sid Meier’s Civilization VI and Stardew Valley that you can choose from. Cuphead, Hades, Disco Elysium, and more are also great choices. Plus, you can connect a Bluetooth gamepad to your new Mac so you can play old-fashioned games with a gamepad.
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