Best Mac Apps
Aug 11, 2019. The Best Apps to Customize Your Android Phone Android, Apps Best Mac App. One of the main appeals of Google’s Android platform is the freedom that it gives you to tweak.
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.
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.
May 27, 2020. Think of Alfred as Spotlight with a dash of Siri. It’s an application launcher, but it can do a lot more than just that. With Alfred, you can quickly perform calculations, execute web searches, and find word definitions, among many other functions.
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!
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.
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.
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As a child, I used to read a lot of novels. My fascination for reading kept me glued to books all the time. I used to finish up a Sidney Sheldon novel within days of starting. But do you know how much it takes to write a book? There are authors who take years to finish up writing one. It is for the ease of all those authors and budding writers that writing applications have been developed. If you are in search of the best writing apps for Mac, the buddy, you are in the right place!
The history behind writing…
Contents
- So, improve your productivity with the following writing apps for Mac…
Writing began with stone tablets which then moved on to palm leaves and manuscripts. And then when the paper was invented, books started showing up everywhere around the globe. Writing a book with a pen took several months to complete. Typewriters shortened this time by many folds. But with the invention of computers, writing became super-convenient.
Best Mac Apps For College Students 2020
In the present generation, writing applications are being developed which will make the life of authors and writers even easier. If you are a tech blogger, the promising writer, author, then a good writing app is a must!
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What is the use of a writing app?
Though a general word file covers the basic needs of a writer, yet for a more convenient experience, you can go for a writing app. It creates the right ambiance in the system for the writer to concentrate just on the content of his write-up.
Additional editing tools, backgrounds, correcting tools etc. will help you create a better story or article in lesser time. When you write a book, you add various chapters or sub-sections to it.
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Managing all these documents can turn quite messy; in these times writing apps come to your rescue.
So, improve your productivity with the following writing apps for Mac…
Best Mac Apps
Mac systems are widely used all over the globe and if you are a writer or author, then this app is god’s gift for you. This ultimate writing application can be used for focused writing sessions encouraging immersion with the text.
The app also helps you organize your write-up related documents and daily blog posts. It works on iPhones and iPads and you can also sync up your work with iCloud through this application.
It has got a 14-day free trial and after that, the monthly rental price is Rs 299.
Microsoft Word 2016
Really guys? Do you even need an introduction to this app? Popular across the globe for its simplicity yet abundant features, Microsoft Word 2016 can be used in Mac as well as Windows systems.
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Though it is tailor-made for Windows systems, yet it works more than fine in Mac ones. Available at a price of Rs 454, you can find cheaper alternatives of this in this list.
Even the name of the app has got an ‘I’ in it indicating it is made for Apple products. Listed as the best-selling text editor in the Apple store, it is a minimalistic writing application used for focused writing experience.
It is also used by famous author Augusten Burroughs. Though some users complain about its missing settings of preferences, it is this very feature that makes the app help writers focus on their content.
The item is prized at Rs 590.
Just like Microsoft Word is for Windows systems, Apple pages are for Mac systems. But it is not only limited to Mac users. If you have any other PC, then you can download pages and use it through iCloud. And the best part about this writing app for Mac? It is free of cost!
It is certainly one of the best free word processors for Mac. Though it has got an impressive user interface and features, it is not very popular as every user with whom you would like to share or collaborate would have to install Pages in their systems too.
Released back in 2007, it is one of the bestnovel writing software for Mac. It is also supported by systems running on Windows and Linux. You can now easily organize your documents and notes with the help of this content managing app. The app also offers various templates for creating screenplays, fictional, and non-fictional manuscripts.
The split-screen mode and drag-drop feature of virtual index cards make it a top choice for various writers.
TextEdit
The Mac word processing app SimpleText was replaced by TextEdit. It uses the Cocoa text format to read and edit documents in various formats like Rich Text Format, plain text and HTML.
Though it is not a very advanced tool, it can be used for applying various text edits to your content, adding multimedia inputs to it and writing different character encodings. And the best part? It is a free novel writing software for Mac.
A top-notch text editor and writing app for Mac is Byword, available on Mac and Apple app store. You can easily use this app anywhere to edit your stories, blog posts, and school projects.
There are various features like on-the-tip keyboard shortcuts and syntax highlighting that help the user achieve better productivity.
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Sync up your work in iCloud or Dropbox so that you can work on them from any device, anywhere, anytime.
The finest in the industry, it has been used by various authors and movie script writers in the entertainment industry. All have given rave reviews about this app. Tailor-made for the entertainment industry, it offers more than 100 templates for drafting screenplays and stage plays.
You can also collaborate with a partner for real-time writing, outline act, scenes and sequences easily. Apart from these, there are several other text editing features that make it one of the best word processor for Mac.
It also works on Windows systems.
Write!
Yet another free writing app for Mac is Write! Though currently, only its Windows version is available, its Linux and iOS versions are on their way for release. If you get quite distracted while writing your blog or story or even school essay, then use this tool for a distraction-free writing session.
Features like automatic spell-check, tunable autocomplete (completes your word before you end), multiple keyboard shortcuts, support for Markdown, Wiki, and Textile syntax, unlimited undo etc. make authors prefer this over the others.
Storyist
An advanced writing app for Mac preferred by various novelists and screenplay writers is Storyist. Talk about focused writing environment, more organized writing, easy access to all documents…Storyist covers them all.
It supports Mac systems and also works on iPhones and iPads.
With the help of this app, you can now create stunningly formatted manuscripts and screenplays and get a customized high-level view of the story with the help of index cards.
Experience a distraction-free writing session with app Whiteroom which creates a full-screen writing environment. It was developed as an alternative to Microsoft Word to provide a more convenient writing environment. It has got spell check and auto-save feature in addition to basic features of Word.
More the features more the distractions; that is why Whiteroom has stuck to the basics.
Writing a movie script or screenplay? Go for one of the best writing apps for Mac named Slugline. It is a simple and elegant writing application for Mac and iOS systems. Its outline navigator helps you write sections and sub-sections of the write-up in a more organized way.
Just like other writing apps in the list, you can sync up your documents in iCloud and Dropbox and then work on them on other devices too.
The dark mode of the app helps you work in low light conditions. You can also pair a keyboard to your iPad and then write using it.
- Tinyword:
Work on multiple document types like DOC, DOCX, PDF, HTML, RTF etc. and create amazing stories with the help of Tinyword. Featuring multiple editing tools like inserting tables, symbols, footnotes, hyperlinks, page numbers etc., it is highly preferred by budding writers and authors.
You can also protect your content with a password and also put editing restrictions on your content.
Focus on your story or write-up with the help of this amazing writing app for Mac. With quick note feature, easy to use interface, advanced markup editor with knowledge of over 20 programming languages, multiple work themes, cross-note links, focus mode, hashtags, smart data recognition, multi-device sync…and many more,
it is certainly one of the most feature-rich writing apps for Mac.
We hope the above writing apps for Mac help you create your dream story or screenplay in time. If you want a better work space, do take a look at free time tracker apps for Mac and Calendar apps for Mac.
Just the way above-mentioned tools will help you improve your writing productivity, these apps will help you achieve more work in less time.