Are you the proud new owner of a MacBook Pro M1?
Congratulations! You are now one of the first users in the world to experience the incredible power, speed, and performance of Apple’s most advanced chip ever.
But with all that power comes a lot of responsibility. You need to make sure that your machine is running at peak performance, and that means finding apps designed to take full advantage of everything your new Mac has to offer.
In this article, we have compiled a list of some of the best apps for Macbook Pro M1. These apps will let you use your computer’s built-in features—like facial recognition and multi-touch gestures on your trackpad—to make tasks like surfing the web more intuitive.
Keep reading for more information about these amazing applications!
Best Apps For New Macbook Pro M1
With Apple’s fancy new MacBook Pros, its colorful new iMacs, and of course, 2020’s still-excellent M1 MacBook Air all offering incredible performance and battery life, it’s never been a better time to give (or receive) a new Mac.
And as more and more people are shifting to remote work, that laptop or computer you buy has to do more than ever. So we’ve rounded up some of our favorite Mac apps, designed to help you be more productive or to simply just make using your computer and navigating day-to-day life and Zoom calls a little more enjoyable.
PIXELMATOR PRO
Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro Image: Pixelmator Team
Adobe Photoshop is a key tool for image and photo editing, but it’s super expensive, thanks to its monthly $9.99 subscription. Pixelmator Pro, on the other hand, has a one-time fee of $19.99 while still offering tons of powerful tools for editing your photos. The latest update added a host of useful new features, including the ability to instantly remove the background from an image and improved masking and selection tools.
Pixelmator Pro
$20
Pixelmator Pro offers tons of powerful tools for editing your photos while costing less than Adobe’s app.
$20 AT MAC APP STORE
SPARK
Spark
Spark Image: Readdle Technologies
Spark is one of my favorite email apps for mobile, and the company’s Mac app is just as great, offering a fast UI, helpful automated sorting, and tons of customization for power users. And it supports Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo, Exchange, and more, along with integrations for popular work services like Trello, Asana, Zoom, and GoToMeeting. No one likes having to deal with email, but Spark makes it a little easier to get it done.
Spark
Spark is one of the best email apps for mobile, and the company’s Mac app is just as great, offering a fast UI, helpful automated sorting, and tons of customization for power users.
FREE ON MAC APP STORE
TWEETBOT
Twitter’s official app exists and is free, but Tweetbot is infinitely better if you’re the kind of person that spends a lot of time on Twitter. The paid app has no ads or suggested tweets clogging up your timeline — instead, it just offers the revolutionary feature of showing all the tweets from the people you follow in the chronological order that they tweeted it. The app looks great, too, with a clean, simple interface that makes reading Twitter almost enjoyable.
Tweetbot
$10
Twitter’s official app is free, but Tweetbot is infinitely better if you’re the kind of person that spends a lot of time on Twitter.
$10 AT MAC APP STORE
$10 AT TAPBOTS
ALFRED 4 FOR MAC
Alfred 4 for Mac
Alfred 4 for Mac Image: Crayons
Like many apps on this list, Alfred does something that one of Apple’s built-in apps already does — in this case, search your computer. But Alfred is way better: a lightning-fast search tool and app launcher that supports virtually endless customization, including automated workflows, bespoke Google searches, or whatever else you can think of. Once you use it for a few days, you’ll never be able to go back to Spotlight again.
Alfred 4 for Mac
Alfred is a lightning-fast search tool and app launcher that supports virtually endless customization.
FREE FROM ALFRED
DAISYDISK
DaisyDisk
DaisyDisk Image: Software Ambience
It happens to everyone sooner or later: after a few years of accumulating photos, videos, music, and other random documents, you start to get the dreaded notifications that you’re running out of room on your hard drive. DaisyDisk is meant to help — it scans your computer and shows you just how much storage you’re using, broken down by files and folders in neat, colorful rings that make it simple to dial down to the junk that’s taking up all your space and clear out your computer.
DaisyDisk
$10
DaisyDisk scans your computer and shows you just how much storage you’re using, broken down by files and folders in neat, colorful rings.
$10 AT MAC APP STORE
1PASSWORD
1Password
1Password Image: 1Password
Your passwords probably aren’t secure enough. 1Password will help you fix that, generating ultra-secure passwords and keeping track of everything. With deep integration into both Safari and Chrome, a clean UI, and tons of useful added features for protecting not just passwords but credit cards, documents, and more, it’s a one-stop shop for securing your digital life. An individual subscription is $36 per year, but if you have more than one person in your household, you’re probably better off with the five-person family subscription for $60 per year that adds the option to share passwords, too.
1Password
$36
1Password generates ultra-secure passwords and keeps track of everything.
$36 AT IPASSWORD (ANNUALLY)
AUTHY DESKTOP
Authy
Authy Image: Twilio
If you’re not using two-factor authentication for your important passwords and log-ins, go do that now. Authy is one of the better apps around for your two-factor setup, with cross-platform apps on iOS and Android. The Mac app does exactly what the mobile versions do: it gets you your 2FA codes when you need to log in. But it’s far more helpful, due to its being on the computer that you’re probably trying to log into something on.
Authy
Authy is one of the better apps around for your two-factor setup, with cross-platform apps on iOS and Android.
FREE ON TWILIO
MONITORCONTROL
MonitorControl
MonitorControl Image: MonitorControl
As more people shift towards working remotely, there’s been a big uptick in building out home offices and using an external monitor. MonitorControl is a nifty little menubar app that lets you control your external display’s brightness and volume (if it has built-in speakers) using your Mac’s function keys, just like on Apple’s own hardware.
MonitorControl
MonitorControl is a nifty little menubar app that lets you control your external display’s brightness and volume using your Mac’s function keys.
FREE FROM GITHUB
HAND MIRROR
Hand Mirror
Hand Mirror Image: Hand Mirror
Video calls are a bigger part of the day-to-day workplace than ever before. Hand Mirror is a simple app that lives in your Mac’s menubar and is designed to help you look your best on calls: a single click, and it launches a quick window that shows what the current view from your webcam is, letting you double-check that you’ve moved all the workout gear or messy laundry from your background or that your hair is neat before you start your Zoom call.
Hand Mirror
Hand Mirror is a simple app that lives in your Mac’s menubar that’s designed to help you look your best on calls.
FREE ON HAND MIRROR
DOZER
Dozer
Dozer Image: Mortennn
Managing your menubar apps can get out of hand pretty quickly (especially if you just installed any of the ones that we’re recommending here). And it’s only become a bigger problem thanks to Apple’s new MacBook Pro models, which eat up a big chunk of your menubar real estate with a hefty webcam notch. Well, Dozer is here to help. It’s a free app that makes it easy to hide all the menubar icons for things you want open but don’t necessarily need to have visible all the time. If you prefer a little more flash, there’s also Bartender, which costs $15 but offers a fancier design.
Dozer
A free app that makes it easy to hide all the menubar icons for things you want open, but don’t necessarily need to have visible all the time.
FREE ON GITHUB
MEETER
Meeter
Meeter Image: Bardeen
Meeter is another menubar app that’s designed to help with one thing: wrangling all your different Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, Teams, and other video calls into a single place, with one-click links to join whatever meetings you have scheduled. The free app links to your Mac’s built-in Calendar app and can pull in any video calls it sees, putting them in a handy drop-down menu, complete with notifications to remind you to join before your call starts.
Meeter
Meeter is designed to help with one thing: wrangling all your different Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, Teams, and other video calls into a single place, with one-click links to join whatever meetings you have scheduled.
FREE FROM MEETER
VLC
VLC
VLC Image: VideoLan
Local media playback isn’t the critical function it once was, thanks to the rise of streaming as the main way of consuming movies, TV shows, and music. But for those times that you do need to play a local audio or video file, there’s still no better app than VLC, which can handle virtually any file format or codec you’ve ever heard of and quite a few that you haven’t. Plus, it’s completely free.
VLC
A free audio / video app that supports a variety of codecs, so it should play anything you throw at it.
FREE FROM VIDEOLAN
best apps for macbook pro 2020
APPLE MAKES A killer operating system for its computers. MacOS is beloved for its out-of-the-box stability and ease of use, but some of its included programs lack a lot of the functionality we expect. Apple doesn’t often listen to its customers, stubbornly refusing to add simple features that would make the platform even easier to use. Lucky for you, we’ve highlighted the best third-party applications for macOS to augment and upgrade your macOS experience.
Some are for niche uses, but others fix gaps in vanilla MacOS. Many of these apps aren’t free, but most have free trials you can check out while you decide whether to buy. It’s also common for them to sync with companion apps on your iPhone. Check out the list below and give them a try. These MacOS apps might just make your life a little easier.
Also, be sure to check out our many other guides, including the Best MacBooks, Best iPads, Best iPhones, and How to Back Up Your iPhone.
Updated March 2022: We added Evernote, Microsoft 365, and Tweetbot, and we updated pricing on several apps, including ApolloOne, Shift, and Magnet. We also swapped the Samsung T7 external solid-state drive for the cheaper non-touch model, and we added details about cloud-based backup services Amazon AWS S3 and Backblaze B2.
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For a Better User Experience
Alfred COURTESY OF ALFRED
BetterSnapTool ($3)
Yes, you can use Split View on MacOS to view two applications side by side, but it’s nowhere near as intuitive as it is on Microsoft’s Windows, where you can simply drag a window to a corner and have it snap into place. This app is worth the $3 if you don’t want to mess with resizing window borders constantly. Magnet ($8) is another good option, although now that they’ve raised the price from $3, BetterSnapTool is a better deal.
Amphetamine (Free)
If you’ve ever had to keep wiggling a finger on the trackpad during a movie or YouTube video to stop the screen from going to sleep over and over (or maybe during a particularly long download), you’ll appreciate an app that lets you keep the screen on for certain tasks. It even works with external displays. Sure, you can keep going into your system preferences to change the screensaver and hard disk shutdown settings, but that can get tiresome quickly.
Tweetbot ($10)
Twitter can be an overwhelming hive stream of consciousness, and finding the tweets you want can feel like looking for a handful of needles in a big, international haystack. Tweetbot’s sidebar makes using Twitter more manageable by giving you one-click access to your timelines, saved searches, and DMs. You can also select from a list of filters to block out tweets you don’t want to see, such as spoilers, sponsored tweets, and specific keywords, users, and hashtags that you personally customize.
Alfred (Free)
The default search tool on MacOS isn’t bad, but there’s room for it to go deeper. Alfred is a supercharged alternative that lets you create custom shortcuts to programs and file folders, activate system commands by typing, create automated custom workflows that begin with the push of a button or a typed phrase, and, well, a lot more. It’s free, but you can purchase a version called Powerpack that has more features, such as contacts and app integrations. It costs 29 British pounds (around $38) for a single user license or 49 pounds (around $64) for a lifetime of free upgrades to subsequent versions of Alfred.
AdGuard ($30 per year)
AdGuard’s stand-alone MacOS app lets you choose from and custom-toggle a huge array of filters to block social media extensions, pop-up ads, URL redirects, and a whole lot more. It works not only on your browser but also on other apps you have installed. There’s a free two-week trial, but you’ll need to pay for a license to use it after the trial expires. For $2.49 a month, you get access to the service on three devices simultaneously.
For a Better Writing Experience
Ulysses COURTESY OF ULYSSES
LibreOffice (Free)
Tired of paying for Microsoft Office, unimpressed with Apple’s default office suite, and unable or unwilling to switch entirely over to Google’s G Suite on the cloud for everything? Download LibreOffice, a full-featured suite that includes the usual applications, such as a word processor and spreadsheet editor. It’s completely compatible with all the usual Microsoft file types, including legacy formats such as .doc. It’s open source and costs nothing to use, even commercially. For goodwill, donate a few bucks if you end up liking it and using it a lot.
Microsoft 365 ($84 per year)
OK, OK, I know I just presented a very worthy, free alternative to Microsoft Office, but there are two features that make paying $7 a month for a Microsoft 365 subscription worth it, if you use them. First, Word’s included Editor feature, which scans for grammatical mistakes and makes suggestions, is as useful and easy to use as Grammarly. Second, Microsoft quietly rolled out free in-app voice transcription in Word, and it’s as accurate as any expensive stand-alone voice transcription software I’ve used.
Ulysses ($50 per year)
I love Ulysses’ plain text and clean interface for writing longer stories, but it’s also perfect for short stories, novels, poetry, and scripts. It strips away all the unnecessary icons, buttons, and settings and lets you focus on your work. You can get a free trial before committing to the subscription fee. (You can opt for $6 per month instead of the annual payment plan.) If you do shell out, the iOS app is bundled with the MacOS version.
Highland 2 PHOTOGRAPH: QUOTE-UNQUOTE APPS
Highland 2 (Free)
Highland is a plain text editor designed primarily for screenplays and stage plays, but there are templates for things like novel writing as well. What’s nice is that it’ll automatically configure exported scripts in industry-standard formats, and there’s a new gender analysis tool that’ll break down how many lines are spoken by your characters, categorized by gender. The basic version (which watermarks PDFs with the company logo) is free, but a one-time $50 purchase nets you upgrades and more features, and it gets rid of the intrusive watermark.
Day One ($35 per year)
Journaling is a meditative experience, but if you’re like me and your handwriting looks like an SOS message carved into a rock, you tend to avoid writing on paper. Day One is a great digital journaling experience that lets you insert photos, save voice recordings, and export your logs in various formats, like PDFs. Your journal entries are end-to-end encrypted, automatically backed up, and secured with a passcode or biometrics too. There’s a free version, but it’s severely limited, so you’re better off paying the $35 per year for the full suite of features. There’s a seven-day free trial available.
Dark Noise ($10)
Working in a noisy place—or a dead-quiet one—can be monumentally distracting. Dark Noise lets you custom-mix its 50 built-in sounds to create the perfect audio illusions, whether “perfect” to you is raindrops falling on a tent or a box fan thrumming away on a windowsill. Even if you’re not under audio attack, a smooth layer of background noise might boost your concentration.
For a Better Viewing Experience
VLC Media Player COURTESY OF VIDEOLAN
ApolloOne ($12 per year)
If you need a heavy-duty image viewer that lets you edit and view metadata, batch-process catalogs of RAW image files, and set up automated processes to sort and classify photos for you, then step up to ApolloOne. This is a program for serious photographers—or at least people who take a lot of pictures and want to organize them. The 14-day free trial has limits on what you can do, but it’s a good way to see if you’ll want to pay $12 a year for the Standard Edition or $20 a year for the Pro Edition. (You can use the free trial past 14 days if you don’t mind the annoying pop-up reminders to subscribe.) Another alternative is XnView MP (free).
Xee³ ($4)
A lightweight image viewer, this app doesn’t come with all the options and clutter of more advanced programs, but it’s nicer to use if you don’t need all those features. Xee³ is clean, like MacOS’ default viewer, but it lets you browse through folders of images and move photographs more easily. For $4, it’s yours for life. It reminds me of Windows Photo Viewer—in a good way.
VLC Media Player (Free)
An oldie from 2001, this is a great video player that’s continually supported. It works with a ton of file formats and codecs, even allowing you to convert from one file type to another, and it gives you a range of audio and video compression methods for making smaller files out of raw or larger ones. If you download a lot of videos, it’s a no-brainer. It’s also an open source product, so be nice and donate a few bucks for the creator if you end up using it a lot.
Skitch (Free)
From the folks who brought us Evernote, Skitch one-ups MacOS’ built-in Screenshot app. Once you capture a screenshot of a program window, a portion of the screen, or the whole screen, you can edit and annotate it with arrows, shapes, textual callouts, and more. You can also pixelate (make fuzzy) portions of an image to obscure sensitive information, or to draw focus.
For Better Organization
Paprika Recipe Manager COURTESY OF PAPRIKA APP
Hazel ($42)
Tidying up folders is a slog, and sorting all your files into place never ends because you have to keep doing it over and over as you continue using your computer. That’s where Hazel steps in. You tell it which folders to watch—say, your Downloads folder—and it’ll automatically move files to new destination folders and sort them by name, date, type, what site they came from, and more. Newly created or downloaded files are moved automatically. It’s a one-time purchase.
Shift (Free)
Instead of having to sign in to all your email, workflow, and social media accounts with individual browser tabs, you can link all of them into Shift. That means having just one app window open for all your work tasks. You can hook up Gmail, Slack, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Spotify, Google Docs, and more (plus Chrome extensions!). The Advanced tier unlocks everything you’ll want for, uh, $100 per year. Try the basic (and free) tier first.
Deliveries ($5 per year)
You’re drowning in packages. Keeping everything straight is a nightmare, and it’s stressful to know that if you miss an email or if a delivery date changes, a porch package thief might make off with your goods. This app gives you a clean, color-coded space (purple for FedEx, brown for UPS, etc.) to keep track of delivery statuses and due dates for all your packages, and you can upload tracking information through Amazon links too. It costs $5 per year or 99 cents per month.
Evernote (Free)
If you need more from your note-taking app than bread-and-butter checklists and wish you could scribble in your own handwriting, upload pictures, and scan documents, Evernote is your app. To sync across more than two devices, have access offline, and upload more than 60 megabytes a month, you have to pay $8 a month for the Personal tier or $10 a month for the Professional tier.
Paprika Recipe Manager ($30)
Save recipe web pages and Paprika automatically formats them into a uniform design. All your recipes are organized in folders, and you can use the app’s interactive features to check off ingredients as you cook and scale up or down the ingredients needed for different serving sizes. There’s an iOS app and an Android app, but you have to buy each separately for $5. It’s also available on Windows for $30, so you can sync recipes across multiple platforms.
Other Good Tools
Beyond adding functionality, you should also boost your security. It has nothing to do with using a Mac and everything to do with using computers and mobile devices in general. To guard against data snoops and identity thieves, I highly recommend paying for a virtual private network (VPN).
Also, that same password you put into every one of your hundreds of website accounts? It’s easy for intruders to guess it. Download a password manager, which will generate complex, secure, and unique passwords for each website (and remember them all for you).
You should also back up your files regularly in several places for redundancy, both on physical hard drives and on a secure cloud service such as Amazon AWS or BackBlaze. There’s a saying that if data doesn’t exist in three places, it doesn’t really exist at all. Three copies are a minimum, and five isn’t too paranoid. Once you lose non-backed-up data, it’s too late, and those photos of your best friends and you on spring break are gone forever.
To automate your cloud backups, you can use an app. I prefer MSP 360, which is still informally known by its previous name, CloudBerry. It’s free to use, and you can have it upload to Amazon AWS S3 or Backblaze B2. Unless you have loads of huge files, such as videos and raw-format photographs, you’ll likely only have to pay a buck or two per month for either one.
And lastly, don’t forget the tunes. Check out my guide to the best music streaming apps you can use to rock out while you work and goof off on your Mac.
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