Best Apps For Mac 2019

This guide will walk you through the numerous options you have for a fantastic Mac experience, from how to get & use the apps that can improve your workflow and make you more efficient, to how to enjoy media on your computer (e.g. photos, videos) and wirelessly stream them to your TV. This article goes into detail of the most popular apps, with links to help you install the app. It’s all about the content in this document: we link out to apps and their developers so you can easily discover, download and use them.

Table of Contents

AIRMAIL 3

Image: Airmail
For those who really don’t like the design of the native macOS Mail app, Airmail 3 is about as close as you can get to a clean, Gmail-style interface on an Apple desktop. Yes, it’s pricey at $26.99, but many email apps these days have moved to monthly subscription models, making Airmail a nice alternative to that pricing approach.

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It has a great companion app, some unique features like Touch Bar support, and a nice customizable interface that feels like the Mail app but with a much-needed visual overhaul. There are plenty of other options, from Spark to Edison Mail to Newton, but Airmail is perhaps the most reliable of the bunch, and the only one geared toward consumers that lets you pay once and own it forever.

Airmail 3

Available for $26.99 from App Store
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ALFRED 4

Image: Running with Crayons
The latest version of the popular Alfred search and application launcher tool, Alfred 4, was released back in May, and it brought a dizzying number of major upgrades to the service. To name just a few, Alfred 4 has a new theme editor for creating custom looks for the Alfred menu, a powerful workflow debugger, and Catalina dark mode compatibility.

But for those unfamiliar with Alfred, it’s like a superpowered Spotlight that lets you customize endless keyboard shortcuts and other shorthand commands for launching apps, searching the web, and pretty much anything else you can imagine automating in your desktop workflow. It’s as powerful as a productivity app can be. Plus, it’s available for free, with the option for a $25 license for the premium PowerPack upgrade.

Alfred 4

Available for free; $25 for premium version
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APPCLEANER

Image: FreeMacSoft
Cleaning up your Mac is an integral part of desktop maintenance, and removing unwanted apps can go a long way in keeping your machine feeling snappy as it ages. Unlike some paid alternatives like Trash Me, AppCleaner is a free donation-based app that helps you uninstall software you no longer use or want and gets rid of all the related files that may be buried elsewhere in your directory.

AppCleaner

Available for free
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BARTENDER 3

Image: Surtees Studio
The Mac menu bar can be a powerful productivity tool, but only if it’s managed correctly. There’s where an app like Bartender comes in. It lets you organize your menu bar, configure keyboard shortcuts for accessing individual apps via menu bar icons, and was recently updated with macOS Catalina support. It’s a simple app, costing $15 once to own it forever, that offers a surprisingly powerful amount of customization to an oft-overlooked part of macOS, especially if you’re getting concerned your menu bar is stuffed full of unnecessary junk.

Bartender 3

Available for $15; 30-day free trial
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BEAR

Image: Bear Notes
Note-taking apps are often a matter of aesthetic preference. The Apple Notes app works just fine, as does Evernote and any number of other third-party alternatives. But if you’re looking for something clean, well-designed, and just downright pleasant to use, give Bear a try. It’s Mac-only note-taking software that has a fantastic iOS companion app and a great look and feel. It’s not overstuffed with features you’ll never use or bogged down by its creator’s desire to break into the enterprise.

It has simple features, like note pinning and markdown support, and an elegant three-column layout that lets you move between your organized hashtags, note list, and the actual editor itself. It costs $20 a year for the premium version to get access to cross-device syncing, but it’s worth it in my opinion. The one big drawback: no web version, in the event you move between macOS and Windows.

Bear

Available for free from the App Store; $20 for premium version
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LASTPASS

Image: LastPass
Most password managers these days live in the background, most prominently as browser extensions and more recently as mobile apps that finally support autofill on iOS and Android. But there is something to say for the dedicated Last Pass app. Beyond being my password manager of choice, the LastPass Mac app is a much easier and faster way to access passwords in the unfortunate but rather common event you need to manually input credentials, like if you’re using a macOS app that naturally doesn’t sync to the Chrome extension. It also has a nifty keyboard shortcut for quickly searching your password vault.

LastPass

Available for free
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MAGNET

Image: CrowdCafe
For Windows 10 users, managing the desktop space is a built-in feature of the operating system. But for Mac users, window management is kind of a nightmare and always has been. That’s why there’s a robust third-party ecosystem for helping you get the window snapping and organizational features you find natively on Microsoft’s OS. One of the best apps for doing this is Magnet, which lets you snap windows flush to the edges of your screen and into preconfigured layouts that you can save across apps. There’s support for keyboard shortcuts as well, making Magnet, at just $2, a must-have tool for the more organizationally-minded Mac users out there.

Best apps for macbook pro 2020

For a Better User Experience
Screenshot of Alfred search app for Mac
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
Screenshot of Ulysses writing app for Mac
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.

MacBook Air displaying Highland 2 app
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
Screenshot of VLC Media Player app for Mac
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
Screenshot of Paprika Recipe Manager app for Mac
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).

Conclusion

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