As a blogger for BestAppsForMacBookAir.com and because of My passion for blogging, I have decided to put together a big list of must have applications that I think every one has to try on their MacBook Air. This will be focused on what you can find in the Mac App Store and those apps that you can use to make your life easier.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Macbook Air 2017
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.
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
BUY NOW
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
DOWNLOAD NOW
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
DOWNLOAD NOW
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
BUY NOW
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
DOWNLOAD NOW
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
DOWNLOAD NOW
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.
Magnet
Available for $1.99 from the App Store
BUY NOW
TODOIST
Image: Todoist
Like email, calendar, and note-taking apps, personal task-tracking software is something a Mac comes with out of the box. But it’s not great and, like most native Mac apps, lacks that clean look and feel of third-party paid apps. Thankfully, there is software out there like Todoist, which spins out the to-do features often built into calendar and note apps, and gives them the dedicated app treatment.
Todoist has a lot of neat features, like being able to add items to your lists directly from Alexa or Slack. Its simple design breaks up your tasks into an inbox-style series of queues you can easily categorize by due date. There’s a great iOS companion app, and Todoist offers a robust free version if you don’t feel like paying for the more team-oriented premium and business subscriptions at $3 and $5 a month, respectively.
Todoist
Free from App Store; $3 for premium version
DOWNLOAD NOW
TWEETDECK
Image: Twitter
Since Twitter started revoking access to key developer tools last year, Mac users haven’t been given a lot of great options for accessing Twitter outside the web. To make matters worse, the company killed its admittedly terrible dedicated Mac app last year, only to resurrect it as an experimental, buggy Catalyst version back in October. Thankfully, there’s always the free Tweetdeck.
Once a third-party app that Twitter eventually acquired way back in 2011, Tweetdeck offers a unique vertical column layout that is arguably the most information-rich and digestible version of Twitter available. The trick is to curate lists, so you can kick your unfiltered timeline to the curb and rely on dedicated columns full of handpicked accounts you like to follow. But once you’ve got it going, Tweetdeck becomes indispensable when you’re at your desktop.
Tweetdeck
From from App Store
DOWNLOAD NOW
VLC
Image: VideoLAN
Every Mac user needs a solid video playback app, and there exists nothing better than the open source and free app VLC, now maintained by VideoLAN. Started way back in 2001, VLC supports multiple file formats and codecs, as well as audio and video compression methods. If you’re trying to play an obscure video file or convert one file from .avi or .mkv to .mp4, VLC has you covered.
VLC
Free
DOWNLOAD NOW
WAVEBOX
Image: Wavebox
My personal Mac email app of choice, and a solid alternative to more single-serving options like Airmail and Spark, Wavebox is a multi-purpose, Electron-powered web wrapper that lets you build dedicated tabs for more than 1,200 apps, from Gmail to Slack to Office 365. It’s best at being a dedicated Gmail wrapper.
This is for those Mac users who, like me, enjoy keeping an uncluttered browser window and prefer to segment different parts of their workflow into dedicated apps. Although Wavebox costs $20 a year to unlock some of its better features, it works well enough in its free, base version, and it has powerful notification and menu bar controls. You can also customize the way apps within Wavebox run in the background, to keep a handle on memory usage and battery drain.
Best apps for macbook air m1
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.
Conclusion
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