I’ve loved people posting their Top 20 Mac Apps lists around the web, because twenty seems like a magic number. It’s enough that the lists start to get into the obscure, specialized tools that you never hear about because they get no marketing.
Some Top 20’s I’ve enjoyed so far:
Lou Plummer (a guy I like who blogs about a different app every day…somehow): I Picked My Top 20 Apps
Bunch(free): auto-set-up your apps and settings for particular types of computer sessions, priming yourself for focused work.
MindNode: mind-mapping that “flows” really nicely from the keyboard.
Path Finder: Finder but with so many features that it’s a little intimidating.
Soulver: notebook style calculator (in the style of the new Apple Notes features, but better).
Supercharge: tweak billions (that’s my completely accurate estimate) of macOS behaviors, along with other tools.
CleanShot X: best screenshot/recording app I’ve used by far, including scrolling capture, grabbing audio, and good annotations.
Warp(free): a powerful terminal where the most useful feature to me is treating commands and their output as “blocks”.
Raycast(free-ish): probably not a surprise to anyone here.
Visual Studio Code(free) with extensions (free): Microsoft made a good text editor?!
Color Picker(free): Sindre Sorhus consistently making the best small, focused apps.
BetterTouchTool: “If Batman were an app, he’d be BetterTouchTool”: utility belt of automating actions off of just about any trigger.
Workflowy: a not-very-Mac-like infinite outliner that makes up for it in sheer practicality.
DockDoor(free): my current favorite “peek at the windows an app has open while hovering over the dock icon” app.
Pixelmator Pro: probably needs no introduction, but Photoshop-without-the-clutter-and-without-going-bankrupt-from-the-subscription.
Firefox(free) + Tree Style Tab(free): I know there’s sleeker browsers, but Tree Style Tab makes up for everything.
IINA(free): QuickTime Player except that it has a bunch of features and doesn’t annoy me.
These lists take surprisingly long to make if you fully link up and comment on each item, but I’d love to see everyone’s lists even just in plain name-dump form.
Immediate gold, thank you! I’m going to try Libation right now, I’ve been increasingly annoyed at how the Audible app’s “Now Playing” type screen has just become an ad for a different book.
Still fun even knowing a lot of the apps, because I didn’t know about EndNote, which might be valuable to my wife. It seems like everyone ends up having at least a couple cool little apps that other people aren’t aware of, or are using popular apps in unique ways.
1Password
Calendar
CleanShot X
Drafts
iMovie
Mail
MS Outlook
Notion (Teamwork)
Obsidian (Solo)
PowerPoint
Raycast
Reminders
Safari
Screen Studio
Spotify
Whatsapp
Drafts and Raycast are the foundation of my app stack.
You’re the second person I’ve seen mention Outlook in their list, do you find it preferable to Mail for some things? It’s been so long since I’ve used it that I don’t even remember its strengths.
I was introduced to EndNote by my constitutional law professor when studying case law in education. I’ve used it ever since. There are other options, but EndNote is the only app that has an extension for Pages—as far as I can determine.
Mail
Safari
Mimestream
Final Cut Pro
Default Folder
Pixelmator Pro
BBEdit
Fantasical
Numbers
CleanShot X
Omnifocus
Affinity Designer
Clean My Mac
Passwords
Raycast
Typeface (font management)
Name Mangler
Apple Notes
I’m trying this out and immediately love it. And I think I can get away with the free version. For anyone curious, here’s the site: https://typefaceapp.com/
Anybox - great for bookmarking, storing links, and read later - perfect for research. Native app and replaced Raindrop.io for me
Arc - my favourite browser although I’m starting to look at Zen
CleanMyMac X - don’t use all the features but like it for everything in one place (uninstaller is good)
DeepL - best translation and now has a convenient Mac app
FTAnalyzer - simple Family Tree utility that allows you to load a GEDCOM and shows new ways of looking at data
Heptabase - my app for PKM, research notes, and visual learning - it’s marketed for making sense of complex topics, but can be used for many learning or research projects (notes, highlights, whiteboards, it does it all well)
What I really like about Outlook is the composer and how it handles attachments.
I use the Mail app for my personal emails, and it’s fine for that. But when I tried to make it my only email app, I struggled—especially with attachments. They were all over the place. The composer window felt too small, and the way Mail handles text size is completely different from other apps.
For example, font size 10 in Mail isn’t the same as font size 10 in Outlook or other email clients. That’s because Mail measures text in pixels, not points. I had a hard time getting the right size, which often made my text look huge—something I only realized when I got a reply.
Another thing that frustrated me was how Mail handles read/unread messages. I like to keep all my emails unread until I’ve actually dealt with them, so I prefer marking them as read manually. But in Mail, as soon as I open an email, it gets marked as read automatically. That was a real hassle for me.
Many apps in my top 20 are duplicates/commonplace and will not mention.
• Xojo: a programming language with Basic as its foundation but that is almost irrelevant. I makes creation of actual applications with user interfaces relatively easy. Python is fine for many things but not, IMO, so great for trying to make an “application” with a user interface.
• Curio: an infinite white board application. Freeform on steroids. I use it relatively rarely actually but when I am trying to really understand a topic I use it. For me, particularly valuable when trying to understand concepts that require drawing things. It takes time to “draw” in it but the drawings are perfect in a way that I cannot do with a pencil. Circles are circles etc. List are readable etc. I use it when I am doing a deep dive and I do not begrudge the time that I spend because it is all in the service of trying to understand something complex.
• Screenfloat: If you are working on some project that requires looking at multiple windows and applications, this is a great tool for people whose short-term memory is weak. Easy to grab pictures of part of your screen to retain bits of information as you move along. Telephone numbers, error messages during programming, cost of motels when trying to compare etc. I use this utility all the time and could not imagine not having it
• BBEdit: I work with large amounts of text at times culled from various sources and formats. I am always glad when I manage to get the data into BBEdit. It handles giant amounts of text without difficulty or crashing. It is super fast. Its RegEx searching and replacing tool is fabulous. It has great tools for comparing two similar text files looking for differences.
•Geometers Sketchpad: This is a free app. It is intended as a tool to teach geometry. That is not what I use it for. I design boats and a few other things and it is a great assistant.
The drawings that it creates are “constrained” by their definition, You can see a point that you have put on a circle and you can move it around, but it has to stay on the circumference. If two lines are defined as parallel, angling one forces the other to maintain this relationship etc. A tangent line will maintain as a tangent if the circle size is changed or if the tangent point is moved around. GeoGebra Geometry is a similar tool in some ways. Geometer’s Sketchpad has a disarmingly simple user interface and I prefer it. An inspirational application.
• Keyboard Maestro: This tool is pretty well-known But I include it because it is so awesome… I don’t use it so much for automating my day to day life (I tend to use focused dedicated apps for this kind of thing) but I do use it under circumstances where I am automating some one off workflow that will have to be repeated 1000 times and consists of a bunch of steps. Amazingly clever and flexible for solving this sort of thing usually coupling a few apps together to solve some problem.
I don’t see this app popping up on any of these lists but I think it’s a real gem and BARGAIN.
I was looking for something a little more taylored to keeping my list of Apple stuff, with serials, purchase date, sold date, AppleCare or not, etc. I was just using a table on an Apple note but it was cubersome.
Available on Mac, iPhone, iPad which allowed me to customize the database perfectly. Great API. I’m currently setting up a Coin collection database with it with some Javascript to import pictures and CSV files from CoinSnap. Excellent Apple Shortcuts support.
I can’t say enough good things about the app. Not sure why this isn’t on everyones list. And the price $6.99 LIFETIME. Make this developer rich he’s doing great work.
