Patryk Chojecki

Patryk Chojecki

Research & Business Development

Mac Apps That Make My Life Better

3 minute read

Published:

This is a list of Mac apps that make my life significantly easier and more fun. I use a vast majority of them every single day and it’s hard for me to imagine using a Mac without them.

To keep the list more concise, I decided to not include any first-party apps (like Mail.app or Reminders.app) and software that is well-known to an average user (like Mozilla Firefox).

A lot of these apps are open-source and/or free.

  • Amphetamine - A simple utility app that will keep your Mac awake. Mac App Store

  • AppCleaner - It allows you to delete unwanted apps together with useless files they left on your hard drive, the same way iOS does it. Free Download

  • Battery Buddy - A cute battery indicator that appears in the menu bar. Free Download

  • Bitwarden - My password manager of choice. Secure, reliable, and free. Free Download

  • calibre - A powerful e-book manager. Works perfectly with Amazon Kindle and any other e-reader. Free Download

  • Disk Inventory X - A disk usage utility, which allows you to see how exactly you use the space on your hard drive. Free Download

  • Dozer - A utility that allows you to rearrange and hide unwanted menu bar items when it gets too cluttered. Free Download

  • Expenses - This is what I use to track all of my expenses. Works on both macOS and iOS. Mac App Store

  • Hush - A privacy-oriented Safari extension that blocks all unwanted junk that occupies the modern Web. Mac App Store

  • IINA - A modern media player that just works. Super lightweight and always reliable. Free Download

  • ImageOptim - A utility that lets you shrink the size of your images. It does it without any loss of quality by simply deleting some metadata. Free Download

  • Latest - This is a tiny app that helps you keep all of your apps up-to-date. No matter if you’ve downloaded them from the Mac App Store or any other source. Free Download

  • Maccy - My favorite clipboard manager. Simple and always reliable. Free Download | Mac App Store

  • NetNewsWire - A world-class RSS reader, which syncs magically through the power of iCloud. It is exactly what I expect from a modern Mac app. I also use it on my iPhone. Mac App Store

  • OmniGraffle - If you ever need to work with graphs or diagrams of any kind, this app will make your life a lot easier. It has many advanced features, but at the same time stays easy to learn. Download

  • Raycast - My favorite alternative to Spotlight. Much more powerful and due to the abundance of user-created extensions has truly unlimited potential. Free Download

  • Tiles - A brilliant window manager, which at this point really should be built into macOS. I appreciate its fantastic keyboard shortcuts. Free Download

  • Wipr - This is the best ad block available for Safari as of right now. Both macOS and iOS versions are superior to anything else available on the market. If you hate ads, you need Wipr. Mac App Store

  • Wondershare PDFelement - One of the most advanced PDF editors out there. Usually, for browsing PDFs, I use Preview.app, however, the build-in utility significantly lacks editing features. That’s what I use PDFelement for. Download

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