When was the last time you took a look at the Mac App Store for its utilitarian selection of niceties? Probably a while back, right? The truth is that there isn’t much in the way of personalized curation in Apple’s own catalog, which is why we’ve taken it upon ourselves to find the best Mac apps around.
That said, not all of the best Mac apps derive from the App Store. Others come from external sources on the web. In fact, you can download and install applications from anywhere on your Mac by simply tweaking your privacy settings in macOS.
From note-taking apps to image editors, windows managers and music production suites, read onto the next slide for a quick look at our picks of the best Mac apps.
Gabe Carey has also contributed to this article
- Get it from: App Store
- Price: Free
No brand of computer is without its annoyances. For so long now, it’s been impossible to use our MacBooks – unbound by the chains of a power adapter – while video outputs to an external monitor. As we all know here at TechRadar, Apple’s laptops automatically enter sleep mode whenever the lid is closed. For the lot of us, this can be a huge inconvenience should you prefer the sheer magnitude of a monitor as opposed to a 12- or 13- or 15-inch laptop screen.
Luckily, Amphetamine makes it possible to continue using your MacBook while closed. Previously you could accomplish this using a similar application called Caffeine, but we prefer the UI features you get with this freebie. In addition to fitting in naturally with the rest of your Menu Bar items, Amphetamine also supports hotkey commands as well as deactivation reminders, not to mention there are no pesky advertisements in sight.
- Get it from: App Store
- Price: $9.99 (£7.99 or around AUS$14)
While Windows has been able to snap programs to the edge of the screen since version 7, Apple’s solution didn’t arrive until OS X El Capitan. What’s more, even then it lacked some of the comprehensiveness of Microsoft’s alternative. Fortunately, HyperDock gives us that full-fledged functionality we so desperately crave, allowing anyone with a Mac to administer to the app Dock and windows all the same.
For windows, you can drag an app to the left or right edges of the screen (or the corners) and it'll automatically fill that space. This makes it much easier to be productive on the desktop without wasting time dragging windows from the corners. For the Dock, hovering over apps activates something similar to Windows 7's thumbnail previews, providing overviews of windows that can be accessed by a click or closed directly from the preview. Handy.
- Get it from: Parallels
- Price: $79.99/year (Home & Student) Around £60 or AUS$100)
If you've bought a Mac and miss some of your old Windows programs, don't worry - Parallels Desktop 12 can make it happen. Instead of having to dual-boot your Mac into a Windows partition, Parallels Desktop 12 allows Windows and macOS Sierra to co-exist side-by-side, and you can even run Microsoft-only programs such as Visual Studio 2015, or the Windows versions of the company's Office 365 apps, alongside your native macOS ones.
All you need is a Windows 10 license - so prepare to buy one if you haven't already. Or, alternatively, you can use Parallels to try a handful of free operating systems including Chromium (a free distribution of Chrome OS) or Linux Debian. This year's version of Parallels is the most useful yet thanks to a new addition called the Parallels Toolbox, which allows you to easily carry out common tasks — from taking a screenshot to downloading YouTube and Facebook videos, and password-protecting all of your files.
- Get it from: App Store
- Price: £14.99 (around $20 or AUS$25)
If you're anything like us, you'll hate working with one monitor or screen. Portable monitors are still fairly expensive (and not to mention bulky), and luckily you can use an iPad instead using a nifty app called Duet. Developed by ex-Apple engineers, it works by tethering your iPad to your Mac using one of Apple's Lightning cables and firing up the app on both devices.
You can then drag windows and apps onto your iPad's display just like you can a second monitor, and if you have a more recent iPad with a Retina display then you'll get the full benefit of all those pixels. Just know that the bandwidth isn't quite what you would get with a proper monitor, so it can be a bit laggy when you notch the quality up. But it's still more than usable for reading websites, typing up documents and watching videos.
- Get it from: Atom
- Price: Free
Atom is a text editor that's primarily designed for coders, but its flexibility and customization options make it a viable option for many different types of users. That's because of two reasons: first, you can download a number of different Packages - effectively plug-ins - to make it bend to your will. It can be transformed into a Markdown editor for writing blog posts, for example, or you can hook it up to Evernote for storing notes in the cloud.
There's at least 10 different word counters out there, and you can even add typewriter sound effects as you hammer out your delicious prose. Atom is also infinitely customizable on the visual side thanks to an editable back-end, allowing you to do anything from changing the font size, line height and colors to giving the caret Word 2016-like elasticity.
- Get it from: App Store
- Price: £149.99 (around $195 or AUS$255)
Whether you're an aspiring rockstar or superstar DJ, Logic Pro X is one of the best music creation apps on the Mac. Developed by Apple itself,76 its accessible interface hides a ton of advanced functionality. The latest version comes with a slick new design, 64-bit architecture and new session drummer that will save you having to shell out for a drum machine.
It also works in natural harmony with iPads, providing a touch-based alternative method of creating song structures to dragging and dropping blocks in the main visual editor. Whether you're a seasoned producer already (Sia used the app to record her hit song 'Chandelier') or are looking to upgrade from Garageband, Logic Pro X likely has what you need.
- Get it from: App Store
- Price: Free
A simple app but an important one, to-do app Wunderlist's strength lies in its cross-device functionality. It's available on Mac, PC and Android and iOS, allowing you to pick up where you left off wherever you are using macOS's Handoff feature.
Once you've created a list you can schedule reminders, add notes and embed it into the macOS Notification Centre using a widget. Team-based features are unlocked by signing up to Wunderlist's Pro option for a yearly fee, and you can add files of any size without running into limits.
- Get it from: App Store
- Price: Free
Evernote has morphed into a mighty note-taking app over the years. While some people will say that it's too bloated, the sheer number of things that you can do with it still makes it best-in-class. You can type up notes, obviously, organizing them using a combination of folders and tags. You can even embed Google Drive documents, which are accessible in a click.
There's also the ability to set reminders, share notes with friends, find information related to notes using Evernote's 'Context' feature, create lists, and favorite notes that you frequently return to. Better yet, all of your notes are synchronized using the company's servers, making them accessible on nearly any PC (through a browser or the native Evernote app) or mobile device in the world. The paid version lets you use Evernote with more than two devices while upping the amount of data you can sync each month.
- Get it from: Website
- Price: Free
GIMP (standing for GNU Image Manipulation) is one of the best free image editing apps out there. It's a great alternative to Adobe Photoshop and comes with a massive array of professional-quality functions that let you tweak existing images saved in a range of formats or create fresh ones from scratch. Features include layers, highly customizable brushes, automatic image-enhancing tools and filters. You can do even more with it using plug-ins, which are available to download from the GIMP Plugin Registry.
- Get it from: App Store
- Price: £34.99 (around $45/AUS$60)
Ulysses is one of the best "distraction-free" markdown editors out there today, balancing features with simplicity and beautiful design. Unlike Word 2016, or even Apple's own Pages, Ulysses hardly features an interface at all. This allows you to get on with writing without being distracted by superfluous buttons and menus. The app uses its own brand of Markdown — a type of text formatting engine — that lets you highlight your writing in a way that makes organizing it simpler, and a vast number of export styles formats it in an attractive way once you're finished.
There's a handy attachments bar on the right-hand side that features an attractive word counter and lets you write notes to assist you in your writing. Notes can be accessed anywhere thanks to iCloud support, so you can pick up your iPad and carry on where you left off using macOS's Handoff feature.
- Get it from: Website
- Price: Free
If you’re a gamer who takes pride in the fact that you use a Mac, whether for work, school or leisure, Nvidia GeForce Now will silence your biggest critics. Since the dawn of time itself, it’s seemed as though PC gamers have shut down the prospect of using a Mac to play triple-A video games. The graphics weren’t there, and neither was the library.
Nowadays, we live in the era of streaming. You don’t have to download your TVs and movies – you can stream them on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Why should games be any different? Well, with GeForce Now, they’re not. You can stream PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Overwatch and more at the highest settings from the comfort of your MacBook or Mac computer.
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