30 free macOS apps every Mac user should have From useful utilities to handy archivers and transcoders, here are 30 free yet powerful macOS apps you can download today. Jun 23, 2020 So if you have a Mac and are wondering how to turn your normal life into an iLife of cool and exciting apps, you need Mac apps. Even though some of the most popular applications are initially installed on the Mac (like Safari, mail.app, etc.), your Mac destiny needs a gentle push with these must-have Mac apps.
Contents
- 2. El Capitan Features
- 3. El Capitan Download & Install
- 4. OS X 10.11 Problems
- 5. Mac OS X 10.11 Tips
- 6. Software for OS X 10.11
- 7. Compare OS
In July, Mac has released their newest beta OS, El Capitan. While users still might experience a few bugs until the official version is released this fall, many of us are quite happy with the overall experience and all the new features. To make the experience even better, there are numerous apps available for the OS. Whether you want to increase productivity, organize your day better or find a great media player, I’ve got you covered. Here are my top 10 picks of the greatest and most indispensable software for Mac OS X El Capitan.
Top 13 Must-have Software for Mac OS X 10.11
#1. Recoverit (IS)
Recoverit (IS) recovers almost all kinds of files from multiple devices. You can use this powerful Data Recovery to recover your images, video or audio files, ducuments and archives etc. It is also available on Mac computers, video players, USB, hard drive, digital camera, and memory card. This Data Recovery provides the easiest, fastest and safest solution to recover your data lost by accidental deletion. You are allowed to preview your files before recovery. The recovery process is extremely easy and every one can use it without difficulty.
#2. Wunderlist
It can’t hurt to have a great to-do app, but finding one that is actually great for you is harder said than done (trust me, I’ve been there). Wunderlist is probably the best one out there, because of its versatility. Whether you want to write a grocery list, manage work projects, create a schedule or set a reminder for that important business meeting next week, Wunderlist has got you covered. The interface isn’t cluttered and difficult to navigate, so organization will be easier than ever. To me, this is an app I couldn’t function without. Plus, it allows you to share lists with family or colleagues and is available on pretty much every platform. You can set reminders, due dates, add hashtags, notes or print your schedule with just a few clicks. That’s power, right there.
Price: Free ($4.99 for the Pro version)
#3. 1Password
Do you know that feeling when you have so many accounts or email addresses that you eventually forget what the password is for every one of them? I do, which is the reason why I love 1Password so much. It keeps all of your passwords in one place, so you’ll never have to click that embarrassing “I forgot my password” button again. There are a lot of similar apps available, but I opted for this one because of its overall simplicity. In El Capitan, 1Password might experience slight display glitches, but other than that, it works fine.
Price: Free ($69.99 for the Full version)
#4. iSkysoft iMedia Converter Deluxe for Mac
iSkysoft iMedia Converter Deluxe for Mac is an all-in-one video converter that converts an audio or video media file to virtually any format. In this case, this can be a very helpful tool that allows you to convert your video files from or to any other format. You can not only convert various video formats files, but also be able to make and manage distinctive videos. This powerful Converter allows users to crop, trim or rotate video before conversion. The converting process is so simple that even beginners can use it in no time.
Price: $59.95
#5. Mailbox
Going through your emails is often like running through a maze – you get lost in junk mail, subscriptions, newsletters and personal emails, so sometimes, you overlook a few important messages. Mailbox is only one of email management apps, but, unlike most of the others, it’s already available for El Capitan. With mailbox, you get an iPhone-like experience; you can swipe right and left to delete or mark your emails, it has a bunch of useful features and a fast and visible interface.
Price: Free
#6. MalwareBytes
Every computer needs a good anti-virus protection. MalwareBytes has over 200 million downloads, so it must be doing something right. It’s simple to use, while still effectively protecting your Mac from those dangerous Trojans, worms, spyware, rogues and whatnot. Protecting your computer is definitely something every user should invest in, so if you haven’t downloaded it by now, get right onto it.
Price: Free ($25.54 for the Premium version)
#7. Caffeine
This tiny little app prevents your Mac from automatically going to sleep and starting screen savers. Although it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, it’s pretty useful for users and that’s why I love it. After installation, you’ll see a little coffee cup at the top of you menu bar – when you click it, Caffeine will be active, but you can turn it off just as easily. Plus, it’s free, so if you decide you don’t want it anymore, you won’t shed any tears over the price.
Price: Free
#8. CoconutBattery
CoconutBattery allows you to see everything you need to know about your battery’s life: how often it was charged, how much time you have before you need to charge it again, current capacity in comparison to when it was new, its age and so much more. It doesn’t take up much space on your Mac, but is really useful.
Price: Free (they accept donations, though)
#9. Colloquy
Have you been searching for that perfect messenger to communicate with people? If so, this is the best choice you can make. Usually, Mac’s chat apps aren’t very easy on the eyes, but Colloquy is the exception. It’s really simple, clean and easy to use and has a feel of a high-quality Mac app. Plus, it’s available on mobile, as well. It has a sleek interface and you can customize the look of it however you like. It also includes a dictionary and emoji’s, so communication will be really easy.
Price: Free
#10. Fantastical 2
This is probably one of the best, clearest and most user-friendly calendar programs out there. It allows you to import your schedule, organize your tasks in different categories (family, work, personal etc.) and all of it will be reachable and easy to navigate. You can also set reminders and have 2 different themes to choose from – Dark and Light. Fantastical 2 is the Holy Grail of calendars, trust me on this.
Price: $39.99
#11. Filmora Video Editor
For those who needs a tool for video editing, Filmora Video Editor is by far the most powerful and useful video editor. This software allows users to convert video clips into movies a lot faster. You can also create a timed movie with background music, professional effects and smooth transitions. With Filmora Video Editor, you can edit and personalize your video and audio files with ease.
Price: $39.95
#12. CleanMyMac 3
This is a software useful to anyone with a Mac. Most of us have a lot of apps or old files we don’t really need anymore, but can’t quite bring ourselves to delete them. That’s where CleanMyMac 3 comes in. Hey, did you know that every time you rotate a photo or make any sort of change to it, your computer automatically creates a copy of it? Now, how many unnecessary files is that? A lot. With this program, you can choose which folders you want scanned, so broken downloads, old updates, file copies or old email attachments won’t eat up your disk space anymore. Call it a spring clean, but every computer need a cleanup every now and then.
Price: Free (€39.95 for the full version, €59.95 for 2 Macs, €89.95 for 5 Macs)
#13. Deliveries
Now if you are big on online shopping like me, you’ll love this app. It will be located on the bottom of your screen and show you the status of your purchases. Whether you’re waiting on the latest gadget, a piece of clothing or a new book that you can’t wait to read, with Deliveries, you’ll be able to track your shipment. If you click a particular delivery, it will display more information and there’s also a countdown timer, so you’ll always know how much more you need to wait until you get your hands on an anticipated product. It’s compatible with more carrier services, like FedEx, DHL or City Link.
Price: $4.99
Yep, it’s the post every Mac user has to publish at least once in their lifetime. But hear me out now; If you’re a designer or developer, you might this list useful.
Efficiency is the root of all evil
I like efficiency. It gives me a sense of clarity and makes me productive. An efficient writer will write more in less time, an efficient driver will get better gas mileage, an efficient athlete will train better for a race.
It takes time to learn how to be efficient. Each person is different—you have to try stuff to see if they work for you, and fit your work style.
I want to show you how I roll.
Interface
On my MacBook Air 13”, I’ve hid my dock, to gain some vertical space for apps (yes, I know I can run apps in fullscreen). I wish Apple would’ve released a new Thunderbolt display with the release of the new Mac Pro…
I run a few apps in fullscreen: SublimeText, Spotify, and Mail. I write code in fullscreen SublimeText, then swipe to the right, and refresh the browser to see the changes (using Mixture for auto refresh). Pc mac os x lion.
When working with non-fullscreen apps like Finder, Photoshop, etc., I know that a swipe to the left is SublimeText; two swipes is Spotify, and so on. It’s faster that pressing Cmd + Tab 12 times (depending on the number of apps you have running) to find SublimeText from the list, for example.
It’s faster to start apps using the spotlight shortcut [Cmd + Space], and type in the first few letters of the app. But if I don’t know/remember the app, I find it much faster to pinch with four fingers and find it from the menu.
Categorisation
I have all my apps divided into four categories/folders:
- “Apple” (Dictionary, FaceTime, Photobooth, etc.).
- “Other” (Keychain Access, TimeMachine, Disk Utility, etc.).
- “Utilities”.
- “Apps” (not inside a folder).
Apps (In order of usage)
Dropbox for storage/backup. I almost forgot to add it to the list! That’s what I love about it: it’s unobtrusive. It’s just there, always working perfectly. It has saved me many times; I permanently deleted a file, only to remember that I need it. If I had it synced with Dropbox, I just restore it (deleted files are kept for 30 days). Another use is doing website testing on external devices. I add the site to the “Public” folder, and load the URL on the browser of my iPad, iPhone, etc. I wrote moving my websites to Dropbox.
Google Chrome for browsing. Until recently, I was using Safari. The Chrome DevTools made me switch forever.
SublimeText for coding. I spend my life in it, so I might as well make it look pretty. Download my User settings. For CSS coding I use SASS + Compass.
Adobe CS suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects) for design, photography, and videos. A no brainer. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with Sketch for design work. I’m not ready to replace Photoshop, yet.
Mail for reading emails. Far from perfect, and I want an alternative besides Sparrow. Can’t wait for dotMail to come out.
Spotify for listening to music. Or if you want an alternative try Rdio or Grooveshark.
Skype for chatting/video calls. Use this chat style to make your chatroom prettier.
Tower for pushing code to GitHub. Makes Git simple. Say goodbye to the command line. If you still use FTP, a great app is Transmit.
Mixture for web development. It allows me to quickly create a website using any boilerplate (fetches latest version automatically), it converts my SASS into CSS, it auto reloads the website and creates a local server, it can push to GitHub, and many more. If you want just an app for live reloading of website use LiveReload. Alternative Prepros.
Byword for writing. A minimal app that inspires you to write. Alternatives are iA Writer or SublimeText.
VLC for watching videos.
Transmission for torrenting. I wouldn’t be where I am without torrents, and in general, the Internet. I don’t support piracy, but I do support knowledge. Having paid for a higher education that taught me only a couple of useful things, I now value free knowledge (and try to give some, through this blog). This is a topic for another blog post, though…
ImageOptim for reducing file size of graphics. It works like magic, you drag and drop your images, and ImageOptim reduces their file size. To reduce the file size of transparent PNG-24 assets, you can use ImageAlpha. It converts the PNG-24 image to an 8 bit PNG with a full alpha channel.
LiveView for broadcasting your screen to an iOS device. Useful for designers developing graphics for iOS devices. Supports retina as well. You can also control the cursor of your Mac from the iOS device, useful when doing design prototypes or presentations. Requires Live View installed on the iOS device as well. Alternative app: Skala Preview.
Reflector for mirroring the iOS device’s screen onto a Mac. Useful for demos, presentations, tutorials, or product videos. The product video demo I did for HopIn was created with this app.
ScreenFlow for recording your screen. The best app for this job. The tutorial I did to show you how to make your sites pretty on retina was created with this app.
Induction for connecting to databases. I suck at Terminal and the command line. Induction lets me connect and browse databases easily.
Utilities (In order of usage)
Best Free Mac Apps
I define utilities as small apps, that run in the background and help you with specific tasks, or make your life easier.
Paragon NTFS for Mac for connecting NTFS drives to OS X. It allows you to connect your NTFS drives to your Mac without formatting them in a weird format readable only by Macs. Thanks to this, I can still use my external drives on other Operating Systems.
F.lux turns your Mac screen yellow. This app changes your screen’s colour to look like the room you’re in. Doing that allows me to work more by staying up late, and staring at my screen longer without hurting my eyes. It might look weird at first, but once you get used to it, your eyes will love it.
Brightness Slider for reducing screen brightness. When you can’t reduce the brightness of your screen any lower, you can use this app to lower it even more. Especially during the night, your eyes will thank you.
Moom for managing app windows. You can also assign keyboard shortcuts for frequently used app screen locations.
Slicy for exporting assets from Photoshop. Drag and drop your PSD, and assets are created automatically. It also generates @2x from 1x assets, and vice versa. Free alternative: Cut&Slice me. If you use the latest Adobe Photoshop CC version, it generates these assets for you without a plugin.
The Unarchiver for extracting and compressing files. Much better than the Archive Utility app.
Icon Slate for exporting icons. I use it mostly for creating favicons that have embedded both retina and non-retina versions into one file (“favicon.ico”).
TextExpander for keyboard shortcuts and snippets. With this app you create snippets to help you code faster, and to make you more productive. You can add snippets for your email signature, or your address, or your phone number. It has potential, but I have a terrible memory, so I tend to forget my snippets and I have to search for the snippet code that I assigned. Not very efficient. Download some cool snippets.
Canon EOS Utility for remote access to camera. Connect your dSLR camera to your Mac and operate it from a distance. I used it in the past as a high quality live webcam (1080p recording). I had Skype recording my screen, which was occupied by the Canon EOS Utility app, that was showing live video from the camera.
CrossOver for running Windows apps. Instead of using Parallels to install Windows on your Mac, and occupy precious disk space, it’s better to simply run Windows apps (.exe) with this very cool app.
iExplorer for transferring files between iOS devices. It allows you to browser or transfer music, videos, photos, and tinker with the device’s folders (useful for theming your iOS device).
Monolingual for removing language packs and freeing disk space. Especially if you’re on an Air, disk space is precious. Use this app to remove all the language resources your Mac came with. I left only three languages (English, Greek, Romanian). I don’t remember how much space it has saved me, but I think it was around 2-3 GB.
CleanMyMac for freeing hard drive space. Bonus feature is uninstalling applications by moving them to the trash.
Other
To make designing easier, I use some cool plugins for Photoshop:
- GuideGuide for making grids.
- Kuler for picking colours and palettes. To enable it, in Photoshop, go to Window > Extension > Kuler. It should be there. Online version.
- WebZap for creating layouts, mockups, editing many text fields.
- DevRocket for faster designing and exporting iOS UI elements.
- CSSHat for turning layer styles into CSS code.
- Bjango Photoshop Actions & Workflows that speed up the design process.
To make developing websites easier, I use some cool extensions for Google Chrome:
- WhatFont for identifying fonts on websites.
- User-Agent Switcher to evaluate how websites are rendered on other devices (Chrome DevTools also has this feature, but it’s hidden in the settings).
- PageSpeed Insights for analyzing and improving website performance.
- Window Resizer for resizing the browser window to specific resolutions.
- Hola for unblocking sites and country-specific services, like Spotify.
- Rather for improving my browsing experience by replacing certain words, like “Justin Bieber”, with others.
- AdBlock for blocking site ads and annoying popups.
- Awesome Color Picker for copying the HEX colour of a website directly to clipboard.
Web apps I use:
- FreshBooks for invoicing clients.
- IcoMoon for creating icon web fonts from SVG icons.
- DataURL for converting images into Base64 code (saving one HTTP request).
- InVision for creating high-fidelity desktop prototypes from images.
- Flinto for creating iOS prototypes from images.
On top of that, I even learned to type using a more efficient keyboard layout called Colemak. With the Colemak layout, your fingers move 2.2x less than with a QWERTY keyboard layout. It also supports multilingual, and allows you to type weird symbols (like: €, â, ñ, etc.) without switching languages. The negative aspect is that you have to invest some time to learn the layout.
Must Have Mac Apps 2020
Be wary of small improvements that lead to even smaller gains. They’re not worthy. Apply the Pareto principle which states that 80% of the effects should come from 20% of the actions. Go forth and make stuff!