25 Best Mac Apps 2021
To get the best of your Mac, you need to install some carefully selected apps. It’s not that there are no pre-installed apps on a new Mac, it’s just that they are a bit limited. If you really want to jumpstart your productivity and turn your Mac into a powerful machine, then keep reading. I’ll share with you the best apps that are specially designed to make these easier for you and improve your productivity.
Understandably, there are tons of apps out there, which makes choosing the right ones difficult. But, that’s why I’m here to walk you through the best apps in different categories. Whether you need entertainment, monitoring, social or photo editing apps for your Mac, you can start by going through this list. I have come up with the best apps under various categories to make the selection process easier for you.
Best Entertainment Apps for Mac
1. Spotify
If you are a music lover and Apple music is not enough for you, then you will find Spotify a better option. With this app, you can stream music on your app and enjoy tons of songs spread across all genres. Keeping track of your favorite music does not have to be stressful as there is a playlist section for that. You also get to see trending music using the music discovery section. The app makes it easy to share your playlists with closest people. Further, you can listen to your music on your mobile, tablet, desktop, PlayStation, Chromecast, TV, and voice-controlled speakers.
2. VLC
This is a free and open-source media player for Mac. It accepts a wide array of video formats with support options for a customized viewing or listening experience. It supports Blu-ray decryption and DVD. It is also compatible with many other platforms, user-friendly and very reliable. The latest version has no flags on VirusTotal. Besides, it has several editing tools that you can use to make the video even better.
Best Monitoring Apps for Mac
This is an app to monitor kids and employees. It can be used for remote control of pressed keys, social media, websites, used applications and many more. The app lets you view the Mac screens in real mode and to record user activity. You can even spy on the target person via the webcam and microphone. It’s perfect for employee control as it gives you a clear picture of how your team members spend working hours (the soft offers smart time control system with productivity reports). As for parental control, Spyrix Activity Monitoring can help you block applications and websites that you don’t want your kids to visit. You can also set keyword and URL alerts that will warn you if your child performs unwanted online activities.
4. iStart Menus
iStat Menus is among the best monitoring apps for your Mac. It gives you a quick view of essential data in the menu bar. If you need to see more of an item, then you can click it. It is so customizable that you can configure it to monitor just what you need. Besides, the app shows a huge range of stats: GPU, memory, disk usage, a CPU monitor, date & time, battery, network usage, disk activity and more.
5. Time Doctor
If you are an employer that needs to monitor how your employees spend their working hours, Time Doctor is what you need. You get to know when employees are chatting, visiting irrelevant websites and monitor their work progress. It is very customizable and you can schedule screenshots to be taken at intervals and alerts or notifications to keep them focused.
This app helps you schedule reports while monitoring is done. It is user-friendly, flexible and can operate undetected. It is a powerful surveillance app for your Mac as it gives you real-time screenshots and reports chatting or messaging activities. It gives you absolute control of web usage and the user’s activities.
Best Social Apps for Mac
7. REKK Call Recorder for Skype FaceTime Facebook Whatsapp
So if your keen on talking to friends via social apps and messengers like Skype, Viber, WeChat, and others, you’ll definitely like this call recorder for Mac. With REKK, you can record any kind of calls made with IMs and apps, including Zoom video calls and FaceTime voice calls. After recording a call, macOS users can transcribe a call locally in the app with smart speech recognition. Besides, the app lets you share the recorded call with friends via social messengers. Whether you‘re going just to have fun with your friends or to record an important business meeting, REKK will meet your needs.
8. TweetDeck
This lightweight app allows you to log into your Twitter accounts as well as others like WhatsApp, LinkedIn Facebook, and Pinterest. It lets you have fast and light navigation around your Twitter account by acting as lightweight Chrome. It can be used to view your Twitter account in Tweetdeck or Twitter Mobile styles whichever you prefer.
If you find yourself always on Instagram, then Photofeed for Instagram is for you. With this app, you can simply access your Instagram account to like and comment on posts as you browse through your feed. There is no need to go through your phone to know what is happening on Instagram. However, you will need to log into your account to enjoy all of these.
10. Skype
Skype provides a VoIP service for voice and video calls. Two people can use Skype to communicate when they have the app on their computers. You can also use it to call landlines over the world, receive voicemail services and forward calls to your phone. It can also be used to send texts via your Mac and for conference calls.
Best Photo Editing Apps for Mac
This photo editing app for Mac is a benchmark in this category. It lets you organize your edited photos. It is useful when you are into taking and editing large numbers of photos. It has powerful editing tools that can be enjoyed with a token of a monthly subscription.
12. GIMP
Also known as GNU Image Manipulation, this free photo editing app is among the best you can get. It comes with a wide range of functions that are pro-level with which you can create new images or work on existing ones. The app has brushes that can be customized, with layers and image-enhancing filters and tools that are automatic.
13. Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is a photo editing app with powerful tools that permit raw processing and very high-resolution images editing in real-time. It can be used to open and edit photos. Its learning curve is steep for novices and doesn’t have internal or 3D vector tools. However, most professional photographers find its features useful. There are paintbrushes, layers and exposure controls that are Photoshop-like for your use.
14. Google Photos
Google Photos is a free photo editing app that is user-friendly. It synchronizes your video and photo library on iCloud and you can also print your projects through the desktop version. The app makes accessing, organizing and sharing your videos and photos very easy. With Photos, you can synchronize your libraries across all your Apple devices for easy access.
Best Travel Apps for Mac
If you are the traveling type then you will agree with me that sometimes there can be a communication gap between you and the locals. A universal translator comes in handy here. Not only can this app detect what language is being spoken, but it can also translate phrases and words between 50 languages. The app is free and it provides accurate translations.
16. Seasonality Core
Because different places have different weather conditions, Seasonality Core helps you know the weather conditions of where you are heading to. With this high functionality app, you will be able to view reliable forecasts of over 200 countries and more than 34000 locations in them. Other things you will also be able to view are precipitation, wind, pressure, radar and map data of various regions.
17. Evernote
Evernote is a travel app for Mac that allows you to successfully organize and execute your trips. With it, you can scan and preserve tickets, passports, and travel itineraries in the event of loss of the originals. Files can be stored in a variety of formats, and the app can be synchronized across all your devices. Evernote allows you to store and search for your files easily, share them, clip, and organize web content.
Best Web Browsing Apps for Mac
18. Google Chrome
With a vast library extension, this app is very reliable and multi-purpose. You can open your Mac tabs on your other devices by synchronizing it across all your devices. Google Chrome allows you to search for images on google instantly with such a super speed. If you are after fast, secure and convenient browsing experience, Google Chrome is a perfect choice.
19. Opera
Opera for Mac is available in 42 languages with millions of users worldwide. It uses Blink as its layout engine. More features include downloads manager, pop up blocking, tabbed browsing, private browsing, and bookmarks bar. It has a speed dial that allows you to download pages and view them as thumbnails. Browsing on turbo mode reduces waiting time while loading a page. Opera operates while preserving the security of your Mac against insecure sites.
20. Mozilla Firefox
Developed by Mozilla Foundation, this free, customizable, and open-sourced browser for Mac is available in 79 languages. Its amazing features include live bookmarking, geolocation, private browsing, and tabbed browsing as well as spell-checking, etc. It can add more features with built-in tools that make it one of the best for Mac users.
Best Productivity Apps for Mac
21. PDFpen
PDFpen is a must-have for college students or anyone who has an interest in online research. With this app, you need not be afraid when someone sends you a PDF file. The app allows you to make changes, fix some mistakes and upload images to a PDF. You can edit a scanned document using the Optical Character Recognition. PDFpen makes PDFs very easy to work with.
22. Todoist
This note-taking app helps you organize your professional and personal projects keeping you abreast. It has amazing features that are free and can be used for creating tasks, interactive boards and browser extensions. All in a bid to make organizing your notes stress-free. Paying an optional fee of $29 per year unlocks more advanced features.
23. 1password
1password for Mac is an ideal password manager that keeps all your passwords secure. It saves you all the time wasted in trying to recall your passwords. You need not manage all your accounts with one password or memorize all of them. With just a password, you can access all your passwords.
24. Backblaze
Losing your Mac to theft or crash can be such a nasty experience. However, with Backblaze, you can save yourself the time spent in restoring or retrieving lost files. Also, you can avoid the heartache of completely losing some vital files. With as little as $5 a month, you can have your Mac completely backed up to avoid all these.
25. Flux
If you are working long hours on your Mac, then you need Flux to protect your eyes. Because your Mac radiates an unnatural blue light that can make you tired and unable to fall asleep after working on it. It works flawlessly to regulate the level of brightness of your Mac screen. Also, it softens your screen’s backlight and makes your display to adapt to any time of the day.
26. CleanMyMac
With a little token, CleanMyMac can get your Mac working superfast by ridding it of all the heavy files you do not need. These heavy and unnecessary files make your system slow. It scans, monitors and cleans your computer making it up and running fast thereby improving your productivity.
Below is a table showing the advantages and disadvantages of the apps.
