Great programs that I enjoy

March 23rd, 2024

I always enjoy sharing with others some of the apps that I’ve discovered during my time as a MacOS user. Many of these apps were important reasons for me to shift from Windows to Mac. This is a rather exhaustive but not complete list of programs for Apple devices that I recommend. There may be Windows variants of these programs, but I don’t use them and can’t guarantee their quality.

Programs listed below in italics are my favorite favorites.

⚠️ This list was last updated March 27, 2024.

🎼 Audio

Albums — Music player with a focus on full-album listening
Albums: Music Shortcuts — Widget app to immediately play a selected favorite album
AudioKit Reverb — A GarageBand plugin for reverb
Audio Trimmer — A simple audio trimming tool for mobile devices
Finale — A better Last.FM audioscrobbler
Hark — Podcast clip browser
Hokusai — Mobile audio editor
King of FM — FM synthesizer
LE01 — Synthesizer for bass sounds
Marvis Pro — Music player with advanced listening tools and features
Mimi — Hearing test and audiogram creation for AirPod customization
Minimoog Model D Synthesizer — A remake of a classic synthesizer
Miximum — Playlist authoring for combining official Apple and user-generated playlists
myNoise — Noise cancellation through walls of sound
Outcast — Podcast player for Apple Watch
Panflow — Panning plugin for GarageBand
PaulXStretch — Extreme sound length distortion
Pitch Drift — Pitch shifting plugin for GarageBand
PlayTally — Apple Music listening statistics
Podcast Archiver — Download backups of podcasts via RSS feed
Podcast Saver — Mobile backups of podcasts via RSS feed
Shazam — Music identification via live microphone recording
SLEEP — Calming space scenes and beautiful music for relaxation and focus
Sleeve — Album art as a HUD for easy listening on Macs
Soor — Music player with stat tracking
SoundHound∞ — An alternative to Shazam, with the supposed ability to recognize humming
Thwip — Fun sound effect generator for mobile devices
VHS Synth — A gritty, warbly synthesizer
808 Overdrive Pro — A synthesizer with a focus on bass sounds

👨🏻‍💻 Development

Applite — A user interface for the popular package manager, Homebrew
Boop — Various useful scripts for development
CodeEdit — A basic text editor to manage simple tasks
Coteditor — A more Mac-minded version of Notepad++, a popular Windows text editor
Cork — A well-engineered user interface for Homebrew
DevCleaner for Xcode — A utility to clean out data from Xcode installs
DevToysMac — A port of the popular script tool for Windows
Entity Pro — A helpful browser for all glyphs available on macOS
Favicon Factory — A simple UI to build favicons for websites
Gapplin — An SVG image viewer
GitHub Desktop — A helpful UI for managing Git
Jayson — A JSON viewer for mobile devices
Nova — A beautiful, performative IDE built only for Macs
One Markdown — A feature-rich Markdown editor and viewer
Textastic — A cross-platform text editor
Visual Table — A UI for databases
Zavala — A helpful outline builder for writing blog posts

👨🏻‍🎨 Graphic Design

Affinity Designer v2 — An incredibly powerful yet affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator
Affinity Photo v2 — A popular alternative to Adobe Photoshop with an ingenious UI for managing various graphic design tasks
Affinity Publisher v2 — A wise choice for Adobe InDesign users who wish to avoid a subscription fee
Afterlight Photo — A helpful set of filters and overlays for iPhone photography
ColorSlurp — A color sampler and UI palette builder
Darkroom — A well-made Apple Photos companion for photo and video editing
Fontcase — A tool to use custom fonts in certain apps on an iPhone
ImageOptim — A must-have image compressor for web development
Inkscape — A vector image editor with great drawing tools
Linea Sketch — A good and simple drawing tool
Magic — Useful for signing PDFs with the Magic Trackpad
Paletter — A UI palette builder
Photomator — A powerful AI-powered photo editor that links to Apple Photos
Pixelmator — A great raster-based image editor for mobile devices
Pixelmator Pro — A useful tool for quick raster-based edits
Procreate — A powerful and comprehensive drawing tool for iPad
PureRef — A helpful mood board builder for creative work
Retrospecs — Fun vintage computer image processing emulator
VSCO — My favorite image editor for digital photography, filled with beautiful filters and a powerful toolset

AltTab — Emulate the Windows Alt+Tab UI for easier program management
Amphetamine — Temporarily keep the computer on without editing power management settings
Amphetamine Enhancer — Additional features for Amphetamine that can be helpful in some cases
Command X — Adds the ability to “Cut” files in Finder
Dropover — A little bucket to hold files when transferring between folders
FinderFix — Quickly resizes and centers new Finder windows so that they don’t scatter across the screen when opened
Gamepad Menu — Adds support in macOS for MFi gamepads
Hand Mirror — Opens a small preview window of the active camera on macOS
Hidden Bar — Hides the excessive amount of applications I run in the Menu Bar
Lasso — Grid-based program window management
Mac Mouse Fix — Adds mouse settings for external mice to customize the experience from the Magic Trackpad
Magnet — Program window management with window snapping features
Mission Control Plus — Allows for the closing of programs while in Mission Control
MonitorControl — Management of external monitors through a UI
Pelican — Clipboard manager; lists a history of the contents of the clipboard for easy retrieval
Screenfloat — A tool to make and overlay screenshots over other programs
Shottr — A useful screenshot tool with a variety of helpful features

🚶🏻‍♂️‍➡️ Outdoor Activity

Distance — A UI for tracking distances on Google Maps
Easy Price Compare — A quick comparison tool for weights, prices, and quantities
EPA AIRNow — Current readings of outdoor air quality
EPA Smoke Sense — Pollutant level measurement of outdoor air
LastQuake — Worldwide tracking tool of earthquakes; includes self-reporting tool
Merlin Bird ID — A tool to discover and catalog local birdlife
OSHA-NIOSH Heat Safety Tool — Helpful guide on the safety of outdoor activity
Organic Maps — A good offline mapping tool for biking and hiking
Seek — An AI-powered plant identification program
SkyView® — Constellation tracker with a camera overlay for easy identification of stars in the sky
Stocard — Membership/loyalty card wallet for stores that don’t use Apple Wallet
Streets — Open Google Street View from a shared Apple Maps location
WaterMinder — Track water intake throughout the day to avoid surprise dehydration
what3words — A grid-based offline tracking tool for hikers who might get lost with insufficient cellular coverage
Where To? — An alternative to Yelp for planning an activity
Windy — Weather coverage by way of wind tracking

📸 Photos

Clips — A fun video maker useful for iMessage sharing
GIF Toaster — A quick tool for building GIF images on a mobile device; handy for sharing on iMessage
Green Screener — A quick preview of green screen coverage for later importing on a video editor
Halide Mark II — A powerful alternative to the default camera app on iPhone
LP — Quickly generate a GIF or video of a Live Photo
NeuralCam — Use AI to (overly) process an image taken on a mobile device
Peek-a-View — Build an album of photos that can be safely shared with someone else
Photoscope — A comparison tool to cull photo collections
Pixea — A robust image presentation program
Pixel Art Camera — A silly camera tool that makes images look like they were taken on an old device
Queryable — A more comprehensive AI-powered image search
Slow Shutter Cam — A camera for taking long-exposure images
Spectre Camera — A powerful long-exposure camera program
This — A simple UI for highlighting sections of an image with a refined result
VSCO — A very powerful image editor with a camera app included that has some unique overlays included

🛠️ Shortcuts

Charty — Build charts through Apple Shortcuts
Data Jar — A database for other shortcuts such as App Wishlist Pro
Opener — A tool to directly open supported links into apps
Scriptable — Write scripts on and for mobile devices
Toolbox Pro — Adds additional functionality not available in Apple Shortcuts

🧰 Utilities

4K Video Downloader+ — Download videos from a variety of sites with a simple UI
AppCleaner — Deletes extra files not properly culled after moving an app to Trash
Atlas Wallpaper — Generate interesting wallpapers using maps of cities
BetterDisplay — Adds additional features to monitors that might be hidden by software settings
Brush — An Apple Watch app that connects to HealthKit to time toothbrushing sessions
Calibre — Robust eBook creator
Callsheet — A better UI for IMDb and other movie sites
DaisyDisk — Displays file space used as a pie chart for easy drive management
Encrypto — Encrypt files for sharing with others
Equinox — Wallpaper designer for automatic day/night image changes
FlickType — Type out messages on an Apple Watch
HiDock — Customize the dock behavior based on the amount of monitors connected
Keka — A useful file or folder compression app
Latest — Pings the supported programs on a macOS device for updates
Lulu — A firewall for Macs
Mela — A cross-platform recipe management tool with calendar, grocery list, and search tools
Pipper — Presents a Safari overlay on top of all other windows
Screens — A remote management tool with a great presentation
Sigil — Ebook creation tool
Sloth — Shows all files and sockets in use on a Mac
Sniffnet — A network monitoring tool
Transmission — Bittorrent client
Unblah — Tracks the amount of time one speaks during a conference call to ensure one doesn’t monopolize a conversation

🎥 Video

Blackmagic Camera — A comprehensive and powerful video recording app
DaVinci Resolve — A powerful video editor
Emulsio — Image stabilization
IINA — A video player with a pleasant UI
Infuse — A useful video player
Lossless Cut — A non-destructive video file editor
LumaFusion — A good video timeline editor when used on mobile devices
Motion — Apple’s motion graphics tool
Unsqueeze — Video scaling application

🌐 Web Browsing

Arc Browser — A Chromium browser with a lot of interesting UI choices
AdGuard Pro — Ad blocking tool for Safari
feeeed — A news feed builder that supports a variety of sites
Firefox — Less popular these days, but still good enough to become one’s default web browser
Goodlinks — A tag-based read-it-later link-saving app with iCloud backup
Hack — A friendly UI for the Hacker News forums
KeePass XC — A Mac client for the KeePass encrypted password and secure notes file format
KyPass — A mobile UI to open a KeePass file, with iCloud support
MiniWiki — Wikipedia on an Apple Watch
Mlem — A better UI for the Lemmy platform
Mona — A superb Mastodon universal client
NetNewsWire — A universal RSS reader built on Apple design principles
Orion — A web browser built on WebKit that supports Firefox, Chrome, and Safari extensions
Parrity — A web browser for the Apple Watch
Parrot — A helpful quotation graphic tool to share links and quotes from online sources
Play — A universal app offering a better Save for Later experience on YouTube
Re:Toot — Generate images of text from Mastodon posts for sharing
Reversee — Reverse image lookup tool
Tailor — Connect multiple screenshots into one file, useful for when the existing functionality in a mobile device doesn’t support the use case
Watch Feeds — RSS feed reader for Apple Watch

DH:Personal