Did you just pick up a shiny new 13-inch MacBook Pro? Or even a 16-inch MacBook Pro, maybe a MacBook Air, perhaps an iMac? No matter your Mac of choice, there are some Mac apps out there that are just so good that they should be one of the first apps that you download and install on your new machine right away! Here are our favorites.

• Mac Apps Everyone Should Have Won
• Apps Everyone Should Have On Their Mac
• Mac Apps Everyone Should Have One
• Mac Apps Everyone Should Have Kids

The basic purpose of this must have apps for Mac OS X guide is to help you in selecting some of the best apps for Mac and installing them on your Mac system. So, if you have just got yourself a brand-new Mac and totally clueless what to install, this must have Mac apps article is absolutely perfect for you. Jan 17, 2020  So, having a Mac and wondering how to turn your ordinary life into an iLife with cool and exciting must have Mac apps. Although, some of the most predominate apps are initially installed in Mac (such as safari, mail.app etc), still your Mac destiny need some gentle push with these must have Mac apps.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud storage service that lets you easily backup important documents, files, photos, video, and other things. While your stuff is stored in Dropbox, you can access it across any other device, as long as you're logged in to the same account. Any changes to your files get saved automatically, though you can also check older versions on the web interface if needed. Everything you upload into Dropbox is encrypted, and there are also collaborative features that make it easy to share files with others. One thing I absolutely love about Dropbox is how it integrates with pretty much any other app I need, so my stuff is accessible from anywhere and in anything.

A free account gives you 2GB for free (and the chance to get more space with referrals), but they have plans that start at around $11.99 for 2TB.

Dropbox

Online backup for all of your files, with integrations in almost every app.

Mac Apps Everyone Should Have Won

Source: iMore

I'm on Twitter pretty much all day, every day. My app of choice is Tweetbot from Tapbots. The reason I use Tweetbot over every other Twitter app is because I love the interface, as it's easy to use, and it provides plenty of powerful features. You can quickly search for topics that interest you, filter and mute hashtags and people that are annoying you temporarily (or permanently, it's up to you), create lists, and there is support for a multi-column view. I've been using Tweetbot on my iOS and Mac devices for years — there's no other app that I would rather use. Plus, you don't see promoted ad tweets.

Tweetbot

Tweetbot has plenty of powerful features that make it the best Twitter app on Mac.

Source: iMore

While I use Safari as my default browser on my Mac, it's always good to have an alternative, especially since some things don't always work properly in Safari. For my alternative, I use Google Chrome. It syncs with your Google account, has numerous plugins and extensions to enhance the browser experience, and it works better with certain Google apps than Safari, like Meet.

Google Chrome

Chrome is a great alternative browser that syncs with your Google account and has a ton of plugins and extensions.

Source: iMore

I have a lot going on daily, so my schedule gets really hectic at times. That's why I need a calendar, and I continue to use Fantastical on my Mac. Fantastical has a beautiful interface that is easy to use, and you have several different views on how to look at your calendar. It integrates with your iCloud, Google, Exchange, or even local calendar, so any changes are saved and sync automatically. The agenda list view is a great way to see what's coming up in your schedule, and it's easy to create events with the natural language input support. Fantastical also integrates with Reminders, so you have your calendar and tasks in one place.

Fantastical

Fantastical provides a beautiful interface for your schedule, and natural language input makes it easy to schedule events and reminders.

Source: iMore

One of the most important things you can do to protect yourself online is to have secure passwords. For this, you're going to want a good password manager, which can track your passwords and other sensitive data, while also helping you generate randomized passwords to use. With 1Password, you can create different vaults for personal and work accounts (or whatever else you need), sync your data across multiple devices (it's available on everything), and even store things like bank info, credit card numbers, and other things that need extra security. 1Password encrypts everything so that it's safe, and you can't even get in without a master password. I've been using 1Password for years, and it's one app that I cannot live without.

1Password

Generate safe and secure randomized passwords, track all of your passwords and other sensitive data, and sync everything on all of your devices.

Source: iMore

Need to do a bit of hard drive cleanup? DaisyDisk is a must have. This app lets you easily see what is cluttering up your hard drive thanks to bright and colorful blocks, so you can see what's taking up the most space. You can delete stuff directly from DaisyDisk to free up space, and it's all done in an intuitive interface that's a joy to use. Decluttering has never been prettier.

DaisyDisk

DaisyDisk lets you easily visualize what's on your hard drive, and you can delete useless files directly through DaisyDisk's intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

Software to calculate area from sketch macos 10. Source: iMore

Once you start installing a lot of apps, you may find your Menubar cluttered with a bunch of icons. Bartender is an app that helps you tidy up that Menubar by tucking away unwanted icons into a kind of sub-Menubar. With Bartender, you can choose to rearrange your icons into an order that makes more sense to you, as well as choosing what is shown in the main Menubar, and what to hide in a secondary Menubar. Or, you can hide some items completely, because they're unnecessary — it's up to you.

Bartender

Tidy up your Menubar by rearranging and hiding app's Menubar icons as you see fit.

Source: iMore

The Spotlight Search in macOS is alright, but you can do so much more with Alfred. Alfred is essentially Spotlight on steroids. You can do your basic search functionality, but you can also create workflows to make your life easier, access your clipboard history at anytime, view contact info, have app integrations, text expansion, search the web, and more.

Alfred 4

Boost your productivity like never before with Alfred and it's many magical wonders with the keyboard.

Source: Pixelmator Team

Whether you're an amateur or professional, you may end up having to do some photo editing at some point. Pixelmator Pro is one of our favorite apps to get the job done. It's a powerful photo editor that will have all of the tools you need, but it's intuitive and easy to use, unlike Photoshop, which some may find intimidating. With Pixelmator Pro, you have many professional and non-destructive editing tools, allowing you to bring the best out of your photographs. And the image editing is enhanced by Pixelmator's machine learning, so you get the absolute best looking photos with ease. Plus, the price is reasonable and affordable.

Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator Pro brings professional-grade tools in a simple and easy-to-use interface for everyone.

Source: Bare Bones Software, Inc.

If you're looking for a professional text, code, and markup editor, then you should download BBEdit. It's used often by web application developers, writers, and software developers who need powerful tools for editing, searching, and manipulation of text, code, and HTML/XML markup. Some features of BBEdit include grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files, project definition tools, function navigation and syntax coloring for a wide variety of source code languages, code folding, and more.

Unsure if BBEdit is what you're looking for? The app has a 30-day trial for you to put the app through its paces, and then you can decide whether or not to purchase the full package, which has even more advanced features. But you can continue to use the free version of BBEdit too.

BBEdit

BBEdit is one of the best go-to apps out there for text, code, and markup editing.

What are your favorite apps?

These are just a few of our favorite must-have apps for a new Mac. Do you have any recommendations of your own? Let us know in the comments!

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One of the biggest benefits of using macOS over its Windows counterpart is its app ecosystem. I love the fact that for everything that I want to do manually, there is a Mac app which can help me do it better and faster. However, I have one big grievance with the Mac’s App Store, and that’s the fact that every useful app on the Mac App Store costs so much that buying a bunch of them just isn’t possible for everyone. Take for example Fantastical 2, it’s by far the best calendar app for Mac and costs a whopping $49.99. Things 3, a great app which I use for managing my tasks, costs me another $49.99. Am I the only one, or are you also seeing a trend here?

For that reason, many of us have to look around for the alternatives of these apps and settle for ones which are affordable but compromises on features and user interface. That said, not all the apps on the Mac App Store have to burn a hole through your pocket. There are some apps which are the best apps in their class and don’t cost much. In this article, I am going to list the best apps which are all priced under $10 and are extremely useful. The list contains app which I personally use on a daily basis and have fallen in love with. So, I hope that these apps are going to help you too without breaking the bank:

Note:This in no case is an exhaustive list. It’s just the apps that I found most useful in my workflow. If you want to see other apps which fall in this category, do leave a comment down below.

5 Best Cheap Mac Apps Under $10

1. Magnet

macOS is a great operating system but there are somethings which Windows handles better than macOS and windows management is one of them. Windows makes it really easy to work in split-screen mode while macOS makes it a chore. That’s where Magnet comes in. It makes handling split-screen multitasking a breeze. With Magnet installed, all you need to do is hit a keyboard shortcut and it will arrange the app windows in split-screen mode. Magnet not only allows you to use apps side by side but also up and down and even allows you arrange four different apps in four corners.

That said, I mainly use the app for using side-by-side multitasking. All I need to do is to hit ⌥⌃→ shortcut to arrange the app on the right side and ⌥⌃← to arrange the window on the left side of the screen. Now, before you go on saying that there are more powerful tools out there, I agree, there are. But no other app makes using split-screen as effortless and intuitive as Magnet. It’s like having the functionality natively on your Mac. But you know what the real kicker is, it’s that the app just costs $0.99. If you don’t buy any other apps on this list, I would recommend that you at least buy this one.

Pro tip: Hide the dock using the ⌘⌥D keyboard shortcut for a more immersive split-screen experience.

Install: Magnet - $0.99

Apps Everyone Should Have On Their Mac

2. aText

aText is an app for someone who is used to typing repetitive things on their Mac. The app basically lets you create custom abbreviations for long texts so that you don’t have to type the same text again and again. I mainly use the app’s functionality when I am on emails, filling up online forms or sharing my website’s link.

It’s really easy to use this app. All you need to do is launch it and then add the custom shortcuts and the corresponding full text. From the next time whenever you type your short-text, it will automatically transform to the full text.

You can see the app working in the GIF above. For demonstration purposes, I created two short-texts. One transforms into a long text and one into my websites URL. Believe me, once you start using this app, it will make your life so much easier. Lastly, I want to add that there are a lot of reviews on the App Store that the app is not working for the latest version of macOS and even the app's iTunes page says the same thing. but I have been using this app since last 5 months on my my MacBook Pro running on the latest version of High Sierra and it has been working perfectly fine for me, just as shown in the GIF above.

Install:aText - $4.99

3. Yoink

Yoink is one of those apps which you never knew you needed until you came across it. Yoink is one of the best utility apps you can get for yourself. The app basically creates a virtual space on your Mac, allowing you to store and move items easily. With Yoink, you no longer have to drag and drop any file. Just drop the files in Yoink and access and move it anywhere you want. It especially comes in handy if you are using a big monitor hooked to your MacBook Pro or an iMac as it saves you from dragging your files across long distances.

By default, the Yoink window is placed on the left side of your display but you can change the size and position of your window by going to the app’s preferences. Apart from storing files, Yoink also allows you to drag and drop texts into its window. The dragged text is saved in the form of a text file. It’s an easy way to save text without having to copy and paste it. Yoink is a really useful app and I know it’s going to help you a lot once you make using this a habit.

Install:Yoink-$6.99

4. Copied

Next on the list is a nifty little clipboard app which saves all your clippings in one place. Whether its text, links, or images, Copied saves everything that you copy on your Mac. Everything that you have copied can be easily accessed using Copied’s menu bar icon. If you want to use any of the saved clippings, you can just drag and drop the clippings wherever you want to use them.

Copied also has a ton of organizational features which allows you to manage your clippings. You can create folders which are called lists and organize your clippings any way you want to. However, if you are like me, you will mostly use Copied insanely quick search feature to find the clipping that you are looking for. In fact, the Test list which is the what you are seeing in the attached pictures is the first list I ever created in Copied. All these features are good, but by far my favorite feature of Copied is that it syncs all your clippings across devices. So, if you have more than one Mac or a Mac and an iPhone, your clippings are synced and available on every device.

I know Apple has recently introduced a universal clipboard feature, but for some reason, it’s been really quirky for me. So, I still use Copied for that task. I also like that Copied allows me to copy and save anything including an image, a feature which is not available natively on Mac’s universal clipboard. I love this app and it has saved me many times when I forget to paste something that I copied or I accidentally copy another item when I have already something on the clipboard.

Mac Apps Everyone Should Have One

Install:Copied - $7.99

Mac Apps Everyone Should Have Kids

5. DaisyDisk

Since Macs come with pretty limited storage options and each storage upgrade tier is pretty costly, most of us end up buying either a 128GB or 256GB option. That’s why it’s so easy for us to run out of storage on our Macs. But have you ever taken a moment and wondered where all that storage went? Believe it or not most of the time a big chunk of our Mac’s storage is filled with garbage that we don’t need. We keep files in folders, neatly organize them, and as time passes we eventually forget everything about them.

Those files keep on piling up and eating up our precious storage with us being none the wiser. The main problem is that macOS doesn’t make it any easier to discover the files that are eating the storage but are no longer necessary. That’s where DaisyDisk becomes so valuable. The premise of the application is very simple. It helps you analyze the storage on your Mac so that you can find and remove unwanted files and recover lost storage space.

The best part about the app is its user interface. It represents all the folders and files occupying your Mac’s storage in easy to navigate and color-coded concentric circles. Clicking on a circle is equivalent to opening a folder. Once you click on it, DaisyDisk will show you all the folders and files inside that folder using the same neatly arranged concentric circles. There is also an information bar at the right which will show you all the files inside the selected circle or folder. The files are neatly arranged in the descending order based on their size.

So, you can easily navigate your whole Mac to find out the files which are taking space and determine if they are useful or not. If they are not useful, you can just click and drag that part of the circle which represents the unwanted file. Do this for all the files and when you are done, hit the delete button to get rid of them. If that’s not enough a reason to buy this tool, DaisyDisk also allows you to scan any external drives which are either on your server or physically connected to your device.

I can’t tell you how much storage DaisyDisk has helped me in getting back. Every few months I run DaisyDisk and I am able to release anywhere between 20-50GB of storage. If you are using a Mac and always running out of storage DaisyDisk is a must-have tool for you.

Install:DaisyDisk - $9.99

5 Best Cheap Mac Apps: Final Thoughts

As I said in the beginning, this in no way is a full list of Mac apps that are both useful and cost less than $10. That said, in this article, I wanted to include just those apps which are so essential to my workflow that I cannot imagine working without them. All the apps that are mentioned in this article are the ones which I have personally paid for and have been using for more than six months now. Other than DaisyDisk which by design is used once every other month, the other four apps are very important to my workflow and I wouldn’t be able to work without them. They are useful, they look good, and they cost under $10.