Creation software isn’t enough on its own. Word processors, spreadsheets, creative tools, IDEs, email, databases, and more run our businesses and are the reason we have computers for work, but they’re not perfect. You can have the best apps to code software, write novels, or sketch art, but still waste half your day typing or clicking repetitively, organizing files, and trying to find today’s date.

Time to put your computer’s smarts to work. From our years of working on Macs, here are our team’s 25 favorite Mac productivity apps, tools that will make your work more enjoyable and efficient. The Best Mac Productivity Software Ask someone why they love their Mac, and odds are you’d hear something about how it “just works,” “gets out of the way,” and “has great apps.” macOS isn’t known for being the absolute most customizable—that award would go to Linux—or the one with the most software—something Windows would easily win (or, these days, the web as more business software goes online).

Instead, macOS is known for its simplicity. It’s packed with keyboard shortcuts and trackpad features, includes the same menubar and searchable help in every app, and keeps distractions at bay with full-screen and split-screen apps. Apple’s vibrant developer community has taken that inspiration further and built hundreds of beautifully designed apps to make you more productive and help you create better work on your Mac. Those are the tools that let you make the Mac your own. In this roundup, we focused on macOS tools that help you get work done—not tools you’ll primarily use to do your work.

A developer might need Sublime Text or xCode, a designer Photoshop or Sketch, a writer Word or Ulysses. All three could use the tools in this roundup to get work done in each of those apps faster. We tried to find the options that give the most bang-for-your-buck in each category.

And when there are a number of popular options with their own specialized features, we picked the app that fits most people’s needs and then included others as alternatives underneath. Note: We didn't include built-in apps like Automator or Preview, since you already have those.

And while this list focuses specifically on macOS apps, many of the apps on this list are cross-platform and appear on our list of best productivity apps for, and/or as well (along with other recommended productivity apps for those OSes). Tiny Tools Some of the most helpful apps aren't full-screen apps with dozens of features. They're instead tiny tools that do one thing well. They help you find today's date, drag-and-drop files, and make sure your downloads complete before your Mac goes to sleep. To add a calendar to your menubar for free. Your Mac shows the time and day of the week in the menubar by default—and you can set it to show the date, too, if you’d like.

But if you’re used to being able to see the full month at a glance as you can on Windows with a click on the date, you’ll be disappointed. Itsycal does one better.

It shows the date in your menubar—including time and day of the week, if you want—along with a calendar of the full month and surrounding dates if you click on it. Underneath, it shows upcoming appointments from your built-in Calendar app, with a + button to add new appointments in a separate window.

That’s handy—but the main reason to install Itsycal is for a quick way to see next Tuesday’s date at a glance. Itsycal Price: Free open source The most well-known Mac menubar calendar is ($49.99)—and true to its name, it is rather fantastic. Type in an appointment like Meet Bob on Tuesday 6PM at the airport and it’ll turn it into an appointment directly. That simplicity comes with a rather high price, though—so if it’s a simple at-a-glance calendar you want, Itsycal might be enough. To keep notes, files, and clipboard history handy. Dragging and dropping files between apps can be tricky, especially if you’re dragging the file to another monitor or to a window hidden under several others.

Copy and paste can be frustrating if you copy something, get distracted, then forget to use the thing you copied before you copy something else. And sometimes you need some tiny place to jot down ideas without making a full new document. Unclutter is for all of these. Move your mouse pointer to the top of your screen and scroll down, and Unclutter will show your clipboard history alongside a pane to drag files and jot down notes. Need to move something? Drag it to the top of your screen and drop it in Unclutter, then repeat that when you’re ready to drag it back out. Write notes in the text area—and sync them to Dropbox via Unclutter’s settings, if you’d like.

It’s a handy place to keep all your in-progress files and ideas while you’re working, somewhere to manage your files and ideas while you're working. Unclutter Price: $9.99 If you only want a tool to make dragging-and-dropping files easier, without clipboard and notes tools, ($6.99) is another similar tool, with a companion iOS app to share files to mobile. ($1.99) adds a tiny text notepad to your menubar, if you want something specifically for notes. (macOS, iOS) To organize your tasks and projects. You need somewhere to keep track of all your work and home projects, organize your ideas, and plan for the future—while still helping you know what needs to be done next, today. Things is a to-do list unique designed to do all of that.

The latest version of one of the original Mac GTD apps, Things includes projects to organize your lists, areas to group projects, and sections inside project lists to group related tasks and add notes about why that set of tasks are important. Then, the Today view pulls it all together, showing the tasks from all of your projects and areas that are due today alongside your calendar events. It’s one view that helps you keep up with everything going on. And when you need to focus, Things lets you hide the sidebar for one simple sheet of tasks to check off.

Things Price: $49.99 Things works on iOS and macOS—and there are a wide range of other to-do list apps, from web-based apps with free versions like Todoist to Apple’s built-in Reminders app and the popular GTD app OmniFocus. Compare them all in our roundup of. To keep your Mac awake. Ever been waiting for a movie to download or website files to upload or your backup to finish, only to come back and see that your Mac went to sleep? Amphetamine—much like an older, now unsupported app Caffeine—makes sure that never happens. Tell Amphetamine to not turn off for the next minutes or hours—or as long as one specific app is running—and it’ll do everything to keep your Mac running as long as you want.

It can still turn off your monitor if you want, keeping just the computer itself active. And best of all, unlike tweaking your Mac’s Energy Saver settings to keep your Mac awake, Amphetamine will still let your Mac fall asleep on its normal schedule next time unless you turn Amphetamine back on again. Amphetamine Price: Free To see every keyboard shortcut in any app. The worst part about keyboard shortcuts is that they’re hard to remember, and are often hidden levels-deep in menus or help documentation. But work shouldn’t feel like a pop quiz.

CheatSheet is the hint sheet you need. Whenever you need a keyboard shortcut and can’t think of it, press the Command key and hold it for a second. CheatSheet will show a popover with a list of every keyboard shortcut for that app—including custom ones you’ve added manually. And if you’d like a hard copy, you can even print out the list from CheatSheet. CheatSheet Price: Free iOS has a similar tool built-in. Press-and-hold the Command key on an iPad external keyboard and you'll see a similar set of keyboard shortcuts.

To add a stopwatch and timer to your Mac. There’s one thing your iPhone has that your Mac doesn’t: a Clock app. Timer is the next best thing. It adds a stopwatch, timer, and alarm to your Mac. You can track how much time you spend on tasks, start a countdown timer, or even use your Mac to wake you up if you take a nap in the office. Timer lets you start as many timers as you need, minimizing them to a tiny floating window so you can glance at the time alongside your work.

It can shut down your computer, open a link, or do other tasks when a timer is finished if you want. Timer keeps a logbook, too, so you can keep track of every minute of tracked time. Timer Price: Free; $29 Pro version for full-screen mode, iconized windows, and automations to send email, play songs, and more when a timer is finished Timer only works on macOS, but if you want a Pomodoro timer to help you break up your work day into 25-minute chunks, (free) is a great option to set the same work time for every task on both Mac and iOS (or see our for PC and web alternatives). Or, if you want to pay less attention to the time, turns your clock into a phrase like half past noon for a less precise clock that’s a bit less stressful.

To show stuff in action on your screen with a GIF. A picture’s valuable—and your Mac comes with of anything you want.

But what if you need to show what happens when you click something? Perhaps you want to make a tutorial on how to accomplish something on a computer, or maybe you just want a small animated version of your slideshow. Either way, GIF Brewery is a great way to make a GIF of whatever’s on your screen. It can record any section of your screen or turn an existing video into a GIF. Then resize or crop the recording and set the GIF quality before exporting it to share with others. GIF Brewery Price: Free Another simple way to record GIFs of your screen is (free, Mac and Windows), which lets you drag your mouse over a section of your screen then record it, more like taking a traditional screenshot.

Or, (free; $10+/mo., Mac and Windows) lets you take up to 25 screenshots or GIF recording a month and upload them for free. To block distracting websites. You know the feeling.

A moment of boredom hits, you’re not quite sure what to do next, so you open your browser and check Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or wherever else you waste time online. We all do it. SelfControl can save us from ourselves. Add your most distracting sites to SelfControl, then set how long you want it to run and turn it on.

It’ll block those sites until the timer’s up—and you can’t turn it off, even if you reboot your Mac. It’s a handy way to force yourself to stay focused. SelfControl Price: Free Check our roundup of for similar tools for mobile, web, and Windows. (macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Web) To keep your password, software licenses, ID, and more secure.

You shouldn’t use the same password on every site, but you can’t remember dozens or hundreds of unique passwords, along with the license keys for your software, ID details for your memberships, and other private data that shouldn’t be saved in plaintext files. That’s what 1Password’s for. It’s a convenient way to save your passwords and other private data in a secure place. 1Password makes passwords simple.

It can enter login details for you automatically, create secure passwords for new accounts, and share group accounts with your family and team. When your passwords are outdated, insecure, or have possibly been leaked, 1Password will let you know. It’ll also remind you to add to sites that support it. It’s an app that will keep you more secure. 1Password Price: from $2.99/month Personal for all apps and syncing Compare 1Password to other options in our roundup of. Text Editing Even if you're not a writer, much of our days are spent writing emails, reports, presentations, and more.

Anything that helps you write faster will boost your productivity. Here are some tools to help.

To get iOS style copy/paste popovers with customizable functions. Keyboard shortcuts make copying and pasting easy on Macs, but the iOS copy and paste popover still has some things that would be nice to have on the Mac: options to paste-and-search directly in Safari, tools to replace autocorrected words or look up definitions, and more.

PopClip brings those to the Mac with a unique productivity twist. Install PopClip then select any text with your mouse, and a popover with search, cut, copy, and paste buttons will open above the text. There are context sensitive buttons, too, including one to open a link in your default browser that only shows if you’ve selected a URL. Then, customize that toolbar with one of the over 170 that let you create new documents, tasks, and notes from text, search for text inside your favorite apps, replace or reformat text, and more. It’s one of the quickest ways to put any text on your screen to work. PopClip Price: $9.99 To add quick visual communication to every app.

Press Command+ Control+ Space whenever typing on your Mac for an emoji picker to scroll or search through every emoji in macOS. It’s handy but not nearly as quick as team chat app Slack’s emoji tool. There, you type: followed by the name of any emoji, such as:joy:, and press Enter to select the emoji you want from the autocomplete menu. That simplicity is part of why emoji are so popular in Slack. Rocket brings that to every Mac app. Type: anywhere, and Rocket’s popover will start searching through emoji for the one you want.

With an upgrade, Rocket also lets you search for GIFs and stickers, add shortcuts for your favorite emoji, and group emoji together to easily let your team know sales are going up or to set the weekend mood on Friday evening. Rocket Price: Free; $4.99 upgrade for GIFs, stickers, and custom shortcuts Emoji aren't just a way to reply to text messages—they can be productivity tools, too. To export Markdown formatted text as rich text, PDF, Word documents, or HTML. If you write with formatting in Sublime Text, TextEdit, Word, or other text editors, there’s no default way to export your copy into a PDF or formatted HTML.

Marked, however, can turn any app into a Mardown writing app. Just save your text as a.txt or.md file, then open it in Marked to preview how your formatting looks and export it in the document format you want. Marked will automatically scroll to the part of the document you’re currently editing, so you can see how your finished document will look. The lower toolbar will show your word count along with an outline of your document’s headings. And if you include images, equations, or code blocks in your document, Marked will preview them for you too. Marked Price: $13.99 Want to turn Markdown documents into presentations?

($29) does just that. (macOS, iOS) To write notes and plain-text tasks alongside events. What did you do last Tuesday afternoon?

You could look back at your calendar for old events or your to-do list for completed tasks, or perhaps check your notes app or documents folder for items added or updated on Tuesday (as long as you haven’t updated them since then). Or, with Agenda, you’ll have notes as a stream-of-consciousness that show exactly what you worked on and were thinking about anytime. Agenda’s a hybrid notes and calendar app. It pulls in your calendar events and lets you write Markdown-formatted notes about each thing that’s happening. Or add notes to upcoming events to have all the details together when you walk in the conference room.

Notes are grouped by project so you can flip back through your notes to see how your ideas progressed along the way. And with its companion iPhone app, you can add notes about whatever you’re thinking about, anytime. Agenda Price: Free for core features; $24.99 in-app purchase for unlimited calendars, pinned notes, saved searches, and Markdown formatting export (macOS, iOS) To calculate values in sentences.

How much did lunch cost today if you ordered two burgers, three fries, and a soda? How much was that in Yen?

Soulver’s a calculator that can tell you that and more by writing the questions out in text. Instead of pushing virtual buttons as you would in most calculator apps, Soulver is a text editor that understands math.

Tell it a burger costs $6 and that you bought two burgers, and it’ll figure out that the total is $12 automatically. It can convert values and currencies, let you use results of one equation in another, and copy the results to use elsewhere. It’s one of the easiest ways to do quick, back-of-envelope calculations without opening a spreadsheet. Soulver Price: $11.99 Other similar apps include the more basic (free, macOS) and the more advanced ($4.99, macOS, iOS, and Windows) for graphing and detailed equations. App Management It's easy enough to manage two or three apps. As the workday progresses, though, it's easy to have your work spread across a dozen windows and dozens more tabs. MacOS's full-screen and split-screen apps help keep things tidy, and these apps make it even easier to find the app you need among the clutter.

To align windows with mouse and keyboard shortcuts. When every new window opens on top of each other in the center of your screen, most of your Mac’s screen real estate is wasted—especially on larger MacBook Pros and iMacs. MacOS’s default options let you maximize windows to fill your full screen with a keyboard shortcut or split your screen between two apps with a long press on the green window button. Magnet takes that further, letting you drag windows to the side or corner of your screen to show two, three, or four apps side-by-side. You can customize keyboard shortcuts to quickly snap windows to the spot you want or to switch desktops and move windows along with you.

It maximizes your screen real estate, one that works similarly to the default window organizing options in Windows. Magnet Price: $0.99 (on sale; typically $4.99) A wide variety of apps can help you manage windows on Macs. (free) lets you arrange windows with only keyboard shortcuts. ($6.50) (and its sidekick, BetterSnapTool) let you drag windows to the side or top of your screen to resize them—a great option if you already use that app. ($10) adds extra windows resizing options to the green maximize button at the top of every Mac window.

($13.99) divides your screen into a grid to resize windows and fit them into the precise space you want, especially handy on large desktop monitors. To clean up your menubar and manage it from your keyboard. It’s easy for your Mac toolbar to fill up with icons over time as you rely on more utilities. You can remove some on your own—press Command while clicking on menubar icons to rearrange or remove them from your menubar, when possible. If you’d like to hide menubar icons but still keep their apps and options handy, though, Bartender’s the app you need. Bartender adds an extra pane to your Mac toolbar, where it hides the icons you don’t want to see all the time.

From Bartender’s settings, you can choose which apps to keep in your menubar, which to hide away in Bartender, and which to remove from your menubar entirely (those apps will still run, you’ll only see no icon). Bartender can even show icons temporarily when something changes in them—only showing your WiFi icon, say, when you’re disconnected from a network. Your normal menubar will then be as clean as you want.

Whenever you want to view other menubar apps, click the Bartender icon to switch the menubar to your hidden icons. It’s also designed for keyboard productivity—you can set keywords to search through your menubar apps by name (which you can customize in Bartender as well) and then use your keyboard to access any options in all of your menubar apps. Bartender Price: $15 (free) is another similar app that’s a bit easier to use for simply hiding icons. Press command and click on menu items, then drag them to the far right to get hidden behind Vanilla’s arrow. You can’t search through menu items or use them from your keyboard, though—and it often glitches in full-screen apps or external monitors.

To turn web apps into Mac apps. Wish there was a desktop app for Gmail, Google Docs, and the dozens of other web apps that power work today? Fluid’s the next best thing. Add the link to a web app, its name, and a custom icon, and Fluid will make a standalone browser for that app. That lets you keep your favorite web apps pinned to your dock, a click away whenever you need them. Each app has its own cookies, so you could, say, have one Fluid Gmail app for your work email and another for your personal email.

Fluid Price: Free; $4.99 to add custom userstyles or userscripts to apps, use full-screen mode, and pin apps to your status bar On iOS, you can do something similar by saving a bookmark of a web app to your home screen. Tap that icon to launch the web app in its own window, without Safari's address and tab bars. Or, on Windows and Linux, click Add to desktop in the Chrome browser's menu to save a standalone app of your favorite web apps., or To run Windows, Linux, and older versions of macOS on your Mac. Need to boot up an old PC every now and then to use Windows apps, or want to run a Linux server on your MacBook? A virtualization app—VMware Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox—is what you need. It makes a fake—virtual—computer on your Mac where you can install and run Linux, Windows, and older versions of macOS alongside your favorite Mac programs. VirtualBox lets you do that for free, with a barebones virtualization tool.

If you need to use Windows or Linux apps often, it's worth investing in the paid paid apps from Parallels and VMware. Had trouble deciding between Parallels and VMware Fusion, and having used both, we feel the same. They're run virtual machines more efficiently than VirtualBox, are easier to use, and blend into your Mac with better support for keyboard shortcuts, TouchBar, and native devices.

Parallels is more consumer focused and comes with a set of Mac utilities to clean up hard drive space and convert videos. VMware come from a more professional background, with its server virtualization tools and VMware Workstation for PCs as some of the most popular virtualization software.

To run Windows on a Mac, though, the best pick often depends on any sales that might be running, or whether you have an older version around that's eligible for an upgrade. Either one you pick, you'll get your old PC apps running on your Mac fairly easily. Price: Free for VirtualBox; $79.99 for either VMware Fusion or Parallels; $49.99 upgrade to latest version for either VMware Fusion or Parallels To dim the background behind apps and keep you focused. The best thing about working on an iPad or with full-screen apps on a Mac is the lack of distractions. There are no windows poking out behind your current window, tempting you to check Twitter and switch songs in Spotify. But some apps don’t work full-screen—and sometimes, it’s easier to not work in full-screen mode when you’re switching back and forth between apps. HazeOver is the next best thing.

It dims everything behind your current, active app, obscuring whatever’s going on in the background to help you focus on your work. It’s a tiny hack that might help you be more productive. HazeOver Price: $9.99 Want to entirely hide windows you’re not using? (free) lets you set how long you want apps to stay active—by default, 30 seconds—then if you don’t switch to that app before then, it’ll hide the app window automatically (same as pressing CMD+ H in any active app). (macOS, iOS) To turn your iPad or iPhone into a second display for your Mac. Ever wanted an extra monitor for your MacBook while you’re traveling, or a touch bar for your desktop Mac? Duet Display can turn any iPhone or iPad into a second touchscreen for your Mac.

Download the apps on both your Mac and iOS device, connect your iOS device to your Mac with a Lightning cable, and seconds later your Mac screen will show up on your iOS device. You can then drag-and-drop items with touch, use an on-screen touch bar to change settings, and keep any window open beside your Mac for extra screen real estate. With an iPad Pro, you can even use the Apple Pencil to draw in Mac apps. Duet Display Price: $19.99 for iOS, plus free companion Mac app Automation Your Mac comes with Automator, a handy tool to organize files, run timed events, resize photos, and more. Want to automate even more of your work? These handy apps build on macOS's built-in tools for powerful ways to work faster.

To add custom options to your mouse, trackpad, Touch Bar, and windows. The right-click menu is one of the most powerful parts of Mac and PC apps, hiding a wealth of additional options behind an easy-to-remember button click. BetterTouchTool takes that to the next level. This unique app lets you set what happens whenever you click multiple times with your mouse—and on a trackpad, it lets you set actions for each corner, multiple finger gestures, or force touch click.

Say you want to quickly close a popup window in Safari. You could set BetterTouchTool to close a window whenever you 3-finger click on it. Or perhaps you want to click once to get a specific menu option. You could set the top left corner of your touchpad to select that option directly. Or you could have it recognize a drawing on the touchpad—a square, say—to take a screenshot if you wanted. BetterTouchTool also works with the Touch Bar on newer MacBooks to add custom buttons and options to the always-on toolbar at the top of your keyboard. You can also use it with a companion iOS app or the Apple TV remote to, say, change slides or run custom options with a tap.

As a bonus, BetterTouchTool also makes it easier to arrange your windows side-by-side. From the Window Snapping tab in its settings, you can enable Windows-style options to drag a window to the top of your screen to maximize it or to the sides to have it take up half your screen. It’s a handy extra along with BetterTouchTool’s core mouse-focused tools. BetterTouchTool Price: $6.50 license for 2 years of updates Only want the window snapping tools? ($2.99) includes the window options from BetterTouchTool in a dedicated app. To quickly open apps and files, run automations, expand text, manage the clipboard, and more.

It’s the little app that does everything. Is one Mac app we’re not sure how we could live without. At first glance, it’s a replacement for the Spotlight search on your Mac. Press its keyboard shortcut ( Option+ Space by default) and type anything to search through your computer’s apps or find something online. Press space before you start typing to search through your files, too. Behind the scenes, Alfred can do more than speed up search. It includes a Snippets feature to expand common phrases as you type in any app.

It also has a clipboard manager so you can look back through the things you’ve copied most recently. Then inside Alfred’s main search, there’s a calculator, dictionary, tools to empty your trash and shut down your computer, and options for custom search engines to search your favorite sites. Alfred’s most powerful feature, though, is workflows. You can make your own or to add Evernote notes, control Spotify music, upload files to Dropbox or an FTP server, start a timer, check the time in another timezone, and much more.

With, you can connect your Mac to 1,000+ web apps to add Trello cards, search through Airtable, add MailChimp subscribers, and much more all from Alfred’s handy search window. Alfred Price: Free for search tools; from £19 (around $25) Single User license for full features Only want some of Alfred’s features? (29€, macOS) or the built-in search (free) are popular alternatives for search; ($4.99, macOS) or ($4.16/mo., macOS, iOS, Windows, Android) are great alternatives for; ($7.99, macOS, iOS) is another option along with other. To organize files automatically. Your Downloads, Documents, and Desktop folders quickly fill up with stuff—not junk, per se, but when you have a half-dozen files all with various non-descriptive names like screenshot837 and q4reportfinal2, it’s hard to find what you need. Hazel makes sense of files for you automatically.

Some files need to be deleted after a while; you likely don’t need to keep every app installer forever, for example. Others files have common names—including scanned documents, screenshots, bank statements, and more—that need better names and to be saved in specific folders. Music, photos, videos, eBooks, and other media might need to be imported into other apps with their metadata.

With Hazel, make rules on what files go where, how they should be named, and what should be deleted or cleaned up, and it’ll do the heavy lifting in the background for you. It’s the app that’ll keep you from manually renaming dozens of IMG1100.jpg and document1.docx files again. Hazel Price: $32 Macs also come with a free, built-in automation app: Automator. It too can move files and keep things organized, albeit with less detailed options than Hazel. If you need to organize files for individual, one-off projects, Automator’s great—if you want something that keeps files organized automatically, all the time, Hazel’s worth the investment. To see how where the space on your Mac goes. Something funny happened as SSDs made our laptops faster and thinner—storage space suddenly became a scarce resource.

Where a half-decade ago our MacBooks might have had a 512GB or 1TB hard drive, today many MacBooks include a 256GB (or smaller, if you bought an early thin MacBook or MacBook Air). That makes it more important than ever to keep your hard drive free from files you don’t need—or otherwise, you might get annoying notifications about running out of space, or won't be able to save a project file during work. DaisyDisk helps you find them. It quickly scans through your computer and visualizes which files and folders use up the most space. You can zoom in on those long-forgotten ZIP files, virtual machines, videos, and more that waste space—and either view them in Finder to delete or move them or drag them to the bottom of the app to delete them at once. DaisyDisk Price: $9.99 To automate apps from your keyboard.

Keyboard shortcuts are one of the best ways to speed up work. Instead of switching to your mouse—or touching the screen as you would on a tablet—you press a few keys and magic happens. But what if you could make keyboard shortcuts for anything you can think of, shortcuts to upload files, open sets of apps, add text to a file, crop images, and more? That’s what Keyboard Maestro does. It’s an automation app that lets you set a keyboard shortcut (or a mouse gesture, timer, or system event like reboot or wake from sleep) that runs as many actions as you want. You can build detailed workflows that get work done for you at the touch of a button.

You might start by automating a few of your most common tasks; then over time, you’ll build up detailed sets of workflows that help you get much more done in less time. Keyboard Maestro Price: $36 The built-in Automator (free) can do many similar tasks—though you’ll need to manually run each action, so you’ll lose some of the time savings. You can also add custom shortcuts for functions in apps from the Shortcuts section in your Mac’s Keyboard settings.

To see where your time goes throughout the day. Ever gotten to the end of the day and wondered where the time went?

Wonder no more. Qbserve can track every app, document, and website you open on your Mac, and even noticed when you’re away so you can document what happened while you weren’t typing.

It then categorizes each app, decides whether it’s productive or distracting (Word, productive; YouTube, distracting), and shows your productivity percentage in your Mac’s menubar. Working on a project for a client? You can add a project, list the sites, apps, and documents related to them, and have Qbserve automatically track how much you work on their projects based on the time you spend in those apps.

You can then drill through the time you spend at work, play, and projects—and even turn project time directly into invoices from one app. Qbserve Price: $40 (free; $9/mo., macOS, Windows) is a popular way to track the time you spend on your computer, with options to block distracting websites with a Premium subscription. Its free plan is a great way to start tracking your workday. Or, (from $29; $49 for idle time tracking and reports, macOS) includes even more tools to track your work by app. These are only some of the dozens of productivity apps you could download for your Mac—tools that would speed up your work, help you accomplish more, keep you from getting distracted, and add new features to your favorite software.

But they're our top picks, whether you're new to macOS or just looking to make your time on your Mac more efficient. Looking for more productivity app options?

Check out our roundups of software that everyone needs: a, an, a, a, and a. There are dozens of options for each, many of which work on the web and across platforms, so check the linked roundups above for recommendations there.

The Mac App Store is full of all manner of apps, from simple utilities to complex programs. New apps are published every day, making it hard to find the best of the best — which is where we come in. We've gathered the best free apps for the, all in one place so you don't have to go digging.

My criteria for apps on this list In researching the best free apps for the Mac, I started by using Apple's category list. This makes it easier to cover the wide variety of content available. If an app is on the Mac App Store, it is in one of the 21 categories that Apple has listed. Because this is a 'free' app list, I tried to only include apps that are truly free or whose functionality is not diminished without an in-app purchase. You will see some apps that have premium content that can be unlocked with an in-app purchase, but I've included them on the list because I feel that the free content is noteworthy. Since this is a list of apps, I'm not including services that only have websites without a dedicated app (there are two exceptions to this rule on the list, but they are totally worthy of rule-bending).

I've included some apps that are not available in the Mac App Store. That's because some of the best apps in a given category are so much better than any Mac App Store counterpart that I couldn't exclude them. Though this list is long, it is by no means complete. There are just too many free Mac apps available to include everything. If you don't see your favorite free Mac app on this list, please add it in the comments section with your reason for why it stands out.

(Remember: It has to be truly free or the free version of an otherwise premium app that is noteworthy.). Wave is one of those exceptions to the rule of no services without a dedicated app. It is a free software tool for small businesses. You can use it for invoicing, receipts, accounting, and more. You can also add credit card processing and payroll for a small additional fee. It is set up to work with what your business needs are. If you don't need a feature, you aren't paying for it.

If you only need a feature sometimes, you only pay when you use it. Because Wave is dedicated to making small business tools work the way small business owners need them to, I've included it on this list. Developer tools Xcode.

Khan Academy is another exception to my rule that a service must have a dedicated app, but it is such a fantastic learning website, rich with online study courses of all levels — for free — that I had to include it. You can learn the colors of the rainbow or the Pythagorean Theorem. It covers basic subjects and works you into deeper involvement, just like you would start off taking basic classes in school and move into more advanced curricula. You can also prepare for the SAT, MCAT, GMAT, IIT JEE, and NCLEX-RN with excellent study guides. It is a great resource for getting started or back into your education. Right inside the iTunes app on your Mac is a universe of knowledge. There are thousands of specialized courses, which you can download for free, that are lead by professors at some of the most popular colleges in the world.

You can learn statistics from Harvard, business from Stanford, psychology from Yale, and much more. Subjects cover architecture to women's studies, with practically everything you can think of in between. To access iTunes U, open iTunes on your Mac and select it from the menu.

Entertainment HandBrake. HandBrake is a free, open source software program that lets you convert practically any media file to MP4, M4V, or MKV. You can convert your entire DVD or Blu-ray collection into digital form to watch on your Apple TV without having to pay someone to do it for you. You can quickly choose which type of device you want your file to be transcoded to support (like iOS or tvOS) and then get to converting within just a few seconds.

For more advanced file conversion fans, there are a number of great features to help you perfect your digital movie catalog. VLC media player. If you're not using Apple Music (actually, even if you are), Spotify is the next best music streaming service for the Mac. With the Mac app, you can listen to thousands of songs across all genres. It includes a useful playlist section so you can keep track of your favorite music. It also has a great music discovery section where you can see what's trending or music you might like based on what you've been listening to.

The social aspect makes it one of my favorite, too. See also. Finance Debit & Credit - Personal Finance. If you prefer to keep track of your finances manually, Debit & Credit is a great check book balancing app (I know, no one balances a check book anymore). You manually enter every transaction and income, and you can keep track of what you're spending with the budget list. The report feature is the best.

You can view your spending habits by category, where you spend, your income and expenses differences, whether you are able to save, and more. There is an in-app purchase to unlock more than two accounts, but if you only have two bank accounts, you don't need the premium service. If you follow the stock market, you will love the ease with which you can keep track of the major indices with just a little bit of setup. You can create watch lists based on whatever criteria you choose and view stock changes on a chart or by heat map and track them throughout the day, month, and year. The best part?

There is a stock ticker that sits at the top of your screen, which you can relocate to anywhere across the desktop. The pro version adds some significantly useful features, but for the purpose of simply following the stock market, you can't beat Stock +. Money Wiz 2 Personal Finance.

Money Wiz is a great personal finance tracker for balancing your bank account. The free version lets you manually add account information like income, expenses, and account transfers. If you sign up for the monthly subscription, you can connect your online bank accounts and have the work done for you. You can also create a budget (though you can only track one budget before being asked to upgrade). You can also set up a schedule reminder to keep you on track for paying bills that are due at the same time each month. It features a few more customizable features, like creating a new category for income and expenses, as well as creating finance reports based on your net worth, cash flow, and balance over time.

Money Wiz works better with the subscription upgrade, but is very useful for keeping your checking accounts balanced. Graphics & Design GIMP. Macaw is a web design tool for people that don't want to spend a lot of time coding.

It features dozens of tools so you can create the perfect website in a short amount of time. It generates HTML automatically while you are designing web pages and it comes with a series of robust image editing tools to help you make your content look right.

Because it is so easy to use, it's a great program for people with a basic understanding of web design, but want to jump right in without needing to know coding. Autodesk Sketchbook. Autodesk is famous for its artists' apps, which feature a rich selection of brushes that seem hyper realistic. You can use it to create vector graphic images, illustrations, and photorealistic works of art. There are dozens of customizable pens, pencils, and paint brushes, and the color palate is so robust that you can perfectly match practically any color in the world. The free download comes with dozens of amazing tools, but you can upgrade to the pro version to unlock even more options. It is a graphic artist's best tool on the Mac.

Health & Fitness Time Out - Break Reminders. Taking a moment for oneself is one of the most difficult health and fitness steps to take. We get so caught up with our busy schedules that we forget to stop for a moment.

Time Out forces you to take those little breaks by dimming your screen so you can't use it for a specified amount of time. You can set up small breaks every hour, micro breaks every 15 minutes, and lunch breaks to get your eyes off the screen for a half hour or so. You can configure how long the breaks are and how often you take them. It'll make your eyes, your muscles, and your heart a little bit healthier every day you use it. Relax Lite - Stress and Anxiety Relief.

Digi.me is a sort of dashboard for your social networking profiles. You can combine all of your profiles in one place with a nice interface, and you can search through posts by words, find content by a specific date and time, save photos you've liked or are tagged in to your favorites folder, and create special collections of categories in any way you'd like.

You can even export your collections as a PDF and read it like a personal magazine. This isn't a feed of your friends' status updates; it's a collection of your social networking personal information. IBooks Author. If you fancy yourself a writer, Apple's iBooks Author is the perfect app to get your work published without having to sign a publishing contract.

You can use Apple's pre-made templates to help facilitate the perfect design. Add images, a video introduction, book cover, and more for a more immersive experience. With the multitouch widgets, you can make your pages interactive.

Add photos, audio, Keynote presentations, and 3D objects. When you've finished you can upload it to the iBooks Store with the in-app export tools. You'll be a famous author before you know it! How many chat and messaging programs are you signed up with?

If it's more than one, you need Trillian. It combines all of your chat and messaging accounts into one simple interface so you don't have to switch between apps to talk to your friends and family. You can chat through Facebook, Twitter, Google Chat, AIM, Yahoo, Bonjour, and more, all in one window. Chat services are delineated by color coding, so you know where a message is coming from. If you have too many chat channels and want to keep them all in one place, use Trillian to keep them organized. Medical Complete Anatomy. DJ programs can be a pain in the pocketbook.

If you're just learning the ropes or want to have a homegrown dance party, don't spend the heavy cash. Cross DJ makes it possible for you to spin the beats without the expensive software.

It features waveforms, beat sync, track cueing, loops, digital scratching, and more. It accesses your iTunes library directly, so you don't even have to load up new music. You may eventually upgrade to a more robust DJ app, but this is definitely a great starter program.

The popular song identification program that was folded into Siri on the iPhone is also available on the Mac. Shazam listens to your music and tells you what you want to know about it. While it's running, it will tell you the name of a song and artist. While you're listening to tunes, it will automatically create a playlist of tracks you can listen to with Apple Music (when available), even if you are currently listening to music with a different service. Click a track to see lyrics and watch music videos on Shazam's website, too. If you read a lot of news online, follow a lot of blogs, watch a lot of YouTube videos, or all of the above, you need Feedly to help organize and keep track of your content. You can log in with your Google or Twitter account for easy sharing features.

It syncs with the iOS Feedly app, so if you track your RSS feed on mobile, this will know when you've already read the day's content. It is easy to use and you can add content with an RSS link, a URL, or by searching for keywords. RSS Bot - News Notifier. Pocket is sort of like the folder your mom used to keep with newspaper and magazine clippings in it.

You can save articles, videos, recipes, and more, right in Pocket for reading later. It's the perfect app for people who like to browse the entirety of the internet with no real focus, but don't have the time to read everything they come across. Save articles for offline viewing so you can read new content while you are on the bus or at the park. The app has a nifty tool that highlights the most important articles of the day, so you can read content organized by priority. Photography Fotor. Fotor is a super easy photo editing app for the Mac that lets you create fun and unique projects from your collection.

You can adjust the lighting, tweak the white balance, add a fun border, lay on a filter, and even add text boxes. It supports batch editing, so you can stylize all of your vacation photos at the same time. The collage tool lets you create pages with multiple photos that you can customize to your liking.

It is a fun, simple way to edit your photos without the complex tools that you need to know about with Photoshop. Autodesk Pixlr. Polarr is a basic photo editing app with excellent tools for image adjusting.

You can adjust color, light, clarity, highlights, shadows, and more. Add effects like color shadows, lens distortions, vignettes, and filters.

This app works best when you are trying to enhance your pictures, not when you are trying to get artsy with them. If you can't seem to get your picture just right, trigger one of the helpful tutorials to learn how to brighten dark images or properly add white balance. There are dozens of pro-level tools, but they are designed to be used by anyone. See also. Productivity Wunderlist. Wunderlist is the best task manager app you can get without paying for it. You can create different lists and add time-sensitive projects to them, create tasks with recurring due dates, and share your lists with others.

It syncs across Mac and, so you can take your lists with you everywhere you go. You'll always be ready to take care of business. You can set due dates for tasks and reminders to help keep you on task. You can also include subtasks for specific projects and leave yourself a note if you need more details. Tag a task as important and it will move to the top of your list.

Evernote is like that basket you have next to the couch or that drawer in your kitchen that has everything in it. You can clip web pages, link status updates, add music, store pictures, create new notes, and share anything you want with others.

Not only is it the perfect junk drawer for every digital thing you could possibly want to save, but it is also totally organizable so your junk looks more like a perfectionist's desk. You can make checklists, set reminders, drop notes into existing documents, annotate pictures, and all manner of stuff. It does practically everything except fix the kitchen sink. If you are a blogger (let's face it, these days who isn't?), then you might want to give Blogo a try. It makes it super easy to publish content to WordPress, Blogger, and Medium. You can write up your post with distraction-free full screen mode, and move all of your content into your online site with specialized tools.

It supports Markdown and Rich Text and formats for in line image placement. When you connect your blogging account, you can even get a live preview of your page. The app recognizes your theme.

You can schedule posts, manage categories, and a whole lot more. It's a great little workhorse for the blogger in you.

See also. Reference Mactracker. Apple geeks, pay attention. This little reference tool is going to impress you. It features detailed information on every single Apple product ever made, including things like processor speeds, original price, and current selling price.

Did you know that the first Macintosh only had 1 MB of memory? With Mactracker, you will know all about all the Macs. And, you can input your own Apple devices, too. So you can keep track of what you own and whether it is still under warranty. It covers more than just Mac's too.

You can look up servers, powerbooks, and every software update for every device. Sometimes, you're just trying to find that perfect word, the one that rhymes perfectly for your song or the one that is similar to the word you are thinking of, but works better in a sentence. Megawords is a simple little app that gives you a wealth of information in just a few seconds. You can look up anagrams, find rhymes, and even get a little help with crossword puzzles. Type in a word to get the dictionary definition, synonyms, and even geographical information if the word happens to also be the name of a place. Social Networking Twitter. Your Instagram feed never looked so good on a Mac.

Yes, on a Mac, and I'm not talking about Safari. Flume creates a really nice looking interface right on your desktop screen. You can see pictures from people you follow, search for members and hashtags, and discover new content. You can't post pictures to your account, but you can save your own and other's photos, as well as share them with others via various social media accounts. It is the best way to view your Instagram account on your Mac. Sports Yahoo Sports.

When you just need a quick fix on how your favorite teams are doing, use the Yahoo Sports Notification Center widget to keep track. You can add your favorite teams to see what the score of their most recent or current game is and see trending teams' scores as well. If you want to read more about a particular game, click on the score to open Yahoo Sports in Safari. The widget also shows upcoming games, including when your favorite teams are scheduled to play next. To find out more about an upcoming game, click on it to view Yahoo Sports online. You can even purchase tickets from the website. Travel Apple Maps.

Apple's built-in mapping service is really convenient to have on the Mac. You may not realize how often you look up the location of something while on your computer, but it is a fairly common occurrence, at least for me.

Having Maps integrated with every aspect of your Mac makes it easy to look up directions from anywhere, like an email, a website, or a contact card. Siri can use Apple Maps to help you find all manner of locations in just a few seconds. It's already on your Mac and works great with all of the other built-in apps, too. Google Earth.

You may think of Google Maps as a means to get from point A to point B, but there is so much more to discover on this big blue marble than just driving directions. You can virtually travel the globe, visiting cities you'll never get to in real life. Walk around Manhattan with Street View, visit the swelling seas, and even look up to see the stars above you. With the time travel feature, you can go back decades to see what your house looked like, long before you lived there.

Google Earth is less of a mapping service and more like a wealth of global information at your fingertips Utilities f.lux. If you've always wished you could, wish no longer. F.lux is the original maker of soft, yellow-hued lighting for digital screens. You can set it to your local time and your screen will automatically start to dim and turn a slight yellow color.

You can customize the effect by increasing or decreasing the intensity and there are additional color effects, like 'Movie mode' and 'Darkroom' which drastically alter your screen's lighting, but under specific circumstances that you choose. F.lux is designed to help relieve eye strain due to late night computer use. It is a great utility to have on your Mac. Parcel - Delivery Tracking. Thanks to the mega-boom in online retail services, we are getting packages delivered more often than ever before, and not just during the holidays. Parcel is easy to use. All you have to do is copy a tracking number and then click on the plus (+) button in the Parcel app and the carrier information will be added automatically.

You can add a title description and then keep an eye on how much longer before your package will be at your doorstep. You can add a widget to Notification Center and use Spotlight to look up tracking information. You can only track three packages at a time without an in-app purchase, but the premium price is only $2.99 per year. The Unarchiver. If you regularly get large files sent to you, you'll love what the Unarchiver can do for you. It quickly unzips compressed and archived files from a number of different sources, including Zip RAR, 7-zip, and more, and it will open older archives from Stuffit, ARC and ISO disc images. As easy as it is to use Apple's Archive utility to simply unzip large files, the Unarchiver takes care of older content that can be a real pain to get open, since it uses smart detection to encode files correctly so that you won't end up with a bunch of garbled text.

It is a fantastic secondary utility for opening files on your Mac. See also. Video GIPHY Capture - The GIF Maker. Giphy, which supplies the single largest collection of GIFs across the internet, has a GIF maker so you can join in the fun. It features a recording window that you place over anything you want to record. You can capture still shots or videos (iTunes movies will go black under the GIPHY Capture app due to copyright protections). After recording the section you want to use as a GIF, you can edit it by trimming, resizing, and looping it.

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You can also add a caption to turn it into a meme. When you're done, you can upload it to Giphy.com to share with the rest of the world.

Who knows, maybe your GIF will go viral. Smart Converter.

Consumption of entertainment is going digital and it is much easier to simply watch one of your DVD or Blu-ray discs as a digital file right in iTunes instead of having to walk over to your shelf, find the title, walk over to your player, insert the disc, and hit play. With Smart Converter, you can turn all of your movies, TV shows, and homemade videos into files that you can watch from whichever device you prefer.

It is specially designed to make it easy to resize and convert files into content fit for your Apple TV, Mac, iPad, or iPhone, but you can also select and convert for dozens of devices, including non-Apple products. When the conversion is finished, simply add it to whatever streaming service you use with your device and your content is ready to watch.

It is super easy to use for conversion beginners, too. Keep a detailed watch on weather stats with Weather Live. Not only can you quickly glance at the current temperature and forecast, but you can find out additional information about wind chill, humidity, precipitation, sunrise, and more.

You can set up the app to show a dashboard with icons and labels, or switch to text-only, which includes more information, but less illustration. You have control over what information is on display by customizing the parameters. You can add or remove the different data sets and even decide where on the display you want them to appear. It's a classy and useful way to stay on top of the weather. WeatherBug Lite. If you just want a quick glance at the current temperature, WeatherBug Lite is just what you need.

It is a Menu bar app that always shows the current temperature and weather condition. All you have to do is look up. If you want more information, you can click on the Menu bar widget to get an hourly forecast and a current weather radar. If you really want to get into the nitty gritty, click on a stat to open WeatherBug on the web, where you can find out about windshield, sunrise, rainfall, and more. WeatherBug Lite is the perfect little at-a-glance weather app because it's always on. For a completely different type of weather reporting, check out what Swackett has to offer.

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Not only does it show weather stats or the current temperature and daily and weekly forecasts, but you can find out how to dress for your outdoor adventure thanks to the adorable Peeps. These little faceless fashionistas show off shorts, sweaters, jackets, umbrellas, and more, to let you know if you should layer up or peel off before heading out the door. There is even a dog walking index to let you know when will be the most ideal time to take your pooch for out for exercise. You can select from a variety of different Peeps. For a few dollars, you can unlock the entire Swackett Peep army. Your favorites? Though this list is long, it is by no means complete.

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There are just too many free apps available for the Mac to include everything. If you don't see your favorite free Mac app on this list, please add it in the comments section with your reason for why it stands out (Remember: It has to be truly free, or the free version of an otherwise premium app that is noteworthy.) This post may contain affiliate links. See our for more details.