Looking for a list of macOS apps every user needs? Well, you've come to the right place. Here's a shortlist of the best free macOS apps.
The market is saturated with so many Mac apps, it can be hard to know which ones to download and which to skip. That’s why for the last few years, I’ve been making a shortlist of free MacOS app recommendations. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s that time of year again!
So first up is ApolloOne. This is an image viewer that is far more robust than Preview.
With ApolloOne, you’re able to rotate your images without having to save them to that orientation. But, better yet is all the metadata that’s available in this app. ApolloOne is compatible with a ton of raw image formats and depending on your raw file, you can click on the photo and it’ll use the metadata to tell you where the auto-focus is in your image. ApolloOne is also compatible with Lightroom, so you can use the built-in star rating system, which will transfer over to Lightroom if you open your image up in there. But it also has macOS tagging too, and if you dig around a little further on your right-hand panel and click the note icon, you can actually add a ton of other data to the image. You can add location data and keywords in order for this to be easily searchable in your spotlight on macOS. Lastly, ApolloOne also has some histogram toggles here too, which is really handy when you’re editing photos.
So now let’s move on to a great audio recording app, Piezo.
Piezo allows you to easily record audio on your Mac. You can record from any application or from your microphone inputs. Simply select your audio source and hit the record button. You do have a settings gear here too to export in your desired file formats. That's really all there is to it!
Alright, we’re going to move into the world of Wondershare. I am a big fan of their product offerings.
Wondershare Filmora is, at its core, a video editing app. It has some cool effects, elements, and transitions built into the app, and yes, while you’ll need to pay to access some of these cool features, there is a lot available within the free download.
So, for example. Do you know what I use Wondershare Filmora for? I use this app to capture high-resolution png images from my videos. So when I’m shooting my YouTube videos, I literally take video footage of whatever I think my thumbnail will be, then I pull that clip into Filmora to grab a high resolution snapshot of that frame of the video.
Can you believe? It'a really that easy to take a high resolution picture from a video!
Let’s move onto a handy Mac functionality app.
Rectangle is an easy way to move and re-size macOS windows using keyboard shortcuts. Rectangle is a huge timesaver because you can use either built-in keyboard shortcuts, or create your own keyboard shortcuts to move and resize your windows in macOS.
But it would be a pain to have to remember keyboard shortcuts all the time, right? Well, you don’t have to. In the top menu bar of the app, you can click on the little Rectangle icon, and voila, you have all the snap options you could ever dream of, just a click away.
And by the way, many people may recommend the Magnet app to do this on macOS, but guess what? Magnet is not free! Rectangle is totally free and quite literally does the exact same thing.
So let’s move on now to a weather app. And you’re probably like ‘really a weather app for my Mac, puhleaseeeee’. But hear me out!
I’m not the biggest fan of the native weather app found on iOS or the weather widget found in the macOS notification center. So here’s what I mean. If you click on the date in your menu bar, your notification center pops out from the right and in it, you can get a quick snapshot of the weather. However, I don’t think it’s very robust.
Enter the Weather Dock app! With Weather Dock installed and kept in your dock, you’ll have a quick snapshot of the weather right there whenever the app is open. And speaking of when the app is open, you get a handy snapshot of the current weather, upcoming weather for this day, as well as a three-day forecast. If you want to splurge and get the full version for $3, that will get you a 7-day ad-free forecast, but truthfully, I think the free version is great.
Okay, it wouldn’t be a classic Tasia Mac app list without a bonus addition!
This is for all my fellow Apple geeks, mac lovers, computer nerds, and history buffs!
The bonus app for today is Mactracker. Simply put, it’s a reference tool app. Mactracker gives you detailed information on every single Apple product that has ever been made.
Mactracker give you crazy detailed info on literally any Apple device. For example, it provides a little image of what the device looks like, we can learn when it was introduced, when it was discontinued, the price, weight, processor speeds, and so much more. There are so many detailed sections here and you can even learn more about the history of each device. We can even learn what the tagline was!
But wait, there’s more! You can actually track your personal Apple models with this app too, and the app will tell you if you are still in warranty or not.
So, those are my 2021 free macOS app recommendations. Now I want to hear from you! What are your absolute favorite free Mac apps and why?
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