The Best Mac Apps, Tools and Utilities

Name: The Best Mac Apps, Tools and Utilities | Open Video
Uploaded: 2024-05-08T00:18:53+00:00
Duration: 12 min 41 s

0:00
Finding good apps can be hard, especially if you're new to the Mac
0:03
Luckily, we've put together a list of the 16 very best apps
0:08
These cover all kinds of work, from writing, graphic design, video editing, to a few simple
0:13
utilities that everyone can make use of. Jumping right in, AirBuddy is a much better way to manage your Bluetooth devices between
0:23
your Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, whatever else you might have. When you're playing music from your iPhone through your AirPods, you sit down at your
0:31
Mac, you just click the AirBuddy icon in the menu bar, and it'll yoink audio from your
0:36
iPhone to your computer. If you have both a work Mac and a personal Mac on your desk, you'll really like Magic Handoff
0:43
Now Apple will let you share a keyboard, mouse, and trackpad between two Macs with their own
0:48
feature called Continuity Keyboard, but AirBuddy takes it to the next level, giving you manual
0:53
control of all of your Bluetooth devices. AirBuddy normally costs $10, but you can find it at just $8.99 through Cult of Mac deals
1:01
Next up is bbedit, an incredibly powerful text editor. It has been a top choice among Mac nerds for over 30 years
1:10
It can handle projects of all sizes and code in all languages
1:14
You can pull and commit projects directly to and from GitHub. You can open and save files over an FTP server
1:22
Calling it an editor honestly sells it short. It has regular expression commands, AppleScript support, text transforms
1:29
It is a word processing wonder. Or you can just keep it simple and write blog posts in Markdown
1:36
You can subscribe to bbedit for $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year, or a limited free version
1:42
available in the Mac App Store. So the best way to transfer files between two Apple devices in the same room is with
1:48
AirDrop, but the best way to do it remotely over the internet is with Blip
1:54
Blip is different from Dropbox and Google Drive because you don't have to upload your
1:58
files to the cloud and then wait for somebody to download it on the other end
2:02
Blip creates a direct peer-to-peer connection between two Macs and transfers them instantly
2:09
You just click on someone's name in the menu bar, drag files into the window, and send
2:14
it their way. You can do entire folders at a time, project files for Logic and Final Cut Pro, whatever
2:21
you need. You can download it for free from blip.net. Next up is Camo
2:26
Instead of using your crummy webcam built into your MacBook and the microphone on your
2:30
AirPods, you can upgrade your video quality for live streaming, video conferences, using
2:37
any modern USB camera, or even an iPhone, and a desktop microphone
2:43
It's what I'm using to create this very video right now. There are a bunch of advanced features for picking which lens of the iPhone it's using
2:51
adding a custom watermark, adjusting image brightness and contrast, adding background blur effects, and more
2:58
You can download Camo for $49.99 a year from reincubate. If you make a podcast, then Forecast is a must-have app
3:06
It is the simplest utility for adding chapter markers to your show
3:10
In Logic, you export your podcast as a wave, and you open it in Forecast to see all the chapters
3:16
From there, you can add episode-specific metadata like the title, description, and you can add
3:21
chapter-specific artwork and URLs. Then you just encode it as an MP3 from there
3:28
Forecast is available for free from Overcast. Next up is a really simple window management utility that I consider an absolute must-have
3:37
It's called Front and Center. It changes one little detail about your Mac
3:43
Normally, when you click on a window, only that window comes to the front
3:48
But when you have Front and Center enabled in Classic mode, when you click on a window
3:53
all of the windows belonging to that app will come forward as well
3:57
So if you have a bunch of Finder windows or a bunch of Safari windows open, clicking on
4:01
any of them will bring all of them forward. This is already how it works when you click on an app icon in the dock, but now it'll
4:09
do this all the time. I use Safari and Finder as examples because usually I have between the two about 10 or
4:16
15 windows open at any given time. And with Front and Center, I don't need to make sure all of them are visible on my screen
4:22
because clicking on one of them will let me see all of them. If you like organized chaos like me, you will find it an absolutely indispensable tool
4:31
It's only $4.99 from the Mac App Store. iINA is a free video player for the Mac that goes above and beyond what QuickTime can do
4:40
It supports a bunch of extra file formats like MKV and AVI
4:44
The user interface is modern and highly customizable to your preferences. I added a screenshot button to the video player that I can just click to take a PNG
4:52
image, and I use it every day. There's also a picture-in-picture mode to keep a video or a music playlist floating
4:59
above all your other windows. For movies and TV shows downloaded to your computer, you can instantly load subtitles
5:06
that it'll find and match online. You can even open YouTube videos
5:11
Shift-Command-O, just paste in a URL, and you can watch YouTube from the video player
5:16
on your Mac. iINA is free and open source. You can download it from the project website
5:22
Once you install a Clipboard Manager on your Mac, you'll never know how it was possible
5:26
to live without one. You go to copy one thing that's really important, but then you accidentally copy something else
5:32
and oh no, it's gone forever. You gotta go back and find it again
5:36
No more. Thanks to Mackie, you have a new keyboard shortcut on your Mac
5:41
Shift-Command-C will bring up this pop-up menu that lets you instantly paste things
5:46
out of your clipboard history. You can just hit Command-2 to paste the second most recent thing you copied
5:51
Mackie will keep paragraphs of text, images, files, all sorts of things
5:56
You can customize the size of the clipboard history to contain hundreds of items
6:01
And you can buy it for $9.99 from the Mac App Store. MacWhisper is an app that creates highly accurate transcripts out of video and audio files
6:09
Just drag it in and it'll instantly start transcribing. You can edit the transcript and export it in a bunch of different formats
6:16
A plain text file, a subtitle file for a video, a nicely formatted HTML page, a PDF, and more
6:24
All the core functionality is available in the free version, which comes with the small
6:28
transcription model. It's a bit of a misnomer because even small does an unbelievably accurate job at creating transcripts
6:38
If you pay for pro, you get the larger models, which do take up more space and run slower, but create more accurate transcriptions
6:44
You also get cloud transcriptions. And you can create transcriptions of audio on your Mac if you want to create a transcript
6:50
out of a meeting that you're having, for example. It's available for $30 from Gunroad
6:55
If you're a writer with a WordPress blog, then MarsEdit is a much nicer place to start
7:00
your writing. You don't have to worry about losing your internet connection, your web browser bugging
7:05
out and quitting, another author on the site taking over your draft and losing your work
7:10
or any of the other many problems you've probably experienced before. MarsEdit is a reliable, native Mac app that lets you build an offline collection of drafts
7:20
that you can send to your site or publish directly. MarsEdit syncs with WordPress to pull in your existing categories, tags, authors, post history
7:29
You can even upload new images and videos to your media library, even if you have a
7:34
gigantic ancient backlog like we do at Cult of Mac. It only offers mixed support for the new Gutenberg block editor, but honestly that's
7:44
more of a feature than anything. MarsEdit is available with a 14-day free trial for $59.99 from the Mac App Store
7:52
Apple Mail, or really most mail apps, don't do Gmail justice. Gmail has a bunch of extra features that other mail services don't have
8:01
Instead of having folders, Gmail has tags. Instead of having a singular inbox, Gmail has specific categories for starred, social
8:09
promotions, updates, and more. And Gmail plays really nicely with Google Calendar with one-click responses from the
8:17
web app. Mimestream is the desktop app that's been designed to play nice with all of Gmail's
8:23
awesome features. The developer is actually an ex-Apple employee who used to work on Apple Mail and Apple Notes
8:30
And that really shines through because Mimestream looks and feels as if Apple themselves made
8:36
a desktop Gmail client. It's so nice to use. It supports simultaneously using a bunch of different Gmail accounts if you juggle between
8:44
a few different ones. It's available for $49.99 a year from Neil Javeri's website
8:49
OpenEMU is the all-in-one game emulator for Mac. Just like Delta on the iPhone, it couldn't be simpler to use
8:57
To download your ROM files online, or legally copy them from your game cartridges, drag
9:03
the files into the app and it'll add them to your library. It supports Bluetooth game controllers with customized controls, save states, you can
9:12
even turn on filters to make it look like you're playing the game on an old CRT television
9:17
or a pixelated LCD display. It supports dozens of game consoles from the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Sony PlayStation
9:26
even the obscure ones like the Vectrex and the ColecoVision. It's available for free from the project website
9:34
If you do any kind of graphic design, especially if you do marketing or branding for multiple
9:38
different clients, then you need Pastel. Pastel lets you create custom color palettes and swatches, give them names, organize them
9:48
into folders. You can just click and drag a color out of a palette to drop it in your graphic design
9:53
app to add it in, or you can right click on a color to copy its RGB or hex values
9:59
or even as code in SwiftUI or Objective-C. You can export a color palette as a wallpaper using a bunch of these different generators
10:08
and on an iPhone, you can import a palette from a picture
10:12
Pastel is available for $9.99 from the Mac App Store. Pixelmator Pro is a modern graphic design app made just for Mac
10:20
Compared to the established names in the game, Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo
10:25
Pixelmator Pro could not be easier to pick up and use. All the basic features you regularly use are put front and center
10:32
Cutting a subject out of a background? That's done in just two clicks
10:36
It's very rare that I find myself reaching for a more powerful app. It even supports vector formats like SVG and superimposing graphics on top of video
10:46
It's available for $49.99 from the Mac App Store. If you're a PC switcher, you might miss the window snapping features that Windows
10:53
has had for years. Well, Rectangle brings that to the Mac. You just grab a window and throw it to the side to fill half the screen, or to the top
11:02
to maximize, or in a corner to fill a quarter of the screen
11:06
But of course, all of these gestures are highly customizable, and you can even add custom
11:11
keyboard shortcuts to tile windows exactly how you want. Even if you don't care much for window snapping, I still use Rectangle for the Command-Control-C
11:21
keyboard shortcut, which perfectly centers a window on my screen. If you have multiple displays, you also might like Control-Option-Command-Left or Right
11:30
which jumps a window between your two displays. Rectangle is available for free with the basic features, or $9.99 for the full feature set
11:39
from the developer's website. UTM Virtual Machines is the easiest way to emulate or virtualize other operating systems
11:46
on your Mac. Unlike VirtualBox, adding new machines is incredibly easy. You just click the plus button, and you can download a pre-made machine from the UTM gallery
11:57
UTM can even virtualize modern operating systems like Windows 11 for the few PC programs you
12:02
might need to run. And you can use all flavors of Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and more
12:08
For your app development, you can install multiple versions of macOS, so you don't
12:12
have to keep a pile of old Macs around. Like I do
12:16
UTM is available for $9.99 in the Mac App Store. So that is my list of the best Mac apps
12:22
For even more, you can click here to check out the awesome apps series that we have on
12:26
Cult of Mac. You can also check out my video on the best games on Apple Arcade
12:32
Remember to like and subscribe. I'm Geographer Jones with Cult of Mac. See you next time. Bye

The Best Mac Apps, Tools and Utilities

Cult of Mac

Can Ternus turn back the clock and make Apple lean and agile again?

iPhone 18 Pro has arrived, and it’s already got a -gate

Apple’s not done yet! Fall event could launch a slew of new products!

Is folding iPhone Duo worth it? What about iPhone 18 Pros and Apple Watches? Surprise and Shine.

Cupertino's new broom

Finally, the AirPods charging trick that will blow your mind! 🤯

Apple is leaking like a sieve

World's 2nd most boring sport comes to Vision Pro -- and it's magical! (Cult of Mac Podcast #28)

A quick announcement… (Cult of Mac Podcast #27)

Mac and iPad price hikes hit hard (Cult of Mac Podcast #26)

10 days in with Siri AI + iOS 27 (Cult of Mac Podcast #25)

Siri AI & OS 27 updates unpacked! (Cult of Mac Podcast #24)

WWDC26 in 90 Seconds

Vision Pro isn’t dead yet + WWDC26 predictions! (Cult of Mac Podcast #23)

No Apple Car, but we have… this (Cult of Mac Podcast #22)

Up next in 10

The Best Mac Apps, Tools and Utilities

Cult of Mac