100 Free Useful Mac Apps You Should Know (Updated)
Mac is a powerful machine with a high-performing operating system. If you love working on your Mac, you’ll be glad to know that so many free apps are available to make your Mac usage even more interesting and productive.
In this post, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of 100 free and useful Mac apps that every Mac user should know. From media editing and productivity to entertainment and lifestyle apps, you’ll find a whole array of tools in the list. So take a look and see if there’s an app or two that you find interesting.
Developers and Designers Tools
Visual Code Studio
Visual Studio Code is a code editor from Microsoft that’s been gaining massive popularity among web developers. It features a built-in Git manager and debugger, yet surprisingly runs fast. It provides a vast selection of first-party or third-party extensions to power up the editor.
Krita
An image editor that allows you to produce both bitmap and vector graphics. It has an intuitive user interface and is compatible with macOS, Windows, and Linux. Check out the gallery from the artists and designers using Krita.
MAMP
MAMP is an easy-to-use application to run a localhost environment in macOS. The latest version now includes Nginx aside from Apache as an option to run the localhost webserver.
Cyberduck
Cyberduck is a FTP and SFTP app that provides an easy way to transfer your files to servers and clouds. It supports many types of servers and connections, including FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, Dropbox, etc.
Fontbase
Built by designers for designers, FontBase brings a whole new experience to managing fonts in macOS.
Related: Best Font Pairing Tools for Designers
ImageOptim
Allows you to quickly reduce the size of most types of image formats, including .jpg?2, .png, .gif, and even .svg, by simply drag-n-drop.
Iconset
This is an app for designers’ and developers’ teams to manage their icon collection. It’s compatible with both macOS and Windows and works together seamlessly with many designing apps like Photoshop, Sketch, Figma, etc.
Related: 15 Websites to Download Free SVG Icons
GIF Brewery
Convert any video file, screen recording, or webcam video into an animated GIF. GIFBrewer makes creating an animated Gif a breeze.
Related: Best Tools to Optimize Animated GIFs
Productivity Tools
Paste
Paste is a useful clipboard manager that stores everything that you copy/ paste so you can instantly find every text, link, image, or file copied/pasted.
uTorrent
Utorrent allows you to manage, download, or stream files like video and audio from a Torrent network fast and safely with an intuitive interface.
Microsoft To-do
A lightweight task management app that can help you to stay organized in whatever tasks you need to do, from grocery lists, to housecleaning routines, or managing your side-hustle project.
AltTab
Want to switch alt-tab switching apps like Windows in Mac? Now you can, with this app. So instead of Cmd+Tab to switch between the application window, you can press Alt + Tab. A great utility app if you’ve just migrated from Windows to macOS.
Evernote
A full-featured note-taking app that enables you to organize ideas, lists, reminders, clip anything from the web and manage your project all in one place from any device, whether online or offline.
Grammarly
Grammarly has revolutionized spell-checking and auto-correction that corrects word-by-word and suggests a better selection of words, phrases, and tones in real time. A must-have app for bloggers, editors, or any professional writers.
WeTransfer
The WeTransfer app allows you to share files or folders safely online and seamlessly for up to 2Gbs for free. Once you’ve uploaded files through the app, it will provide you with the download link you can share with anyone.
Related: 15 Websites to Send Big Files Online
Trello
Trello is a project management tool that allows one to manage and organize tasks or ideas on the Kanban board. Trello allows you to have a customized workflow based on the type of project. For software development, for example, it’s common to have multiple columns like “Backlog”, “Coding”, “Testing”, “Approval”, and “Done”.
Dropbox
Seamlessly stores and sync any files across multiple devices for free. It can also generate a link you can share with anyone to download.
ThunderBird
A free cross-platform email client app with full IMAP and SMTP mail connection support. It brings handy features like a calendar, address book, reminder, and tabbed interface, which makes managing email a whole lot better.
MindNode
Simple-to-use mind mapping applications for the macOS that help to visually collect, classify, and structure ideas as well as organize, study, and solve problems.
Folx Download Manager
Folx is a free app for macOS to manage your downloads. It also offers browser extensions that offer more convenience when downloading files from any website.
Microsoft Remote Desktop
Forgot to bring your laptop? Not to worry. Use this app to connect to a remote Windows PC, apps, desktops, or resources like files and directories from macOS and virtually any device as it’s also available in iOS and Android.
Slack
Beyond just a chat application, Slack allows you to integrate it with external services like Github, Zapier, and IFTTT with the Apps to streamline your workflows. Could not find the app you need? You can create your app or Slack bot through its API.
Entertainment Apps
VLC Player
A favorite Mac video player that supports almost all video formats!
Shazam
Discover any song playing around you and explore all the music, lyrics, and video that you love within seconds through Shazam.
Kindle
An app that allows you to read eBooks on a simple, easy-to-use interface. It can sync with your phone, tablet, and e-Reader so you can pick up where you left off.
Lifestyle and Misc.
Parcel
Track the status of all your deliveries in one app. You get notified of your parcel’s delivery status.
Garagebuy
For regular eBay users, this app will keep track of your biddings and searches on eBay and notify you whenever there’s a change in any items that you’re interested in.
myTuner Radio
Get access to more than 40,000 radio stations all over the world right through your mac.
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a simple, secure, and robust browser used by millions around the globe. You can get all of Google’s smart apps built in the browser.
Music and Video Editing Tools
Mixx
For the DJ in you, this is a powerful music-mixing software that allows you to edit and create new music.
Audacity
Audacity is a free app to record sounds or edit your recorded audio and music through a simple interface.
Handbrake
Handbrake is an open-source video converter to transcode videos from nearly any format to several widely supported codecs.
DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve is an innovative tool that features professional video editing, color correction, visual effects, and audio post-production.
Studio One 4 Prime
Studio One 4 Prime is a digital audio workstation with many native effect plugins and unlimited tracks.
News and Reading Tools
NetNewsWire
An RSS reader that collects articles from your favorite blogs and also keeps track of what you’re reading to send recommendations.
Related: 20 Top Content Curation Tools for Marketers
Adobe Reader
Universal software to view, print, and edit PDF documents.
Photography Tools
Fotor
A powerful and feature-filled photo editing app that can cater to all your photo editing needs.
DarkTable
An open-source photography workflow application and raw developer manages your digital photography database.
Related: 10 Free Photo Management Desktop Apps
Chat and Social Network
Trillian
Simple and free messaging app to connect with your friends or teammates for personal or business use.
Official Twitter app that allows you to tweet search and get notifications right from the comfort of your desktop.
Skype
Skype is a useful and popular video-calling app that you can use to connect with one or many contacts. You can even share your screen with others and record your calls.
What’s more useful than having the Whatsapp application on your phone is to have it on your mac desktop as well.
Mac Utilities
Memory Clean 2
Recovers memory for your applications to use and helps avoid the performance hit you get when running low on Free memory.
The Unarchiver
Think of it as WinZIP for Mac. Supported file formats include .zip, .tar, .gzip, .rar, .7zip, .lha, and many other more or less obscure formats.
Malwarebytes
A useful anti-malware that blocks malware, adware, spyware, and other threats from affecting your mac.
Related: Top 5 Antivirus Software for Mac
Audiobook Binder
A tool to convert your audiobooks from .mp3 to .m4b, making them iPod compatible.
Flame
An app that shows you what is happening behind the scenes on your network.
LastPass
A password manager tool that makes it easy for you to manage all your passwords that come under your personal or business use.
Mactracker
An interesting app that gives you all the information you need on every Apple Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad ever made, including all the hardware and technical knowledge.
Smart Converter
A fast video converter that can convert videos in almost any format to various other compatible formats.
Speedtest
Check the speed of your internet connection with this app. The results are accurate everywhere, thanks to their global network.
Unsplash Wallpapers
A beautiful collection of high-quality wallpapers for your macOS desktop.
Amphetamine
An app that keeps your mac or its displays awake for a long time through a simple on-off switch.
Google Earth
Explore hundreds of amazing places in the world in 3D right through your mac.
Monolingual
Monolingual removes unnecessary language resources from your macOS so you can have several hundred megabytes of disk space at your disposal.
