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Five Great Apps for Your Mac - February 2018
Apps designed for the Mac often don't receive as much attention as apps for iOS apps, which is why we've launched a monthly series that highlights various useful, fun, and interesting Mac apps that are worth checking out.
This month's app selection, outlined both in the video and post below, includes apps with niche and broad appeal for taking notes, using Gmail, learning shortcuts, and more.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
Make sure to also check out our January list, which covered apps like Unclutter, Dropzone 3, Bartender 3, and Magnet.
This month's app selection, outlined both in the video and post below, includes apps with niche and broad appeal for taking notes, using Gmail, learning shortcuts, and more.
- Boxy ($5.99) - Designed for Mac users who use Inbox by Gmail, Boxy is a minimal email app for the Mac with a clean, simple interface that offers a rich feature set like smart replies, Markdown support, email snoozing, reminders, email bundling, email pinning, Google Calendar event parsing, useful archive search tools, and more. Boxy works with any Gmail email address and supports multiple accounts.
- Sip ($9.99) - Sip is a bit of a niche app, but it's useful for artists, designers, interior decorators, app developers, and other content creators who like to create and maintain color palettes. Sip lets you create and organize color palettes that can be accessed right in the menu bar of your Mac and shared to all of your favorite design apps like Photoshop, Xcode, Illustrator, Sketch, and more. Choosing colors from any source is as simple as a key press, and a color dock makes all of your palettes readily available.
- Agenda (Free) - Agenda is a note taking app that's a little bit unique because it's date based, which makes it ideal for project planning. Agenda offers a timeline organizational system that makes it easy to keep track of your progress on a project, with an "On the Agenda" tool for surfacing things that need to be addressed right away.
There's a full text editor built in complete with styles and formatting, and notes can also be added to categories for even deeper organization. Agenda is a free download, but it will cost $24.99 per year to unlock premium features like creating calendar events, saving searches, and exporting in Markdown or HTML. - CheatSheet (Free) - CheatSheet is simple little app that's designed to offer an overlay with a list of all the keyboard shortcuts that are available on your Mac. It's customized to the current application that's open, so if you're running image editing app Pixelmator, for example, it'll display all of the available Pixelmator keyboard shortcuts.
- DeskApp for YouTube (Free) - DeskApp is another simple but useful app that's designed to let you search for and watch YouTube videos from within the DeskApp app instead of through Safari, Chrome, or another browser. It allows for quick access to YouTube from the menu bar on your Mac, it supports multiple windows and tabs, and it has a clean, easy to use interface.
Make sure to also check out our January list, which covered apps like Unclutter, Dropzone 3, Bartender 3, and Magnet.
Tags: Mac App Store, Essential Mac Apps
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8 months ago
please stop with this advertising
Just for the record, these Mac apps were all independently picked and used by us.
We don't accept suggestions for these lists from app developers or companies, and our lists are in no way paid advertisements. If you don't like these suggestions, definitely point us in the direction of some good Mac apps -- we're doing these lists because it's not always easy to find useful Mac apps. Would love to hear from you guys.
8 months ago
I am very disheartened by the negative comments. Is this a sign of our times? Fer heavens sakes these suggestions are offered with the intent to broaden our knowledge of what's available to, maybe, help some Mac Users. Sure, many apps might only appeal to a small subset of readers. If you don't need the app, don't use it. I am delighted with "Cheat" and hope this negativism won't discourage future postings of nifty apps. The comments above remind me of the story of an old man on the beach with his grandson. A large wave comes in a washes the child out to sea. At this point the old man looks skyward as exclaims: God, please I implore you, return my Grandson to me! There's a sudden clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning and another large wave rolls in, carrying his Grandson safely to the beach. The old man hugs his Grandson with joy, looks skyward and exclaims: But, he was wearing a hat!
8 months ago
definitely point us in the direction of some good Mac apps -- we're doing these lists because it's not always easy to find useful Mac apps. Would definitely love to hear from you guys.
My votes go for a lot that help with common issues you read in the forum, though they’re not so much productivity apps like these are. They’re all free.
MalwareBytes for Mac - fixes almost any PUPs you’ll get, very effective at getting rid of them.
OmniDiskSweeper - useful for seeing a simple visual breakdown of what’s taking up disk space.
AppCleaner - good for completely uninstalling apps along with their associated files that don’t stay in the Applications folder.
The Unarchiver - my go-to application for extracting RAR files and other common compressed file types that you find on Windows.
Boxer - really intuitive version of DOSBOX for playing legacy games.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test - for drooling over the crazy Flash speeds in newer Macs.
Preview - although it’s built into macOS, it’s got this great Instant Alpha feature to remove white space. Infinitely easier and more intuitive than Photoshop, I was mega impressed when I stumbled on it. Not sure if you’ve covered it already but it’s definitely worth checking out.
8 months ago
My votes go for a lot that help with common issues you read in the forum, though they’re not so much productivity apps like these are. They’re all free.
MalwareBytes for Mac - fixes almost any PUPs you’ll get, very effective at getting rid of them.
OmniDiskSweeper - useful for seeing a simple visual breakdown of what’s taking up disk space.
AppCleaner - good for completely uninstalling apps along with their associated files that don’t stay in the Applications folder.
The Unarchiver - my go-to application for extracting RAR files and other common compressed file types that you find on Windows.
Boxer - really intuitive version of DOSBOX for playing legacy games.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test - for drooling over the crazy Flash speeds in newer Macs.
Preview - although it’s built into macOS, it’s got this great Instant Alpha feature to remove white space. Infinitely easier and more intuitive than Photoshop, I was mega impressed when I stumbled on it. Not sure if you’ve covered it already but it’s definitely worth checking out.
Great list, thank you. We'll certainly check these out.
8 months ago
I have never heard of any of these programs, until now.
I appreciate the article but none appeal to me.
I appreciate the article but none appeal to me.
8 months ago
DeskApp for YouTube? Seriously? A web browser app is getting front stage placement on macrumors? Wow... Extremely disappointed.
8 months ago
No point in buying SIP. Just use a digital color meter which is totally free and is on every mac, make a TXT file and then with the color code and import it into your chosen app.. Simple savings.
The great thing about Sip is not having to do any of that.
8 months ago
No point in buying SIP. Just use a digital color meter which is totally free and is on every mac, make a TXT file and then with the color code and import it into your chosen app.. Simple savings.
8 months ago
"5 Essential Mac Apps" ... goes on to list niche apps (Boxy, Sip) or apps that do what my web browser already does just fine (DeskApp).
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