Five Useful Mac Apps Worth Checking Out - April 2018

Apps designed for the Mac don't typically receive as much attention as apps for iOS devices, so we've launched a monthly series that highlights useful, interesting Mac apps that are worth checking out.

This month's app selection, outlined in the video and the post below, includes apps for managing and organizing your files, getting info about your Mac, accessing your favorite content quickly, and more. Many of the apps we've included this month were chosen by our forum members.

• DaisyDisk ($9.99) - DaisyDisk is an app that's been around for quite some time, but it was just recently updated with extended support for Apple File System (APFS), the file system on macOS High Sierra. DaisyDisk is designed to show you all of the files on your Mac, so you can see what's eating up your disk space. Using simple drag and drop gestures, you can delete unnecessary content, freeing up storage.
• Hazel ($32) - Hazel is a little bit more expensive than the typical Mac apps we feature, but it has a unique function -- it automatically sorts and organizes all of your files. You can assign Hazel to watch folders on your Mac, such as the download folder, and using user-specified rules, Hazel will organize all incoming files into categories like Movies, Music, Pictures, Old Files, New Items, and more. Hazel can be used to open, archive, tag, rename, and upload files, and there are tools for cleaning up support files when you delete an app.
• Shortcut Bar ($8.99) - Shortcut Bar is a simple menu bar app that lets you access your favorite files, folders, apps, web bookmarks, and text snippets, essentially putting all of the files and apps you use most on your Mac right at your fingertips.
• Station (Free) - Station is an app that's designed to house and aggregate all of your web applications in one easy to access location. Instead of having dozens of tabs open with things like Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, and Slack, you can relocate them all to Station for quicker, more streamlined access. Station is, essentially, a web browser that has a more thoughtful layout for accessing web apps.
• iStat Menus ($9.99) - iStat Menus is a fairly well-known app that's worth checking out if you haven't already. It provides a wealth of information about your Mac that's accessible through your menu bar. You can track battery life and health, processor usage, memory usage, network details, weather information, and more, and it can send notifications based on your custom parameters. Want to know if your CPU usage has exceeded 60 percent for over 10 seconds or if your internet is down? iStat Menus can do that. It's free to download in a trial capacity, but unlocking full functionality costs $9.99.

Do you have favorite must-have Mac apps that we haven't highlighted yet? Let us know what they are in the comments and we might feature them in a future video. Many of this month's picks came from our forum members.

For more of our Mac app picks, make sure to check out our lists from February and March.