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.

Alternatives: BBedit, Emacs, Atom, and Xcode
Visual Code Studio
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.

Alternatives: Autodesk, Sketchbook, Seashore, Paint X, and Gimp
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.

MAMP
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.

Alternatives: Filezilla
Cyberduck
Fontbase

Built by designers for designers, FontBase brings a whole new experience to managing fonts in macOS.

Alternatives: RightFont, FontAwesome, and Glyphy

Related: Best Font Pairing Tools for Designers

Fontbase
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.

ImageOptim
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.

Alternatives: Svgsus

Related: 15 Websites to Download Free SVG Icons

Iconset
GIF Brewery

Convert any video file, screen recording, or webcam video into an animated GIF. GIFBrewer makes creating an animated Gif a breeze.

Alternatives: Kap, and GIPHY Capture

Related: Best Tools to Optimize Animated GIFs

GIF Brewery

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.

paste app
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.

Alternatives: Transmission
uTorrent
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.

Alternatives: TickTick
Microsoft To-do
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.

AltTab
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.

Alternatives: Microsoft OneNote, Simplenote, and Post-it
Evernote
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.

Grammarly
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

WeTransfer
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”.

Trello
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.

Alternatives: OneDrive, and Google Drive
Dropbox
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.

Alternatives: Mail for Gmail, Spark, and AirMail
ThunderBird
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.

MindNode
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.

Folx
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.

Microsoft Remote Desktop
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.

Slack

Entertainment Apps

VLC Player

A favorite Mac video player that supports almost all video formats!

Alternatives: MKPlayer
VLC Player
Shazam

Discover any song playing around you and explore all the music, lyrics, and video that you love within seconds through Shazam.

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.

Kindle

Lifestyle and Misc.

Parcel

Track the status of all your deliveries in one app. You get notified of your parcel’s delivery status.

Parcel
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.

Garagebuy
myTuner Radio

Get access to more than 40,000 radio stations all over the world right through your mac.

Alternatives: Radio FM
myTuner Radio
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.

Alternatives: Firefox, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi
Google Chrome

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.

Alternatives: Cross DJ
Audacity

Audacity is a free app to record sounds or edit your recorded audio and music through a simple interface.

Alternatives: LMMS
Audacity
Handbrake

Handbrake is an open-source video converter to transcode videos from nearly any format to several widely supported codecs.

Handbrake
DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is an innovative tool that features professional video editing, color correction, visual effects, and audio post-production.

Alternatives: Lightworks
DaVinci Resolve
Studio One 4 Prime

Studio One 4 Prime is a digital audio workstation with many native effect plugins and unlimited tracks.

Studio One 4 Prime

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.

Alternatives: Pocket

Related: 20 Top Content Curation Tools for Marketers

NetNewsWire
Adobe Reader

Universal software to view, print, and edit PDF documents.

Adobe Reader

Photography Tools

Fotor

A powerful and feature-filled photo editing app that can cater to all your photo editing needs.

Fotor
DarkTable

An open-source photography workflow application and raw developer manages your digital photography database.

Related: 10 Free Photo Management Desktop Apps

DarkTable

Chat and Social Network

Trillian

Simple and free messaging app to connect with your friends or teammates for personal or business use.

Trillian
Twitter

Official Twitter app that allows you to tweet search and get notifications right from the comfort of your desktop.

Twitter
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.

Alternatives:Zoom, Uz Meet
Skype
WhatsApp

What’s more useful than having the Whatsapp application on your phone is to have it on your mac desktop as well.

Alternatives: Messenger, ICQ, Viber, Telegram, WeChat, and Line
WhatsApp

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.

Alternatives: CleanMyMac X, and BuhoCleaner
Memory Clean 2
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.

The Unarchiver
Malwarebytes

A useful anti-malware that blocks malware, adware, spyware, and other threats from affecting your mac.

Malwarebytes
Audiobook Binder

A tool to convert your audiobooks from .mp3 to .m4b, making them iPod compatible.

Audiobook Binder
Flame

An app that shows you what is happening behind the scenes on your network.

Flame
LastPass

A password manager tool that makes it easy for you to manage all your passwords that come under your personal or business use.

Alternatives: 1Password, Zoho Vault, Dashlane, and Psono
LastPass
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.

Mactracker
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.

Speedtest
Unsplash Wallpapers

A beautiful collection of high-quality wallpapers for your macOS desktop.

Unsplash Wallpapers
Amphetamine

An app that keeps your mac or its displays awake for a long time through a simple on-off switch.

Amphetamine
Google Earth

Explore hundreds of amazing places in the world in 3D right through your mac.

Google Earth
Monolingual

Monolingual removes unnecessary language resources from your macOS so you can have several hundred megabytes of disk space at your disposal.

Monolingual

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