12 of the best apps ready for your new Mac 2021

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With Apple’s awesome new MacBook Pros, its colorful new iMacs, and of course the still excellent 2020 MacBook Air M1 offering incredible performance and battery life, there has never been a better time to give (or receive) a new Mac.

And as more and more people are moving to remote work, that laptop or computer you buy needs to do more than ever. So we’ve rounded up some of our favorite Mac apps, designed to help you be more productive or just to make using your computer and browsing your daily life and Zoom calls a little more enjoyable.

Pixelmator Pro Pixelmator Pro Image: Pixelmator Team

Adobe Photoshop is a key tool for image and photo editing, but it’s super expensive, thanks to its $ 9.99 monthly subscription. Pixelmator Pro, on the other hand, has a one-time fee of $ 19.99 while still offering tons of powerful photo editing tools. The latest update added a number of useful new features, including the ability to instantly remove the background from an image and improved masking and selection tools.

Pixelmator Pro offers tons of powerful tools to edit your photos for less than the Adobe app.

Spark Spark Image: Readdle Technologies

Spark is one of my favorite mobile email apps, and the company’s Mac app is just as great, offering a fast user interface, helpful auto-sorting, and tons of customization for power users. And it supports Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo, Exchange, and more, along with integrations for popular job services like Trello, Asana, Zoom, and GoToMeeting. Nobody likes to deal with email, but Spark makes it a little easier to do so.

Spark is one of the best email apps for mobile devices, and the company’s Mac app is just as great, offering a fast user interface, helpful automatic sorting, and tons of customization for power users.

Tweetbot

The official Twitter app exists and it’s free, but Tweetbot is infinitely better if you’re the type of person who spends a lot of time on Twitter. The paid app has no ads or suggested tweets clogging up your timeline, it just offers the revolutionary feature of showing all tweets from people you follow in the chronological order they tweeted them. The app looks good too, with a simple and clean interface that makes reading Twitter almost enjoyable.

The official Twitter app is free, but Tweetbot is infinitely better if you’re the type of person who spends a lot of time on Twitter.

Alfred 4 for Mac Alfred 4 for MacImage: Crayons

Like many apps on this list, Alfred does something that one of Apple’s built-in apps already does – in this case, search your computer. But Alfred is so much better: a lightning-fast search tool and app launcher that supports virtually endless customization, including automated workflows, bespoke Google searches, or whatever else you can think of. After using it for a few days, you will never be able to go back to Spotlight.

Alfred is a lightning-fast search tool and app launcher that supports virtually infinite customization.

DaisyDisk DaisyDisk Image: Software Ambience

It happens to everyone sooner or later: After a few years of accumulating random photos, videos, music and other documents, you start getting the dreaded notifications that you are running out of space on your hard drive. DaisyDisk is meant to help you: it scans your computer and shows the amount of storage space you are using, divided into files and folders in neat and colorful rings that make it easy to locate the junk that is taking up all of your space and empty your computer .

DaisyDisk scans your computer and shows you how much storage space you are using, broken down by files and folders into sorted and colored rings.

1Password 1PasswordImage: 1Password

Your passwords are probably not secure enough. 1Password will help you solve it, generating ultra-secure passwords and keeping track of everything. With deep integration into both Safari and Chrome, a clean user interface, and tons of useful additional features to protect not only passwords, but credit cards, documents and more, it’s a one stop shop to keep your digital life safe. An individual membership costs $ 36 a year, but if you have more than one person in your household, you’re probably better off with the five-person family membership for $ 60 a year which also adds the option to share passwords.

1Password generates ultra-secure passwords and tracks everything.

Authy Desktop Authy Image: Twilio

If you’re not using two-factor authentication for passwords and important logins, do so now. Authy is one of the best apps out there for your two-factor setup, with cross-platform apps on iOS and Android. The Mac app does exactly what the mobile versions do – it gives you 2FA codes when you need to log in. But it’s much more useful, because it’s on the computer you’re probably trying to access something on.

Authy is one of the best apps out there for your two-factor setup, with cross-platform apps on iOS and Android.

MonitorControl MonitorControl Image: MonitorControl

As more and more people move to remote work, there has been a big increase in home office construction and the use of an external monitor. MonitorControl is a nifty menu bar app that lets you control the brightness and volume of your external display (if it has built-in speakers) using your Mac’s function keys, just like on Apple’s hardware.

MonitorControl is a nifty menu bar app that lets you control the brightness and volume of the external display using your Mac’s function keys.

Hand mirror Hand mirror Image: Hand mirror

Video calls are a more important part than ever in the daily work environment. Hand Mirror is a simple app that resides in your Mac’s menu bar and is designed to help you look your best during calls – just one click and launches a quick window showing what the current view is from your webcam, allowing you to double check that you have moved all your workout gear or messy laundry out of the background or that your hair is in order before starting your Zoom call.

Hand Mirror is a simple app that resides in your Mac’s menu bar, designed to help you look your best during calls.

Bulldozer Bulldozer Image: Mortennn

Managing menu bar apps can get out of hand pretty quickly (especially if you’ve just installed one of the ones we’re recommending here). And it has only become a bigger problem thanks to Apple’s new MacBook Pro models, which consume a big chunk of your menu bar space with a strong webcam notch. Well, Dozer is here to help you. It’s a free app that makes it easy to hide all the menu bar icons for the things you want to open but don’t necessarily have to always have visible. If you prefer a little more flash, there is also Bartender, which costs $ 15 but offers a more elaborate design.

A free app that makes it easy to hide all menu bar icons for the things you want to open, but they don’t need to be visible all the time.

Meeter Meeter Image: Bardeen

Meeter is another menu bar app designed to help with one thing: organize all your different video calls Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, Teams, and other video calls in one place, with one-click links to join any scheduled meeting. . The free app connects to your Mac’s built-in Calendar app and can take any video call it sees, putting them into a handy drop-down menu, complete with notifications to remind you to join before the call begins.

Meeter is designed to help you with one thing: organize all your different Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, Teams, and other video calls in one place, with one-click links to join any scheduled meeting.

VLC VLC Image: VideoLan

Local media playback is no longer the core function it once was, thanks to the rise of streaming as the primary way to consume movies, TV shows and music. But for those times when you need to play a local audio or video file, there’s still no better app than VLC, which can handle pretty much any file format or codec you’ve ever heard of and some you haven’t. Plus, it’s completely free.

A free audio / video app that supports a variety of codecs, so it should play whatever you throw at it.

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