Contenders

• Downie - A youtube downloader. Comes with browser extensions. Used to be great, but recently doesn't work that well and downloads are much slower than via ytdl (Paid €19)
• HandBrake - Converts videos from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.
• Infuse - a nice mmedia player from a variety of sources (local, network, plex). (Subscription: $10/y or Lifetime: $95)
• BoltAI - bring-your-own-api-key. Lots of features, "evolving" UX ;-).
• SUBgpt - bring-your-own-api-key. Lots of features, "evolving" UX ;-).
• Tagger - mp3 tags editor.
• iConvert Icons - A darag&drop image converter (Paid: $10)
• Ghostty - Terminal emulator. Generally great, but has no search!
• Zed - next-generation code editor designed for high-performance collaboration with humans and AI. OpenSource and super fast, slowly becoming good enough to use for work.
• Notion - feature-rich information management solution. Quite powerful, however, it does add a lot of "friction" to every simple thing (generous free tier, or subscription: $96/y).
• OpenInTerminal - Finder toolbar and menubar app for MacOS to open the current directory in Terminal, iTerm, VSCode and others.
• Reeder - A decent replacement for the classic version, but not as good (Sub: $10/y).
• HackIt - native hacker news app for mac.
• Forecast Bar - a menubar weather app (Subscription ~€10.50 a year)
• Latest - update apps - nicer UI than MacUpdater, but doesn't support many apps (that MacUpdater does), and doesn't run in background.
• Pearcleaner - AppCleaner alternative. Quite good and has CLI.
• PopClip - popover on selected text (like on iOS but better) (Paid: $19)
• ProcessSpy - shows all processes and the actually useful details (like command) (Paid: $7)
• Phoenix - source DIY window manager. Configurable & programmable with javascript. | ★★★ | \- |
• Yabai - |
• SuperTab
• VictorMono - ligatures, fantastic coursive.
• FiraCode - ligatures.
• Nerd Fonts
• Soulver - to calculate anything (like numi but better) (Paid: ~$37)
• Enpass - a nice password manager with 2e2 encryption and custom storage (dropbox, icloud, google drive, etc). (Subscription: €22/y or lifetime: €93)
• AltTab - |
• Calendar 366 II - good looking but not as feature rich as fantastical (Paid: $15)
• OwlOCR - OCR anything (Core version is free, Pro costs $8.99).
• Mizframa - Beautiful mockup generator (puts screenshots in devices) (Lifetime €23).
• SuperTab
• xScope - does measuring, color picking & other designy things (Paid: $50)
• Lasso

Podium

• IINA - The ultimate video player for mac.
• Meta - pretty looking mp3 tag editor. (Paid: $20)
• Permute - Best video/audio/image converter (Paid: $15)
• PDF Squeezer - Best PDF compressor (Paid: €20)
• Velja - Browser picker with lots of cool built-in.
• iTerm2 - Customizable terminal emulator.
• VSCode - Code editor. Best in class.
• LinearMouse - mouse and trackpad customizer (also works wil magic mouse).
• Adguard - System-wide ad-blocker. It's expensive ($65) but occasionally gets discounted (even down to $14).
• Readwise Reader - aims to become a total reader (pdf, books, news, rss, newsletters, youtube). Some great features, some nice AI integration. (Subscription: $96/y)
• AppCleaner - Cleans-up after you uninstall another app.
• Daisy Disk - Disk usage viewer/manager (Paid: €11)
• Dato - Menubar Clock with calendar integration (Paid: $4.99)
• Fantastical - probably the best calendar app for mac (Subscription €70/yr)
• Moom - one of the best. custom grid sizes & lots of useful options (Paid $15).
• Swish - brilliant gestures to throw windows left & right. Nicely supplements other window managers (Paid €12).
• Raycast AI - AI toolset provided as part of the Raycast Pro + Advanced AI subscription. For a single monthly sub you get all top models + prompts + scenarios + the new @ask-ai feature (Subscription: ~$10 pro + ~$10 advanced AI).
• ChatGPT - OpenAI's own app. Excellent UX and great feature set for a monthly sub of ~$20.
• Bruno - Bruno is a Git-integrated, fully offline, and open-source API client OpenSource with premium paid features.
• Nimble Commander - Best dual-panel file manager.
• Reeder Classic - The best RSS reader for Apple devices (Paid: $10).
• PixelSnap2 - measure stuff on screen, draw guides, etc. ($40)
• 1password - The ultimate password manager for apple ecosystem! (Subscription ~€36/yr)
• ColorSlurp - best color picker for mac! (Freemium, Pro €8)
• Mela - simple, elegant and modern recipe manager (Paid: $10 mac, $5 ios).

• Commander GPT - A decent ChatGPT app app for mac. Requires OpenAI account and a personal token (Paid $5).
• MacGPT - A decent ChatGPT app app for mac. Requires OpenAI account and a personal token (Pay what you want).
• QuickGPT - A native macos wrapper around the OpenAI GPT window. Doesn't require a key (Pay what you want).
• Reflex - ensures that media keys hit the right app (stop YT taking over).
• Swinsian - A great music player for local libraries (Paid: $25)
• Tagger - mp3 tags editor.
• Yomu - An independent reader for book lovers (Paid: €7).
• SigmaOS - Tabs in the sidebar. Like Arc but worse. Cannot even change the wallpaper.
• Iconology - icon maker
• iConvert Icons - A darag&drop image converter (Paid: $10)
• ImageOptim - Best image compressor
• Image2icon - Easy, drag&drop icon creation (Free/Paid: $9.99).
• Mizframa - Beautiful mockup generator (puts screenshots in devices) (Lifetime €23).
• CotEditor - similar to Notepad++ for Windows.
• CommanderOne - FTP client and dual-panel file manager (Limited free version and paid Pro: $30 for 1 mac).
• Dash - instant offline access to 200+ API documentation sets (you can even backup stack-overflow!) (Paid: €33).
• Forklift - 2 panel file browser (Paid: $29.95)
• Insomnia Core - REST API tester. Extremely slow. Used to be good, now unusable.
• Patterns - Regex tester (Paid: $3)
• Peek - to quicklook code files (Paid: $3)
• RegExp.app - regex tester for JS, Python, Go, Swift & Rust
• Sequel Ace - a nice MySQL/SQLite DB manager for mac.
• SQLiteStudio - SQLite DB manager
• TablePlus - DB manager for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Redis, etc. (Limited free version and paid options from $90/1 Mac).
• FMail - unofficial desktop app for FastMail. Now deprecated in favour of the new version, which is not as good (does not show in menubar, only in the dock).
• SteerMouse - External mouse customizer (Paid: $20).
• Smooze - External mouse customizer (speed, smoothness, etc) (Paid: $25).
• ApolloOne - (Subscription: €12/y)
• aText - text expander (Paid: $4.99).
• Gestimer - for quick reminders (Paid: $4)
• Glide - Glide is a focus pointer which dims parts of your screen for better focus and reading experience (Paid: $7).
• JustFocus - A simple and free pomodoro app, that shows full-screen notifications.
• Klokki Slim - nice & simple 5time tracking app.
• OpenIn - Handle opening urls & files in different browsers (allows for rules or even javascripts) (Paid: $10)
• OwlOCR - OCR anything (Core version is free, Pro costs $8.99).
• PDFgear - although with a decade old UI, it's a decent app for pdf annotation, and can make filling non-interactive forms a breeze. And it's free!
• Shiori - pinboard client for mac (like Spotlight for pinboard).
• Bitwarden - Self-hostable, open source password manager with free apps for mobile & desktop.
• Muzzle - Automatically turn on Do Not Disturb when screen sharing.
• Session - Even more private Signal clone.
• Telegram - Private messenger with great UX (only *Secret Chats* are encrypted).
• freezingcam - fakes poor connection :wink:.
• ActiveDock2 - Replaces MacOS with a different dock. Doesn't look that well, functions worse, and cannot even hide the native dock, so... there's really no point in using this app (unless as a second dock on a different edge maybe?). (Paid: €24.10/y or Lifetime: €57.85)
• Forecast Bar - a menubar weather app (Subscription ~€10.50 a year)
• iperf - network performance/throughput measure tool.
• PasteBot - best clipboard manager (Paid: $13)
• ScreenFocus - dim other monitors when not needed (Paid: $8)
• SDCardFormatter
• ShortcutDetective - detects which app receives a keyboard shortcut.
• Sloth - displays all open files and sockets in use by all running processes.
• Transnomino - the best file renamer tool for mac.
• WiFi Explorer Lite - excellent WiFi scanner/analyser (Paid: $2)
• xsearch - allows to set custom search providers in safari (Paid: €3.50).
• Calendar 366 II - good looking but not as feature rich as fantastical (Paid: $15)
• Diarly - Excellent diary/journal app (Basic free, or premium subscription: €23/yr)
• Structured - Quite a good daily planner. Shows a timeline of your day with a great UX. (Yearly: €10, Lifetime: €35).
• Bettersnaptool
• DisplayMaid
• Divvy
• Grid
• LayoutSwitcher
• Magnet
• Mosaic - 25 |
• Rectangle - |
• RectanglePro
• Stay
• Window-collage - |
• Command-Tab Plus
• SuperTab
• Witch
• Wooshy
• Glide - Glide is a focus pointer which dims parts of your screen for better focus and reading experience (Paid: $7).
• DocFlipper
• Laravel Herd - One click PHP development environment. Zero dependencies (basic version is free, pro is $100/yr).
• LaunchControl - GUI for launchd (Paid: €28.05).
• LingonX - GUI for launchd (Paid: €23).
• awesome-ios
• Telik - track YT channels for new videos.
• TempBox - opensource temp email app.
• ControlPlane - context automation (abandonware).
• FiScript - add options to context menu.

Contenders

• FolderPreview - to preview folder contents.

Contenders

• Archive.today - access internet-archived version of the current site with a button (Paid €2).
• Keys - lets users keyboard-navigate the web by dynamically generating and rendering shortcut keys in the least ugly/confusing way possible.
• SponsorBlock - skips sponsored segments in YouTube videos (Paid for Safari: $4).
• SuperCopy - copy URL of the current tab with `⌘+⇧+C`
• UserScripts - allows to inject custom script to sites (like temper monkey, et al.), e.g. to get [Youtube dislike button](https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com/) back.

• StopTheMadness - stops websites from making your browser harder to use
• Noir - make all websites dark. Has custom schedule and can ignore sites that already have dark mode. Available also for [iOS](https://getnoir.app) 🔗 (Mac $3, iOS $3).
• UnTrap - Customize youtube (remove sidebar, toolbar sections, etc.) (Paid for Safari: $2).

Contenders

• GithubCopilot - AI coding helper.
• Multiple cursor case preserve - Preserves case of the selected words, when editing multiple words at once.
• perfect-dark - absolutely best dark theme for VSCode.
• SVG - SVG Language Support Extension. Can preview SVG images.

• Apache Conf - config file syntax support.
• Dash - Companion to Dash app. Shows docs on highlighted code.
• DotENV - `.env` syntax highlighting.
• EditorConfig for VS Code - plugin for [editorconfig](https://editorconfig.org/).
• Error Lens
• ESLint
• HTML CSS Support - CSS Intellisense for HTML.
• Markdown All in One - keyboard shortcuts, table of contents, auto preview and more.
• npm Intellisense - autocompletes npm modules in import statements.
• Open Folder Context Menus for VS Code - adds two new context menus to the Explorer: "Open New Workbench Here" and "Reopen Workbench Here".
• Open in Finder - opens the current file or project in Finder.
• Open in GitHub, Bitbucket, Gitlab, VisualStudio.com - adds context menu option to jump to a source code line in Github, etc.
• Path Intellisense - autocompletes filenames.
• PHP Intelephense - better PHP support (has an annoying "buy pro" popup with every update).
• Stylelint - CSS, Less & Sass Linter support.
• stylus - language support for the best css preprocessor.
• Subtle Match Brackets - Underlined matching brackets without covering the code (like the native does).
• Svelte for VS Code - syntax highlighting and rich intellisense for Svelte components.
• Version Lens - shows package version information e.g. in `package.json` files.
• VSCode Great Icons - best icons for VSCode.
• MacMenuBar.com - A curated directory of 500+ Mac menu bar apps.