Quinn Nelson has been making YouTube videos about consumer technology since he was a middle schooler – 18 years and counting. Now the host of Snazzy Labs, he’s also an avid skier and golfer who lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, toddler daughter and Maine Coon cat named Sully. He loves learning how things work by taking them apart and putting them back together – usually without any screws left over!

Fun facts

• First Mac: Bondi Blue iMac G3
• Favourite Mac: 12-inch Retina MacBook – more than a decade later, it still feels wildly modern and futuristic
• Favourite macOS feature: Quick Look
• To-do app: Apple Reminders for everyday life and Todoist for work
• Rainbow or solid Apple logo: Rainbow Apple logo – timeless!
• Productivity pro tip: Your most productive hours are typically in the morning. Pick a task or goal you’re going to tackle and get it done first! Email, organisation and other tasks can follow the post-lunch sleepies.

We talked to Nelson about some of his favourite apps for being more efficient and productive as a creator

Craft
“I’ve been using Craft for years. What’s kept me around is how its capabilities have scaled incredibly over that time without ever making the app feel bloated – a genuinely hard thing to pull off! What started as a beautiful notes app has grown into a full knowledge workspace with rich text blocks, linked pages, collaboration and polished, presentable exports. And the AI integration is some of the best I’ve used: it slots right into your writing flow to draft, summarise, rewrite and answer questions about your own docs, instead of feeling like a chatbot bolted onto the side.”

Pro tip: “Lean on the daily notes template and backlinks to build a ‘second brain’ over time – your ideas start connecting themselves, and Craft’s AI can surface and stitch them together when you need them most.“

Folder Peek
“Folder Peek lets you put local and iCloud folders, server directories and more in its systemwide menu for easy access. If it’s clickable in Finder, you can put it in Folder Peek! Folder contents are displayed in hierarchical menus you can sort by name, size and more. You can see file previews right in the menu. And you can even drag files from the menu to move or copy them without opening Finder. (Tip: Adding custom icons to folders makes it easier to navigate the menu.)”

Pro tip: “Want a custom menu of your frequently used apps and files? Create a new Finder folder containing aliases to the apps and files, then add it to Folder Peek.”

PDF Squeezer
“Few apps make you think ‘Wait... how did it just do that?’ but PDF Squeezer is one of them. It takes those massive PDFs that won’t send over email and shrinks them to impossibly small file sizes, often without any visible loss in quality. You choose exactly how much to shrink and what data to remove (such as unused fonts and forms). The app lets you compare the resulting document side by side with the original before saving.”

Pro tip: “Even though PDF Squeezer’s interface is a joy to use, you needn’t open the app at all. Built-in automation tools let you seamlessly integrate the app’s features into Shortcuts, Finder Quick Actions or even the command line to compress PDFs quickly in the background.”

One Thing
“One Thing places a single task, goal, reminder, event or link right in your menu bar. It can be motivational, a reminder – whatever you want. For example, I’m an aspirational subscriber to the ‘eat the frog’ method, wherein I devote myself to the most important or challenging task first thing in the morning. At the close of each workday, I put tomorrow’s ‘frog’ in One Thing, so when I get on my Mac in the morning, I’m immediately focused on the most important task at hand.”

Pro tip: “The app integrates with Shortcuts, Services and share sheets, giving you many ways to add that one thing to the menu bar. For example, you can use a shortcut to automatically display the highest-priority task from your to-do app. But my favourite method is to simply select text and drag it onto the One Thing menu!”

Dropover
“Dropover gives you a temporary ‘shelf’ to place files and folders before you do something else with them – a hassle-saving alternative to Command-clicking a bunch of files or having windows strewn across your desktop. Whether you’re moving or copying files, ingesting them into another app or sending them to your cloud file provider of choice, they’ll sit safely in Dropover’s shelf until you drag them out.”

Pro tip: “Dropover can perform bulk actions on files too: Click any shelf’s menu and select All Actions to rename, resize, convert and more.”

My hidden gem: GrandPerspective
“GrandPerspective is one of those apps I use only once or so per year, but every time I get so much utility out of it. The app gives you a graphical view of your Mac’s storage, identifying (using size and colour) what’s taking up lots of space and giving you actionable sorting/deletion/organization options. The visuals look dated, and these days a bunch of fancy AI-driven tools are available (not to mention Settings > General > Storage in macOS), but none do a better or quicker job than GrandPerspective.”

Pro tip: “Start by scanning just your home folder – that’s where most of your space gets consumed – and don’t delete anything you don’t recognise!”

Some titles may not be available to download on all devices or in all regions.

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