OUR FAVORITES

Indispensable Affordable Apps

Try these simple, super-useful apps that won’t break the bank.

Not every app has to be a feature-packed powerhouse. These outstanding—and inexpensive—apps will improve your Mac-using life in small but impactful ways.

Master your schedule

In Your Face delivers on its name, providing full-screen meeting notifications you can’t miss (or ignore).

Meeter puts the time and description of your next meeting right in the menu bar and lets you join online meetings with a click.

Meeter checks your calendars for upcoming virtual meetings and gathers them all in the menu bar.

With AudioSwitcher, quickly switch among different audio inputs and outputs—like your AirPods and your Mac’s speakers—and adjust their levels independently.

Clocker puts an international clock in your menu bar; click it to see how multiple time zones overlap.

Click Hand Mirror’s menu bar icon for a preview of how you’ll look on your next video call.

Got a new MacBook Pro with M1? Click the camera notch and NotchCam shows you a camera preview.

Easily track the time you spent on different projects with Time Sink.

Work with text

The convenient menu bar notepad Tot lets you quickly jot ideas, lists, and notes.

Build your vocabulary with the beautifully illustrated dictionary LookUp and its whimsical Word of the Day widget.

LookUp’s illustrations are more than just eye candy—they show the meaning of each word to help you remember it.

TextSniper copies uncopyable text—in photos, PDFs, videos, online presentations, apps, and more—and makes the process as easy as grabbing a screenshot.

Select text in any app and PopClip will show a slew of useful actions you can pull off with a click.

Easily create workflows to perform magic on text: Taio can change case, sort lines, search and replace, insert clippings, and much more.

Generate “lorem ipsum” placeholder text—a word or paragraphs at a time—with a keyboard shortcut or click of GetIpsum’s menu bar icon.

Boost your productivity

Copy ’Em gives you unlimited clipboards—and lets you paste text, images, and files from any of them using a keystroke.

With powerful text filters and searching, Pastebot is the power user’s endless-clipboard utility.

The Mail add-on MsgFiler lets you file messages, navigate mailboxes, and much more using the keyboard.

The elegant, blazingly fast RSS reader ReadKit seamlessly formats and organizes the latest articles from all your favorite websites in one place.

ReadKit keeps your online reading organized—and lets you navigate entirely with keyboard shortcuts.

Temporarily stash files, folders, images, text snippets, and more—Yoink’s pop-up shelf keeps them handy for instant access.

Snap windows to a set size or position—say, the left half of your screen—using BetterSnapTool’s keyboard shortcuts or by dragging a window to the edge of the screen.

Quickly start timers by pulling down on Gestimer’s menu bar icon—the longer the pull, the longer the timer.

Manage your Mac

Use ToothFairy to quickly connect your AirPods and other Bluetooth headphones to your Mac with a click or keyboard shortcut.

FreeSpace monitors available storage across your devices and lets you quickly unmount removable drives.

Manage your drives in one convenient menu with FreeSpace.

Too many apps in your menu bar? Hidden Bar lets you hide the ones you don’t need to see. You can also rearrange menu bar icons by simply dragging them around.

Use MonitorControl Lite’s systemwide menu or keyboard shortcuts to independently control the brightness of any connected display.

Declutter your desktop by using Folder Tidy to automatically sort random files into smartly labeled folders.

GrandPerspective finds huge videos, downloads, and other files hogging space on your drives.

Mic Drop can mute and unmute your Mac’s microphone via a keyboard shortcut or a click in the menu bar.

TripMode lets you control which apps use data on which networks—for example, to conserve data while tethered to your iPhone.

Manage your life

Track all your inbound and outbound packages in one place with Deliveries.

Time Out reminds you to take regular breaks—whether to get up and move or to just clear your head.

Time Out’s Muscles theme suggests exercises you can do during your breaks.

Quickly trigger HomeKit scenes using Scenecuts’ convenient menu bar icon and keyboard shortcuts.

Practice your sun salutations and downward dogs in the comfort of your home with Pocket Yoga’s virtual yoga teacher.

Create your own soothing soundscapes from Relax Melodies’ library of over 100 ambient sounds.

Poolsuite FM offers up warm-but-chill playlists from under-the-radar artists.

Tune in to thousands of internet radio streams from around the world with Broadcasts.