Mac apps that I use

As I’ve been using Mac OS more, I’ve been spending more time trying to find good software that is designed for Mac OS. I’m not talking about applications that been built with frameworks such as Electron or Flutter (I’ve done a course on Flutter, it’s a nice framework!)

I’m talking about applications that are built for for Mac OS. Applications that can leverage the hardware and software in a Mac.

If you got a Mac over the holiday season or are just looking for some new Mac applications, check out this list of useful Mac applications that I use.

Raycast

I discovered Raycast fairly recently and it has now replaced the default ‘Spotlight’ application on my Mac.

Need to know what the day will be in 4 weeks time? Raycast will know, but Spotlight will struggle with the query. Want to see your schedule across your calendar and Teams? The ‘My Schedule’ feature will show you that. I also find that the emoji picker

I found the tutorial very approachable and it really gets you to go ahead and play around with what Raycast can do.

The store is a nice feature and a core component of Raycast, it has some great extensions for services like Homebrew, and Bear. Just being able to open Raycast, type in ‘brew’ and I can see a list of commands to view my installed packages, outdated packages is great! Also handy for searching my notes in bear.

Another handy feature Raycast offers is the ability to use built in commands for Window management. You can also create your own hotkeys so you can move your windows around even faster.

Raycast has some developer documentation as well for those who want to create some extensions.

It’s free to use which is fantastic. If you own a Mac, give Raycast a chance, you might find it to be your alternative to finder.

Pixelmator Pro

Photoshop is pretty expensive these days. And like most software now, everything is a subscription. It’s wild.

I wanted to see if there were any good alternatives out there that weren’t tied down to a subscription model.

Turns out, there was; Pixelmator Pro!

This application brings professional image editing to everyone. From colour editing, RAW photo support, draw and illustrate, and designing. Plus, there’s the handy feature of using machine learning to enhance photos automatically (and from my experience, it works really well!).

In it’s latest update, Pixelmator even supports movie editing!

I tend to use Pixelmator now for most of photo editing needs. The software receives updates and the website has plenty tutorials for new users. The tutorials definitely make working with Pixelmator less daunting.

Pixelmator Pro is available as a one time purchase of $39.99.

PDF Expert

I surprisingly work with a lot of PDFs. I don’t know why or how, but I do (I guess the PDFs creep up on me when I’m not looking). And it got to a point I needed a dedicated application that could handle signing, working and editing PDFs. I discovered PDF Expert and have found it to be excellent for PDFs. PDF Expert is also available on iPhone and iPad.

From editing, merging, signing and exporting, PDF Expert does it all. It’s also very fast, since PDF Expert runs on Metal.

PDF Expert has some good videos and documentation explaining how to perform certain tasks in case you get stuck.

PDF Expert is available to buy for a lifetime licence for £119.99 (Mac only), or as a subscription (for Mac, iPhone and iPad).

Nova

One of my major complaints with Visual Studio Code is it’s performance. It’s slow every time I open the application, a project or whatever. I think this is mostly due to the electron framework (but in several cases, I need to use Visual Studio Code for working with Jupyter notebooks, I want move away from Visual Studio Code eventually)

But anyway, I wanted to find a code editor that takes advantage of the hardware and software of a Mac. That’s when I discovered Nova.

Nova is developed by Panic, the same company that released the new handled console called Playdate (I really want one) and have been developing Mac software for a while now.

The speed of Nova is fantastic. Opening projects is very quick, it handled opening my Gatsby project in a few seconds.

The editor itself is good for highlighting syntax, showing you if you’re working within a tag, for loop etc. Nova has support for plenty of languages.

Nova recently upgraded Nova to version 10, with improved parsing, performance, Tree-sitter extensions and more. Being able to debug your code is a great improvement!

You can add tasks to a project (such as being able to build, serve, etc), which is great if you’re working with frameworks. In fact, I’ve created several custom tasks for Gatsby in Nova.

Nova may not have a wide library of extensions that Visual Studio Code has, but the number and quality of extensions is growing. Panic does provide documentation for those who are wanting to write extensions for Nova.

Panic does a good job of providing regular updates for Nova.

Nova is available to buy for $99 (which includes a year of updates).

Freeform

So, Freeform is actually developed by Apple and is available not just on Mac, but on iPhone and iOS. The reason why I’m mentioning Freeform is that, for a free application, it’s absolutely fantastic.

If you’re looking to create some mind maps, plan out a project with friends, Freeform is great. Only downside is that this application is only available for iOS, iPad OS and Mac. So if you’re wanting to work with people who don’t own an Apple device, you may need to look for an alternative.

Freeform is available for Apple devices for free.

Wrap up!

And that’s a short list of Mac applications that I use! If I find anymore Mac applications that are worth mentioning, I’ll create another post.

If you know any good Mac applications, let me know.