Mac Apps That Bring Me Joy

2025-03-04

I wrote a post roughly 3 years ago about happily paying for MacOS apps. I’ve found a good amount has changed in my MacOS “usage” during that post and now¹. So I thought I would revisit the general concept, only this time look at all applications I enjoy using (paid or otherwise).

Apple Mail

I’ve tried so many 3rd-party email clients, from MailMate to Spark, but unfortunately none seem to tick all my required boxes. Hell, even Apple Mail fails to handle simple things like git email workflows! But Mail does handle plain text composition, performs actions relatively fast, and syncs well with its iOS counterpart. It’s still far from perfect though…

Ships with MacOS · Free

Amphetamine

I mostly work with my MacBook Air closed and connected to an external monitor. Apple still seems to struggle with keeping displays consistently awake, even with System Settings set to disable sleep. Amphetamine is a fantastic little menubar app that I use constantly, mostly set to run under “Indefinitely”. The app also claims to have kept my current MacBook awake for a total of 21 days.

Amphetamine · Free

Preview

The default document/PDF viewer, Preview, is stellar. I truly miss it when working with documents on my Linux or OpenBSD machines, since it has an incredible amount of built-in features (just showcasing a few):

• Merging, reordering, and splitting PDFs
• Interactive forms
• Password protection
• Direct editing, annotations
• Instant previews
• Digital signatures

Ships with MacOS · Free

Terminal

There isn’t a whole lot to mention about Apple’s default terminal. It comes packaged with zsh by default, performs all tasks blazing fast without breaking a sweat, ships with a small collection of decent color profiles, and handles tabbed sessions. Since I tackle most of my day-to-day coding in Sublime Text, Terminal is more than capable to fit my needs.

Ships with MacOS · Free

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire is an absolutely fantastic RSS reader for both MacOS and iOS. There isn’t a whole lot to dive into though, since the concept of an RSS reader should be to get out of the way and let the content shine. Did I mention it’s completely open source, too?

NetNewsWire · Free

Orion Browser

Safari has always been my go-to browser when surfing the web on Apple devices². With the recent inclusions of adblock extensions and how performant it is on battery life, Safari was always a no-brainer. Then I gave Kagi’s Orion browser a fair shake.

Orion is built on top of WebKit, so it shares the same battery-conscience performance as Safari while also including:

• Built-in ad blocker
• No phoning home (zero telemetry)
• Support for both Chrome and Firefox web extensions
• Integrates with Apple Keychain
• Syncs with iOS version (huge!)

I’m not trying to make this seem like a promo or “sponsored” section for Orion. If you’re on MacOS, I highly recommend you take it for a test drive yourself. Coming from Safari I found myself pleasantly surprised. Orion has become my default browser on both MacOS and iOS.

Orion Browser · Free

OneCast

OneCast allows you to stream your Xbox console directly to your Apple device. I don’t use OneCast as much as I once did years back, but it still works pretty damn well when I do! My license for OneCast was also purchased back in 2020 and I have never been “duped” into requiring a paid update since that time.

OneCast · $24.99

Passwords

Even though I am a big advocate for Bitwarden, Apple Passwords has slowly grown on me. The seamless connection between both MacOS and iOS, without the need to open a separate app directly has probably saved me quite some time. I still keep my core Bitwarden vaults synced with Passwords, but Apple is starting to win me over…

Ships with MacOS · Free

Transmit 5

Panic is known for building incredibly useful apps that look beautiful. I purchased my Transmit 5 license back in 2019 and still use it quite a bit, even now in the world of git hooks or rsync scripts. There are multiple free file transfer apps for MacOS on the market, but nothing comes close to this. Highly recommended.

Transmit 5 · $45

Sketch

Yet another app I purchased in 2019, Sketch has been my go-to design tool that entire time. Figma might be the new fad, but I find it slower when working with larger projects. My Sketch app is still locked at v62, since I have no need for all the extra bells-and-whistles added in later versions (that’s not to say those features are bad!). Still as snappy as ever though.

Sketch · $10+/month or $120/year

Closing Thoughts

I’m sure this list will change over time, since new applications launch and older ones die off (or succumb to outrageous subscription pricing setups). Either way, I thought others might be genuinely curious about the tools used by fellow Mac users.