What's up guys, welcome to another Best Mac Apps Video.
I do this every year.
It is becoming a tradition here on the channel.
You guys have been asking for an updated video for this year so here it is - some of the
best Mac apps that you can download for maybe your new Mac that you have just got or maybe
your Mac that you have owned for a while just looking for some cool new apps.
If you have seen some of my Best Mac Apps videos in previous years you will see some
apps that are on this list that were on those lists as well because these are still some
of my favorite Mac apps, however there are some new ones in here that I have discovered
recently that are in here so make sure you watch all the way to the end of the video.
Let's get started with 1Password.
We will go in alphabetical order staring with the numbers.
So 1Password this is a great app for all Mac users it lets you remember all your passwords
for all your devices with just one password it is a paid app it is like $35 a year.
So if you want that security and you deal with a lot of passwords for a lot of different
sites which most of us do this is an invaluable app that you can get for your Mac.
Next up is Alfred, the ultimate productivity tool for the Mac.
This has been on my list for years I have used this since I got my first Mac in 2009.
Basically it is productivity at your finger tips right there as you see it on the screen.
You can find apps in files with it, you can search the web calculate all these different
productivity tools.
Quick Look is really cool, all these different productivity tools built into one single app.
If you master Alfred you will definitely increase your efficiency on your Mac by tenfold.
So check out Alfred if you haven't downloaded it yet.
Next up is Amphetamine.
It's got a weird name but that is the scientific name so let's all calm down.
It basically keeps your Mac awake.
You can set it to keep your Mac awake for just a specific amount of time or indefinitely
so if you have ever had the problem of your Mac going to sleep while it is supposed to
be doing something like backing up or like me uploading a YouTube video it definitely
comes in handy.
Check it out if you want to keep your Mac awake.
Next up is AppCleaner.
This has been on my list for years as well it basically uninstalls Mac Apps the right
proper way.
It cleans the junk files and the left over files that are usually left over if you just
uninstall in the normal way that is built into the Mac by dragging app to the trash
can.
If you use App Cleaner instead of doing that it will find all the left over Junk files
along with it to keep your Mac clean as you go throughout the years installing all those
Apps.
Next up is AstroPad.
If you're a graphic designer and you own an iPad and the stylus you definitely need to
get Astro Pad.
You are missing out.
It is fantastic for designing any type of design work or illustration work on your Mac
with your iPad.
If you prefer drawing, I am not a graphic designer but this is a must have app if you
are and you own an iPad and one of those styluses.
Next up is a very important app.
If you are not backing up your data you should stop what you are doing, maybe stop watching
this video and back up your data.
In fact you know I'll leave a link to BackBlaze.
This is the best backup solution for Mac users in my opinion.
It is easy to use, it's cheap, it is like $5 a month for unlimited cloud backup.
It is secure.
You set it up, it is easy to use, it does it in the background.
You set it and forget it.
Don't have to worry about it.
So if you're the person who like tends to forget to backup or you are not backing up
at all check out Back Blaze.
It might save you in a crisis further down the road if your Mac hard drive crashes or
gets stolen or something like that or goes up in a fire, let's hope not.
But you know accidents and stuff like that happens so you want to make sure that you
have all your important data backed up - your photos, your music, all that stuff backed
up securely off site.
So this is probably the best solution to do that: BackBlaze.
Next up is Beamer so if you own an Apple TV or Chromecast and you want to stream your
local files to your TV this is the app you want to do it with so normally I have a Chromecast
and you can only stream stuff from Google Chrome Browser you can't really do local video
files but with this app you can.
So if you have movies or TV shows saved to your Mac hard drive locally you can use this
app to stream it to your Chromecast which is pretty cool.
Next up is BetterTouchTool.
This is another productivity app.
You will see this trend throughout the video, I like productivity apps so I will recommend
a lot of those.
So this is a good one if you have an Apple trackpad.
So of course if you have a MacBook you have one built in or you are using one for your
Mac Mini or iMac this is a great tool to set up like custom figure gestures for your Trackpad
so you can set it up to launch certain applications or do certain things.
Set up different types of rules.
It is a very cool app to have it is paid, it used to be free, it is paid now but it
is worth it in my opinion.
I had this installed on my Mac Mini and my MacBook Pro and it works great.
So check it out, Better Touch Tool.
Next up is a little bit of a pricey app but if you are a music lover or audiophile this
is something you want to check out.
It is not really for everybody but like I said if you love music or if you want that
perfect audio for your Mac check it out it is called Boom 2.
It is a Mac volume booster and equalizer that you can set up and get like the best most
optimized audio out of your Mac.
So all you music lovers out there who want some really crisp high quality audio you will
want to check this one out.
Now we were just talking about backing up with BackBlaze, now this is another backup
app for your Mac.
It is called Carbon Copy Cloner.
It is not really a service like Back Blaze is.
This is just more of an app that you can use specifically to create bootable backups of
your Mac.
So if you want to have a bootable backup of your Mac on site this is the application you
want to do it with so that you can back up your Mac completely it gets a complete image
of your Mac exactly you know bit by bit and that if your Mac hard drive ever crashes you
have one to hook right up and you boot right up to it and it is just like nothing ever
happened so when disaster strikes and you kind of want to have a Bootable backup for
your Mac and that's what you want Carbon Copy Cloner for.
Next up is Cheat Sheet.
CheatSheet sounds weird when I say it.
Anyway it is an app for your Mac that gives you access to view the shortcuts, the keyboard
shortcuts for whatever app you are using so we all know that keyboard shortcuts are faster
than using the mouse and if you master the keyboard shortcuts for whatever application
you are using say you are using final cut pro and you want to know what keyboard shortcut
does what this is a great little app to have.
You can quickly look and see what keyboard shortcuts does what in whatever app you are
using.
So a cool app to use if you want to master the keyboard shortcuts and master your efficiency
on your Mac.
Next up is CleanMyMac 3.
This is a Mac cleaning software for maintenance and cleaning out just your hard drive disc
space if you're finding that your hard drive disk space is filling up quickly and you need
some space freed up this will act as a great little neatly designed app that will scan
your hard drive and basically clean and optimize your Mac of old data that you don't need and
don't use, you specify and tell it to clean and it does it for you very simply.
So check it out if you want to clean your Mac.
Next up is a Clipboard Management App so if you are copying and pasting a lot of things
and you want to access something that you copied like five copies ago, you want to check
out Copy Clip and master that Clipboard Management App it is a feature packed clip board management
tool.
I mean if you find yourself you know wanting to copy a bunch of things and see what you
have copied, copy them multiple times if you have done it.
This is something that you definitely want to have.
DaisyDisk is next.
This is a paid app but it is a great way to view what all is being stored on Mac and how
your Mac hard drive is being filled up and what type files are on your Mac and just gives
you a better view and better understanding of what is on your disk and what is being
stored on your disk and if you want to clean it out.
So it works good paired along with something like CleanMyMac.
So if you want to have a nicely designed app to see what is on all your Mac Hard Drives
this is the way to go.
DaisyDisk.
So next up is Downie.
This is a simple clean app to download videos from the internet, YouTube or Vimeo you know
it actually works with like over a thousand different sites.
So if you are always downloading videos from the internet and you want to do it in a simple
clean way Downie is the app to have, check it out.
So the next app is a kind of a ubiquitous app by now it is called Dropbox you have probably
heard of it.
It has been on my list for years I have used it for years.
It is basically Cloud Storage for free, so I think everybody should have a Dropbox account
as it gives you 2GB of free storage online, secure so you can store you files on Dropbox
and access them basically from any device.
So if you don't already have that I suggest that everybody get that because it is free
for the first 2 gigabytes.
Next up is called Duet Display and if you have an iPad and you want to make that iPad
a second monitor for your Mac.
You can use this app to do it with, it is not wireless it does require the lightning
connector cable.
However if you want that extra space sometimes it does come in handy.
So check it out if you want to do that called Duet Display.
Duplicate File Finder is exactly what the name says it is and it finds duplicate files
on your Mac so that you can delete them easily and it is free.
So if you want to clean up your hard drive space a little bit and you think you have
duplicate files check this app out.
Next up is one of my favorite all time apps Evernote and it lets you store your notes
or ideas or thoughts on a virtual notebook that you can access across multiple different
devices so it is in the cloud and it is accessible 24/7 and it is great for capturing your ideas,
writing down your thoughts.
Just keeping things that you want to search for fast and have instant access to.
I pay for the premium plan and I am absolutely satisfied with it.
However the free plan will work for most people.
So check it out if you want that.
Flux is an absolute must have for Mac users not questions about it if you want to sleep
better get Flux.
This is one of my all time favorite apps as well I have been using this for years.
The screens that we see every day that we look at and stare at they have these blue
huish tones to them really bright and it is not good to look at those types of screens
late at night you know before we go to bed so whenever the sun is setting your screen
flux will slowly change your screen and dim it and make it to a warmer tone so that you
can actually sleep better and the blue bright blue screens don't affect sleep so it makes
it warmer and better to look at calmer as the night goes on and it gets a little warmer
so that is a great app to have if you are doing work late at night.
GIMP is another classic app to have it is a free software for Mac, Windows and Linux
it is basically like a free photoshop alternative so I you need an image editor with some powerful
tools that is free then check out Gimp.
You probably heard of Google, they do some things around the internet.
Anyway they give free 15GB of storage online sort of like Dropbox except that you get more
so if you want more free cloud storage from Google check out Google Drive if you have
a Google account just go to Drive.Google.com and sign up for Google Drive and you have
free access to 15 gigabytes of online storage where you can store all your files and stuff
like that.
So I like to use Google Drive and DropBox side by side that way I have more Cloud storage
space if they going to offer it, it's free.
Handbrake is another classic for the Mac it is free, it is sort of like Gimp it is free
open source and works across the platform but it is a video converting app.
It will let you convert video files from different types of file types and codex and stuff like
that so it is not completely 100% intuitive if you are okay with going around and messing
with that and really customizing your videos check out Handbrake.
This app is called Hazel and it is an automated organization app for your Mac so you can do
cool things with this as far as organization for your Mac if you want to set up a folder
you can actually monitor that folder, set up rules that so if anything gets saved to
that folder the rule gets applied and it will do, it will move it to another folder or rename
it or apply a different tag to it.
So if you are really like OCD with your Mac storage and organization you definitely want
to check our Hazel because it will make your life a lot better.
Helium is a really cool free app that you can use to keep something playing in the foreground
on top of all the other apps while you are multi tasking and flipping back and forth
between the different apps while you are working on you know your class room assignment and
you are typing a document then you are switching back to YouTube and watching my videos you
can always have your favorite television episode playing in the foreground on top of all the
other apps, other app windows.
So keep it there in the corner and have it always playing and always on top.
Really cool app to have.
So if you ever want to do some video editing on your Mac and you don't have access to that
free iMovie it sometimes costs like $14.99 in the app store if you don't want to pay
for that check out Hit Film Express.
This is a free video editing software for Mac and Windows and it is pretty powerful
and you can do a lot of stuff with it.
So check it out if you want to edit some videos.
Now if you ever deal with uploading images to a website you want to have ImageOptim or
even if you want to have smaller compressed photos on your Mac so if you have got a lot
of photos and they're taking a lot of space and you just want more compressed versions
of those files or just smaller files in general to send maybe to upload to your website or
to send to people ImageOptim is a good application to have on your Mac.
LibreOffice suite is my free office suite of choice so if you don't want to pay for
Office for Mac you know Microsoft Office.
LibreOffice is what I use and I have installed on my Mac in case I have to open you know
a Word document or something in Excel but it is free it is open source.
It works great.
Next, Onyx.
This is a good free system maintenance utility for your Mac.
It is sort of like Clean My Mac 3 that we talked about earlier however it is less pretty
but it is free so it is good to try out if you want to have some time of system maintenance
around for your Mac.
Parallels is probably the best way to run Windows inside your Mac virtually so if you
have some kind of specific program that is only available for Windows you can install
Parallels and install a virtual Windows computer on your Mac and then put that program on that
virtual Machine it is like running a Windows computer on your Mac and you can switch back
and forth between Mac and Windows.
So if you have never used Parallels it is really cool to have and convenient to have.
Plex is one of my all-time favorite Mac apps as well.
It is a perfect media server solution for your Mac.
So let's say you want to watch your videos on your TV, the videos that you have saved
on your Mac and watch them on your TV now we have talked about the Beam app but what
if you don't have Chromecast or Apple TV or if you have a Smart TV you may have seen you
have Plex, the Plex App available for it.
So for example I have a Samsung Smart TV, I have a Plex app on that Smart TV and when
I download Plex for my Mac it basically sees all the video files that I have saved on my
Mac on my movies folder you can point it to a specific folder and it will gather information
and turn itself into a media server.
So where I can go to my Samsung TV pull up the Plex App and browse whatever video files,
movies I have on my Mac and watch them directly from my TV and you can do that pretty much
anywhere over internet and I am away from home and I have access to the Plex App on
my Laptop as long as my Mac is on at home that I have Plex installed on I can watch
my movies that are on my Mac at home where ever I am at.
So it is really cool if you want to, there it is enjoy your Media on all your devices.
I should have just said that it is quicker.
If you are wondering how I am recording this video like my face is down here somewhere
in the corner.
I am using ScreenFlow the best screen recording app for your Mac.
It is a paid app however it is definitely worth it if you want to do some type of screen
tutorial obviously I have got my use out of it, because I have done a lot of these videos
and I have basically made my YouTube channel I have started it from just tutorial videos
like this.
So ScreenFlow is awesome.
SmartConverter is similar to Handbrake, however this is just a more simple solution it is
easier to use it is more intuitive but it is a little bit more basic as well.
So if you want to quickly convert a video file to another video file or a video file
to an audio file a MP3 files this is just a quick way to convert files.
Spectacle gives us a feature that should already be built in on our Macs but it is not so we
must use this application and thank you to the creator of Spectacles for giving us this
because this should already be built in however it is not, this just gives you a way to snap
open windows to the right hand side, the left hand side or full screen.
Just like Windows does you know built in however Mac doesn't have it, I don't know why but
Spectacle is something you want to have if you want to do that.
This next app is something I probably shouldn't have to mention but I will mention it because
it is one of my favorite Mac apps.
Spotify, the best on line music streaming solution in my opinion.
I have been a Spotify Premium user for years, I did a video Spotify vs Apple Music that
I am going to update, and I will be releasing an updated video about that so.
So make sure you subscribe to check that out.
Now speaking of Spotify and Apple Music this next app is right up your alley because if
you are thinking about switching from one service to the other you want a way to take
your playlists that you created with if you have like 150,000 playlists that you created
and you want to take it with you and it is keeping you back well this is your answer.
So you just download Stamp for your Mac and you can migrate your playlists to another
music service.
If you are a coder or a programmer Sublime Text is a great app to have I am not one myself
however I do have to do some CSS and HTML work with some of my websites and this is
always a life safer because it shows me the color everything is color coded and it is
easy to use and easy to manipulate the data inside of a long, long, long CSS file or a
long HTML files, so great app to have if you are doing that type of stuff.
Team Viewer is awesome if you ever want to remotely control your Mac from where ever
you are in the world.
If you have Team Viewer installed on your Mac at home and the Mac is turned on and connected
to the internet you can go anywhere else in the world and install Team Viewer and remote
back to your Mac here and basically see you're desktop and have a remote desktop for your
Mac.
Time Machine Editor does just what the name says it lets you know change the default backup
interval of Time Machine so if you use the built in Time Machine app to back up your
Mac you can use this to edit your intervals.
So if you don't want to have a back up every hour and take up those resources and take
up the speed and slow down your Mac while you are doing other stuff you can do this
to change that stuff and kind of customize it a little bit.
It is probably great to have if you use Time Machine.
Transmission is of course one of my favorite BitTorrent client apps for the Mac.
A lot of people use uTorrent but however I have used Transmission ever since I have got
a Mac for years now one of my all time favorites.
I have never had a problem with it and I sort of never had a reason to leave it.
It is fast easy and free.
So check it out if you need a Bit Torrent client.
Another all time classic is The Unarchiver.
It is one of the apps that I first install on any new Mac it lets you unzip or unarchive
a lot of zip and archived files like .ZIP or .RAR.
Just download and install the Unarchiver and it basically runs in the background and does
it all for you, that way you never have to worry about not being able to unzip a file
in the future.
VLC Media Player is another classic, it is free and it lets you basically lets you play
any time of media file, audio or video and it is a cross platform, open source works
great on Windows or Mac so it is just my go to for both operating systems and I never
had a reason to use other ones.
So because I know there are other ones but VLC is my choice and my favorite media player.
VirtualBox is a free application that does what Parallels does, lets you run an operating
system virtually on your Mac except it is open source and it is free so if you don't
want to use Parallels.
Parallels is a paid app but you know it is easier to use it.
It is better designed you can it has more features; I think it just works more better.
Virtual Box is open source and it is free so you will have to go in there and you may
have some things you have to mess with however it is great it works for 99% of the things
that you need to do as far as Virtual Machines go so if you need to run Windows on your Mac
check out Virtual Box.
So there you have it those are the best Mac apps for 2017 make sure you check out the
links in the description below to all those apps that I mentioned.
If you enjoyed this video make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't
already.
I will talk to you guys in the next one.
Bye.