Hey friends, Andrew here – hope you're well. Setting up your Mac is a big part of enjoying
and getting the most of your sparkly new toy. So, here are the 12 best must-have apps to make the
most of your mac i won't be recommending you know the very usual typical apps like google chrome
spotify or zoom come on guys they're no brainers i would hope so i'll share hopefully what are
more unique and more interesting apps that have personally helped me over the years and i find
generally really useful okay so let's get stuck straight into the very first app on my mac now
encrypto is the first must-have starter app that i think everyone should have and it's completely
free too basically if you need to send or store files privately and safely this is the app to have
it basically takes any file like this folder here throw it in here and it adds aes 256 encryption
to it which means only the right person with the right password can access the file i use it
to store important information on my macbook and hard drives like you know tax documents that sort
of stuff and also sending confidential documents over email i'll secure it within crypto before
sending it over it's super simple to use and the interface is really nice and clean basically just
drag and drop the folder or the file into encrypto set a password for it click encrypt and then it'll
secure the file and then you can save it or send it immediately the other person on the other end
basically receives the file and decrypts it within crypto as you can see there and then you access it
i don't use it that often but when i do it's just really really useful and it just works and by the
way i'll leave direct links to all the apps in the description box below for convenience the
next makeup that i love and i want to share is craft it's a really useful note collaboration
and note-taking app that i use instead of apple nodes it's basically a more powerful and prettier
version of notes and also just better made for collaborating so whenever i have a meeting or you
know when i want to build out and type out notes i'll just come into here click the plus sign and
click new document and you get this really sort of clean clean interface to build out notes on and
i just love it because simply it's just a great editing tool you know there's tagging options and
filing systems and it just outright looks great dark mode on this app looks visually stunning
and so does the library of templates i always pull from if i click new document you can come down
here and click templates and there's just a whole load of templates that look visually stunning it
saves you a lot of time too and i always come in here look for a template start using it
and it's just really simple to use there are lots of note-taking apps out there but craft is
just super fast minimal and ios native it's an app that i like to use as my go-to note taker next up
is the dropover app which solves the problem of you know trying to move around a lot of files or
just some files around your mac especially with the trackpad because some things like slip and
you know it's just really hard to drag and drop multiple files it's basically a drag and drop
shelf extension so let's say i want to attach a whole bunch of these photos here on my desktop
what i'll do is i'll get this and start shaking it i'll drop the file here then i can drop multiple
in here and not only that i can also drag and drop a whole bunch of different things not just images
but i can go into unsplash a website even and it's still showing up here the shelf is a layer that is
on top of everything and i'll just grab this and start shaking it too and i'll bring it over here
and i can just start collecting a whole bunch of different photos and then i can all dump it
into a single place like an email for example i also use it to create quick drop over links that
expire during a certain amount of time if i want to share a file or multiple files really quickly
to multiple people over a link straight from my desktop i'll click the three buttons here
i'll go straight to either airdrop messages or mail or i can create a drop over link i seriously
can't tell you how many times i've tried to drag a bunch of files on my trackpad to have it dropped
off elsewhere accidentally or not attach at all having this drop over shelf is probably the most
simple app from this list but it saved me minutes if not hours over the years since i caught the app
speaking of saving time clean my mac x is another app that saves me a heap of time and also saves
my max hard drive space from being completely demolished and eaten up and just a heads up
by the way that clean my mac is sponsoring today's video so thank you to clean my mac
i genuinely love this app because i've relied on it for i guess lack of better words to clean my
mac so one of the big reasons why i use cleaning my mac and why i'm recommending it as a must-have
app is because on a mac when you delete an app by dragging and dropping the application into the bin
it doesn't exactly delete every single file or leave around random files in case you do choose to
reinstall the app that you deleted but clemo mac does a far better job cleaning up the gigabytes of
unused system junk and app files on your mac quite properly and aside from just deleting files
properly i use the smart scan feature every week which is the feature that most people use from
this app if you just click this button here scan the app basically searches for ways to quickly
improve the max performance and then once that was pretty loud so
it's just completed the scan and once it's all done and complete i'll click on the run button
right here so then basically it starts deleting a system junk malware and flushing unused dns and
it cleans up the system beyond just deleting unused uh apps and files and continuing on
from the theme of beautiful apps while this cleans up my system again the developers have seriously
gone out of their way to design what is probably one of the best looking apps that i've ever seen
on the mac system full stop when i looked into it the app has won a bunch of ux design awards so
no real surprises there it just looks great in general definitely definitely recommend clean my
mac as a must-have to delete years worth of junk or to prevent it from being cluttered in the first
place you can try out the app for free in the link below and test out and see if it works for you the
next app is one i use literally multiple times a day every single day and it's called x-snip
uh snip snip x-nip i i don't know how it's pronounced it's the basically the best screenshot
app that i've used on the mac i went through this phase a year ago where i was trying to find the
best screenshot app but most of them were just okay and many of them slowed down my mac for
whatever reason so i was just stuck to the trusty you know mac command shift 4 but xnip is basically
command shift 4 on steroids there's a whole bunch of new shortcuts to get access you get access to
so for example now that i press command shift four or command shift nine in my case i can you know do
a whole bunch of things i can like take a shot here i can lock in the ratio i can go one by one
i can go you know all sorts of shapes all sorts of resolutions and i can even edit the screenshot on
the screen itself before saving it so say if i had a text document i can grab the highlighter
app and you know start drawing on it i can highlight things i can add quick arrow annotations
and basically from there you can either save it or you can copy it onto your clipboard probably most
importantly the app doesn't bloat your mac and works just as smoothly as the native screenshot
function next up if you're a designer or creative in general then figma needs no introduction
whatsoever it's a powerful all-in-one design app that has absolutely mopped the floor with this
competitor's sketch in adobe xd i use figma to collaborate with my team on design projects or
branding projects or just overall um just getting my thoughts into one place basically i'll show you
how this is an example of a brand book that we've created on figma and yeah it's really neat it's
just a really powerful app and let me know what you think of our redesign channel branding below
this is it here but yeah even if you're not a designer you'll find this app really useful
because they have this thing called fig jam if i get out onto the home page again fit jam within
figma is one of the better brainstorming and charting tools that i've used so if you've ever
planned out flow charts or just need a huge whiteboard to collaborate on to brainstorm
on fig jam and figma are super useful tools if you click the purple icon here a new figment
fig jam not figment fig jam file you get access to a whole range of templates if you want to create
a flowchart immediately click this one here and you can see here you get immediate access to this
really easy to use flow chart and it's a really great tool to start charting out thoughts you know
putting sticky notes here and just getting your thoughts really clear fig jam is great for that
bartender here is an app that i've mentioned before on this channel and one of the more
recent tools that i find quite useful it keeps the menu bar at the top here really minimal which is
the way i like it instead of you know whole rows and rows of icons it displays menu items and icons
only when you need them by hovering over the menu bar and then you get access to you know
the rest of your icons here and then there's also the options of triggers too which i find
so smart and useful it basically shows specific menu items in certain situations for example
the wi-fi icon appears only when you're not connected to a network or the time machine
icon only appears when it's actively backing up you can switch those on here and you can also turn
on a whole load of different options and triggers here there's also the infamous bartender bar
that adds another row of hidden menu bar items and you can have extra rows in general again i think
this is just another app that's just really easy to use it is free as well it looks good and it's
feature rich it saves you more space but it still gives you fast access to apps and you might indeed
need this app itself by the end of this video because i'm giving a lot of apps to download and
use moving on to password management my go to free app i use is bit warden i used to have lastpass
about a year ago but they've changed their pricing model and bit warden basically does what i need it
to for free so that's why i switched over it's essentially a password a manager that securely
holds all the keys to your digital life the interface is pretty pretty plain i know that the
interface is not as clean or as appealing as one pass or a last pass but the community raves about
bit warden and i recommend it if you're looking for a completely free password manager on mac
that goes above and beyond the standard you know apple key chain saving passwords on your browser
or god forbid using the same password across all your logins the next app you're going to love if
you're a mac desktop user or if you dock your mac like i do and it is up here it's the magnet app
and the magnet app lets you resize windows however you like it and really quickly with shortcuts too
so essentially you get a whole load of these shortcuts and you can quickly snap and mag
i guess like hence the name snap these windows into different places really quickly so if i get
two windows up here for example you know instead of like dragging them and resizing them i can hit
control option to the side here control option to the left and we have these two nicely snapped in
our windows i think magnet is literally one of the most popular mac productivity apps out there
and it's totally worth the small fee to save you a load of time and to resize things in so
many different formats i can also drag it to the side and it'll snap in automatically but yeah
having window resizing tools and shortcuts can be extremely pleasing way to work it allows for some
really efficient workflow practices and of course i have to mention an app for gamers good old steam
i think we still we tend to forget that macs are still capable of some light gaming and
i'm personally a casual gamer here and there when i want to unwind and i'm not going to
assume by the way that you know what steam is it's basically a digital gaming portal where
you buy and play games from you're definitely not going to get the entire gaming library selection
unlike on windows but there's still some decent mac compatible games like dota 2 portal and my
personal favorite counter strike but yeah steam is a great app to have on the side just in case
you want to unwind and play some games next up is the photo editing app adobe lightroom this app
is a no-brainer for those into photography or even casual enthusiasts who enjoy touching up photos
it's a powerful app that gives you a big range of controls to tweak your photos to your liking with
all the controls on the sidebar here and more yeah and it takes advantage of your max computing power
there's two versions lightroom classic and the one that i'm using right here
lightroom cc i've migrated over to lightroom cc and prefer it they're both really similar
classic has slightly more tools and controls but lightroom cc is basically better at everything
else including being connected to adobe cloud the most useful feature is exactly that
it is the cloud syncing so any photo editing that you do on your mac is synced across every
single device you access lightroom on including my ipad for example so yeah killer must-have app
that helps me edit organize and manage all my photos and then of course how can i ever forget
notion notion is an all-in-one app when it comes to note-taking collaboration to-do lists kanban
boards and so much more i don't even know how i'd survive without it i have one for
my personal use here if i flip out this one's for business so i have multiple notion boards
and like i said i really don't know how to survive without it i use notion to organize my life
literally and manage my businesses and it's all cloud placed again so when i jump back onto the
ipad for example from my mac all the work is updated and synced and yes there are other macs
that may do certain things within notion that much better and there's even an overlap between
notion and craft the app that i mentioned earlier but i personally have i personally appreciate
having most things in one spot and i'd sacrifice some benefits for this simplicity
if you're interested in how i've set up my notion here and in both my business and personal
i made a full video on it and you can check it out in the description box below so yeah guys
these are the apps that i highly highly recommend when you're starting out with your new mac and so
go forth and start building out the rest of your apps if there are any apps that you'd recommend
please do let me know in the comments i am always on the hunt for new app recommendations and
testing out all sorts of apps i'll drop a video of how to set up my favorite app notion on the
side of the screen here and also if you're curious about my home office setup here
i'll also drop a video here too for you to check out because i get loads of questions on my setup
all the time drop the code word comment apples if you got to the end of the video and subscribe for
more tech and business videos as always thank you for watching and see you in the next video