The Best Apps For Mac in 2020

While your Mac has some great preloaded tools to help you with your tasks, you can further enhance the capability of your machine by adding new apps to it.

The Mac App Store has thousands of apps and choosing the best apps for Mac is tricky. You don’t want to end up with an app that doesn’t do what it claims to do.

Fortunately, here we’ve put together a list of some of the best apps for Mac to narrow down your choices. These apps have proven that they work and they are used by many users regularly.

Best Utility Apps For Mac

Caffeine

A habit of most computers is that they fall asleep if you keep them idle for a while, and your Mac is no exception. Caffeine is a menu bar app that prevents your Mac from going into sleep mode. It can be enabled/disabled with a single click.

Lightshot Screenshot

Although your Mac comes with built-in options to take screenshots, those don’t offer as much customization as Lightshot does. It lets you quickly take screenshots of certain areas, edit them once they’re captured, and share them on the Internet with a single click.

It’s available as a browser extension as well.

HiddenMe Free

Often while taking screenshots or trying to hide something from prying eyes around you, you might want to hide all the icons on your desktop. HiddenMe Free does that for you with the click of a button. You can then restore the icons with another click in the menu bar.

AppCleaner

Mac’s app uninstallation feature is quick and easy but unfortunately, it doesn’t wipe off all the app files. AppCleaner helps you uninstall your Mac apps along with all the files associated with your apps. There won’t be any leftover files with this app. It searches for and helps delete those files in a few clicks.

Android File Transfer

Transferring files between an iOS device and a Mac doesn’t require an app, but things aren’t the same when you have an Android phone. Android File Transfer makes it possible for you to transfer files between your Android device and your Mac. It mounts your device as storage on your Mac.

Best FTP Apps For Mac

FileZilla

FileZilla has been around for a long time and it lets you easily and quickly connect to any FTP server (securely or not) from your Mac. You can also have it remember your server login credentials so it can auto-connect next time. It has drag and drop support which makes uploading and downloading files much easier.

Cyberduck

Cyberduck is an FTP and SFTP client but it offers several more features as well. It lets you connect to your cloud storage providers like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft OneDrive among many others to download and upload files. It also integrates with Finder to make it easier for you to perform file transfer tasks.

Best Torrent Downloaders For Mac

Bittorrent

BitTorrent should sound familiar to you if you’ve ever downloaded a torrent on any of your devices. It lets you download multiple torrents simultaneously, offers download customization options, and shuts your machine down when a torrent is downloaded. It can also be accessed remotely to add new torrents from far away.

Transmission

Transmission is yet another torrent manager that lets you download torrents, has support for magnet links, and offers the ability to control it from anywhere on the Internet. It’s an open-source app and doesn’t come bundled with other apps to install on your Mac.

Deluge

Deluge brings with it all the standard torrent download features plus it’s extensible. You can add more features to it in the form of plugins available on the app’s website. It supports full encryption, web UI, and proxy. It supports multiple users as well.

WebTorrent Desktop

If you’re anything like us, you probably hate waiting for your torrents to finish downloading so you can watch them. WebTorrent Desktop enables you to stream media from your torrents even when they haven’t been fully downloaded to your Mac. It starts streaming as soon as the torrent is added to the list.

Best Download Managers For Mac

Free Download Manager

If you often download files from the Internet, having an app like Free Download Manager is a good idea. It lets you accelerate your downloads and also offers the option to manage your files when they’re downloaded.

Your downloaded files list will look much better with this app.

JDownloader

JDownloader is a customizable and theme-able downloader that allows you to download files with multiple connections, auto-extract archives when they’re downloaded, and helps set bandwidth limitations for your downloads.

You can further extend its features by adding new modules from its website. It’s currently available in multiple languages.

Xtreme Download Manager

In addition to letting you download files the normal way, Xtreme Download Manager allows you to save the streaming videos as well to your Mac. It helps speed up the downloads and works with all the popular browsers out there. It supports scheduled downloads, too.

Best PDF Readers For Mac

Preview

Preview doesn’t need downloading as it comes equipped with your Mac machine. Most users think of it as an image viewer but it helps you view PDF files as well on your Mac. It even lets you sign your PDFs and edit them to some extent.

Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader is another app that lets you access as well as print PDF files on your Mac. It makes opening and switching between multiple PDFs easier by letting you keep a stack of open files in the sidebar. It helps you to search your PDFs as well.

Adobe Reader

You’ve probably come across those forms that require you to fill them using PDF software. Adobe Reader lets you view your PDFs and helps you to fill your PDF forms as well. It can also search inside your PDFs for the text you want. You can use it to sign your PDFs, too.

Skim

Skim lets you view your PDF files and create notes based on these files. It also allows you to highlight certain elements in your files for easy reference at a later time. It has the standard features as well including bookmarks, search, a preview of internal links, and so on.

Best Compression Apps For Mac

The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver is the only app you’d ever need to manage almost any kind of archive format on your Mac. It lets you extract files from dozens of archive formats, supports foreign characters, and easily integrates with the core macOS. It sports a dark mode in the recent release.

Extractor

With the Extractor app, you only need to drag and drop your archive onto the app icon in the Dock and your files are decompressed. It supports password-protected archives, can decompress multiple files at once, and lets you know when your files are all out of the archive.

Best Media Players For Mac

QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player is one of the built-in apps that lets you play various media files on your Mac. You can use it to play your MP4 videos and MP3 audio files, and it supports many other file formats as well. It can even be used to record your screen.

VLC Player

There’ll hardly be any media format that VLC Player can’t play. It’s an open-source app that allows you to play almost any media format available under the sun on your Mac. It also comes with features like subtitles and audio and video filters. The great thing is it’s got no ads.

5KPlayer

5KPlayer is a media player but with advanced features. It lets you play 4K as well as 360-degree videos. It supports a wide range of file formats so most standard ones are covered. It also supports AirPlay and DLNA to stream content from your devices. You can use it as a YouTube downloader, too.

MPlayerX

What sets MPlayerX apart from other apps is its clean and simple interface. If media viewing is all that you want to do, this one’s a perfect app for you. It plays videos from online sites, auto-detects episodes in a series, and can be controlled using an Apple Remote.

Best Remote Desktop Apps For Mac

Chrome Remote Desktop

Whether Google Chrome is your primary browser or not, you’ll want to use Chrome Remote Desktop to remotely connect to computers. It lets you easily give and get screen-sharing support and helps manage your computers when you aren’t home. It sits in the Chrome browser and can be accessed from it.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer has long allowed people to share their screens and give technical support remotely. You can use it on your Mac to access someone’s computer by using their ID and password. You can also let others use your Mac with the same app.

Best Office Suites For Mac

iWork

iWork is Apple’s very own office suite that comes bundled with all Macs. It includes Pages to create documents, Numbers to create spreadsheets, and Keynote to make presentations. It comes with its own file format as well. It allows you to keep your iWork documents on the iCloud for easy access.

Google Docs

If most of your office work requires collaboration on your documents, Google Docs is a perfect office suite for you. It lets you create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. You can share these files with custom privileges with your colleagues and you can all work together on them.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice has an ever-growing list of features as it’s supported by the open-source developer community. It comes with Writer to create Word-like documents, Calc to make spreadsheets, and Impress to design presentations. It also has tools to create diagrams and databases on your Mac.

Best Video Editors For Mac

iMovie

iMovie is Apple’s video editor that allows you to edit your pre-recorded videos on both your Mac and iOS devices. If you aren’t much into editing, its trailer feature should let you quickly make some basic videos on your machine.

It supports 4K videos as well in your editing projects.

OpenShot

OpenShot is a perfect choice for those of you who’re looking for a simple yet powerful video editor. This one has no complicated menus, is easy to use, and doesn’t have anything that may scare the people dabbling in the editing field. It comes with all the standard video editing options.

Shotcut

Shotcut is a video editor that doesn’t require much learning and you can get started with it in no time. It has many keyboard shortcuts to let you quickly cut, trim, apply filters, and add special effects to your videos. It has support for a wide range of file formats.

Best Audio Editors For Mac

GarageBand

GarageBand is more of an audio creation tool but you can use it to edit your audio files as well. You can even use your physical instruments with the app to quickly record your music and then start editing it in the same application. It’s a full audio studio app for you.

Audacity

Audacity is a simple yet powerful audio editor that lets you record your music as well as edit it in a multi-layer setup. You can start using it without any prior editing experience and it just gets the job done for you. It’s mostly used to remove noise from audio files.

Oceanaudio

If you’re looking to edit large audio files on your Mac, Oceanaudio might be a good choice for you. It has an instant preview of your effects, offers a fully-featured spectrogram, and supports VST plugins for more features.

Summary

We will be updating this list as the best Mac apps come and go. So bookmark this page and check back often.