This project is now very large, and is very different from the original idea.
Here, we collect awesome macOS software and arrange them into various categories.
Feel free to star and fork.
Any comments, suggestions? Let us know! We love PRs :) Please take a look at the contributing guidelines before opening one. Follow the awesome list.
means open source. click the icon to see the item's repository;
means free to use, or free personal license;
means App store hyperlink;
means hyperlink to a corresponding Awesome list for the item;
✦ My macOS application:
Reading and Writing Tools
Applications to edit text, I suggest the open-source editors
Text Editors
Aurora Editor - Lightweight Code Editor (IDE) for macOS.
Bootstrap Studio - A powerful desktop app for creating responsive websites using the Bootstrap framework.
Brackets - A modern, open source text editor that understands web design.
CodeEdit - A lightweight, natively-built editor. Open source. Free forever.
CotEditor - Lightweight plain-text editor for macOS.
Emacs - Popular Unix-based text editor for programmers and system administrators.
Haystack Editor - Code editor with a canvas UI for better code understanding.
GitHub CLI - gh is GitHub on the command line. It brings pull requests, issues, and other GitHub concepts to the terminal next to where you are already working with git and your code.
Glances - Glances is a cross-platform curses-based system monitoring tool.
Go2Shell - Go2Shell opens a terminal window to the current directory in Finder.
htop - htop is an interactive text-mode process viewer for Unix systems. It aims to be a better 'top'.
Aspect - Photo organization app with peer-to-peer sync.
Assetizr - Resizing images and optimising them for web and mobile applications.
Couleurs - Simple app for grabbing and tweaking the colors you see on your screen.
Diffusion Bee - The easiest way to generate AI art on your computer with Stable Diffusion.
Eagle App - Simple and intuitive file manager with tag and annotaion for all your design files. Supports all major source, image, RAW, video, 3D, audio, font, and office files.
ExifCleaner - Remove exif metadata from images and videos with drag and drop.
FlowVision - RWaterfall-style Image Viewer for macOS.
DingTalk - Free, powerful and professional office tool used by over 5 million enterprises and organizations globally.
Discord - All-in-one voice and text chat for gamers that's free, secure, and works on both your desktop and phone.
Element - Create, share communicate. Chat and call securely.
Ferdium - Desktop app that helps you organize how you use your favourite apps by combining them into one application. It is based on Franz with the difference that Ferdium gives you many additional features and doesn't restrict its usage.
Franz - Electron based, multi-protocol wrapper for web-based chat. One application, 23 messenger services.
Gitter - Instant messaging and chat room system for developers as well as GitHub users. Developer friendly with Markdown syntax support.
Keybase - Secure groups, files, and chat for everyone!
Krisp - An AI-powered noise cancelling app that mutes background noise during calls.
Lark - The Next-Gen Collaboration Suite. All your chats, meetings, calendars, docs, and emails in one place.
Mastodon - Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community
Matrix - An open network for secure, decentralised communication!
Mattermost - Mattermost is an open source platform for secure collaboration across the entire software development lifecycle.
Misskey - 🌎 A completely free and open interplanetary microblogging platform 🚀
Muzzle - A simple mac app to silence embarrassing notifications while screensharing.
Presentify - A mac app to draw on your screen while on calls, highlight your cursor, and more.
Rambox - Messaging and emailing app that combines common web applications into one.
Signal Desktop - Fast, simple, secure. Privacy that fits in your pocket.
Skype - Cross-platform application that provides video chat and voice call services. Users can exchange images, text, video and any other digital documents.
Slack - Awesome tool for team collaboration and communication.
Stack - Open, organize and use multiple web apps on a single screen. Stack your apps by categories or projects.
Teambition - Team collaboration tool, including many features like task plan, schedule, file sharing, instant discussion and everything you need when collaborating with other team members.
Telegram - Messaging app with a focus on speed and security.
Wavebox - A revolutionary and feature-rich Chromium browser that's built for productive working across Google Workspaces, Microsoft Teams, ClickUp, Monday, Atlassian, Asana, AirTable, Slack, and every other web app you use to get work done.
LocalSend - An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop.
NearDrop - An unofficial Google Nearby Share/Quick Share app for macOS.
Transmit - Highly flexible and intuitive FTP client, supports SFTP, S3 and iDisk/WebDAV.
Data Recovery Tools
Data Rescue - Comprehensive and professional data recovery tool for most cases.
DiskWarrior - The world’s most advanced repair and recovery tool for Mac.
R-Studio for Mac - Powerful tool for recovering data on disks, even if their partitions are formatted, damaged or deleted.
SuperDuper! - Painless fully bootable disk backups.
Disk Drill - Free data recovery tool. Also has a PRO version.
Audio and Video Tools
Adapter - Free audio, video and image conversion software.
Aegisub - Free, cross-platform open source tool for creating and modifying subtitles. Aegisub makes it quick and easy to time subtitles to audio, and features many powerful tools for styling them, including a built-in real-time video preview.
Audio Profile Manager - Allows you to pin input/output devices for each particular combination of connected devices. May suppress HDMI displays from being chosen.
DaVinci Resolve - Free, cross-platform video editing, color grading, video effects and audio editing software.
Elmedia Player - This media player is a super versatile app for any file format you probably may think of: FLV, MP4, AVI, MOV, DAT, MKV, MP3, FLAC, M4V are all supported as well as many others.
FreeTube - Open source desktop YouTube client built with privacy in mind.
Stremio - Movies, TV shows, series, live television or web channels like YouTube and Twitch.tv - you can find all this on Stremio.
Stringed 2 - Music practice software designed to help users learn how to play their favorite songs.
Synfig Studio - Synfig Studio is free, open-source 2D animation software.
trax - Free, open-source music library management tool with audio conversion and tag management functionalities.
Tiny Player - As the name suggests, a tiny player.
VLC - Free, open-source, cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files, DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
VOX Player - High-definition audio player for Mac and iPhone. Music just sounds better!
XLD - Tool to decode, convert and play various 'lossless' audio files.
Recordia - Record audio directly from the menu bar or with a global keyboard shortcut.
Omniplayer - Best media player on Mac, support almost all format.
YouTube Music - YouTube Music Desktop App bundled with custom plugins (and built-in ad blocker / downloader).
YPlayer - A multifunctional app capable of live caption on-device, converting audio and video files into text and subtitle, transforming recordings into text, and translating subtitles.
Audio Record and Process
GarageBand - A free Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) from Apple,providing a simple interface and professional level audio production functions.
Logic Pro X - A professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) from Apple,providing complete audio production functions along with high quality native plugins and soundtracks. With native Apple Silicon support.
Stargate DAW - An all-in-one digital audio workstation (DAW) and plugin suite.
Quick Recorder - A lightweight and high-performance screen recorder for macOS
InputSourcePro - A tool for multi-language users. Automatically switch input language for different applications.
Browsers
Arc - Arc is your space to breathe on the internet. A browser equipped for the way we use the internet in 2024, and foundational for how we hope to use it in the future.
Brave - Web browser with an emphasis on privacy and speed.
Station - An open-source browser providing a single place for all of your web applications.
Tor Browser - Anonymity Online. Protect your privacy. Defend against network surveillance and traffic analysis.
Mullvad Browser - Tor Browser without the network integrations, aimed at providing anti-fingerprinting browser technologies to VPN users, though it does not require Mullvad VPN.
Ludwig - Linguistic search engine that helps you to write better in English.
Mate Translate - Translate in Safari and any app on macOS between 103 languages.
OpenAI Translator - Browser extension and cross-platform desktop application for translation based on ChatGPT API.
Translatium - Translate words, phrases and images between over 100 languages with dictionary, transliteration and voice output support.
Education
Wokabulary - Collect, practice, and organize your individual foreign language vocabulary.
Finance
SubManager - Track your subscriptions in one place and get notified when a subscription is due for renewal. Available for macOS, iOS and visionOS and syncs across all your devices.
Encryption
Cryptomator - Multi-platform transparent client-side encryption of your files in the cloud.
Deadbolt - The easiest file encryption tool you'll ever use. macOS-compatible, and open-source so you can trust it.
Security Tools
Antivirus One - Trusted Mac Security Protection: Protect your Mac from viruses, malware and adware. Block potential web threats and protect your Mac against vulnerabilities.
BlockBlock - Me: "Please alert me whenever anything is persistently installed." BlockBlock: "You got it"
Dylib Hijack Scanner - Simple utility that will scan your computer for applications that are either susceptible to dylib hijacking or have been hijacked.
KextViewer - View all modules on that are loaded in the OS kernel.
KnockKnock - See what's persistently installed on your Mac.
LockDown - Open-source tool for El Capitan that audits and remediates security configuration settings.
LuLu - LuLu is the free macOS firewall that aims to block unauthorized (outgoing) network traffic.
MalwareBytes - Malwarebytes crushes the growing threat of Mac malware, so you are protected and your machine keeps running silky smooth. Cybersecurity smart enough for the Mac.
Mana Security - vulnerability management app for individuals.
OverSight - Monitor mic and webcam, alerting you when the internal mic is activated, or whenever a process accesses the webcam.
ParetoSecurity - A MenuBar app to automatically audit your Mac for basic security hygiene.
Lantern - Free application that delivers fast, reliable and secure access to the open internet.
Mullvad VPN - Privacy focused VPN that requires no personal information for use, keeps no logs, and allows payments with Bitcoin Cash, Monero and more.
Outline - Outline makes it easy to create a VPN server, giving anyone access to the free and open internet.
RerouteMe - An easy one-click macOS Proxy Configuration app.
Tunnelbear - Really simple VPN to browse the web privately & securely. Unblock websites around the world with applications for Mac, PC, iOS, Android & Chrome.
Tunnelblick - Free, open-source graphic user interface for OpenVPN on OS X.
Windscribe - Gives 10GB free bandwidth monthly on the spot and gives limited server location options (for users on free plan). Connection also takes very less time.
eZip - An easy to use, feature-rich archiver for macOS. Supports popular formats such as RAR, ZIP, 7Z, BZ2, GZ etc. Works great with Mojave dark-mode and QuickLook.
Fileside - A modern, tiling file manager with unlimited panes.
Folders File Manager - A file manager with an expandable folder tree, similar to that of Windows Explorer.
Hazel - Automated file organization for your Mac. Responsibly and beautifully designed.
muCommander - Lightweight file manager with a dual-pane interface.
Modal File Manager - A lightweight, minimal dual-pane file manager with Vim style hotkeys. It can be customized with themes and extensions that are downloaded from GitHub using a built in interface.
PDF Archiver - Nice tool for tagging and archiving tasks.
Rapidmg 1-Click extracting apps from DMG images to the "Applications" folder.
The Unarchiver - Unarchive many different kinds of archive files.
Unarchive One - Quickly decompress multiple different types of compressed files/compressed files to various scene compression formats.
Marta - File Manager for macOS written entirely in Swift
General Tools
AirServer - Most advanced screen mirroring software receiver for Mac, PC and Xbox One.
ChatGPT - ChatGPT on your desktop. Chat about email, screenshots, files, and anything on your screen. Download. Available now on macOS.
Claude - Your AI partner on desktop. Fast, focused, and designed for deep work.
Clean-Me - A macOS system analyser and cleaner [
]
CleanMyMac - Delete megatons of junk, malware, and make your Mac faster & more organized
DNS Heaven - Unifies macOS DNS so applications using glibc can resolve DNS with the native stack. Mainly for use with VPNs.
DevToysMac - Offline toolbox that helps developers in daily tasks.
DevUtils.app - All-in-one Toolbox for Developers. Format/Validate JSON, encode/decode Base64, convert timestamps, debug JWT… with just one click! Native macOS app and works offline.
Etcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives, safely and easily.
rem - An open source approach to locally record and enable searching everything you view on your Mac.
Rewind - Rewind is an application designed for macOS that records and indexes all user activities on the Mac, including screen content and audio. Users can rewind and search past activities, essentially adding a "rewind button" to the Mac.
SlowQuitApps - An OS X app that adds a global delay of 1 second to the Cmd-Q shortcut.
TickTick - Simple and effective to-do list and task manager that helps you organize all aspects of life.
Productivity
1440 Minutes Left Today - Keep a track of how many minutes you have left until the day is over, right in your menu bar.
ActivityWatch - Cross-platform, extensible, and privacy-focused time-tracker.
Alfred - Award-winning app which boosts efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more. Search your Mac and the web, and be more productive with custom actions to control your Mac.
Atomic - A habit tracker app to build good habits, break bad ones, and stay on top of your daily routines.
BetterMouse - Smooth scroll, cursor acceleration prohibition, and powerful button/gesture remapping in one utility for 3rd-party mice. Aims for replacing those bulky and intrusive official drivers.
BetterTouchTool - Great, feature-packed app that allows you to configure many gestures for your Magic Mouse, Macbook Trackpad, Magic Trackpad and also Mouse Gestures for normal mice.
BoltAI - A beautiful & powerful ChatGPT app for Mac. Stay ahead by integrating AI into your workflow today.
Cerebro - Open-source productivity booster with a brain.
Choosy - UI, URL API and a browser extension set for managing rules where and how to open links.
CursorSense - Mouse & trackpad driver that lets you tweak the acceleration curve and more.
Day Progress - Time remaining today in your menu bar.
Dropzone - Create a popup grid of customizable actions. Scriptable in Ruby & Python.
escrcpy -📱 Graphical Scrcpy to display and control Android, devices powered by Electron.
Focalboard - Open source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana.
Freeter - Open-source app that allows you to gather everything you need for work in one place, organized by projects and workflows, and have a quick access to them.
Hammerspoon - Tool for powerful OSX automation with the Lua scripting engine.
HapticKey - A simple utility application for MacBook with Touch Bar that triggers a haptic feedback when tapping Touch Bar.
HazeOver - App that dims your background app windows so you can focus more on your main task!
Hook for Mac - Hook files together fast and easily, enabling you to find anything related with a simple keyboard shortcut.
Hungrymark - Useful app to bookmark your files, folders, and webs, quick access your bookmarks through menu bar
Hyperkey - Lets you convert the caps lock key or any modifier key to the hyper key, all four modifiers combined: ⌃⌥⌘⇧.
iCMD - Fuzzy menubar search and vim/easymotion emulation which works globally for every native MacOS app.
Journey Navigation - A powerful route planning app with weather along your route, traffic alerts, turn by turn directions, and more.
Karabiner - Powerful and stable keyboard customizer for OS X.
Keyboard Cowboy - The missing keyboard shortcut utility for macOS.
Keyboard Maestro - Automate routine actions based on triggers from keyboard, menu, location, added devices, and more.
Keytty - App to keep your hands on the keyboard. Move, click, scroll, drag and more with a few strokes.
Lazy - Keyboard-driven commands to manage your surroundings directly from your mac.
Linear Mouse - Full control of mouse. Change the speed, scrolling direction, pointer type and much more.
Macaify - Fast use of ChatGPT, lightweight, clean, keyboard-first.
MindMac - Feature-rich & privacy-first native ChatGPT app to use OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, OpenRouter all in one place.
Mos - Simple tool can offer the smooth scrolling and reverse the mouse scrolling direction on your Mac.
nnScreenshots - A super easy way to keep a visual record of your productivity to make it easier to fill out timesheets or just to help you review the day. Built in timesheet editor.
OmniPlan - The best way to visualize, maintain, and simplify your projects. Project Management made easy.
OpenIn - Take control of installed apps on your Mac
PaletteBrain - Access the power of ChatGPT across all your Mac applications with the press of a shortcut.
Raycast - Raycast lets you control your tools with a few keystrokes. It’s designed to keep you focused.
RecurseChat - RecurseChat is a personal, local-first and private AI Chat App. Features a simple interface, powerful customizations and blazingly-fast speed.
RescueTime - Personal analytics service that shows you how you spend your time and provides tools to help you be more productive.
Rize - A.I. powered time tracker that automatically improves your focus and helps you build better work habits.
Selectric - Private personal search engine for your emails, documents and messages. Search across Gmail, Outlook, Drive, Dropbox, Teams, Slack and more applications right from your computer.
SensibleSideButtons - Use the side buttons on your mouse to move forward and backward in many apps, like in Windows.
nnScreenshots - A super easy way to keep a visual record of your productivity to make it easier to fill out timesheets or just to help you review the day. Built in timesheet editor.
Strategr - No-fuss time management app. Stategr helps you maximize your productivity, giving you the quickest and most effective way to time-box your day.
Time Out - Easy break reminders, with micro-break and flexible customization if you want it.
Timing - Automatic time and productivity tracking for Mac. Helps you stay on track with your work and ensures no billable hours get lost if you are billing hourly.
Trello - A collaboration tool that organizes your projects into Kanban boards.
Lasso - Intuitive and easy to use grid-based window manager.
Magnet - Window manager that keeps your workspace organized.
MakeItHome - Extends your macOS' UI allowing you to access with the pointer in the "over screen", an extension of the interface for accessing quick actions, mainly fast switch of the most used running applications.
Moom - Allows you to easily move and zoom windows, or to another display—using either the mouse or the keyboard.
rcmd - Use the ⌘ Right Command key to switch applications based on their name.
Rectangle-app - Rectangle is a window management app based on Spectacle, written in Swift: Move and resize windows on macOS with keyboard shortcuts and snap areas.
ShiftIt - Managing window size and position in OSX.
Sidebar - The modern Dock replacement for your Mac.
Slate - Window management application similar to Divvy and SizeUp (except better and free!). (Needs config file)
Swift Shift - Use your mouse with a keyboard shortcut to move and resize your windows quickly. It offers options to customize the draggable areas and mouse behavior.
Tiles - Easily reorganize windows by either dragging them to the edges of the screen, using keyboard shortcuts, or the menu bar.
Luminescent - Bring back Keyboard Backlight Shortcuts for the MacBook.
Lunar - Help you adujst brightness, contrast and volumn of your external display.
Shifty - A macOS menu bar app that gives you more control over Night Shift.
Snap - Launch an app in a snap. Ridiculously easy shortcut management.
Shareful - Supercharge the system share menu with copy, save, and open actions.
System Related Tools
AlDente - Charge limiter app for MacBooks to keep your battery healthy even longer.
Amphetamine - Override your energy saver settings and keep your Mac awake.
AdBlock One - Your New Favorite Free Ad Blocker for macOS and iOS: Stop seeing annoying ads in Safari. Open websites faster. Browse the web more safely.
AppCleaner - Small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.
Apple Silicon App Test - Browser-based tool for checking Apple Silicon app compatibility before you buy an M1 Mac.
Background Music - Automatically pause your music, set individual apps' volumes and record system audio.
Cleaner One - All-in-one Disk Cleaning Manager: Clean up your Mac and optimize its performance. Run a quick scan now to verify what's taking up your storage.
Cleaner for Xcode - Helps make your Xcode faster by removing unwanted and deprecated files.
coconutBattery - Shows live information about the battery in your Mac. Includes: manufacture date, capacity, cycle count, battery status, temperature, discharging power.
DaisyDisk - Gives a great overview of disk usage. Can also make more disk-space available by cleaning up your disk.
gfxCardStatus - Unobtrusive menu bar app for OS X that allows MacBook Pro users to see which apps are affecting their battery life by using the more power-hungry graphics.
GrandPerspective - A small utility that visualizes disk usage by way of tree maps. It lets you quickly spot which files and folders take up the most space.
Gray - Pick between the light appearance and the dark appearance on a per-app basis with the click of a button.
HandShaker - Mac on the management of Android mobile phone content.
iStat Menus - Advanced Mac system monitor on the menubar.
iStats - Command-line tool that allows you to easily grab the CPU temperature, fan speeds and battery information on OSX.
Juice - Make your battery information a bit more interesting.
KeepingYouAwake - Alternative to Caffeine with better support for dark mode in Mac.
MagicQuit - Automatically closes unused apps on macOS to free memory, declutter the desktop, and improve battery life.
Ryujinx - The Open-source Nintendo Switch Emulator
Suyu - A familiar, open source, and powerful Nintendo Switch emulator.
Whisky - Wine wrapper that supports GPTK (Game Porting Toolkit)
Remote Login Software
AnyDesk - Provides remote access across multiple machines.
Moonlight - GameStream client for PCs (Windows, Mac, Linux, and Steam Link).
Parsec - Parsec offers a seamless 4k experience at up to 60 frames per second with near-zero latency. Secure, flexible, effortless access to whatever you do, at any time, from wherever you go.
RealVNC - The original and best software for remote access across desktop and mobile.
RoyalTSX - Royal TSX is an ideal tool for system engineers and other IT professionals who need remote access to systems with different protocols.
Steam Link - The Steam Link app allows you to play your Steam games across all your computers.
Sunshine - Self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight.
TeamViewer - Proprietary computer software package for remote control, desktop sharing, online meetings, web conferencing, and file transfer between computers.
Windows App - Connect to a remote PC or virtual apps and desktops made available by your admin.
QuickLook Plugins
QLMarkdown - Quick Look extension for Markdown files. -
MacPorts - Open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system.
MacUpdate Desktop - Simplifies finding, buying and installing apps for your Mac.
Mac App Download Sites
Here are some of the major software download sites, there are a number of OSX Mac software sites
Genuine Sites
alternativeTo - Also a very nice community. If you are looking for some alternative apps FOR Windows or another platform, check this site.
Slant - I personally recommend this. This is a platform where you can compare apps side-by-side, you might get an idea by seeing other users recommendations. Please contribute if you find an application from this list!
Buy software, once - The place to find all the software you can buy one time, and own for a lifetime.
Open Alternative - Discover Open Source Alternatives to Popular Software. A curated collection of the best open source alternatives to everyday SaaS products. Save money with reliable tools hand-picked for you.