It’s no wonder that so many developers flock to MacOS; the overall usability is unparalleled, and the plethora of utilities and apps available to boost productivity allow for a near optimal workflow. With that being said, the correct set of utilities and apps is paramount to every user’s experience, so here are a few of my favorites.

1. Alfred (Free)

Arguably my most used and most important utility is Alfred. Alfred replaces spotlight search in a wonderfully powerful and beautiful way. It hosts a plethora of different configuration options and truly changes the way you interact with your computer — no more looking through folders. Alfred is snappy and makes your workflow just as quick.

Download Alfred

2. Hyper (Free)

The war over which terminal emulator is the superior one will be long fought and entirely inconclusive. With that said, Hyper has taken my heart for one key reason: the hyperterm-overlay extension. This extension allows you to pop up a terminal window from wherever you are using a keybind. Although offered in many other emulators, combined with Hyper’s sleek, minimalist design, it is a tool that I will forever stand by.

Download Hyper

3. Rectangle (Free)

Rectangle is a very simple utility that brings Windows-like application snapping to MacOS. It allows you to snap windows to quadrants and halves of your screen, and it is completely free. This utility is amazing for quickly multitasking especially if you’re not a fan of the native MacOS splitscreen experience.

Download Rectangle

4. Rocket (Free)

Rocket is arguably the most niche utility on this list, and yet it is one of the ones I use the most. Rocket allows you to trigger text-replacement using a key-bind or repeated key such as “::”. This is extremely useful for having emojis on the fly, but beyond emojis, it truly re-invented my note-taking dynamic. Having the ability to quickly note down mathematical symbols introduced a level of coherence in my notes that I never had before and allowed me to transition the majority of my note taking, even in STEM, to the computer.

Download Rocket

5. VS Code (Free)

VS Code is an app that every developer knows of. Some love it. Some hate it. Nearly all of us use it. With the sunsetting of Atom, I decided to give VS Code one more shot before heading back to vim, and all I can say is I’m so glad that I did. VS Code boasts a nearly endless list of plugins to configure its look and feel as well as dramatically improve your productivity.

Download VS Code

6. Maccy (Free)

If you do not already have a clipboard manager, go install Maccy right now. At first, I was hesitant — I didn’t feel like I often ran into issues with referencing previous things that I had copied, but I was so wrong. I use Maccy almost every single day, and the best part is that I don’t even think about it until I need to use it. Another game-changer that Maccy introduces is the ability to search your clipboard for things you have copied in the past.

Download Maccy

7. Obsidian (Free)

Obsidian is one of the most popular markdown editors out there, and for good reason. Obsidian offers plenty of configurability through its native settings as well as an amazing set of community plugins that push it to the productivity powerhouse that it is. As a student, it has completely changed my note-taking game. I am able to harness the power of markdown to structure my notes on the fly making them extremely easy to reference and review. I genuinely cannot recommend swapping to MD enough for note taking and project outlining among so many other applications.

Download Obsidian

8. Bartender ($16)

Bartender is a great way to clean up your menu-bar. It’s especially helpful if you have a lot of applications spawning menu-bar apps that cause clutter. Bartender offers a minimal, configurable appearance to managing all of those menu-bar apps and makes sure that your menu-bar looks as sleek as possible.

Download Bartender

9. Sublime Text (Free)

Sublime Text is one of the best text editors out there. It brings syntax highlighting and file structure management to a lightweight setting allowing easy editing on a dime. Whenever I don’t want to wait for a full IDE to load up, and don’t particularly feel like using vim, Sublime is my goto, and thats before we even mention all of the amazing community-developed plugins that introduce an unbelievable amount functionality for a text editor.

Download Sublime Text

10. iStat Menus ($10)

iStat Menus is an amazing utility that allows you to monitor your computer straight from your menu-bar. It offers battery, CPU usage, network performance, and memory monitoring among so many other helpful stats on the fly. Not only does it provide easy access to these stats, but it does so in a beautiful, highly configurable format. One of the best features, in my opinion, is its ability to display the battery level of bluetooth connected devices such as AirPods.

Download iStat Menus on the Mac App Store