10 BEST Mac Apps for PRODUCTIVTY in 2024

are you always looking for that next productivity Mac app that will save seconds minutes and hours off every single workday so you can get back to doing the things that you really enjoy well so am I today I'm going to share not just one but 10 different Mac apps that help me be more productive on a daily basis and I've even got a Bonus app at the very end that I just started using so stick around for that thanks to set app for partnering with today's video all right so the first app that I want to talk about is called magnet and it's pretty straightforward that enables you to snap Windows to different sections of your monitor or your screen and this is super handy for me as someone who uses an ultra wide monitor but it's also really useful for anybody even if you're just working on your laptop screen so let me just show you with a window how it works so once I've got a window here I can just drag over to the left side and it snaps to the left side do the same thing to the right and someone can do full screen and even into I think it's six you can divide the screen up into and just snap Windows into those different sections in the preference es for magnet you can select and set different shortcuts for different areas of the screen that you want to snap Windows to like I mentioned you can do it in thirds and six and you can even use it to move Windows to next displays previous displays and to maximize sensor and restore Windows so this is one of the first things I will always install on a new Mac is magnet just because without it it's such a pain having to manually resize Windows all the time all right so next on the list we've got monitor control and this is super useful if you're using an external monitor basically what it does is that an aables you to control just using your keyboard shortcuts the brightness and the volume of your external monitor that's connected to your Mac so for me normally with this LG ultrawide I have to use the manual switch to be able to change things like brightness and volume but with this app installed all I have to do is just hit the brightness key and that will adjust the brightness of the screen as well as the volume so I can turn the volume up and down just using my keyboard shortcuts as I would if I was just using the keyboard shortcuts on my Mac it's got heaps of customization options so you can set your own custom keyboard shortcut cuts for example and enable smooth brightness Transitions and you can even sync the brightness changes between the two displays if you want to do them both at once so super handy if you use an external display with your MC all right so next on the list is air budy and what Air Bud lets you do is see all your nearby and connected devices and what the battery level on each is now I know Mac has inbuilt battery indicator displays now which you can see up here but everybody just lets you see more devices basically than what the native Mac battery display lets you see so here you can see on mine you've got all the different devices that I can see so I can see Bluetooth speakers my airpods my headphones even my Apple watch iPad my keyboard and mouse and if I want to just quickly see the battery for all these different devices just go and select your devices up here and you can see all my different items you can see my MX Keys keyboard definitely needs a charge everything else is looking pretty good and it's also pretty cool because just like on your iPhone when you open your airpods case using air body if you open your airpods case near your Mac you can see the case back battery level as well as the actual individual airpods charge level so I'm a big fan of air body especially because we got so many different devices to always keep charg it's really nice to know which ones are charged which ones are flat all right so the next app on the list which I've used for ages now is Alfred and if you haven't heard of it basically it's a supercharged Spotlight search bar so if you just do the standard command space it will open this search bar which you can fully customize by the way and this enables you to search through your Mac really quickly and easily now with Alfred there's so many different things you can do like setting custom shortcuts automations and all sorts of things like that but I'll just share the main things I like to use it for the biggest reason why I like to use it is because it's so much quicker than the default Spotlight search that Mac OS has inbuilt so like I just showed you before if I search for anything just type in Photoshop it instantly appears like it's so fast and then even if you want to search for something online you can just type in best Mac apps and then you can choose to search Amazon Wikipedia Google that's all fully customized ible and then shortcuts are really handy so one that I regularly use is empty trash I just type in empty empty trash appears hit space and the trash will be emptied again you can customize all sorts of different commands in here like locking the screen shut the computer down force quit applications all sorts of different things if you're looking for a better Spotlight search then I definitely recommend checking out for it that all right so next on the list is this app here called structured and I've actually been using it a lot lately in conjunction with my physical journal in terms of keeping track of my daily tasks and checklists and the cool thing about structured is that it's fully integrated with AI so I can just open the AI assistant and then use keyboard and I can just type in what I need to do today so I've got my little notebook here where I keep check of my tasks just like that we've type in what we need to get done today so I'm just going to hit submit let the AI think for a second and then it will give me a task list of everything that I just tolded I need to do and all I have to do is just hit this little icon here go add all finish and then as you can see they're all all on my task list for the rest of the day all scheduled out just how I want them so it's super handy if you do want to adjust them it's just a matter of double clicking and then hitting edit task and from there you can f tune them adjust the color add alerts and even add subtasks so I just been finding this really useful to use and satisfying to check things off so you can see I had my lunch from 1:30 to 2: p.m. and checked that off it was very satisfying if you're looking for a good checklist something that's super straightforward it helps you just keep track of what you need to do each day this is a great app for that and just quickly before we dive into the next app I want to take a moment to talk about set app today's partner a fantastic platform of Premium Mac apps that has seriously boosted my productivity what's really cool about set app apart from the hundreds of amazing Mac apps that you get included with the subscription is the AI assistant just tell it what solution you're looking for and it recommends the best app on the platform for that specific task I've genuinely been loving setup and have literally been using multiple apps a day since I started using it as you can see from this video here setup kindly gave me a 1year subscription and if you sign up using the affiliate link and the code Nick kendle you get a free 30-day trial instead of the usual 7 days so check it out below if you're interested all right so the next app we have is called session now if you watched my videos for a while you know I'm a big believer in the Pomodoro Technique which is where you set a 25 minute or longer timer and then take a 5minute break and session is a really good Pomodoro Timer in digital form so you can select your focus and put it into different categories so for me I've got like planning editing writing filming that type of thing then once you've selected your task you can set your intentions so if I'm planning might want to plan some shorts it will prompt you to take a breath before you start your work and then once you've taken a breath it will start the session for you and then the 25 minute count up will start counting down you can add or subtract time if you want add notes to your session and I think the coolest thing about this particular app is that it actually gives you some analytics on your pomodoros so for example if we go back to the 4th to 10th of December which was last week I can see my total focus total break time my average Focus per day and my most focused time and I always find these kinds of stats really interesting to look at and it could really help me know where I need to focus more time in the future and where I know I'm slacking or wasting time so if you're looking for a digital Pomodoro Timer this is a really great option available on setup definitely recommend checking it out all right next on the list we have get sound what get sound does is it creates a customized soundscape to help you FOC and this has actually been really helpful for me over the past few weeks it uses AI to create a custom soundscape so it looks at your location the time and the conditions outside as well as the temperature and then it will create a custom soundscape for you which you can fully customize you can select different environments depending on what mood you're in and what helps you focus so I often like listening to Gentle rain sounds that helps me to focus and then it just constantly plays it in the background I just find this so helpful to help me Focus especially in my hair here I've got a lot of construction ction noise and gym noises and all sorts of things so this really helps me to tune all that out and just focus on my work all right next up we have cleanshot X and cleanshot is a screen recording tool that's again super powerful you can have a custom wallpaper that appears when you're recording if you want I'm currently using a wallpaper from my wallpaper pack make sure you check that out in the description you can set up different shortcuts for recording which is really nice and then it's got a quick access recording button that appears in your toolbar so for me it's up just here and I can go capture full screen capture area even self-timer scrolling capture record screen all sorts of different capture options it does screenshots as well as videos and obviously I use it for videos you can set your different recording options in here including frame rates and resolutions so if you do screen recording a lot like I do then cleanshot X is definitely a great option for that all right so the next app on the list is permute and what permute does is it's basically just a conversion app now I used to use handbrake quite a lot to conver videos but prute is really good because it converts all sorts of different file types not just videos and it's a lot more straightforward than handbrake cuz all you have to do is just open prute grab the clip that you want to convert drag and drop it and then all you have to do is just select the file format that you want to convert it to and then hit play and then it will convert it's super fast really straightforward and for me as a content creator it's so good to just be able to quickly and easily drag and drop files that I need converted especially into MP4s and not have to worry about complicated settings so PR is definitely a great program if work with any type of media or content all right so the next app we have is called bartender and what bartender does is it enables you to fully customize the menu bar at the top of your Mac now if anything like me or someone who has a lot of different apps on their Mac your control bar can get quite messy and full of different controls and apps and all sorts of things so one of the coolest things about bartender is it lets you just customize what you can see and what's hidden so if I open up and show you what's hidden you can see I've actually got quite a lot of different apps being displayed up on the menu bar and normally if they're all displayed at once it's just kind of cluttered and distracting so I prefer to have them hidden and again you can fully customize that using bartender so if we go into the bartender preferences you can see here you can customize what different menu bar items are displayed you can have different presets depending on what different apps are open at different times you can customize the menu bar style so you can see currently I've got like rounded with separate size which is quite different I actually quite like it like it feels I don't know a little bit more neat a little bit more interesting than just a standard squared off flat bar across the top like I mentioned you've got presets depending on what different apps are open you can even set up custom triggers so for example I've got a trigger so when Spotify music is playing it will show me the now playing up in the menu bar which is pretty cool bartender it's a really good app if you just like to have full control over your Mac and make sure everything's nice and neat and tidy all right last but not least as I promised we have a bonus Mac app that I just started using a couple of weeks ago which is why I didn't include it in the main list because I'm still really getting my head around this app cuz it can do so much but it's called better touch tool and it enables you to basically set up all sorts of custom triggers and keys and mouse gestures and all sorts of different things literally select from all your different inputs You Can Do streamex Magic Mouse trackpad normal Mouse keyboards and then once you've selected your input device you can then fully customize and create super custom shortcuts so for me I have this set up so that if I go control shift click it's going to split my window into two and then if I go contrl shift right click it's going to move my window over to my other display and honestly with better touch tool you can customize so many different shortcuts like this I've literally barely scratching in the surface with what you can do with better touch tool and I'm Keen to explore more with what I can do with it but if you're looking for an app that can really streamline different processes you can do just with super quick and easy keyboard shortcuts or Mouse short cuts then I definitely recommend checking out better touch tool now if you're thinking about getting an ultra wide monitor like this then make sure watch this video here where I talk about the best and the worst things about having an ultra wide monitor

Channel: Nick Kendall

Views: 36,663

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Id: BaDYKeRtjM4

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023