10 of the Best macOS and iOS Apps of 2018

[MacRumors]

It's the end of the year, and 2018 is coming to a close. Over the course of the last several months, we've highlighted several useful Mac and iOS apps in our YouTube series, and for December, we've picked our favorites.

In the video and the article below, you'll find a selection of some of the best apps that we've used over the course of the year.

Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.​

Mac

• Paste ($14.99) - Paste is a copy paste manager that keeps track of and organizes all the files, photos, URLs, and text snippets that you've copied and pasted on your Mac. Paste is described as a sort of Time Machine for your clipboard, because it saves everything and offers robust search capabilities so you can always find what you're looking for. Pinboards also give you access to things you copy and paste often, while custom shortcuts make it easier to copy and paste. Paste is a Mac App Store app, but a free trial is also available on the Paste website.
• Station (Free) - Station is an app that's designed to house and aggregate all of your web applications in one easy to access location. Instead of having dozens of tabs open with things like Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, and Slack, you can relocate them all to Station for quicker, more streamlined access. Station is essentially a web browser that has a better layout for accessing web apps.
• Sip ($9.99) - Sip is a niche app, but it's useful for artists, designers, interior decorators, app developers, and other content creators who like to create and maintain color palettes. Sip lets you create and organize color palettes that can be accessed right in the menu bar of your Mac and shared to all of your favorite design apps like Photoshop, Xcode, Illustrator, Sketch, and more. Choosing colors from any source is as simple as a key press, and a color dock makes all of your palettes readily available.
• Bartender 3 ($15) - Bartender 3 is a popular Mac app that lets you rearrange and hide icons on the menu bar of your Mac. With Bartender, you can put the menu bar items you use most often front and center, while minimizing all of the rest behind the Bartender icon for a more streamlined menu bar.
• NightOwl (Free) - [Update: While we originally featured this app for its ability to add a quick Dark Mode toggle to your Mac's menu bar, as of 2023 a number of users are reporting suspicious network activity related to it, so we've removed our link to it out of caution and users who have installed it may want to consider removing it.]

iO... Click here to read rest of article

Article Link: 10 of the Best macOS and iOS Apps of 2018

 

[mozumder]

I'd add Filmic Pro to the list, which is going to become really important now that the iPhone XS cameras are ridiculously good for video..

 

[donawalt]

Thanks for the Night Owl tip - exactly what I was looking for!

 

[offshore]

Those Mac ‘apps’ are little more than single function basic system utilities.

Is the cupboard getting that bare for real applications?

 

[Charles50]

Station? Seriously? I looked through the list of services that Station supports. I don't use a single one of them.

 

[fluder]

I'd add FSNotes App to the list, which is really powerful notes manager for iOS and macOS.

 

[Crichton333]

The Calculator.

 

[s15119]

One of my most used and useful apps is MyFitnessPal which helps me track my exercise and diet. Great app, the free version does everything that I need.

 

[sfobear]

Bartender is one of those apps where I wait for it to be updated before I update macOS.

If you do any kind of design work, you really need to get this app--having all the visual clutter of the various menu bar items cleared away (but still available) makes more difference than you might think. Great support from the developer, too.

 

[martyjmclean]

Great list! Bear is one of my favourite apps. My own suggestions: CopyClip 2 is a better and cheaper alternative to Paste. Vanilla is a minimal and freemium alternative to Bartender 3.

 

[weezerr]

Alto looks like a Ski Safari rip off?

 

[nathan_reilly]

anybody like MindNode? I love the UI/feature set/iOS compatibility, and esp. that I can keep my hands on the keys and move up and down the hierarchy of my concept maps... I can build a whole map without touching the trackpad! It's a wonderful thing to leave the structure/aesthetic layout of my concepts to the app, while I just worry about my typing.

Very fast for me, much more so than illustrator/pages/ppt/handwriting on paper/apple pencil on my iPad or any other method I've used to make concept maps and take notes.

 

[Spoon!]

I’ve never heard of these. Time to try new things!

 

[dfee]

I love the idea of station. It's such a no-brainer. I've installed it and have Slack, Discord, Gmail, Google Drive, and Asana all running. I think the UX could use some work, but I'd rather have one Electron app running than 6 (or more as I add more services). And, I don't have to hunt for tabs in my main driver, FireFox.

Anyway, CopyClip2 is interesting (from a comment above). I've never really understood the need for a pasteboard manager, but maybe it's a "you won't understand it til you try it" kinda thing.

Also I spent a few minutes looking at Bartender 3 and Vanilla. I'm hesitant to spend $15 on the first one as I don't want to purchase right before a new revision comes out. I do like the idea, though.

 

[bizack]

Station? Seriously? I looked through the list of services that Station supports. I don't use a single one of them.

I just looked through and there are about 600 web apps supported. You really don't use any of those? Amazon, Gmail, Dropbox, Google Suite, iCloud, Messenger... are you hanging out on Hotmail and ordering online from Target while storing all your files on a backup thumb drive?

 

[Packers1958]

I have never heard of those apps, which probably means I have no need for them.

 

[AngerDanger]

The Calculator.

OMG, I still remember beating that! Not much replay value though…

 

[Skeptical.me]

I had Paste on my iMac for awhile but I found it to be rather annoying. Personally I don't need anything more than those menu bar copy clips

 

[smirking]

YES! Sip is the app I've been trying to find for the past three years! Ever since Color Schemer Studio went to pot I've been struggling to find a color manager that works quite so easily. Thank you MacRumors!

 

[navaira]

Unshaky should be on the list for making 3rd gen keyboards more or less usable.

 

[BeardMan7]

Not on Mac App Store, but imho one of the best Mac app ever ist Better Touch Tool.

 

[Baletin]

PDF Search is the best app I ever bought on Mac. Sad to say on Windows search and preview are combined for years...

 

[Agit21]

The Mac App Store is dead. Js bro

 

[sfwalter]

I'll add Keep It, an Evernote alternative. Its available for both Mac and iOS. The developer stays on top the bugs and squashes them without haste. https://reinventedsoftware.com/keepit/

 

[justperry]

Not on Mac App Store, but imho one of the best Mac app ever ist Better Touch Tool.

in my opinion it's Little Snitch, another one would be Diskwarrior, the problem with diskwarrior though is that it's not working (yet) on APFS, but that's not Diskwarriors fault, Apple should release code first so DW can add support.
Gasmask is another great app, it can be used for blocking adds or complete websites.
ClipMenu is a copy/paste app, better than the above suggestion, I used to use CopyPaste, should still be available.
Menumeters is a system resource utility, it can display Network/Disks/CPU/Memory usage.