Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,149
38,925



Apps created for the Mac don't receive as much attention as apps made for iOS devices, so we have a bi-monthly series here at MacRumors that's designed to highlight useful and interesting Mac apps that are worth checking out and potentially investing in.

This week's picks include apps for streamlining your email, focusing on tasks, checking the weather, cleaning up your Mac, and managing all of your messaging services. Many of our highlighted apps this week were chosen by MacRumors forum members.



[*]Focus (Free with in-app purchases) - Focus is a time management app and monitoring service that's designed to help you keep track of your time so you can stay on task. It encourages users to work in focus sessions, which are 25 minute blocks of time for working accompanied by a 15 to 20 minute break. There's an included task manager so you can stay on top of tasks, along with detailed statistics so you can see how you've spent your day. Focus is free to download, but it costs $4.99 per month or $39.99 for year to use across all of your devices.

[*]Carrot Weather ($11.99) - Carrot Weather is a well-known weather app that delivers weather information with a little bit of attitude to make checking outdoor conditions more fun. It has different dialogue and graphics for various weather conditions, and what comes up is always a surprise. Carrot Weather uses data from Dark Sky so it's super accurate and it offers up tons of data like 7-day forecasts, rain and snow predictions, weather maps, and a time machine so you can see past weather conditions.

[*]Dr. Cleaner (Free) - Dr. Cleaner from TrendMicro is an app that offers a Disk Clean Map so you can see what's taking up space on your Mac, a memory cleanup feature for freeing up memory, a scanner for large files, and a junk file cleaner that's designed to get rid of temporary files, trash, and other unwanted items taking up disk space. Dr. Cleaner is free from the Mac App Store, but there is a $19.99 Pro version that finds and eliminates duplicate files, shreds deleted files, and uninstalls apps.

[*]Canary Mail ($19.99) - Those who previously used the now-eliminated Newton Mail might be looking for a new mail app, and Canary could fit the bill. Canary Mail offers one-click encryption, natural language search, smart filters, read notifications, snooze options, email templates, one-click unsubscribe, and more.

[*]All-in-One Messenger (Free) - This is technically a Chrome extension rather than a Mac app, so it's limited to Chrome users. All-in-One Messenger is designed to combine all of your chat and messenger services into one convenient web app so you can keep up with all of your chats in a single spot. It works with a wide range of messaging apps, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Google Hangouts, and more.

If you have a favorite must-have Mac app that we haven't highlighted yet, let us know in the comments, and we might feature it in a future video. Many of this month's app picks came directly from recommendations from our forum members, and it's these recommendations that have helped make this series useful.

For more of our Mac app picks, make sure to check out our Mac app archives.

Article Link: Five Interesting Mac Apps Worth Checking Out - August 2018
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: sartrekid
Not sure about Dr. Cleaner, MR. Memory clean (purge) applications don’t have any benefit and messes up macOS’s already great memory management. If lots of RAM is being used that’s good for system performance unless it’s paging to disk. Free RAM is wasted RAM.

If anything I’d be advising readers against using those sort of apps.

If you just want an app that shows what’s taking up space I’d recommend OmniDiskSweeper.
 
Not sure about Dr. Cleaner, MR. Memory clean (purge) applications don’t have any benefit and messes up macOS’s already great memory management. If lots of RAM is being used that’s good for system performance unless it’s paging to disk. Free RAM is wasted RAM.

If anything I’d be advising readers against using those sort of apps.

If you just want an app that shows what’s taking up space I’d recommend OmniDiskSweeper.

It’s not for ram. It’s for HD ...
Even though I still haven’t found a better app than WhatSize
 
I just recently switched to Canary for iOS after Newton died ... So far I am liking it. The iCloud sync is what spoke to me. I will most likely be getting the MacOS app as well.
 
One app I use a lot is Tex-Edit Plus. It’s a simple styled text editor. It has some rough edges but really shines in how it works with AppleScript. TE+ has lots of text cleanup features and search and replace features including grep and they are all scriptable. If you are not sure how to script something you can turn on recording, do some actions, and TE+ will write a script implementing what you did. This app has been a huge help when I needed to extract information from messy text files I get.

In one case I had 100+ text files in which I needed to modify one parameter several times to find the appropriate parameter. It would have been impossible to do that manually even once.
 
Carrot Weather doesn't use 'Dark Sky' for its weather; it uses the same forecast.io API that Dark Sky uses. Which, as I've stated before, isn't as good as people want to make it seem. Apps that use the forecast.io service simply have pretty graphics going for them. That's it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Carrot Weather !!! Alright! I like this weather app. I use it on my Apple Watch, iPhone, and now my Mac. Developer is super responsive on Macrumors. It's not cheap but I recommend it. The iOS version allows you to pay a little extra to use Weather Underground as a source.

I don't use any of the other apps.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Elmo1938
If you have a favorite must-have Mac app that we haven't highlighted yet, let us know in the comments, and we might feature it in a future video. Many of this month's app picks came directly from recommendations from our forum members, and it's these recommendations that have helped make this series useful.

Not sure if they've been covered yet but, iAWriter, Day One, BetterTouchTool, SwitchResX, coconutBattery, Arq, Carbon Copy Cloner, iTerm, iStat Menus ---- those are my favorite Mac Apps. :p
 
I know weather underground got messed up when weather channel bought it, but is it that bad where I am going to pay $12 for Carrot Weather??
 
I just recently switched to Canary for iOS after Newton died ... So far I am liking it. The iCloud sync is what spoke to me. I will most likely be getting the MacOS app as well.

you MUST give Spark mail a try. I have tried every email client out there and found the holy grail. Identical MacOS and IOS interfaces. Amazing!!
 
It’s not for ram. It’s for HD ...
Even though I still haven’t found a better app than WhatSize

You can use Dr. Cleaner for RAM too.

I’m curious: why is freeing up RAM a bad thing in the MacOS? I’m not familiar with how the management system works.
 
Nothing spoke to me this time, neither do I have any of them.
Well, I’m busy with other things this months then checking up new apps it seems, lucky me :)
 
I know weather underground got messed up when weather channel bought it, but is it that bad where I am going to pay $12 for Carrot Weather??
Carrot Weather is way overhyped. Dark Sky is more accurate. There isn’t an app for the Mac, they do have a website, though.
On iOS, it is the king!

I know there are some, who will tell me I’m wrong. :eek: But, after forking over the extra money for Carrot Weather notifications....that say it’s raining, when it is not....
Carrot does have a nice Watch app, but, that is not enough to overcome the false alerts.
 
Last edited:
Carrot Weather !!! Alright! I like this weather app. I use it on my Apple Watch, iPhone, and now my Mac. Developer is super responsive on Macrumors. It's not cheap but I recommend it. The iOS version allows you to pay a little extra to use Weather Underground as a source.
I don't see the need for a paid weather service on the desktop. I have Carrot on my iPhone. Works well up here in Australia and New Zealand irrespective of where the weather comes from. Might well be better ones out there, but this one is more fun.

BTW, last time I looked Dark Sky iOS app wasn't available in this part of the world. Happy to be corrected though.
 
I'd also like to mention a few that I used regularly:

Bear notes which is an awesome writing app.
Spark mail (as some others have also mentioned).
NubiDo, a great task management app
Pixelmator, a brilliant and less expensive alternative to Photoshop
 
I vote for Canary Mail... also for the easy encryption, plus i like little furry birds :)

Gelber_Kanarienvogel.JPG
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.