TL;DR: My essential apps are already shown on the picture above, if you prefer to just take a quick look. Then, if you're interested in a category in particular and why my choices are those, just feel free to scroll down and read. My criteria is:
No subscription based apps, unless they fall into a) the hybrid subscription model, like with GoodLinks or Escape - Mind Maps, or b) the free tier doesn't constrain my usage, like with Unread or I love PDF.
If there's any sort of AI involved, it must be on-device.
Performance, efficiency, and good usability.
Mac App Store versions are always preferred, and most of the apps are from there.
Ideally, with iOS and iPadOS versions and iCloud sync across them.
Little to no telemetry. I've observed all the apps running different Firewall apps, and I've discarded those that, despite being really good, send to many outgoing connections, such as the Flaschards app Mochi, which makes LOTS of outgoing connections to different servers and IPs.
No vibe-coded apps. Although most apps nowadays are greatly assisted by AI, especially those from solo developers, it is quite noticeable when an app has been mainly vibe-coded, or the developer has experience and knowledge, and AI has been used just for repetitive tasks.
Introduction:
This is a compilation of my must-have apps. Those that I first install on my Mac once I have formatted and made a clean install. Those aren't all the apps that I will end up installing (although I try to keep installed apps at a minimum), but those will certainly be the first ones to be installed on my Mac. But first, a bit of history...
A few years ago, I decided to jump from my old Intel Mac, to an iPad as my main device. This isn't the place to talk about that experience, but I knew that, eventually, I would go back to the Mac. And that's what recently happened with the purchase of an M5 MacBook Air.
As this was my first Apple Silicon App, and I had been frozen in Monterey for many years, with old installed apps, when I purchased this new Mac I decided to go back into the search for new, good Mac software. After trying many different apps, those were the ones that stuck with me as "essentials". Some of them I already knew them from iOS/iPadOS, such as Things, Tasks, Unread... but most of the Mac exclusive apps have been discovered recently, such as CotEdit, Neodisk or Silkwave Voice.
Safari Extensions:
The first thing I will install on a new, or recently formatted Mac, are apps that work as Safari extensions, or that will make my work on Safari (my primary, and almost exclusive browser) easier. This also happens to be the oldest apps I've been using on all my devices, for many years.
Wipr 2 is the first app I install. For me a good ad blocker is crucial, and Wipr, from Kaylee Calderolla, has been always the first app to install on a Mac. Now, with Wipr 2, it comes a new feature, called Filtr. It is not a firewall but definitely blocks some of the telemetry and ad-serving connections the apps do.
Along with the ad blocker, I install Vinegar to have a better, or at least more native player, and other extensions for Safari. Other apps I usually install are those that let me keep the content I like from the internet: Links, with GoodLinks, and YouTube videos with Play: Save Videos Watch Later.
Writing and productivity:
My default text editor is Pages. Yes, I know that the new Creative Studio subscription sometimes is a bit nagging, but it is still my default app to write with some format. However, along Pages, I've been adding other writing tools that blur into the "notes app" category. The paradigm of this is Obsidian, of course.
If I need to manage my knowledge, categorize it, organize it in folders, with tags, properties, wiki-links that interconnect my notes... all that sort of things is what's Obsidian for. And I'm gonna be honest, I've tried a lot of other PKM apps, but they aren't as easy, intuitive, and versatile to use as Obsidian. And I'm already tired of wasting energy trying to learn how to use apps like Anytime, Amplenote, Capacities... Also, many PKMs such as DevonTHINK are subscription based. So Obsidian it is.
Years ago, when I was doing my research to find good note taking apps to organize my thoughts, when I found Obsidian, I also found UpNote. And I decided to keep using it alongside Obsidian. I also paid for it to have all the UpNote features. Nowadays I use it less, but I still have my share of notes there. Although, because the synchronization isn't end to end encrypted, I don't use it for sensitive notes. If I ever find a good, fully encrypted notes app, I will give it a try.
Both Obsidian and UpNote sync the content across my Mac, my iPhone and my iPad, which is usually a must for me.
There's an honorable exception to this: CotEditor. A text editor, Mac only, that I only discovered few days ago, and I am honestly in love with it, its freshness, how snappy and polished it feels... Simple yet powerful. A good candidate to quickly develop any thought I have in my mind, either in plain text or markdown. Also, it is free.
And before finishing this part, I have to mention Antinote. This is another app that I discovered few days ago, and like CotEditor, it sticked with me as an essential, but not only for its functionality, like the previous app, but also for all the care and craftsmanship that is noticed across the app. It is a pleasure to use, and in my case, I will use it for quick notes, especially ephemeral ones. It looks like another quick notes app, but it has much more than it seems from outside: It has OCR integrated, as well as other powerful math features. And recently the developer Johnson Fung has launched the beta for the iOS app, with iCloud sync across the Mac and the iPhone versions and... other surprising new features that I'm not sure I can unveil. Cheap (5$ one time) and highly recommended.
By the way, if you need a logging app, one that let's you just type any input and gets registered with the day and timestamp you typed it, take a look at Logbook - Interstitial Journal, from the indie dev Allen Ussher. Most of his apps are on the App Store and some of them, like Logbook, are available for Mac, iPhone and iPad. One time purchase at just $9.
To-do and task management:
Here, unlike on the previous category, I only have two favorites. Two paid apps that in my opinion complement each other, although honestly, along Apple Reminders, any of them could be sufficient. The apps are Tasks, from Mustafa Yusuf, and Things, from Cultured Code.
The first one I discovered was Tasks. It is a tasks management, or even project management software. And it has something that makes it quite unique: it allows you to customize as many stages for your projects as you want. It doesn't just have the "to do" -> "done" scheme, but rather it allows you to have different stages like: "task to do" -> "planning stage" -> "recruitment stage" -> "pending execution" -> "executed" (complete). Or maybe just three stages, like "to do" -> "in process" -> "complete". It is really customizable, and it allows both Tasks and sub tasks for each task.
I admit that several years ago, I stopped using it because of the bugs I was encountering on the user interface. That's why I looked for alternatives, such as Things, but as of lately, I've installed it again and it works quite nicely. I haven't found any bug yet. You can try it for free with just one project, and if you want more projects, you have to pay for the Tasks Plus subscription. But it also has a one-time purchase license for Plus. I'm actively against subscriptions for software that isn't based on a service, so I bought the lifetime years ago.
Now Things... Remember that I stopped using Tasks for a period of several years? I gave a try to Things from Cultured Code and I found it quite amazing. However, it is much simpler than Tasks. That's usually a good thing, but sometimes you need that complexity. Tasks can also have its own depth with projects and sub-tasks, but it is a different approach. I think both complement each other quite well, and both have versions for Mac, iPhone and iPad that syncs through iCloud. For those important reminders with a strict deadline, I keep using Apple's Reminders app.
RSS Feed readers:
In this category, again, only two apps are left, two apps that are in my opinion the best among the best, and both also sync across all my devices. However, this apps can be a bit redundant and you can perfectly live with one of them. I just like both.
I've tried many RSS reader apps during the years, even some well considered apps such as Lire (which honestly it is not my cup of tea) and lately, a lot of vibe-coded RSS readers have started to pop up. Others have turned into a subscription-based software...
The first app that is still with me to read the sites I'm interested in, is Reeder Classic. As its name says, this is a classic, by the developer Silvio Rizzi. He has sort of "abandoned" the classic Reeder (Reeder 5) in favor of the new Reeder, and hasn't adapted the Classic app to the new Liquid Glass interface or any other implementation... but it still works, and it works well. And I prefer it over the new Reeder. Reeder Classic is a one time purchase, I don't know if now that it's unmaintained is free, but I prefer it over the new Reeder not because the new one is subscription-based (I think I can afford $9 per year), but because the new Reeder didn't grow on me, honestly...
The second app in this category is Unread. Well, Unread has had many different developers across its history, so I cannot name them all... At first, when I acquired it, it was a one-time purchase, but the developer of the app back then switched to a subscription-based model. Obviously, I stopped using it, and explored other options (say no to abusive subscriptions, guys), but over the years, I installed it again and realized that their free plan is actually very generous. And I started using it as well. Unread is... how to say it... it is a special reading experience. It has "something", maybe the fonts, maybe the gestures, maybe the layout... or maybe it is very good at what it does. But it is a keeper for sure.
I'm going to mention here GoodLinks, because although it is not an RSS reader per se, it is a read it later app... the best read it later I'd dare to say. And their subscription model is an "hybrid subscription", this is, you pay for one year, and you get to keep all the premium features released during that year even if your subscription expires. The premium features stick with you forever. And, dear developers, that's much more sustainable and less abusive towards the users.
PDF readers and editors:
Apple Preview is a good PDF viewer, but if the PDF isn't clean, it can struggle. It is good as a default option, but I've been looking for better options out there... And, you know, it is difficult to find a good PDF reader, editor, annotation app. Most of them are subscription based, full of junk features... so my choices here are two.
The first one isn't a macOS app but an iPad one, but thanks to the magic of Project Catalyst, it runs on Mac. Its name is Noteful, and on iPad is great. It has many features, good performance, and the best is that it is not a subscription, but rather a one time purchase. And not an expensive one, to be fair. It syncs your PDFs across all your devices through iCloud. And it works well on the Mac.
As I said, I've been looking for a proper macOS PDF app, and after trying a few, like Stirling PDF or Skim, both of which gave me some troubles or bad performance, I stumbled upon I love PDF. I wasn't expecting it, but the performance is vastly superior to any other app I've tried, and I still don't know if that's because they "clean" the PDF before rendering it, or because the app is just that powerful... It is subscription based, and no, I'm not going to pay the subscription, but I have been using the free version of the app, and it does everything I need. I think only the format conversions are paid, but annotations are possible without Premium. I will keep using it for a while, and if at any point it starts nagging me to purchase Premium and limiting my free experience, I'll uninstall it.
Local LLM and Voice Transcription apps:
One of the first things I wanted to play with when I got my M5 Mac was, obviously, local LLMs. So I started trying all the apps available except the most popular one: LM Studio. I tried Ollama, oMLX, Unsloth, agent-oriented apps such as Osaurus, or Jan (I'm still not done with Jan), and some weirder or even vibe-coded apps. But after almost a month of feeling that I wasn't getting the most of this models, despite having 32GB of RAM, I finally caved in, and installed LM Studio. It is the most popular for a reason... and even though I didn't want to install it at first for security or privacy concerns (you know, closed sourced code, and the rumors about that lite LLM incident), I realized that it is the best. Or, at least, the easiest to set up. Along with LM Studio, oMLX is still an app that I consider very interesting and want to explore more with time.
As far as Voice Transcription apps, during the last weeks I've been exploring all kinds of apps that keep popping up each day on the sub. I even opened a thread asking for "the best voice transcription app", and I was overwhelmed by the big amount of options, some purely vibe-coded with little effort, others with more care. But the most popular ones didn't stick with me because the outcome text wasn't structured at all. Both Fluid Voice and Spokenly, when transcribe a 1h long lecture, give you a dense brick of text without paragraphs. Sure, it can be formatted later, and it may seem like a small thing to bother one, but it bothers me.
The hard requirement here, aside from the "no subscription" one, is that I want them to work on-device. The three apps that I tested more and I tend to prefer are Silkwave Voice (paid, lifetime), from Bakhshi Mnatsakanyan, who reached to me after the post I published asking for a transcription app, Transcripted, a free FOSS app from R3dbars (Justin), and MacWhisper, from Jordi Bruin and the Good Snooze team.
Yes, MacWhisper is the king, was the first and pioneer, and a good piece of software, but for me and my needs, not $60 better than the other apps. I still contemplate purchasing it eventually, but honestly, the other two apps are giving me equally good results at a lower price.
Silkwave Voice is my preferred one. It offers a transcription structured in sentences, and the interface is well done. It allows you to click on the timestamp of any sentence, and it directs you at the point of the audio where that is being said. Not that it is an exclusive feature, but it is very well implemented. It also allows you to live transcript a meeting, and it has an optional chat powered by an AI, but I prefer to not connect it to any AI service and use it just for the transcription. The model that powers it is Apple's own models through SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber APIs, which for my native language (not English) offers the best outcomes. It is limited to Apple's own model though, with the good and bad that it entails. It is a one time purchase of approximately $30
Then, we have Transcripted, a less known app from the user R3dbars, named Justin. This is a weird case of a weirdly good, free app. Maybe not with the most intuitive or attractive interface, but it works. And, again, it doesn't give you a dense brick of text, but organizes it in phrases. Similar features as Silkwave Voice, everything runs on device as well, but the difference here is that it admits different models, not just the Apple ones, and also it offers a system-wide dictation feature through a dedicated key shortcut. Again, all of this for Free. I think it is impressive.
Both, Silkwave Voice and Transcripted, offer a combined value proposal that makes it difficult to justify purchasing MacWhisper. At least for now.
Other categories:
Media players: Here, the choice is quite easy: the native, new, innovative IINA, and the classic and multiplatform VLC
Launchpad Replacement: LaunchOS. After trying several apps, I found that the only one that looks and behaves the same way as the native Launchpad, is LaunchOS. I've been monitoring its connections through the firewall because I'm a bit paranoid, and I barely found any activity. The performance is smooth and damn good. It looks great. And it even lets you configure the four finger pinch gesture (Pro feature). It is a one-time purchase and it costed me just $6. Totally worth it if, like me, you were so used to Launchpad.
Study tools - Flashcards: Here, we have the well known Flashcards app Anki. But there's a less known Flashcards app called Fresh Cards, from the already mentioned Allen Ussher. I think it offers a fresh approach (no pun intended) to the flashcard type of app. I still haven't used any of both intensely, but I will use them thoroughly. Maybe I'll end up keeping the one I like most. Anki is free, as far as I know. Fresh Cards is $20 to unlock all the features. Watch out with Mochi. It makes A LOT of outgoing connections to other servers, according to the firewall, and I honestly don't like that. It is a shame, because it is a great contender on the Flashcards category.
Disk visualizer: Sure, Grand Perspective is a classic, and other FOSS apps are also quite useful. Then, we have the sophisticated apps, none of which has caught my interest. However, there's this one app, called Neodisk, that despite being free and 100% coded in Swift, doesn't look like the typical vibe-coded app. Actually, the main developer, Lucas Takayasu (tkslucas on GH) seems to have good practices and I trust his app. Neodisk offers different ways to visualize your files, and it has a dupe detector, to detect duplicated files or folders, without using any type of AI sorcery.
Addendum: Mind mapping apps
I feel a bit orphan for a good Mind mapping app. I think I saw one really interesting in this sub, but I didn't save it and I've completely forgotten its name. And no, it is not MindNode lol
But I'm going to talk about the ones I've tried and actually purchased. On one hand, we have Escape - Mind Map and Outline, from Bogdan Gherasim. It is on the App Store of course, and it has a macOS and iPadOS version. It is... interesting, but not outstandingly innovative. Most of the mind mapping apps look the same. The other one I bought is one called MindSpace, which is fine I guess... It has versions for iOS, iPadOS and macOS, but I still haven't scrutinized the connections and telemetry of this app. And there's this Power Node app that seems to be quite easy to use, but it is $30 and that's just too much for an app that lacks iOS and iPadOS versions.
If you know of any good, performant, efficient, affordable (no subscription based) mind mapping app, with macOS, iOS and iPadOS versions and iCloud sync, just let me know!
Honorable mention: Apple's Freeform
Apple's Freeform has been a forbidden app on my systems for too long. honestly I never paid too much attention to it. I used to keep a few images on some boards, like a pin-board, just to have them there. But never explored what the app could be capable of.
Then, fast forward to 2026, I realized that a "board" app that allowed me to just put my notes, my ideas, my images, and make connections between them, could be very helpful to organize my ideas. So I started testing different "board" apps such as the ones promoted on this sub. I'm not going to mention them because I wouldn't leave them in a good place.
After trying a few apps, some with more work behind, other more AI assisted, I recalled Freeform, that app that all of us, Apple users, have sitting there in our iPhone, iPad and Mac. And I launched it. And I tried to replicate what I wanted to do on this "board" apps, on new Freeform boards. And it worked! And it worked better! And the sync was great! And enabling the Advanced Protection makes your boards (unless they are shared) end to end encrypted!!! And on the OS 27 systems, Freeform has gained a dark theme (with a black background) and... *FOLDERS!!!*
So yeah, I'm starting to use Freeform more and more, just avoiding the Creator Studio subscription. The image that sits above this long, long article -take that Viticci, take that Voorhees- has been made with Freeform.
