This post covers the best Mac apps I’ve discovered over my years working in software — many of which I still use daily. They’ve helped me enormously along the way, and some combinations have turned my work itself into something genuinely enjoyable. I hope sharing them is useful.

1. Notes

1.1 Writing Apps

Drafts — Truly a gem. I use it as a scratchpad for quick thoughts: anything I want to capture instantly but don’t know where to file goes straight into Drafts. It has excellent automation capabilities. My workflow: write first, organize later. Drafts is the entry point for everything.

Bear — My main long-form writing tool, beautiful and simple. The typography is lovely, and its nested tag system is flexible without being overwhelming.

Typora — The cleanest Markdown editor I’ve found. It renders inline as you type, keeping you in the flow of writing. I use it for technical documentation and longer posts.

iA Writer — Another excellent distraction-free writing experience. iA Writer has a cult following for a reason: it strips away everything except the words.

Apple Notes — Underrated. With iOS 18’s new features, it’s become significantly more capable. It’s fast, syncs everywhere, and handles images and PDFs well. For a lot of people, it’s genuinely all they need.

Obsidian — The king of local-first, Markdown-based knowledge management. Highly extensible via plugins. My main concern has always been that the default UI feels a bit rough, but it keeps improving.

NotePlan — A beautiful fusion of calendar, tasks, and notes. The daily note feature is excellent, and it handles Markdown well. If you’re looking for something that handles planning and writing in one place, this is worth a look.

Agenda — Date-focused notes. Agenda ties notes to calendar events and dates, making it ideal for meeting notes and project journals.

Mem — AI-native notes. It uses AI to surface connections between your notes automatically. Promising direction, though still maturing.

Flomo — A simple, WeChat-like note card tool. Low friction: just type and hit send. Great for capturing fleeting thoughts and reflections.

Raycast Notes — Built into Raycast, it’s quick and convenient for temporary notes you want in your launcher.

Lazy — A surprisingly capable newer entrant for quick note-taking with a clean interface.

1.2 Bidirectional Linking / Knowledge Graphs

Roam Research — The original bidirectional linking tool. My knowledge management home for years. It’s powerful but has a steep learning curve and requires a subscription plus VPN access in China.

Logseq — Open-source, local-first, with a great graph view. A strong Roam alternative and increasingly my recommendation for people who want offline-first.

Reflect — A slick, polished app that nails the bidirectional linking concept without feeling overwhelming. Fast sync, good mobile app.

Tana — The most powerful and flexible structured notes tool I’ve used. Its tag (supertag) and field system essentially turns your note-taking database. The learning curve is real, but the payoff is massive. Tana is where I now manage complex projects.

1.3 Database / All-in-One

Notion — The original all-in-one workspace. Extremely powerful for databases, project management, and structured content. Heavy for personal use but unbeatable for team wikis.

Anytype — A local-first Notion alternative with a graph structure. Privacy-focused and open-source. Still growing, but a serious option.

Capacities — A “studio for your mind” — objects-based notes. You create typed objects (books, people, projects) and they relate to each other naturally. Beautiful design.

1.4 Whiteboards

Heptabase — My current knowledge management setup centerpiece. Cards on infinite canvases, tied together with maps and PDFs. Excellent for research deep dives and building out complex topics visually.

AFFiNE — Open-source Notion + whiteboard hybrid. Ambitious project combining structured databases with a canvas interface.

Excalidraw — The best hand-drawn-style whiteboard tool. Lightweight, free, and open-source. I use it for quick diagrams and architecture sketches.

2. Productivity

2.1 Calendar

Fantastical — The best Mac/iOS calendar app, full stop. Natural language event creation, beautiful design, and smart integrations. The subscription is worth it.

2.2 Time Tracking

Rize — Automatic time tracking that runs silently in the background and categorizes your time. Great for understanding how you actually spend your day versus how you think you do.

2.3 Tasks

Todoist — Clean, cross-platform, and reliable. Natural language input, great integrations. My go-to for personal task management.

TickTick — A strong Todoist competitor with a built-in Pomodoro timer and calendar view. Popular in China and globally.

Linear — The best project and issue tracker for engineering teams. Fast, keyboard-driven, opinionated in the best way. I use it for all software projects.

2.4 Development Tools

Warp — A modern terminal reimagined. It has AI assistance, block-based history, and collaborative features. Once you use it, going back to iTerm2 feels like a step backward.

Cursor — An AI-native code editor built on VS Code. GitHub Copilot integration is built-in, but Cursor goes further with chat-driven editing, codebase-aware context, and more. My primary editor.

Apifox — A comprehensive API development platform combining Postman-style request testing, API documentation, and mock server in one. Great for full-stack development.

oh-my-zsh — Still the best shell enhancement framework. Themes, plugins, and sensible defaults that make the terminal infinitely more enjoyable.

3. AI

Perplexity — AI search done right. It cites sources, gives direct answers, and handles complex research queries well. It’s replaced Google for a lot of my research queries.

Raycast AI — AI directly in your launcher. Ask questions, summarize text, draft emails — all without switching apps. Deeply integrated into my daily flow.

Dify — An open-source LLM application development platform. Think of it as a low-code way to build custom AI workflows and agents. Powerful for developers.

4. Workflow Automation

IFTTT — The original “if this then that” automation. Simple, broad integrations, good for consumer-level automations.

Zapier — IFTTT for power users and teams. More complex workflows, better reliability, more integrations. Worth the cost for the right use cases.

n8n — Open-source, self-hostable workflow automation. The most flexible of the three, with a visual node-based editor. If you’re technical and care about data privacy, n8n is the way to go.

5. Reading

Readwise Reader — My primary reading inbox. It handles RSS feeds, newsletters, web highlights, PDFs, and Twitter threads in one place. The highlight sync to Readwise is excellent.

Inoreader — A powerful RSS reader with robust filtering and search. Reliable and fast, with a good web and mobile experience.

WeRead (微信读书) — The best e-book app for Chinese-language content. Huge library, excellent reading experience, good sync.

Cubox — A smart reading list and web clipper. Article summarization, tagging, and a clean reading view. Good for archiving and revisiting saved content.

Instapaper — The original read-later app. Clean, simple, and reliable. I still use it for articles I want to read carefully offline.

Follow — A newer RSS/social feed aggregator with a beautiful design. Worth watching as it develops.

Reeder — The best-designed RSS reader on Mac and iOS. Fast, clean, and a joy to use.

Me.bot — An interesting personal knowledge aggregation tool that connects your reading and highlights.

6. System Tools

Screenshots and Screen Capture

CleanShot X — The best screenshot tool for Mac. Scrolling captures, annotations, cloud upload, video recording — it does everything and does it beautifully.

Snipaste — A lighter alternative to CleanShot X. Free tier is generous, and the pin-to-screen feature for reference images is uniquely useful.

Shottr — Fast, OCR-capable screenshot tool. The text extraction from images is excellent.

Translation

Bob — The best translation app for Mac. Supports multiple translation engines, has excellent OCR translation (screenshot to translate), and integrates seamlessly with the system.

Immersive Translation — A browser extension that provides bilingual parallel translation of web pages. Excellent for reading English content.

Monica — An AI assistant browser extension. Summarize pages, chat about content, translate — all from a sidebar.

Browser

Arc — My daily driver browser. Spaces, vertical tabs, and built-in tools make it feel like a genuine reinvention of the browser. Not for everyone, but once you’re used to it, going back feels painful.

System Monitoring and Utilities

Stats — A beautiful, open-source system monitor for the menu bar. CPU, RAM, network, disk — all in customizable menu bar widgets.

Bartender 5 — Manage your menu bar with precision. Hide, show, or rearrange any menu bar items.

RunCat — A little animated cat in your menu bar that runs faster when your CPU is working harder. Delightfully useless and yet I’ve kept it for years.

Vimac — Vim-style keyboard navigation for any Mac app. Mouse-optional workflow through the whole system.

NinjaMouse — Enhances mouse behavior on Mac with additional pointer customization options.

Input Source Pro — Switch input methods automatically based on the app you’re in. Eliminates the constant manual toggling between Chinese and English input.

AltTab — Windows-style app switcher for Mac. Thumbnail previews of all windows, including minimized ones. A small thing that makes a big daily difference.

Hookmark — Deep linking between apps. Create bidirectional links between files, emails, notes, and tasks. Underused and underappreciated.

AlDente — Battery charge limiter for Mac. Cap your battery at 80% to extend long-term battery health. Essential for anyone who primarily uses their MacBook plugged in.

Tencent Lemon — A Mac cleanup and monitoring tool. Handles duplicate files, large file discovery, and gives you a disk usage overview.

Paste — A rich clipboard manager. Search, organize, and quickly access your clipboard history. One of those tools you don’t know you needed until you have it.

Raycast — My single most-used utility. A Spotlight replacement that is infinitely extensible: launch apps, run scripts, manage clipboard, use AI, access integrations — all from a single keystroke. If you’re not using Raycast, start today.