This app is ideal for people who want to set up their Mac precisely to their liking. In these cases, you need a cloud storage provider that works well on all devices (a complaint many have with iCloud, thanks to its subpar Windows and Android support). Many of us have a non-Apple device, or occasionally need to share things with people who aren’t in the Apple ecosystem. Google Drive or Dropbox: Universal Cloud Storage Amphetamine is the perfect replacement for the now outdated Caffeine, on which development ceased in 2013. You can choose to keep your Mac awake indefinitely, for a set period, or while an app runs or a file downloads. This free app lives in the menu bar and allows you to override your Mac’s energy settings in just two clicks. If you share files over a network or run background processes you don’t want to be interrupted, you have to change these settings, so your Mac stays awake. You can customize your Mac’s power settings under System Preferences > Energy Saver, but you might not always want to adhere to those rules. It’s available as a four-week free trial, but the Pro version ultimately costs more ($15) for the same functionality.

The basic functionality of the app is available for free, but if you want to remove an icon entirely, you have to cough up $4.99 for the Pro version.īartender is an alternative. It allows you to hide any apps you don’t want to see and click an arrow to reveal them. You might find rather quickly that not all additions to the menu bar are useful or welcome. That changes over time as you install more software.

If your Mac is brand new, you probably don’t have too many icons hanging out in the menu bar in the top-right corner of the screen. Vanilla: Clean Up Your Cluttered Menu Bar They’re both free, and they also sync with other instances on Windows, Linux, or mobile devices. Chrome or Firefox are great choices, as they’re the most popular, and thus, have excellent support across the web.

For that reason, we recommend you install a second browser, just in case. However, not every website plays nicely with Safari-some force you to use one of the “bigger” browsers. You get more battery life on a MacBook if you use Safari to browse. Apple puts a lot of work into optimizing the browser for reliability, performance, and power efficiency. Safari is the best browser for Macs thanks to its excellent power usage, integration with Apple technologies (like Apple Pay and iCloud Keychain), and its rapid rendering speed. However, both are highly capable media players, and both are free. We recommend MPV over VLC, as there are files VLC can’t play files that work fine in MPV.

Apps for apple mac pro