26 Mar 2025
Productivity apps can make or break your macOS use. If you find the right one for your daily productivity, it can save your plenty of time across a week, or get your focused & working whilst you crunch the numbers or get things done at work.
Grab your mac now! It's time to upgrade it!
There's so many cool mac apps to download and use everyday, but ones that can help you get more done, or make life easier when getting things done, are the coolest of them all.
Trust us, we love productivity tools, but the best ones we'd recommend are the ones that will either free you up to do more, save you time with something you already do, or just get you zoned-in and focused on the work at hand. Productivity apps can be hard to find, especially when you're finding the right ones.
Fear not. It's time to unlock the macOS experience and get work done with these power tools. Whether you got the mac for Christmas and use it for your side hustle, or you took a leap into going freelance, these will all help.
Lookaway helps by reducing eye strain when on your Mac.
Speed is good, but so is taking care of yourself. Wellness on your mac isn't talked about enough and this app will help you pay attention to that more. Set a timer and give yourself a screen break, with this app with exercises on how to remove yourself from the screen. A recommendation for all macOS users who want to take care of their eyes but also embrace breaks more effectively.
Lazy is one of the latest tools on mac for capturing ideas, reads or things to remember.
If you're looking to be more productive on your mac, but you don't want to be roped into reading a long article, or want to use systems like GTD (Getting Things Done) to save things for later instead of doing them now, then Lazy is one of the many tools you can use to capture things and make sure you never forget them.
They have a powerful way to organize them that works in the background to get you focused, without forgetting. There are other tools like this called Readwise and Raindrop too.
Craft is a beautiful way to build documents on your mac.
Everyone tends to gravitate towards Notion, but for mac users, you should consider Craft. It is built for macOS and iOS, and boy is it fast. Craft allows you to open documents, craft them, build them by preparing the look and feel with layouts, then jump into everyday. They have introduced collections for light databases, ways to share documents and now with calendar, you can even journal inside of Craft too. A perfect hub for all your docs.
This is like Notion, but provides a way for you, like Google Docs, to create documents and make them more engaging with cards, designs and layouts that bring a sense of design and organization to your productivity. Used by many businesses as a team wiki and used by many others as their note-taking app and journal tool for capturing day-to-day journal.
Craft is versatile and works great on Mac as one of the speediest document apps on the market, even compared to the powerhouse Notion. We use it here at Tool Finder.
Want to look organized and sharp on video calls?
Boom is one of the latest tools for making your next video call look professional, fun & easy on the eyes.
Boom turns your mac camera into a branded way to bring yourself to life. You set-up Boom by creating what people will see on your next video call, including things like a name badge, branding style, screen sharing modes & more. A neat tool for upgrading the look on your next conference call.
Why do this we hear you ask? Whether you're joining a team call, or trying to look professional in a client meeting, this can be a good way to do that without the constant set-up. You just switch to Boom camera and it's all done, making it easy to set-up on Zoom, Google Meet & Webex, easily.
Think of Raycast as the ultimate command bar for Mac users.
Raycast is speedy and replaces your need to use the built-in Apple spotlight feature that all Mac users get and use as default. This helps to speed things up, and you can use the basic tools, but also get access to 1,000+ extensions built by 3rd party providers.
Raycast has there own App Store, bypassing any app store, allowing users to install Raycast-specific apps that they can plugin into and just use the command bar for. Perfect for apps like Todoist that allow you to then organize your tasks without going into the Todoist app, or even going anywhere but the command bar.
If you're someone who already users the MacOS spotlight command bar feature and you feel like you want a faster, more accurate way to find things, search and bypass your browser opening, and in general open to apps for Raycast... Then this could be your new rapid-fire Mac productivity app waiting in the lurch.
Rize is a perfect companion and auditor to your productivity.
It works in the background to monitor what you visit and if you stray far from that, it will bring you back. This is perfect for those who are trying to focus and get things done, but also need an assistant to their focus. Rize will give you analytics and insights to better see where you went off track, an AI companion to tell you when to come back and a way to breakdown where you spent your time across a week.
Many people are turning to tools like this to reduce procrastination & get more done.
Looking for a better way to do Gmail on macOS, and Superhuman is too expensive?
Mimestream is a consideration for Gmail users who want a native like experience on macOS, that isn't Apple Mail. This email client is clean and simple, with some fast abilities for Gmail users who want the speed but without the clutter that comes with Gmail's web version. This is a nice app to use and works fluidly on mac for handling emails. This one also has the ability to manage labels and organize them within the app too.
These AI note-takers have become popular for joining your meeting & taking your notes.
But Granola is different. It joins your meeting, in the background, on mac, allowing you to write your notes (still) and combine them with the power of AI and transcription. This is a helpful tool for meetings, as it allows for you to better manage your meetings back-to-back, instead of joining and rejecting AI meeting tools each time.
Many of the AI note-taking tools are forced into your meeting or require some management, but Granola works in the background to the job. This still means you'll need to let people know, but a helpful way to reduce awkwardness.
Superwhisper helps you to write emails, long essays or maybe an idea, just using your voice.
The AI system turns your dictation into productive workload. So if your hands are tired from typing, or think you can better dictate the message you have in mind, let this app do the work for you. The benefit to Superwhisper is it works with hotkeys to help you do it with any app you are in. It allows you to change models and even set-up custom actions after each time you record something. Perfect for total dictation customization.
Notchnook is a companion tool much like Raycast, that pops up at the top of your mac.
It is called Notchnook thanks to the notch experience that you are blessed with on your mac device. This makes the most of it by allowing you to change tracks, add calendar, manage tasks and muich more. All from the notch just above your screen, you may be reading on right now (if on mac). This is a nice to have app and helps to access all the major apps you use just from a swipe away.
Let's recommend the best apps and tools for your macOS devices, whether new or old:
The tools you'll need for focus on mac are Rize and Session.
Rize and Session are both time tracking apps, but they work wonders for tracking your progress. Rize does well and better for those who want to see everything and help bring back focus to what you need to be doing. Whereas Session is better suited to those who want to use the Pomodoro timer to get things done.
Time to embrace the zen out. The smarter you work, the better you work.
So our recommendations would be Lookaway, to reduce eye strain and get those breaks in. The second tool recommendation would be PosturePal for getting better posture in across their workday. Both work great for making sure you take breaks and work towards reducing your back pain. What a combo!
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