The eight best apps for your new Mac

Whether you’re unwrapping your first Mac, or getting an upgrade, you’ll need some apps for your new computer. We’re here to help, with some of our best picks to get you started.

We've rounded up our favorite and most-used apps and utilities for the technology we use every day. Check out our other picks for iPhones, Android phones, PCs, and Macs. We've also listed our favorite games for iOS and Android from this year, and our top choices for PS4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch.

Bear

If you’re looking for a note taking app with more functionality than Apple’s included one, check out Bear. There are apps for iPhone and iPad to keep all your work in sync, and a powerful linking feature that lets you chain notes together. (The only downside: there’s no way to sync your notes to a PC or Android phone.)

Available on the Mac App Store

Rocket

Emoji are great. Using the annoying emoji picker to find the perfect one is not. Rocket makes it easy to find emoji anywhere on your Mac by adding a Slack-esque shortcut to let you summon the exact emoji you’re looking for by bracketing the phrase with colons. Need a fish emoji? Just type “:fish:” and Rocket will pop up and do the rest.

Available for download here

Franz

Apple has helpfully included a desktop iMessage app, but what about all your other messaging services? Franz can help, with support for Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Telegram, Google Hangouts, and more all in a single, helpful desktop app.

Available for download here

Alfred

Stop using Apple’s Spotlight search and install Alfred, its faster, more powerful cousin that makes searching the internet and your local files a snap. And if you’re a real power user, like The Verge’s executive editor Dieter Bohn, then the sky is pretty much the limit with what Alfred can do for you.

Available for download here

Muzzy

You know how when you unplug your headphones from your iPhone it automatically pauses the music? Muzzy is a very simple app that lives in your menubar and enables that same behavior on your Mac. It’s saved me tons of embarrassment by not blasting my objectively terrible taste in music to my entire office.

Available on the Mac App Store

TrashMe

Uninstalling Mac apps is usually as easy as dropping them in the trash, but that sometimes leaves behind some extra system files scattered around your hard drive. So if you want to really delete something from your computer, pick up TrashMe, which automatically finds and removes everything related to an app on your hard drive.

Available for download here

Pixelmator

Sure, Photoshop may get all the buzz, but Pixelmater costs a fraction of what Adobe’s image editor costs, and for most people, it’s probably got all the features you’ll need for your day to day digital image processing.

Available on the Mac App Store

Daisy Disk

I never seem to have enough room on my hard drive, which is why every few months I run through everything with Daisy Disk, which shows you exactly what’s taking up all that space and helps you clear it out, all with a fun and interesting UI.

Available on the Mac App Store