Final yr, I lastly made the swap to a Mac.
As a marketer by day and enterprise improvement specialist by evening, I take advantage of many alternative instruments to handle my time, monitor duties, maintain my artistic juices flowing, keep in contact, automate stuff, and maintain all the pieces good and arranged.
So, I used to be apprehensive if my normal productiveness apps and instruments, particularly those needing downloads, would work properly on a brand-new Mac. Seems, all of them did. And my productiveness surged.
So, on this piece, I’m sharing the ten finest productiveness apps for Mac with all their options and golden highlights.
Desk of Contents
What are productiveness apps?
Productiveness apps assist you work higher and sooner, liberating up your psychological vitality. Their most important aim is to make you extra targeted and productive at a given second.
Based on employee performance research, productiveness instruments have an extraordinarily optimistic influence on worker efficiency. Those that use them are extra relaxed and obtain higher outcomes.
In essence, productiveness apps assist with activity administration, calendar group, note-taking, crew collaboration, and time monitoring. For instance, mission administration instruments fall beneath this class. They allow you to kind duties into boards, lists, and playing cards, which is tremendous helpful for staying on monitor.
10 Greatest Productiveness Apps for Mac
1. Todoist
Todoist is a activity administration app for organizing duties and tasks. You possibly can create to-do lists, set deadlines, prioritize duties, and collaborate with others.
It’s obtainable on browsers, cellular gadgets, and desktop purposes. Todoist organizes your tasks with recurring duties, sub-tasks, labels, and filters.
Core Options
- Easy activity seize.
- Recurring due dates.
- Well timed reminders.
- Integration with Everhour, Outlook, Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Trello, and extra.
- Cross-device synchronization.
- Undertaking group inside customizable tasks.
- Versatile views, together with checklist, calendar, and board layouts.
- Collaborative options for sharing duties, assigning roles, and exchanging feedback.
- Prepared-made templates for jumpstarting teamwork.
- Productiveness monitoring for setting objectives, monitoring progress, and analyzing traits.
Pricing
- Newbie: Free.
- Professional: $4 per 30 days (billed yearly).
- Enterprise: $6 per member month-to-month (billed yearly).
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
I’ve tried different apps like Microsoft To-Do and Google Duties, however Todoist’s fast keyboard enter for dates, tasks, priorities, and tags satisfied me shortly to change.
I take advantage of Todoist primarily for 2 issues:
- Scheduling. I really like the simplicity of scheduling with it. For instance, I sort “Each Monday” for a activity I do each week. It additionally works for extra particular schedules, like “each three months beginning March 1.”
I simply sort these phrases, and Todoist understands instructions with out additional enter from me.
- Planning. I take advantage of it to plan my each day actions — from work to private ones. On my checklist, you could find issues like morning yoga, breakfast, writing an article, visiting the dentist, and so on. Plus, Todoist’s customers could make lists with out strict deadlines, comparable to buying lists. I personally use Notes on my iPhone for that.
And one of many coolest issues about Todoist is the way it works with Alexa.
If I neglect one thing, I simply say, “Alexa, add a brand new assembly tomorrow at 8 am,” and increase, it’s in my Todoist in seconds.
2. Harvest
Harvest is a time-tracking and invoicing software program that manages time and bills. It helps monitor productiveness, analyze mission prices, and streamline billing processes.
It additionally creates detailed reviews to investigate mission progress and efficiency.
Core Options
- Monitoring hours, tasks, and actions with visible reviews.
- Administration of invoices, bills, and billable objects.
- Integration with in style instruments like Asana, Slack, PayPal, and extra.
- Automated reminders and notifications for consistency.
- Actual-time mission budgeting, forecasting, and progress monitoring.
- At-a-glance view of crew workload and useful resource administration.
- Customizable reviews and collaboration instruments for mission administration.
- Cell entry and on-line/offline time monitoring.
- QuickBooks integration for seamless accounting.
- Easy information import/export and web-based deployment.
Pricing
- Free Without end: $0.
- Harvest Professional: $10.80 per seat month-to-month (billed yearly).
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
I attempted to make use of Harvest for invoicing, and truthfully, since I’m not massive on accounting and all that numbers stuff (I assume each artistic individual feels the identical), I discovered it very easy to make use of however stayed with my Google Sheets.
Nevertheless, you possibly can profit from monitoring paid/unpaid invoices and sending reminders.
Two issues I appreciated about its invoicing function:
- It routinely creates invoices from timesheets.
- I can settle for on-line funds by PayPal and Stripe.
I additionally tried its time tracker.
In comparison with different trackers, I really like Harvest’s privateness safety. It doesn’t:
- Take screenshots or video recordings of your laptop.
- Monitor your chats or messages.
- Monitor which web sites or apps you utilize.
- Permit monitoring of your crew’s location by way of GPS.
Your employer sees your timesheets after you submit them, which is ideal for distant employees. There’s no want to fret if a personal message pops up throughout a screenshot — Harvest tracks time precisely whereas respecting your privateness. I find it irresistible.
3. Monday.com
Monday is a mission administration instrument for managing duties, bettering collaboration, and growing productiveness. Monday helps product, design, and R&D groups work higher with agile workflows.
Core Options
- Clear interface and easy navigation.
- Customizable workflows.
- Job administration, information visualization, workload monitoring, and different mission administration options.
- AI Assistant presents useful recommendations and automation.
- Templates for various industries and sectors.
- Scales with crew dimension — appropriate for companies of all sizes.
- Doc modifying, mission message boards, visitor entry.
- Integrates with Gmail, Slack, Groups, and extra.
- Chart view, customizable dashboards for monitoring progress.
- Dwell chat, e-mail assist, 2FA, IP restriction.
Pricing
- Free: $0 endlessly, as much as 2 seats.
- Fundamental: $9 a seat per 30 days (billed yearly).
- Customary: $12a seat per 30 days (billed yearly).
- Professional: $19 a seat per 30 days (billed yearly).
- Enterprise: Worth obtainable upon request.
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
I take advantage of Monday, Asana, and Trello for various tasks. For me, Monday wins by way of flexibility and pricing. On Monday, I monitor my workload for the charitable fund District #1, like a head of partnerships.
I opted for a simplified Kanban methodology to prepare and prioritize my duties with “Backlog,” “In progress,” and “Completed” tabs.
My content material advertising friends additionally use Monday’s Content material Planning Template. It helps them with all the pieces from brainstorming concepts to scheduling posts — multi functional workspace.
For example:
- You possibly can schedule content material weeks upfront, so that you at all times know what’s arising.
- Handle your workload by assigning duties.
- By no means miss a deadline, because of computerized reminders.
4. Trello
Trello is one other mission administration instrument for small groups with boards, lists, and playing cards for organizing duties and tasks. It’s tremendous simple to maneuver the playing cards between lists as duties progress. You may as well add descriptions, checklists, due dates, attachments, and feedback to playing cards.
The very best worth for cash. (Free in your entire crew(!) with restricted options.)
Core Options
- Organizing tasks and duties on boards — Kanban board model.
- Visualizing mission timelines for monitoring sprints and objectives.
- Planning and scheduling duties with a calendar view.
- Displaying location-based information on an interactive map.
- Coordinating work throughout a number of boards with customized overviews.
- Automating duties and workflows with Butler automation.
- Pre-designed templates.
- Integration with apps like Slack, Miro, Salesforce, and extra.
Pricing
- Free: $0 (free in your entire crew).
- Customary: $5 per consumer a month if billed yearly ($6 billed month-to-month).
- Premium: $10 per consumer a month if billed yearly ($12.50 billed month-to-month).
- Enterprise: $17.50 per consumer a month, billed yearly.
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
I used to work primarily on Monday or Asana, however then I met a shopper who prefers Trello for all their tasks. So I gave it a attempt. Proper from the beginning, Trello was tremendous simple to make use of.
I transfer duties between “Transient prepared,” “Assigned to author,” and so on., with just some clicks.
Leaving feedback on every card can also be easy, and I like how organized and neat all of it seems on the dashboard.
High options I take advantage of:
- Description. For a short overview of mission particulars to maintain the shopper within the loop.
- Label. Moreover shopper labels, I additionally categorize duties for myself with labels like “Pressing,” “In Progress,” or “Accomplished.”
- Guidelines. I take advantage of checklists to trace the completion of particular duties.
- Attachment. I embrace related sources, paperwork, or pictures.
The very best half is that pictures are seen on the board — there is no such thing as a have to open a activity to see them.
For Mac customers: Proper-click a picture, copy it, then paste it instantly into Trello with Cmd+V.
5. Grammarly
Grammarly is my go-to writing assistant for catching grammar errors, punctuation, spelling, readability, and plagiarism.
The very best factor in regards to the app is its real-time recommendations and corrections as you sort.
Core Options
- Grammar and spelling checks.
- Punctuation checks — commas, intervals, citation marks, and semicolons.
- Type recommendations for enhanced readability.
- Suggestions on sentence construction and readability.
- Synonyms and different phrases for enriching vocabulary.
- Plagiarism detection.
- Browser extension for real-time help.
- Integration with platforms like Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, MS Phrase, Google Docs, Slack, LinkedIn, X, and so on.
- Personalised writing insights.
- AI rewriting.
- Correct citations in APA, MLA, or Chicago model.
- Cell keyboard for writing on smartphones and tablets.
Pricing
- Free Plan: $0 per 30 days.
- Premium Plan: $12 per 30 days billed yearly, or $30 per 30 days billed month-to-month (my alternative).
- Enterprise Plan: $15 member per 30 days billed yearly, or $25 member per 30 days billed month-to-month.
- Enterprise Plan: Customized pricing.
Tried & Examined: What I Assume About It
Identical to each different content material author, I am keen on Grammarly. It shortly fixes misspellings, errors, and grammar points. I often use it to shine my articles and write my LinkedIn posts.
It’s one of many prime Mac productiveness instruments as a result of it integrates completely with Safari, and its downloaded model works flawlessly as properly.
Whereas Grammarly is extremely useful, I don’t at all times agree with a few of its recommendations. They merely don’t match my context or sound awkward. Nevertheless, regardless of these occasional quirks, Grammarly at all times helps me catch errors I overlook, particularly in a rush.
6. Marinara Pomodoro Assistant
I take advantage of the Marinara: Pomodoro Assistant Chrome extension to make the Pomodoro technique simply accessible on my Mac. The app breaks duties into intervals, historically 25 minutes lengthy with quick breaks.
I’m merely in love with this methodology for supercharging my productiveness once I wrestle to drag myself collectively and get issues finished. It immediately prompts my focus mode, and I turn out to be so within the zone that nothing can distract me.
Core Options
- Progress monitoring for each day, weekly, or customized intervals.
- Work interval length adjustment.
- Variable break durations.
- Auto-start possibility for the following timer and world hotkeys.
- Export to CSV, alarm sounds choice, elective ticking, and startup launch.
- Historical past report.
Pricing
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
I’ve tried numerous Pomodoro apps earlier than, however Marinara Pomodoro Assistant is my favourite. It really works easily with none bugs or crashes. Additionally, the reviews are crystal clear. I simply choose a timeframe and examine working intervals.
7. Evernote
Evernote is an app for taking any type of notes and conserving them organized. Use it to put in writing down concepts, save internet pages, and even report audio notes. It really works on gadgets like your telephone and laptop computer, so you possibly can entry your notes from anyplace.
Core Options
- Fast notice creation and entry on any system.
- Incorporation of content material from numerous apps.
- Integration with Google Calendar, Microsoft Groups, Slack, Salesforce, and extra.
- Recording and storing audio notes.
- Turning bodily paperwork into searchable notes.
- Pre-made templates.
- Internet clipper — aka direct saving of on-line content material to Evernote.
- Search performance inside PDFs and pictures.
- Prompt entry to incessantly used notes by shortcuts.
Pricing
- Free: $0 a month.
- Private: $14.99 per 30 days or $129.99 per yr.
- Skilled: $17.99 per 30 days or $169.99 per yr.
- Groups: $24.99 consumer per 30 days or $249.99 consumer per yr.
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
I didn’t swap to Evernote, however I attempted it for 2 weeks to see if I appreciated it:
- Including audio materials was superior.
- I appreciated its integration with Gmail and Google Drive. I may connect information to notes, ship notes by way of Gmail, and share them with purchasers in seconds.
- Evernote’s OCR function lets me search PDFs shortly.
I’ve nothing in opposition to the app; the rationale I didn’t swap is extra private. I’m used to engaged on Monday and making notes in default Mac apps.
8. Slack
Slack is a well-liked messaging platform for communication inside groups and organizations. It permits file sharing, automation with Google Analytics (and extra!), and organizing conversations into channels. Slack goals to streamline communication and cut back reliance on e-mail.
Core Options
- Prompt messaging for fast communication.
- Integration with 2,600+ apps comparable to Jira, Google Calendar, HubSpot, Google Drive, and extra.
- Voice and video calls.
- Doc sharing and storage.
- Workflow automation for streamlining duties.
- Collaborative brainstorming area with Canvas.
- Superior search performance for locating previous conversations and information.
- Knowledge exports for all messages.
Pricing
- Free: $0 a month.
- Professional Plan: $7.25 per 30 days billed yearly or $8.75 per 30 days billed month-to-month.
- Skilled: $12.50 per 30 days billed yearly or $15 per 30 days billed month-to-month.
- Enterprise Grid: Customized pricing.
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
Slack is my best choice amongst communication apps. Switching between chats, channels, contacts, and workspaces is only a click on away.
My favourite components in each Slack neighborhood are channels comparable to #bulletins and fewer work-related issues like birthdays, celebrations, and sharing random pictures from the crew.
That’s the very first thing I examine each time I leap into a brand new Slack workspace. 🙂
And, as somebody who enjoys structuring and making messages simpler to learn, I like Slack’s nice formatting options in chat (daring, italic, numbered, and bullet lists).
9. Monosnap
Monosnap is for taking, modifying, and sharing annotated screenshots with the power to blur delicate data.
Core Options
- Screencast recording with spotlight capabilities.
- Annotating screenshots with pens, textual content, arrows, and shapes.
- Versatile display screen seize choices: full display screen, a part of the display screen, or chosen window.
- Immediately share screenshots.
- Customizable hotkeys for fast entry.
- Delayed screenshots for exact timing.
- Blur delicate data to keep up privateness.
Pricing
- Free Plan: $0.
- Non-Business Plan: $2.50 a month (billed yearly) or $3 a month (billed month-to-month).
- Business Plan: $5 a consumer per 30 days (billed yearly) or $10 a consumer per 30 days (billed month-to-month).
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
After I obtained my Mac, I switched from ShareX, which I used on my Home windows, to Monosnap after a dozen tried-and-failed apps. Different apps got here with poor UX or lacked crucial options like blurring.
10. Calendly
Calendly is a well-liked instrument for scheduling appointments. You possibly can share your obtainable instances by a personalised reserving web page with out the back-and-forth of emails.
It syncs with calendars comparable to Google Calendar, Outlook, or iCloud and offers a personalised hyperlink for reserving a time slot.
Core Options
- Shareable hyperlinks to ebook appointments instantly.
- Alerts and notifications.
- Appointment and occasion administration.
- Automated and group scheduling.
- Customizable options — branding, varieties, reviews, and templates.
- Rescheduling.
- Integration with HubSpot, Google Calendar, Zoom, Microsoft Groups, and so on.
- Computerized time zone conversion.
- Detailed information on bookings, conversion charges, and different metrics for efficiency monitoring and optimization.
Pricing
- Free: $0 a month.
- Customary: $10 a seat per 30 days.
- Groups: $16 a seat per 30 days.
- Enterprise: Customized pricing.
Tried & Examined: What I Assume
With Calendly, I’ve designated three occasion varieties to keep away from back-and-forth emailing:
- For mission replace conferences with my purchasers.
- For preliminary interviews with potential companions.
- For consultations with people concerned about content material writing or enterprise improvement.
My two additional factors go to the combination with Google Calendar and Google Meet.
Additionally, I really like how Calendly routinely adjusts time zones. Since I work with purchasers and companions from each Europe and the US, this function is gold.
What’s the perfect productiveness app?
Every of those 10 apps serves its goal completely, however my three favs are:
- Monday.com. Excellent for organizing my workflows and monitoring progress.
- Marinara Pomodoro Assistant. Helps me take work sprints and keep targeted with the Pomodoro timer.
- Grammarly. Improves my writing and catches errors in actual time.
Whereas I’m at all times open to attempting out extra Mac productiveness apps, these three will keep on my checklist for a very long time.
P.S. As soon as I put some new instruments to the check, I’ll share my insights and expertise with you.
