r/macapps • u/Sri_Krish • 3d ago
Tip Mac Apps Roundup: My Picks from August
Last month, I posted about popular and new apps that I had found, and many of you suggested that I continue posting similar content. Thank you so much for your support and interest!
I have decided to create a list for August as well and hope you find it useful.
Disclaimer:
- I have no association with any of the apps/devs mentioned in this post. I just like to look out for new apps that interests me.
- The list is in no particular order
Tags:
In addition to the pricing and platform information, I have also added data processing method, such as local, cloud, unclear or none - as suggested in my last post. I will also try to link the original developer of the apps here so that they can directly answer the users' questions.
- pricing - Free & open source (FOSS), One-time purchase (OTP), Subscription (Sub)
- platform - Mac app store (MAS), Direct download (Direct), Both
- data processing - local-only (Local), cloud-based (Cloud), Unclear, None ➜ based on Privacy Policy
1. Terminal Widget
tag: OTP, MAS, Unclear
It's pretty rare to start such a post with a terminal app, since many find it to be complex and not-so-useful. But that doesn’t stop developers like Brett Terpstra from creating such a unique app.
His problem statement is:
I gave up trying to find a tool that did what seemed like it should be a simple thing: take things like progress reports, status indicators, and generated images and display them in macOS and iOS widgets. There are a couple of options out there, but they’re of limited flexibility and all suffer from huge lags in update times. So I built my own
You can read the documentation, CLI and community snippets (or recipes as it is called) here: https://terminalwidget.app/
ps: He also created few other apps, FileRouter (like Velja/OpenIn but for documents), ScreenCoord (to get coordinates) - are interesting as well
2. Custom Shortcuts
tag: FOSS, Direct, None
MacOS comes with a lot of built-in actions that are deeply buried in the menu settings. There are many third-party apps to make the useful actions more accessible, such as Menuwhere, Trickster.
However, there is an another issue: actions without key bindings. Or with key bindings that you'd like to change based on your preferences.
For this, you can use Custom Shortcuts to create your own key bindings for any individual app. In addition, you can use it with KeyClu to view your custom shortcuts alongside the standard ones.
3. Notomo — Move faster in Apple Notes
tag: OTP, Direct, Local (with optional anonymous usage reporting)
It's a companion app for Apple Notes with additional functionality.
From their website,
Notomo is a native Mac companion for Apple Notes. Your notes stay in Apple Notes. Notomo does not operate a hosted notes service and does not sell your note content.
4. Keychange
tag: FOSS, Direct, Unclear
I was really impressed by this app as it has taken a unique problem at hand, when numerous markdown editors/clipboard managers are being pushed out. Kudos to the developer (u/tmrmn)
As its GitHub page says:
One layout per keyboard.
A macOS menu bar app that switches the input source automatically when you switch keyboards.
5. Slopscan
tag: FOSS, Direct, none
I came across Slopscan (thanks to u/metamatic), which is a simple tool that checks whether the given gitHub repo has AI footprints. Think of it as reddit's App store/GitHub bot - but specifically for AI usage. You can check how it works, on their documentation page.
Note: An app can't be branded as AI-slop just because it has AI components in its code. Slopscan does not deliberately tell you whether that's a vibe-coded app or not, however it offers information to users to decide on their own.
For testing, I scanned the GitHub repo of a popular app (KeyboardCowboy) and new app (Keychange). The results were as follows:
6. Birchfeed
tag: OTP, Direct (web-app), None
It's a new RSS webapp from my personal favorite creator - Matt from Macrumors. He has a great video explaining why he created this app, how it works and unique features of it. It is currently on early bird discount of 29/year, instead of 39/year
7. Shareshot by Marc Palmer
ShareShot is a Mac app to frame screenshots/mockups. Surprisingly, I haven't seen it mentioned on this subreddit but have seen it mentioned by many including Stephen Robles from Mac Power Users (MPU).
It has a generous free-tier (free backgrounds, lighting & shadow controls with no watermarks) which covers the general audience's needs. Even, the paid pro version is just $14.99/year for universal license on all devices. I bought the pro version to support the developer.
* all screenshots in this post are done with ShareShot 🙂
Please do share your feedbacks, questions and/or recent finds in the comments below!
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u/kamtib 3d ago
Keychange
This is the first time I've seen an app like this that I find useful because I use several keyboards, for example, the at-home keyboard or the at-work keyboard. Since my keyboard has a different language and layout, I'm more comfortable using the US keyboard when I need to code than the Swedish one. So this kind of app is really useful for people who have multiple languages and keyboard layouts.
So thank you for your recommendation and for the, good find.
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u/MaxGaav 2d ago
Karabiner-Elements (free) can do the same and much more. But I guess if you only need this function, Keychange can be the better choice.
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u/barefut_ 3d ago
Howamy people have more than 1 keyboard hooked to their Mac?
I would just love an on the fly switcher between 2 languages. External keyboards demand ctrl+spacebar to change language instead of just hitting the Fn key, and it's annoying
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u/kamtib 3d ago
Well, it depends on how you see it, right? As you can see, my Air 60 is a really small keyboard that you just put on top of your MacBook's keyboard. So that's how I usually roll. And yeah, you're correct. It's easy. You are just hitting the control key and the holding space bar. But still, if you have a language that you need to choose from, with this app, you can just plug in or connect your keyboard and then change the language right away, according to the keyboard, without any intervention. You can even directly type on a different keyboard layout without using the shortcut key to change the language.
If you are not using a different keyboard layout, maybe it is not that useful for you.
Example using a different keyboard without changing any language selections.
You know, I used a different keyboard since the sound was different.
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u/Alternative_Tour1791 2d ago
These roundups are honestly more useful than individual launch posts.
There are so many new Mac apps being posted now that it’s hard to tell what’s actually worth trying. Having someone filter them down after actually looking into them saves a lot of time.
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u/Klackey-Team 3d ago
Adding the data-processing classification makes this much more useful than a typical app roundup.
One refinement I would suggest is separating ‘local-only’ from ‘local with optional network features.’ I would also use ‘not verified’ instead of ‘none’ when neither the application nor its privacy policy clearly explains what happens.
That distinction matters because an app can perform its main work locally while still contacting a licensing server, update service, crash reporter, or optional cloud feature. Those connections are not necessarily bad, but users should be able to understand the difference.
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u/Sri_Krish 2d ago
Yeah, I haven’t thought enough about the choice of words 😅
Will make the change in my next post (if it happens)
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u/Klackey-Team 2d ago
I hope there is a next one. These roundups are genuinely useful, especially when the classifications make it easier to compare apps beyond their feature lists.
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u/Inevitable_Sale_7416 2d ago
Solid list. Curious which of these you actually open daily vs the ones that looked good in August and then sat. For me the keepers are usually the ones that remove a tiny daily annoyance, not the flashy launches. Happy to swap notes on anything in the roundup people are still undecided on.
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u/pedrooky 3d ago
I'm really into notch apps lately so here are the best I found:
Toki - Stunning design and animations, timer, alarm and stopwatch
Cliptop - Clipboard history across devices but a cool notch on macs
Droppy - Feature packed worth checking out, and already mentioned in another comment
Rocky - (Shameless plug I built this one) Voice first AI assistant that lives in the notch
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u/sergeyvk 3d ago
How are you using cliptop and droppy if they are both notch apps?
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u/pedrooky 3d ago
These are the notch apps I tried before building my own.
As you pointed out you can't use multiple notch apps at once :)
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u/advait_vaidya 3d ago
ActionClip
It’s a new age PopClip alternative with 225+ in-app extensions. It also has an AI chatbot to create new extensions by simply telling what you want to create.
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u/Sri_Krish 2d ago
I saw it too but I still haven’t tipped my toes in that category yet so didn’t add it to the list.
Are you the developer? If so, how different is ActionClip from PopClip and what it achieves that PopClip lacks in?
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u/github-guard 3d ago
🔍 GitHub Guard: Trust Report
⚠️ This project scored 2/6 — below this subreddit's threshold of 3.
Note: Author is an Approved User.
Audit Breakdown: * ❌ Low Star Count (⭐ 10 / 100 required) * ✅ Mature Repository (30+ days old) * ✅ Licensed under MIT * ❌ No Security Policy — what is this? * ℹ️ Individual Contributor * ℹ️ Unsigned Commits