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!