I tried dozens. These seven stayed. Two of them I ended up building myself.
Last Tuesday I counted. I opened Finder 41 times before lunch, and I still couldn't find the invoice I knew I'd saved somewhere.
That's my Mac most days. Not broken, just slow in a hundred small ways. So I started deleting apps that didn't earn their place. If it didn't save me time that same day, it was gone.
Seven survived. Not because they're fancy. Because I kept reaching for them without thinking.
1. Notchy
Apple put a notch on the MacBook and then just left it there. A black rectangle. Doing nothing.
That annoyed me for months. Every time I wanted to change a song or check a timer, I had to go hunting in the menu bar.
So I built Notchy. It turns the notch into a little island, like the iPhone has. Hover over it and it opens up. Music, timers, clipboard, the battery on my phone and headphones, a shelf for files I'm using right now.
I know, I made it, so of course I'd say that. But I use it every day because I got tired of waiting for Apple to do it. It's the first thing I miss when I'm on someone else's Mac.
One-time purchase, free trial. €14.99 until Nov 30, then €24.99.
2. Peekaboo
Finder wants you to remember the file name. I don't. I never have.
Last month I spent 20 minutes looking for a screenshot. I knew what was in it, I knew roughly when I'd taken it, I just couldn't remember what I'd called it. "Screenshot 2026-10-14 at 4.32 PM" tells you nothing.
Peekaboo lets me type what I'd actually say. "The invoice from last month." "That blue chart screenshot." It turns that into filters I can see and change, kind, date, size, folder, and it finds it.
It also shows me what's eating my storage, and it lets me clean it up with undo. That last part matters. I've deleted the wrong thing before. Once was enough.
I built this one too, for the same reason. I was losing files I knew I had.
€9.99 until Nov 13, then €14.99 until Nov 30, then €24.99. Free for 14 days.
3. Raycast
Spotlight is fine until you actually try to do something with it.
Raycast is the one I open fifty times a day. Launch an app, do a quick calculation, pull up something I copied an hour ago. One shortcut, that's it.
The clipboard history is the part I didn't expect to need. I copy a link, then I copy a password, then the link is gone. That used to happen to me three times a week. Now it doesn't.
Try it for a day. If you don't use it by lunch, delete it.
4. CleanShot X
I send screenshots to people all day. Users, friends, anyone helping me debug something.
Before CleanShot, every screenshot meant opening Preview, cropping it, renaming it, finding it on my Desktop later. It was stupid, and I did it for years.
Now I take it, draw a circle around the problem, copy the link, done. No file to clean up after.
If you send screenshots to anyone, this one pays for itself in a week. If you don't, skip it.
5. Rectangle
This one is free, and I almost didn't include it because it's so boring.
It just puts windows where you tell them to go. Left half, right half, full screen. One shortcut.
macOS got better at this, but it still forgets. I have two monitors, three apps open, and I want them in the same place every morning. Rectangle remembers. That's the whole job, and it does it.
6. A clipboard manager, properly
Yes, I already mentioned Raycast's clipboard. I'm mentioning it again because copying is the thing I do most on a Mac, and losing a copy is the most annoying thing that happens to me.
Pick one tool for this and learn its shortcut. Just one. I use Raycast's, but a dedicated one works the same. The point is, you should never lose a copied paragraph because you copied something else after it.
I learned that the hard way, rewriting a reply I'd already written perfectly once.
7. Something to clean up after macOS
Open Storage in System Settings and you'll see a big grey block called System Data. That's macOS telling you it has no idea either.
My Downloads folder had installers in it from a year ago. Old .dmg files, stuff I'd already installed and forgotten. Check there first, then ~/Library/Caches, then the apps you haven't opened in months.
Or let Peekaboo do the same check in one place. That's why I added the cleanup view to it, because I was doing this by hand every few months and hating it.
Don't just delete, though. Trash it first. Wait a week. If nothing breaks, then empty it.
What they all have in common
None of them are exciting. That's the point.
They fix one small annoyance I hit every single day, and they do it so well I forget the annoyance was ever there.
That's my test now. If an app doesn't remove friction I actually feel, it's gone by Friday.
What would you add? Tell me in the responses. I'm testing new Mac apps every week, and the next list is the ones that actually survived on my Mac.
I'm Vishva. I make Notchy, a Dynamic Island for your Mac, and Peekaboo, a Mac app for finding files in plain English and freeing space with undo. I write about Mac apps and AI tools that actually save time. Follow if you want the next list.
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