100 Mac Apps To Rule Them All

This post is the answer to the first question that any new Mac user will ask: which apps are the best? The next time someone asks you this question, don’t think twice, just send them here.

We’ve spent hours and hours browsing the web, combing the Mac App Store and wandering through our own archives for the absolute best Mac apps around and we’ve found a whopping one hundred of them that we think you’ll love. Whether you’re looking for a screenshot utility, a todo list or even a great game to play, we’ve got you covered. We’re not merely offering a mindless list of links either, we took the time to tell you what each app does and why we love it so you can make an informed decision. Happy downloading!

Table of Contents

System Utilities

Default Folder X

Default Folder X is a seriously useful app that you appreciate as soon as it’s installed. It augments file open and save dialogs with tons of great features and add ons. Hit a shortcut to quickly go to the most recent folder used by any app, access a list of recent folders, or even click on a Finder window in the background to bring it up in the dialog.

Price: $34.95 – AppStorm Review

Growl

Growl is a system-wide notification system for your Mac. It’s an essential piece of software that’s so simple and amazing that it should probably be built into OS X by now. Growl is theme-able and integrates with a ton of other apps to subtly inform you of everything that’s going on with your Mac.

Price: $1.99

GeekTool

Isn’t it annoying that you can’t put Dashboard Widgets on your desktop? They’re always hidden and out of the way so I tend to completely forget they exist. With GeekTool, your desktop becomes anything you want it to be. It’s definitely a little on the geeky side (hence the name) so if you don’t know what a shell script is, this might not be the app for you. If you know what you’re doing though, you can use GeekTool to display a calendar, the weather, the current time, an RSS feed and tons of other stuff on your desktop. Here’s how to get it up and running.

Price: Free – AppStorm How-To

ClipMenu

ClipMenu is one of those old apps that doesn’t really seem to be actively developed, but it’s so good that you don’t even mind. Say what you will about clipboard managers with fancy interfaces, ClipMenu is the one for me. It keeps an extensive history of text and image clips, lets you store and receive prebuilt snippets, and can perform really complex custom actions on clipped text. ClipMenu pops up right where you mouse is when you hit your assigned shortcut and the minimal interface makes it truly feel like something that’s simply built into OS X. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free?

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

iStat Menus

iStat Menus isn’t a single tool but a plethora of menu bar utilities for monitoring your system. Keep and eye on your memory, CPU, fan speeds, battery health, network information and a lot more. You can even use it to override the default time stamp with something much more versatile. If you like to stay informed, this app should be at the top of your list.

Price: $16.00 – AppStorm Review

Caffeine

Caffeine has the same effect on your Mac as it does you: it helps it stay awake. Granted, you have energy saving controls in System Preferences but sometimes you just want a single click that will turn off screensavers, screen dimming and sleeping. Caffeine does exactly that and works like a dream.

Price: Free

Mactracker

Mactracker is probably my favorite obscure and under appreciated app. It’s like a virtual encyclopedia of Mac hardware. Pretty much everything you wanted to know about anything with an Apple logo is nestled inside of this cozy little app. I reference it all the time for upgrades and replacement parts.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Boom

Let’s face it, your MacBook’s volume isn’t the best. This problem is worse in some places than others. For instance, in iTunes I’m usually fine but some Hulu shows are just so dang quiet I can barely hear. With Boost, you can push past the default volume limits on your Mac and crank that volume to where you need it. You can also use it to boost the volume settings on individual files.

Price: $6.99 – AppStorm Review

TextExpander

As a writer, this is one app that I simply can’t live without. If you’ve never used a text expansion app before, you’re missing out. Basically, these apps allow you to type a little and get a lot. You set up prebuilt snippets that automatically expand when you type a certain key combination. For instance, you could write “thankss” and have it expand into an entire thank you email, saving you several minutes of typing.

There are a few contenders in the text expansion arena, but TextExpander is by far my favorite. The interface is simple and easy to use and the feature set is super powerful, allowing for all kinds of intelligent macros that insert the date, clipboard contents, etc.

Price: $34.95

TotalFinder

TotalFinder is a bit on the hacky side so I always hesitate to recommend it. However, I can’t get around the fact that I simply love this app. The main draw here is that it puts Chrome-style tabs on your Finder windows. No more cluttering up your desktop with fifty-seven open windows, tabbed file browsing saves the day. There’s also a cool dual mode that splits your Finder window in two similar to what you’d see in Transmit and other FTP apps.

Price: $18.00 – AppStorm Review

Screens

Screens is one of the best VNC apps around if you’re looking to access your home computer on the go. Most apps like this are a real pain to set up but Screens does the work for you and makes the whole thing a breeze. It’s especially nice for accessing your home Mac from your iOS device.

Price: $29.99

VLC

I love Quicktime, most of the time it gets the job done perfectly. However, for those times when it won’t play some random video format, I keep VLC on hand, which supports just about everything you can throw at it.

Price: Free

Take Control of Your Mac

Keyboard Maestro

While TextExpander is specifically for writing more with less effort, Keyboard Maestro is all about taking complete control of your Mac via your keyboard. In just a few keystrokes you can “control applications, windows, or menus; insert text; open documents, applications or URLs; execute scripts; control the system, iTunes or QuickTime Player; and more.” It’s a crazy powerful app and keyboard control freaks will absolutely love it.

Price: $35.99 – AppStorm Review

Cockpit

Cockpit is menu app that controls iTunes. Oh, and it also burns discs, handles bulk file tasks, controls Safari, integrates with iCal and has an extension system for interfacing with various third party apps. In short, it is capable of controlling a ton of stuff and is amazingly customizable. It also has a pretty slick design.

Price: $3.99 – AppStorm Review

MacPilot

Mac power users know that there are a ton of hidden and secret functions inside of OS X that can largely be accessed purely through the use of Terminal or some other command line tool. Unfortunately, many or even most Mac users are scared to death of Terminal.

MacPilot gives every user the kind of control over their system that Terminal pros have. Without a single line of code, you can disable the translucent menubar in Leopard, disable menu items for security, disable icon caches, set history limits, erase recently used files, prevent your dock from being modified, turn off all system animations, increase the speed at which windows resize, change which format screenshots are taken in, set a default name and location for screenshots, disable a secondary processor, disable the startup chime, and a lot more. There are also some routine maintenance scripts built in to keep your Mac running smoothly.

Price: $19.95 – AppStorm Review

Quicksilver

Quicksilver, the grandaddy of app launchers is back with a recently updated version for Lion. The project is now open source and the team works hard to keep the wheels turning. If you’ve never used Quicksilver before, you’re missing out. It has many of the same features that you find in the Alfred Powerpack, only free. The downside is that the learning curve is somewhat steep. Anyone can use it as a launcher, but you really have to dig in to figure out how the rich plugin system works.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Alfred

You know what Alfred does. We write about it almost every week on AppStorm. We simply can’t help it, it’s that good. It’s also constantly receiving great updates that add to its functionality. On the surface, it’s a simple app launcher, but there’s so much more under the surface: perform calculations, define words, search your HD and the web, set up global hotkeys for anything and install awesome extensions that take the app even further.

Price: Free/£15 – AppStorm Review

BetterTouchTool

Apple did an interesting thing with the both the Magic Mouse and the newer generation trackpads. They provided a ton of built in possibilities and functionality, then failed to implement most of it in a useful way or at least give you flexible control over how it all works. With BetterTouchTool, you have full access to all of the clicks, taps and gestures that you could possibly imagine. Set them up to perform any number of actions like auto-implementing keyboard shortcuts or launching Mission Control.

There’s more to this tool than just gestures and taps. The developer has piled in features such as Apple Remote customization and even click/drag window resizing. It’s an amazing in-depth app that makes you nostalgic for the old days when Apple didn’t care that you were tinkering with the device they sold you.

Price: Free

Window Management

Cinch

Cinch is a great way to break into the concept of better window management. It doesn’t allow for the level of custom control that others do, but it does provide an extremely fast and easy way to maximize screen real estate. Basically, you just drag a window to the appropriate edge of the screen and it will automatically fill that half of the screen (a fullscreen option is also available).

Price: $6.99 – AppStorm Review

Divvy

When Divvy first launched, I found it to be the most innovative approach to window management that I had seen. A preset keyboard shortcut brings up a grid of rectangles that represent the available screen space. You simply drag a selection to size the frontmost window to the proper dimensions. This makes it incredibly quick to perfectly size windows any way you want them, no matter how complex the arrangement.

Price: $14.00 – AppStorm Review

Moom

Moom borrows the grid sizing approach from Divvy but takes it one step further by making it available right from the default window controls in the upper left (just hover over the green button to bring up the controls). Window resizing apps tend to get forgotten about (out of sight out of mind) but this approach constantly brings the functionality to your attention and therefore is likely to get used more often in the long run.

Price: $4.99 – AppStorm Review

Disk Tools

DaisyDisk

There are several apps available that help you analyze how your disk space is being used, but none of them match the style and grace of DaisyDisk. Not only is it powerful and incredibly useful, it’s also gorgeous. The interface is colorful, unique and overflowing with smooth animations that will make any UI designer drool.

It’s not all eye candy mind you, there are plenty of really great ideas thrown in as well such as a countdown that pops up when you choose to delete a file. This not only feels cool and dramatic, but gives you a chance to back out if you performed the action by accident.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is the first and only app that I turn to when I want to make a clone of a drive (perfect for seamlessly upgrading to a faster HD). It’s been around for over a decade and was one of the first utilities of its kind. CCC makes it truly effortless to perfectly copy the contents of one drive onto another. It’s also completely free. Hats off to Bombich Software for more than ten awesome years of cloning without requiring a cent in return.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Maintenance

Cocktail

Cocktail is a powerful system maintenance utility with five categories of tools: Disks, System, Files, Network and Interface. With it you can perform an amazing variety of system tweaks and improvements. If you’re unsure of this whole system maintenance process, check out the Pilot Mode, which allows for optimization with a single click.

Price: $19.00 – AppStorm Review

CleanMyMac

CleanMyMac is one of the best Mac maintenance applications on the market. It’s developed by the absolutely phenomenal team at MacPaw and has over fifty features to clean the unnecessary crap off of your Mac and make sure it stays tidy. You can use it to automatically empty the trash at set intervals, uninstall apps the right way, strip apps of non-vital binaries and a lot more.

Price: $14.95 – AppStorm Review

MacKeeper

MacKeeper is the leading alternative to CleanMyMac. I’ve used both apps extensively and can honestly say that they’re both absolutely worth every penny. Regardless of which you choose, you won’t be sorry. MacKeeper seems a little bit more geared towards the security side with features such as theft protection, browser security plugins, top-notch encryption and more.

Price: $38.95 – AppStorm Review

AppCleaner

Sometimes you want a quick way to delete an app without anything as major as the apps we just mentioned. You could simply throw it in the trash, but that leaves a of system clutter that you don’t see. A better way to do it is to use the amazing and free AppCleaner app, which hunts down any stranded files and helps ensure that you’re deleting all traces of an app.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Hazel

Let’s face it, we can all be a bit messy at times. Unlike iOS, which takes care of file organization for you, OS X still allows you to be a complete slob. Hazel keeps this tendency in check by allowing you to set up custom actions that automatically places files where they belong based on a given set of criteria. It sounds complex, but it’s just as easy as saving a custom search in Finder and infinitely more useful.

Price: $25.00 – AppStorm Review

Security

1Password

I’m a huge fan of 1Password and can honestly say that it’s one of those apps that I use every single day, whether I’m working or just browsing the web for fun. With 1Password, I can securely store and manage all of my various online accounts, email address information, financial data, and more.

Both the app and the browser plugin are password protected so no one can simply walk up to my Mac and login to anything without my consent. It’s far safer than having sites automatically log you in or remember passwords and only adds a second or two to your login time. There are also iOS versions available.

Price: $49.99 – AppStorm Review

Wallet

Wallet and 1Password are pretty dang close as far as features go. Both allow you to enter and protect several different types of information, both integrate with your favorite web browser and both have accompanying mobile apps. The upside of Wallet is that it only costs $19.99 while 1Password will run you $49.99.

Price: $19.99 – AppStorm Review

Hands Off!

Hands Off! is an extremely helpful app that allows you to monitor the connections that your computer is making behind the scenes to servers across the web. Sometimes apps send out information that you’re not even aware they’re collecting and Hands Off! will help you spot and stop it.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Productivity

Fantastical

Fantastical lives up to its name by being a truly fantastic menu bar calendar that integrates closely with iCal. In fact, it’s so good that I can’t remember the last time I actually opened iCal despite adding appointments and reminders daily.

Fantastical allows you to quickly add events with natural language. So instead of working through complex controls, simply type “meet Jon at 6pm on Tue” and an event will automatically be created in addition to several reminders to ensure you don’t miss your appointment.

Price: $19.99 – AppStorm Review

BusyCal

BusyCal starts with iCal’s old interface and functionality as a base, then adds on a ton of new functionality. BusyCal has more views than iCal, better sharing options, improved todo functionality and a lot more.

Price: $49.99 – AppStorm Review

Wunderlist & Wunderkit

Once upon a time, a $50+ todo list would’ve been on this roundup, but no more. These days gorgeous, collaborative cloud-synced task management is absolutely free and absolutely amazing. Before you spent a dime on a todo list app, be sure to download Wunderlist for Mac and iOS and experience the wonder of award-winning cost-free productivity.

If you’re looking for even more power and versatility, check out the Wunderkit beta. Wunderkit builds on the success and model of Wunderlist and adds a ton of great collaboration and project management functionality.

Price: Free (paid plans available for Wunderkit) – Wunderlist Review & Wunderkit Review

Producteev

Though perhaps not quite as hyped, Producteev actually beat Wunderlist to the punch with free synced task management. Producteev is an incredible product with great apps for Mac, iOS and the web. It’s actually a bit more robust than Wunderlist and is more of a project management tool than a simple task list. The collaboration here is more like what you’d find in Wunderkit. You can use Producteev completely free, but to add an entire team to a project you’ll need a premium account.

Price: Free (paid plans available) – AppStorm Review

iProcrastinate

iProcrastinate has been around for a while now and has seen lots of steady improvements and evolutions. It’s a powerful task manager with support for great features like tags and starring and there’s even a nice calendar view to check out your upcoming due dates. If you don’t want to sign up for yet another web service, this might be the todo app for you as it performs its sync to iOS via Dropbox.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Evernote

I don’t even need to tell you what Evernote is because you no doubt already know. This unbelievable app/web service set the stage for the cloud computing boom that we’re now experiencing. Long before the trend caught on, Evernote was providing a stellar way to create, store and edit all that random digital clutter that life throws at you from any computer. If you’ve never used Evernote, stop everything and go sign up. It’s that good.

Price: Free

NotifyMe

NotifyMe is a bit like Fantastical, only it serves more as a standalone, cross-platform solution for reminders. Hit a keyboard shortcut, type in a plain English reminder (“work out at 5pm”) and NotifyMe will set up a reminder that automatically syncs to the accompanying iPhone and iPad app. You can even create reoccurring reminders for those events that happen regularly.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Alarms Express

Alarms Express completely rethinks the concept of a menu bar calendar. Clicking the menu item drops down not only the traditional calendar but also a unique timeline feature that allows you to quickly add reminders and view your upcoming events. You can even drag and drop items right on the timeline, try dragging emails, contacts, files and more. It’s a really slick system and if you’re in the market for something different, I highly recommend that you check it out.

Price: $7.99 – AppStorm Review

Education

CourseNotes

All throughout college I wanted a better way to organize all of my class notes. My system was nothing more than a series of Pages/Word documents inside of folders. This was the solution I looked for but never found.

CourseNotes is a really slick app that allows you to keep all of your lecture notes in one beautiful and organized place. You can create different subjects and separate notes into different meetings so you always know what happened when. There’s even modest todo functionality to keep on top of various assignments.

Price: $7.99 – AppStorm Review

iStudiez Pro

While CourseNotes is the ultimate way to stay on top of what you learn in class, iStudiez Pro is the best way to actually get yourself to class. It’s a stellar student planner that helps you keep track of your course schedule and important assignments.

There are lots of great features here such as the ability to add in professors and note their office hours. If you own a Mac and you’re in college or even high school, you should definitely check out this app.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Writing & Markdown

Day One

Day One is hands down the best Mac journaling solution around. It’s both super attractive and highly functional. There’s a menu bar item for quick entries, a dedicated app to browse past posts, a calendar view, and it all syncs to the accompanying iOS app via iCloud or Dropbox.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Writeroom

Writeroom was one of the first to market with a truly impressive “minimal” writing app, a genre that’s now overflowing with entrants. Some people hate this market, others love it. I’m personally a big fan of no nonsense writing apps and Writeroom is where I turn when I need to block out the world and be productive. It has a ton of customization options that you won’t find in any of the competitor’s apps.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

iA Writer

iA Writer has probably become the most popular app in the minimal writing category. Unlike Writeroom, this app intentionally has almost no settings to speak of. You just write and it comes out simple and elegant. The bonus here is the automatic Markdown support, which is really slick.

Price: $8.99 – AppStorm Review

Marked

Interestingly enough, Marked isn’t really a writing app. Instead it watches the file Markdown file that you’re currently editing in your favorite text editor and automatically dishes out an auto-updating HTML preview. If you like your current writing app but wish it had Markdown support, this is your solution.

Price: $3.99 – AppStorm Review

Mou

The other Markdown apps above are great, but if I’m writing in Markdown, I’m doing it in Mou. This app has a fantastic split screen view that shows your markdown on the left and an instantly updating HTML preview on the right. You can customize the appearance of the editor to your liking and export an HTML file when you’re finished.

Price: Free During Beta – AppStorm Review

nvAlt

While Evernote is my go to app for general rich content clutter, I more often reach for nvAlt for simple text notes. A popular fork of Notational Velocity, nvAlt adds a ton of great features and options.

It integrates with SimpleNote so your notes are always available online and through various mobile apps, has Markdown support with live preview, does Task Paper style todos, and a lot more. I used to use a menu bar notes app but as soon as I tried nvAlt I was hooked.

Price: Free

Scrivener

Are you sick of seeing all of these minimal writing apps get all the attention? Do you miss the days when features were a good thing? Scrivener is for you.

If you’re a professional writer, you should have Scrivener. It’s particularly suited for large projects and packed with an absolutely untouchable feature set: an impressive template library, fullscreen mode, research collection, a name generator for novelists, autosave, an incredibly flexible workflow that allows you to restructure projects on the fly, and a ton more.

Price: $44.99 – AppStorm Review

Games

Angry Birds Seasons

It’s Angry Birds, on the Mac, need I say more? Though not quite as charming as its touchscreen brethren, Angry Birds for Mac is still at the forefront of completely addictive yet casual gaming.

Price: $4.99

LIMBO

LIMBO is an altogether unique experience that blew us away in our recent review. It’s both terrifying and entrancing at the same time and has a puzzle-driven mystery filled gameplay that won’t let go of you until you’ve played all the way through.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Trine 2

Trine 2 is even more captivating than the first installment of the series. One look at the screenshots for this game and you’ll be dying to jump in and experience it for yourself. Make your way through the breathtaking fairy tale land by solving physics-based puzzles. There’s even an online co-op so you can team up with a friend.

Price: $14.99

Asphalt 6

I asked around for the best racing game on the Mac and everyone said the same thing: Asphalt 6. 42 vehicles, expansive level design, gorgeous graphics and blood pumping gameplay. What’s not to love?

Price: $6.99 – AppStorm Review

Civilization V

Civilization is a legendary series of games that features incredibly addictive strategic gameplay. In it, you attempt to become the ruler of the world as you guide your civilization from the dawn of time through a utopian future. It’s simply too expansive to explain here, check out the site for more details.

Price: $39.99

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

You’re probably familiar with this game already, it’s regarded by some as one of the best Star Wars games ever made. The Jedi are at war with the Sith, you choose your path and either become a force for good or succumb to the dark side.

Price: $19.99

Braid

Featured by Apple as one of the best games of 2011, Braid is a crazy platformer that’s a lot like Super Mario Bros. meets Back to The Future. It’s a fascinating concept that has you manipulating time to collect items and advance further into the levels. If you want old school gameplay with a fresh addictive twist, this is the game for you.

Price: $7.99 – AppStorm Review

Music

djay

If you’re looking into DJing on your Mac, look no further than djay. It’s a fantastic app that’s incredibly easy to use and features seamless iTunes integration, automatic tempo matching, key lock, and even iCloud integration.

Price: $19.99

TuneUp

iTunes has been around for a long time and if you’ve been using it consistently for the last decade then you no doubt have accumulated plenty of clutter, I know I have. TuneUp is an must have utility that I think should be built into iTunes. Basically, it takes a look at your library, then jumps in and fixes problems such as missing album art, mislabeled tracks and duplicates.

Price: $39.99 – AppStorm Review

Snowtape

Snowtape is an Internet radio application that goes way beyond listening to thousands of stations across the country. You can actually record what you hear and export it to iTunes or stream it to your Apple TV.

Price: $33.00 – AppStorm Review

Capo

When you’re trying to master a guitar solo, it can be extremely beneficial to slow down a track and pick out individual notes, Capo does exactly that. It also features chord detection, pitch adjustment, looping and tab support.

Price: $49.99 – AppStorm Review

Radium

Radium is a delightfully simple Internet radio player. There’s no big clunky interface with tons of features that you won’t use, just a basic menu bar item that lets you search for and play your favorite stations. Notable features include custom keyboard shortcuts, AirPlay and social media integration.

Price: $24.99 – AppStorm Review

Bowtie

Bowtie is the best desktop iTunes controller around. It’s a gorgeous little app that’s completely theme-able and integrates with both Spotify and Last.fm.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Design & Graphics

Pixelmator

Pixelmator is the single best app to ever stand up as a worthy affordable alternative to Photoshop. Obviously, nothing can touch Photoshop’s seemingly infinite feature set, but Pixelmator is still a fantastic image editor that truly makes an effort to stand apart from the competition both visually and functionally. From beautiful filters to all the core tools you’re familiar with, this app and it’s amazingly small price tag ($29.99) is good enough to make anyone question their loyalty to Adobe.

Price: $29.99 – AppStorm Review

xScope

xScope is an excellent tool for web and UI designers to analyze the items on their screen. Recently released in its third iteration, xScope has a whole host of great features: grab the dimensions of anything on your screen, use a flexible set of on-screen rulers, magnify anything with the loupe, drag out screen guides, preview screen sizes for various devices, send the contents of a window to your iOS device and more.

Price: $29.99 – AppStorm Review

iDraw

If Pixelmator is the best affordable alternative to Photoshop, iDraw is the best affordable alternative to Illustrator. It’s all here: boolean operations, an easy to use pen tool, great brushes and pencils for drawing, layers; everything you need to create great vector artwork.

Price: $24.99 – AppStorm Review

LittleSnapper

LittleSnapper is a screenshot app for power users. With it you can not only capture anything on your screen, you can also grab the full contents of web pages. Even better, all of your screenshots are automatically imported into an iPhoto-like gallery where you can edit, tag, name and sort them to your heart’s content. If you ask me which tools I can’t do my job without, this one is near the top of the list.

Price: $39.99 – AppStorm Review

Analog

Realmac is one of the best developers in the Mac app game today and this list contains several of their apps. I simply couldn’t pass up Analog, which is one of the best apps that I’ve used for achieving Instagram-like retro photo effects on the Mac. Analog has 24 built-in filters and over a dozen stylish borders.

Price: $6.99 – AppStorm Review

Carousel

If you’re an avid Instagram user, you’ll no doubt find yourself wishing that you could view and interact with your photo feed on your Apple desktop or laptop. Carousel is the best way I’ve seen to achieve this goal. The interface is very flexible and only takes up as much room as you want it to, but still very attractive. Carousel doesn’t just look pretty, it allows you to search, save, like and comment photos right from your Mac.

Price: $1.99 – AppStorm Review

Paparazzi

If you never need to take websites screenshots, you’ll find this app to be useless. However, if you find yourself taking lots and lots of website screenshots as I do, this is a tool that you simply can’t live without. With it you can easily set up a list of URLs and completely automate the screenshot process for full length web pages.

Price: Free

Screeny

There are a lot of screenshot and screencast utilities on the Mac. Some are free, others cost as much as $100. Screeny is the app that has won us over though as it’s the perfect balance between ease of use, powerful features and an attractive interface. Screeny features CloudApp integration as well so sharing is super easy.

Price: $14.99 – AppStorm Review

Skitch

If paying for a screenshot app seems silly to you but you would still like a little more functionality than OS X offers, check out Skitch. It’s free and allows you to both markup and share screenshots with ease. It’s owned by Evernote now so you can bet that we’ll see some greg improvements soon.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

SketchBook Pro

If you love to sketch, the you should have this app both on your Mac and iPad. The range of tools, brushes and pencils here is outstanding and the ease with which you can create sketches that look hand-drawn is very impressive.

Price: $59.99

Social Media

Twitter

The official Twitter for Mac client carries on and improves the legacy of Tweetie from Atebits. It’s not only a stellar Twitter client with tons of great features, it’s such an amazing example of UI design that it has gone on to define a new standard pattern for Mac apps that’s being picked up in every category on the App Store.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

MenuTab Pro for Facebook

It’s long been accepted that there simply isn’t a good Facebook client on the Mac, MenuTab Pro proves this statement wrong. Menu bar social apps are a dime a dozen, but this one goes well beyond the features and charm of the competition and is by far the best way to view and interact with every aspect of Facebook right from your Mac’s menu bar.

Price: $1.99

Twitterrific

In the past several years, countless Twitter clients have risen and fallen while one remained constant: Twitterrific. It’s seen more growth and consistent updates than any other Twitter client that I can name, has a beautiful design and is one of the few apps in this category that you can bet is in it for the long haul.

Price: $4.99 (limited time offer) – AppStorm Review

Courier

Courier is a simple and beautiful way to upload images and movies to all of your favorite online services: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. I think it’s overpriced for such a simple app, but it really is a joy to use.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Flickery

Imagine if someone took Flickr and wrapped it in iPhoto, that’s what Flickery is. View, share, download, browse, comment and manage photos on Flickr all from the comfort of a familiar desktop application interface.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Internet & Sharing

Dropbox

Dropbox is one of the best things that’s ever happened to the Mac since drag and drop. It’s so good that Steve Jobs himself made a personal plea to the founder of Dropbox for allowing Apple to buy them out and integrate it as a part of OS X. The idea is simple: You have a folder on your Mac that looks and works just like all your others, except that its contents is automatically synced to everywhere that you have Dropbox installed. You can access your files from other Macs, Windows machines, iOS devices, and the web. It’s one of those Mac apps that “just works” and makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.

Price: Free

CloudApp

CloudApp allows you to instantly share pretty much anything with pretty much anyone. Simply drag something to your menu bar and it will be uploaded while a sharing link is placed in your clipboard. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Transmit

Transmit is hands down my favorite FTP client. Never mind the fact that it has a legacy dating back well over a decade, even if you’ve not been a faithful user for years you’ll be hooked after a few minutes with Transmit four. The interface is extremely slick and the app is super fast. It’s easy enough that the casual user can pick it up quickly and powerful enough that the pros have all the features that they need.

Price: $34.00 – AppStorm Review

Espresso

Espresso is my personal IDE of choice. It’s simply a fantastic coding environment and is quite extendable. The live, auto-updating preview is something that you get so used to that you can’t bare to use anything without it.

Price: $79.00 – AppStorm Review

Coda

If for some reason you’re not an Espresso fan, check out Coda. It’s a very similar app from the developers behind Transmit. Code is starting to age a bit but it’s still a great app and a brand new version is right around the corner.

Price: $99.99 – AppStorm Review

Codekit

In the past couple of years, coding with the aid of preprocessors has become a huge trend. Haml and Jade for HTML; LESS, Sass, and Stylus for CSS; and CoffeScript for JavaScript are all examples of preprocessors that make life easier on coders.

The problem with all this fancy technology is that the modified languages need to be compiled into the plain ones that the server understands: vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Codekit is one of the best ways to handle this task without the hassle of the Terminal. Just point it at a folder and your files will automatically be compiled as they’re changed.

Price: Free during beta – AppStorm Review

RapidWeaver

iWeb brought us the promise of putting the joy of building websites into the hands of everyone. Unfortunately, it really didn’t deliver and was put to death after a few years. RapidWeaver actually delivers on that promise.

It’s always interesting to see a developer that pulls off the “Apple way” better than Apple does and that’s clearly the case here. RapidWeaver is a pleasure to use and makes building websites an accessible venture for just about everyone, whether you’re into coding or don’t want to write a single line of HTML.

Price: $79.99 – AppStorm Review

Flux

I think WYSIWYGs are fine for the general public, but as far as I’m concerned, developers should code by hand. At least that’s what I thought until I used Flux.

Flux is the first WYSIWYG that I’ve seen made for coders that’s not a train wreck. The entire process and workflow is built around how real developers create websites. You have complete freedom to build from scratch and customize your code at will. The WYSIWYG tools are there when you want them and gone when you don’t. Flux is by far the most under appreciated project in the world of web development.

Price: £69.99 – AppStorm Review

Cyberduck

Cyberduck has been to go-to free FTP client for Mac users for ages. Though the App Store version now sells at a premium, you can still get the free version from the Cyberduck website (it’s the same, just with an occasional plea for money).

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Transmission

I’m sure there are some legitimate uses for torrent apps, I just can’t think of any. If you are the type of user who can (or doesn’t care about legitimacy), Transmission is the best free Mac torrent client. No ads, no messy UI, just drag in a torrent, download it and get back to what you were doing.

Price: Free

Forklift

Forklift is not only a stellar FTP client, it actually serves as a pretty awesome file manager as well if you’re looking for an alternative to Finder. Be sure to check it out if Terminal isn’t your thing.

Price: $29.95 – AppStorm Review

RSS & News

Reeder

Reeder for Mac has been a real game changer in the RSS category. The attractively minimal three column interface looks fantastic on a wide screen and truly makes browsing through your feeds an enjoyable experience. It has a great feature set as well: Readability integration, gestures, shortcuts, and plenty of support for various services like Instapaper.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Caffeinated

Caffeinated has been in the works since before Reeder made its debut and has finally exited its private beta to make a debut on the Mac App Store. It’s a really slick app that feels extremely fast and has a lot of powerful features. If you’re willing to put down Reeder for long enough to try something else, this is the app that you’ll want to check out.

Price: $8.99 – AppStorm Review

Pulp

Pulp is one of the most popular news readers on the Mac that truly breaks out of the UI mold and goes its own way. It features a newspaper-like interface that allows for complete user control over where feeds are placed. If you’ve never taken a look at Pulp, you should.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Mixtab

The iPad has tons of news apps that take what you like and automatically present other content along the same vein. With hardly any setup, you have several feeds custom-tailored to your specific tastes. I’m amazed that more developers aren’t exploring this territory on the Mac. For now, Mixtab is one of the only options out there if you’re looking for this type of experience. There’s a lot about this app that I’m not crazy about but they get serious kudos points for being the only one even trying to nail this market.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Email

Sparrow

As I mentioned before, Tweetie/Twitter changed the way we think about Mac app interfaces. Sparrow is a prime example of how the metaphor proved appropriate for multiple genres. This app started life as a tiny, humble Gmail reader and has grown to a truly powerful, impressive and of course visually awesome email client.

Price: $9.99 – AppStorm Review

Postbox

While Sparrow seeks to simplify and beautify your email experience, Postbox takes the opposite route and pushes it to new heights of functionality. The amazingly well formatted conversations view is enough to catch my attention, but impressive search functionality, Dropbox integration and social media support pushes it to the top of my list for Mail.app alternatives for power users.

Price: $29.95 – AppStorm Review

Browsers You’ve Never Tried

I know you’ve already seen Safari, Chrome, Firefox and all of the other standard stuff so I won’t bore you by listing those. Here are a few that you’ve probably never tried but should.

Raven

Raven is the newest player in the Mac browser market and I’ve been raving about it since day one. It really rethinks the entire browsing experience from an app-based standpoint. The result is something truly enjoyable.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Fake

Imagine if Automator merged with Safari, that pretty much sums up Fake. Web developers, programmers and other professional nerds will love being able to automate web-based tasks.

Price: $29.95 – AppStorm Review

Sleipnir

I recently had the pleasure of writing up a full review of Sleipnir, an innovative browser that you simply have to try. The tab group functionality is better than anything I’ve seen on any other browser, period.

Price: Free – AppStorm Review

Home & Business

Billings

If you want professional level time tracking and invoicing on the Mac, Billings is your answer. It’s beautiful and has more features than you even know that you need. Once you’ve used Billings, it’s hard to look back. Check out the Pro version for some awesome cross-platform goodness.

Price: $39.99 – AppStorm Review

Money

I’m constantly being asked which Mac app is the best for personal money management. I always recommend the same thing: Jumsoft’s Money. It’s simple, but in a good way. You don’t want something that you need a manual to use, you want simple transaction and investment tracking with beautiful reporting and that’s what Money provides.

Price: $38.99 – AppStorm Review

Chronicle

It’s time to get organized. Use Billings to track your time, Money to track your Money and Chronicle to track your bills. Chronicle will make sure you never miss a payment again and even help you get out from under that pile of debt. Awesome features here include Dropbox sync, trends, reporting and more.

Price: $14.99 – AppStorm Review

Delicious Library 2

Delicious Library is sort of like iPhoto for your physical goods. It’s an inventory management system specifically built to help you keep track of the things in your home. Entering products in is as easy as scanning a barcode. Keep track of everything you own: books, movies, gadgets, even clothing!

Price: $34.99 – AppStorm Review

Which Apps Are Your Favorite?

There you have it, 100 amazing apps to fill up your hard drive and perform every imaginable task. Leave a comment below and let us know which of the above apps make your list of favorites. Also be sure to point out any that we missed!