Did you just pick up a shiny new 13-inch MacBook Pro? Or even a 16-inch MacBook Pro, maybe a MacBook Air, perhaps an iMac? No matter your Mac of choice, there are some Mac apps out there that are just so good that they should be one of the first apps that you download and install on your new machine right away! Here are our favorites.
- Quit All Non Essential Mac Apps List
- Essential Apps For Mac Os
- Mac Essential Apps
- Quit All Non Essential Mac Apps 2017
- Mac Quit Application
Dropbox
Quit apps on Mac. It’s easy to quit an app or to make sure that apps don’t reopen when you restart your Mac. Tip: You can have several apps open at once — you don’t have to quit apps when you’ve finished working in them. While in the app, choose App Name Quit App in the menu bar. For example, choose Mail Quit Mail. Jul 04, 2020 The best Mac apps for 2020 By Mark Coppock July 4, 2020 If you’ve heard the phrase, “Once you go Mac, you never go back,” you know it holds true.
Dropbox is a cloud storage service that lets you easily backup important documents, files, photos, video, and other things. While your stuff is stored in Dropbox, you can access it across any other device, as long as you're logged in to the same account. Any changes to your files get saved automatically, though you can also check older versions on the web interface if needed. Everything you upload into Dropbox is encrypted, and there are also collaborative features that make it easy to share files with others. One thing I absolutely love about Dropbox is how it integrates with pretty much any other app I need, so my stuff is accessible from anywhere and in anything.
A free account gives you 2GB for free (and the chance to get more space with referrals), but they have plans that start at around $11.99 for 2TB.
Dropbox
Online backup for all of your files, with integrations in almost every app.
Source: iMore
I'm on Twitter pretty much all day, every day. My app of choice is Tweetbot from Tapbots. The reason I use Tweetbot over every other Twitter app is because I love the interface, as it's easy to use, and it provides plenty of powerful features. You can quickly search for topics that interest you, filter and mute hashtags and people that are annoying you temporarily (or permanently, it's up to you), create lists, and there is support for a multi-column view. I've been using Tweetbot on my iOS and Mac devices for years — there's no other app that I would rather use. Plus, you don't see promoted ad tweets.
Tweetbot
Tweetbot has plenty of powerful features that make it the best Twitter app on Mac.
Source: iMore
While I use Safari as my default browser on my Mac, it's always good to have an alternative, especially since some things don't always work properly in Safari. For my alternative, I use Google Chrome. It syncs with your Google account, has numerous plugins and extensions to enhance the browser experience, and it works better with certain Google apps than Safari, like Meet.
Google Chrome
Chrome is a great alternative browser that syncs with your Google account and has a ton of plugins and extensions.
Source: iMore
I have a lot going on daily, so my schedule gets really hectic at times. That's why I need a calendar, and I continue to use Fantastical on my Mac. Fantastical has a beautiful interface that is easy to use, and you have several different views on how to look at your calendar. It integrates with your iCloud, Google, Exchange, or even local calendar, so any changes are saved and sync automatically. The agenda list view is a great way to see what's coming up in your schedule, and it's easy to create events with the natural language input support. Fantastical also integrates with Reminders, so you have your calendar and tasks in one place.
Fantastical
Fantastical provides a beautiful interface for your schedule, and natural language input makes it easy to schedule events and reminders.
Source: iMore
One of the most important things you can do to protect yourself online is to have secure passwords. For this, you're going to want a good password manager, which can track your passwords and other sensitive data, while also helping you generate randomized passwords to use. With 1Password, you can create different vaults for personal and work accounts (or whatever else you need), sync your data across multiple devices (it's available on everything), and even store things like bank info, credit card numbers, and other things that need extra security. 1Password encrypts everything so that it's safe, and you can't even get in without a master password. I've been using 1Password for years, and it's one app that I cannot live without.
Quit All Non Essential Mac Apps List
1Password
Generate safe and secure randomized passwords, track all of your passwords and other sensitive data, and sync everything on all of your devices.
Source: iMore
Need to do a bit of hard drive cleanup? DaisyDisk is a must have. This app lets you easily see what is cluttering up your hard drive thanks to bright and colorful blocks, so you can see what's taking up the most space. You can delete stuff directly from DaisyDisk to free up space, and it's all done in an intuitive interface that's a joy to use. Decluttering has never been prettier.
DaisyDisk
DaisyDisk lets you easily visualize what's on your hard drive, and you can delete useless files directly through DaisyDisk's intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
Source: iMore
Once you start installing a lot of apps, you may find your Menubar cluttered with a bunch of icons. Bartender is an app that helps you tidy up that Menubar by tucking away unwanted icons into a kind of sub-Menubar. With Bartender, you can choose to rearrange your icons into an order that makes more sense to you, as well as choosing what is shown in the main Menubar, and what to hide in a secondary Menubar. Or, you can hide some items completely, because they're unnecessary — it's up to you.
Bartender
Tidy up your Menubar by rearranging and hiding app's Menubar icons as you see fit.
Source: iMore
The Spotlight Search in macOS is alright, but you can do so much more with Alfred. Alfred is essentially Spotlight on steroids. You can do your basic search functionality, but you can also create workflows to make your life easier, access your clipboard history at anytime, view contact info, have app integrations, text expansion, search the web, and more.
Essential Apps For Mac Os
Alfred 4
Boost your productivity like never before with Alfred and it's many magical wonders with the keyboard.
Source: Pixelmator Team
Whether you're an amateur or professional, you may end up having to do some photo editing at some point. Pixelmator Pro is one of our favorite apps to get the job done. It's a powerful photo editor that will have all of the tools you need, but it's intuitive and easy to use, unlike Photoshop, which some may find intimidating. With Pixelmator Pro, you have many professional and non-destructive editing tools, allowing you to bring the best out of your photographs. And the image editing is enhanced by Pixelmator's machine learning, so you get the absolute best looking photos with ease. Plus, the price is reasonable and affordable.
Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro brings professional-grade tools in a simple and easy-to-use interface for everyone.
Source: Bare Bones Software, Inc.
If you're looking for a professional text, code, and markup editor, then you should download BBEdit. It's used often by web application developers, writers, and software developers who need powerful tools for editing, searching, and manipulation of text, code, and HTML/XML markup. Some features of BBEdit include grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files, project definition tools, function navigation and syntax coloring for a wide variety of source code languages, code folding, and more.
Unsure if BBEdit is what you're looking for? The app has a 30-day trial for you to put the app through its paces, and then you can decide whether or not to purchase the full package, which has even more advanced features. But you can continue to use the free version of BBEdit too.
BBEdit
BBEdit is one of the best go-to apps out there for text, code, and markup editing.
What are your favorite apps?
These are just a few of our favorite must-have apps for a new Mac. Do you have any recommendations of your own? Let us know in the comments!
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power balanceNew EU regulations target App Store, empowering developers
The EU has introduced new regulations and measures to help protect developers and publishers who deal with storefronts like the App Store.
The Task Manager is an advanced tool that comes with Windows 10, and it provides a number of tabs that allow you to monitor the applications, processes and services running on your computer. However, you'll likely find yourself using the Processes tab more than anything else, because it lets you quickly see how system resources are utilized, which can be very helpful when trying to troubleshoot applications or find out why your computer is suddenly slow.
In this Windows 10 guide, we'll walk you through the steps to use Task Manager to identify and stop processes that use excessive system resources, to keep your computer at top speeds.
How to use Task Manager to manage high-resource processes
Opening Task Manager
If you want to use Task Manager to view and stop processes with high-resource usage, you first need to know how to open the tool. Here are a few ways to open Task Manager:
- Right-click the Taskbar and click on Task Manager.
- Open Start, do a search for Task Manager and click the result.
- Use the Ctrl + Shift + Esc keyboard shortcut.
- Use the Ctrl + Alt + Del keyboard shortcut and click on Task Manager.
- Use the Windows key + X keyboard shortcut to open the power-user menu and click on Task Manager.
If this is your first time opening Task Manager, the tool will probably open in compact mode, which only lists running applications. Click the More details button to access Task Manager in advanced mode.
Task Manager compact mode (left), Task Manager advanced mode (right)
Understanding the Processes tab
When you're in advanced mode, you'll see a number of tabs, including 'Performance', 'App history', 'Startup', 'Users', 'Details', 'Services', and the one we're interested in, the 'Processes' tab. Typically, the Processes tab is the first place you want to go to detemine which process is draining your computer's resources. This tab lists all the running processes in a single view grouped by 'Apps', 'Background processes' and 'Windows Processes'. On Windows 10, you can also find multiple instances or other processes under the same process, which helps you to better understand how they're organized and how they use system resources.
You can always expand a group to see all the processes by clicking the chevron-right icon or by right-clicking the item and selecting Expand. Usually, you'll see groups for Windows processes when opening multiple tabs on your web browser or multiple File Explorer windows, for example.
Identifying processes with high-resource usage
If an application is not responding, a website is taking a long time to load, or your system fan starts getting loud, you can quickly use Task Manager to troubleshoot the problem. In the Processes tab, the first thing you want to look at is the percentage of the total resource use for the processor, memory, hard drive and network. You can click the column names to sort the list and bring to the top the ones using the most resources. If you see any of these resources running high (90 percent or higher), you might have found the problem.
Task Manager also uses colors to highlight processes that use the most resources. You'll notice that as a process starts to consume more resources, the color begins to change from a light- to a dark-shade of orange, making it easier to tell which one is causing the problem.
Typically, when you're not actively using applications and your computer isn't working on anything specific, such as maintenance, your total CPU usage should be less than 30 percent. Applications that are running, even if you're not using them, and processes use part of your computer's memory, and that usage will increase as you use or launch more applications. Memory usually won't be an issue unless you run out of it, in which case your computer will start using virtual memory, and that can cause your PC to slow down. Generally speaking, depending on your system configuration, your total memory usage should be below 60 percent. If you're not copying files or rendering videos, disk usage should be below 5 percent.
Mac Essential Apps
Network connectivity is almost never the reason your system is slow, but there could be a problem in the network causing web content to take a long time to load. If you're having problems downloading files, and you see 'Network' stuck at 0 percent, you may have an idea of what's going on.
Stopping processes with high-resource usage
After you identify the problem, right-click the process, and select End task to terminate it. Alternatively, you can simply select the item and click the End task button in the bottom-right corner.
Quit All Non Essential Mac Apps 2017
While stopping a process using the Task Manager will most likely stabilize your computer, ending a process can completely close an application or crash your computer, and you could lose any unsaved data. It's always recommended to save your data before killing a process, if possible.
If you're not sure about how the process you're trying to terminate affects your PC, you can right-click it, and select the Search online option. This action opens your web browser and displays a search result with more information about the process. Windows 10 is also smart enough to let you know if you're about to end an essential system process that can crash your computer.
Wrapping things up
Although there are many other ways to troubleshoot system performance, Task Manager gives you an easy way to find out at a glance why your computer is slow or if an app is not responding, and then quickly act on it. You can end an application that isn't responding using Task Manager in compact mode, but the advanced view gives you more information about processes that are acting up in Windows 10.
More Windows 10 resources
For more help articles, coverage, and answers to common Windows 10 questions, visit the following resources:
Tick TockMac Quit Application
Outlook nets a bunch of time-saving features across all platforms
Microsoft announced a whole bunch of new features headed to Outlook across all platforms today. The one thing they all have in common? Helping you save time and (hopefully) create a better work-life balance.