Daily-driver apps

A developer setup guide that stops at the terminal misses half the day. You'll spend as many hours in a browser, a notes app, a calendar, and Slack as in an editor, and the small utilities — a clipboard manager, a launcher, a window manager — are what make macOS feel finished. This chapter is the opinionated app list. Every item is available as a Homebrew cask (or App Store via mas) so the whole list installs from the Brewfile; the "Install" column gives the cask name.

The bias throughout: free and open source first, paid where it's genuinely better, and nothing that needs a subscription to do a job a one-time purchase did in 2019. Prices are current as of September 2026 and will drift.

Browsers#

Your browser is the app you use most. Have two: a primary for daily life and a secondary for testing, isolated logins, and "the site that only works in Chrome."

Recommendation for a student/engineer: Safari as the daily driver (battery, integration) plus Firefox or Chrome for development with DevTools and extensions. Set the default in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Default web browser.

Extensions worth having regardless of browser: a content blocker (uBlock Origin on Firefox; AdGuard or Wipr 2 on Safari; uBlock Origin Lite on Chrome), your password manager's extension, and Refined GitHub. Safari extensions are installed from the App Store (many are free).

Browser profiles: Chrome and Firefox both support multiple profiles — one for university/work accounts, one personal — which is cleaner than juggling logins. Safari has profiles since macOS 14 (Safari → Settings → Profiles).

Password manager#

Non-negotiable. See chapter 16 for the reasoning; here's the choice:

Install: bitwarden, 1password + 1password-cli, keepassxc. Whatever you pick, turn off Safari/Chrome's own password saving so you don't end up with three overlapping vaults.

Launcher#

Spotlight in macOS 26 is good — app launching, calculator, clipboard history (8 hours), file search, Shortcuts actions, Siri/AI answers, and ⌘1–⌘4 filtered views (see chapter 4). Try living with it for a week before installing a replacement.

If you want more:

Bind the launcher to ⌘Space and move Spotlight to ⌥Space (or vice versa) in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Spotlight. Install: raycast, alfred, launchbar.

Clipboard manager#

The single highest-value utility most people don't know they need. Copy several things, paste any of them later, with search.

• Spotlight's built-in history (macOS 26): ⌘Space then ⌘4. Eight hours only, no pinning. Fine to start.
• Raycast Clipboard History — if you already run Raycast, it's there (⌥⌘C by default, configurable), searchable, with images and pinning.
• Maccy (free, open source) — a menu bar clipboard history with fuzzy search. The lightweight standalone pick. maccy
• Paste ($15 yr) — the pretty one, with iCloud sync to iPhone and pinboards. Subscription.
• CopyQ (free) — cross-platform, scriptable, uglier. For people who also use Linux.

Whatever you use, exclude your password manager from history (all of the above support ignoring apps — set it).

Window management#

Covered in depth in chapter 6. Summary for the app list: macOS 26 tiling (drag to edge, fn+ctrl shortcuts) handles the basics; Rectangle (free) for keyboard-driven halves/thirds; AeroSpace (free) for i3-style tiling; Raycast has window commands built in. Install: rectangle, aerospace.

Notes and knowledge#

The genre where opinions run hottest. Pick by where your notes need to be rather than features.

Recommendation: Obsidian for coursework and long-term knowledge, Apple Notes for everything ephemeral, Zotero the moment you have to cite anything. Install: obsidian, notion, bear (App Store), logseq, anytype, zotero.

Tasks, calendar, and time#

• Reminders + Calendar (built-in) are more than enough for most students. Reminders has smart lists, tags, subtasks, and natural language ("Submit lab Friday 5pm"). Calendar supports Google/Outlook/CalDAV accounts and shows in the menu bar via Itsycal (free) or Dato.
• Things 3 ($50 one-time for Mac, separate iPhone/iPad) — the most pleasant task manager on the platform; no subscription. Todoist (free / $4 mo) for cross-platform and natural-language entry. OmniFocus if you're deep into GTD.
• Fantastical ($57 yr) is the calendar power tool (natural-language entry, multiple calendar sets, Zoom integration); the free tier is fine as a menu bar calendar. BusyCal ($50 one-time) is the no-subscription alternative.
• Toggl Track (free) or Timing ($) if you bill hours or want to know where the day went.
• Itsycal (itsycal, free) — a tiny menu bar calendar. Nearly everyone should install this.

Email#

• Apple Mail — free, private, handles Gmail/Exchange/IMAP, Hide My Email, mail categorization since macOS 15. Rules and smart mailboxes are underused. The right default for most people.
• Thunderbird — free, open source, cross-platform, extension ecosystem, good for multiple accounts and heavy filtering.
• Mimestream ($50 yr) — native Gmail client that speaks the Gmail API (labels, categories, snooze) properly. If you live in Gmail and dislike the web UI, this is the one.
• Spark, Superhuman ($30 mo) — AI-assisted triage; Superhuman is very fast and very expensive.
• Proton Mail / Fastmail apps if that's your provider.

Set your default mail client in Mail → Settings → General (yes, the setting lives inside Mail.app even for choosing another app).

Communication#

Almost all of these are Electron apps that want to run at login and eat 400 MB each. Install the ones you actually need and set them to not open at login; open them when you sit down to work.

slack, discord, zoom, microsoft-teams, signal, telegram, whatsapp. Messages and FaceTime are built in and, in 2026, do RCS with Android users. For Slack and Discord specifically, the browser version is usually fine and saves memory.

Files, cloud, and sync#

• iCloud Drive — already there; Desktop & Documents sync is convenient and dangerous (see chapter 2). Good for documents; keep code out of it (Git repos + iCloud eviction = corruption risk).
• Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive — all use the File Provider API now, so they behave like iCloud (files on demand, no kernel extension). Install the one your school/work uses. Storage tiers are cheaper via a Google One / Microsoft 365 student plan.
• Syncthing (free, open source, syncthing) — peer-to-peer folder sync without a cloud. Excellent for syncing an Obsidian vault or a projects folder between a laptop and a desktop.
• Maestral (free, maestral) — open-source Dropbox client that's lighter than the official one.
• Transmit ($45) or Cyberduck (free) for SFTP/S3 with a GUI; Mountain Duck to mount remote storage as a disk. For most engineers, rsync/scp/rclone in the terminal is enough.

Finder quality-of-life (see chapter 4 for settings): QuickLook plugins — qlmarkdown, syntax-highlight, quicklook-json, qlvideo let space-bar preview handle Markdown, source code, JSON, and more video formats. Since macOS 15 these need explicit enabling in System Settings → Login Items & Extensions → Quick Look.

PDFs and documents#

• Preview — built-in, does annotation, form filling, signatures, page reorder, merge (drag thumbnails between windows), and image conversion. Most people never need more.
• Skim (free, skim) — PDF reader for academics: notes, highlights with export, SyncTeX for LaTeX, presentation mode.
• PDF Expert ($80 yr or one-time tier) — if you edit PDFs heavily.
• Zotero handles paper PDFs (see above).
• Pages / Numbers / Keynote (free, App Store) — perfectly good, and Keynote is the best presentation app on any platform.
• Microsoft 365 — free for most students through their university; install via microsoft-office or the Mac App Store. Word compatibility matters when a professor requires .docx.
• LibreOffice (free, libreoffice) — for when you need an office suite with no account.
• Typora ($15) / MacDown (free) / iA Writer ($50) — Markdown editors when you want to write prose rather than code. Or just VS Code with a Markdown preview.
• LaTeX: mactex-no-gui (cask, ~2 GB) plus TeXShop or VS Code with LaTeX Workshop; or Overleaf in the browser for collaborative writing. Typst (typst) is the modern alternative that compiles instantly and has a much saner syntax; most students writing solo papers should try it first.

Media#

• IINA (free, open source, iina) — the video player. Plays everything (mpv underneath), native macOS UI, picture-in-picture, Touch Bar/Trackpad gestures. Uninstall VLC.
• Music / TV — built-in; Apple Music student plan is $6 mo with Apple TV+ included.
• Spotify (spotify) — set it not to open at login; it's 500 MB of Electron.
• Photos — built-in and good; iCloud Photos is the sync you already pay for.
• Pixelmator Pro (now Apple's, free since 2025) / Affinity (now free from Canva since 2025 — Photo, Designer, Publisher in one app) — the serious image editing choices; both one-time or free, no Adobe subscription.
• Shottr (free, shottr) — screenshot tool with pixel measurement, OCR, scrolling capture, annotations. The built-in ⌘⇧5 is fine; Shottr is better. CleanShot X ($29) is the polished paid option.
• Kap (free, kap) / Screen Studio ($89) — screen recording as GIF/MP4; Screen Studio adds the auto-zoom effects you see in every product demo.
• HandBrake (handbrake), ffmpeg (brew install ffmpeg) — transcoding.
• Audacity (audacity) / Ocenaudio — audio editing.
• OBS (obs) — streaming and recording.
• ImageOptim (free, imageoptim) — drag-and-drop lossless image compression before committing assets to a repo.

Menu bar and system utilities#

Reading and reference#

• Dash ($30) — offline API documentation for 200+ languages/frameworks with instant search; integrates with Raycast/Alfred and every editor. Paid, one-time, worth it for anyone who reads docs daily. dash
• DevDocs (free, web / devdocs desktop wrapper) — the free equivalent; works offline as a PWA.
• NetNewsWire (free, open source, netnewswire) — RSS reader, iCloud sync. RSS is still the best way to follow release notes and blogs. Reeder ($) is the pretty one.
• Kindle, Apple Books — built-in / App Store.
• Anki (free, anki) — spaced repetition. See chapter 20.

Terminal-adjacent GUI tools#

Covered in their own chapters, but for completeness in the app list: Ghostty or iTerm2 (chapter 9); VS Code, Cursor, Zed, JetBrains Toolbox (chapter 12); OrbStack (chapter 13); TablePlus, Postico, DBeaver (chapter 15); Fork, Tower, GitHub Desktop, Sublime Merge for Git GUIs (chapter 10); Proxyman or Charles for HTTP debugging; Bruno/Postman/Insomnia for API clients (chapter 14); Kaleidoscope ($) or Meld (free) for visual diffs.

Games and fun (yes, really)#

Mac gaming in 2026 is real: Steam (steam), CrossOver ($74 yr; runs Windows games via Wine + Apple's Game Porting Toolkit), Whisky (free, whisky — the free Wine/GPTK wrapper), and Apple's own Games app (macOS 26) for Arcade and Store titles. Heroic for Epic/GOG. OpenEmu for retro. Set Steam to not launch at login.

What to skip#

• Antivirus — see chapter 16. XProtect + Gatekeeper + common sense; Malwarebytes free for an occasional scan if paranoid.
• CleanMyMac, MacKeeper, "memory cleaners", "battery optimizers" — see chapter 18.
• Adobe Creative Cloud unless a course requires it; Affinity and Pixelmator are free now.
• Java runtimes from java.com — install via mise or brew install openjdk (chapter 11).
• Flash, Silverlight, Java browser plugins — if a university system requires one, complain to IT; it's 2026.
• Anything that asks to install a kernel extension on Apple silicon — legitimate software uses system extensions now; a kext is a red flag or abandonware.

The Tier 1 list#

If you install nothing else from this chapter: a password manager, Raycast or Alfred, a clipboard manager (or Raycast's), Rectangle or AeroSpace, Obsidian or Apple Notes, Itsycal, IINA, Shottr, Ice, Stats, AppCleaner, The Unarchiver, Karabiner-Elements (if remapping), and Zotero (if writing). All are free. Everything is in Appendix B with the optional items commented out.