Top 3 Essential Apps For Your New Mac

Ever since Apple incorporated packaged applications into the Mac ecosystem, there have been a variety of innovative, useful, and highly-rated apps that help users to maximize their experience on Mac OS X. Sometimes an app is designed with the intent to bring a beloved smartphone or tablet function to a full-sized computer while other apps have something completely new and novel to offer. However, due to the sheer number of apps that are available, sometimes it can be difficult to find the truly great apps. Here are the best and newest Mac apps that are currently available.

Alfred Launcher

Similar to download a third-party launcher for an Android device, Alfred is an app launcher designed for use on Mac computers. In actuality, Alfred is more than just an app launcher. Alfred lets you search the internet; quickly find, move, or copy files and folders on your computer; browse emails and contacts; and essentially gives you easy access to just about anything and everything that’s stored in your computer. Just setup the key command that will open Alfred, then begin typing your search term and let Alfred suggest or predict what you’re looking for, which you can choose using shortcut key commands.

The great thing about Alfred is that it learns from you the more you use it. Over time, Alfred will pick up on your search habits and patterns, becoming more and more accurate each time you search for something. While there’s an iOS app available that serves as a remote control for Alfred on your Mac computer, the version of Alfred in the Mac App Store hasn’t yet been updated to the new version that’s compatible with the iOS remote app, which means that you’ll have to download Alfred directly from the developer’s website for the time being.

1Password Personal Password Manager

We’ve all gotten frustrated trying to remember our passwords and all the variations of those passwords that we use to sign into our email, social media, and all other personal web accounts. Although it might seem like setting up and using a password manager would be equally as tedious, the good thing is that you only have to input the information once and let the app remember your login information from now on.

Where 1Password is truly innovative is that it keeps track of each website or service’s unique criteria, allowing you to create unique passwords that meet their individual security requirements while allowing you to login to each of those sites and services using your 1Password login. It’s more than for just passwords, too; you can save banking and credit card information, passports, secure personal data, and any other sensitive info that you want or need to protect. It can even help you to keep track of security questions and answers.

Additionally, 1Password has powerful security built into it that make it virtually unhackable and tamper proof, even giving you a way to lock your computer if it’s ever lost or stolen. 1Password might be a little pricey, but it offers some truly innovative, powerful, and secure features to help make logging on easier for you and is available for most mobile smart devices too.

Fantastical Calendar for Mac

Many have lamented that Mac’s native calendar isn’t as functional as it could be, which is where Fantastical come into play. Fantastical is a comprehensive calendar app that features a beautiful and intuitive design, multiple viewing modes, an intuitive parsing engine, and a mini calendar and widgets to use for accessibility. You can easily toggle separate calendars on and off, see maps based on the location of calendar events, and customize and control alerts and notifications. Fantastical also has light and dark themes so that you can either match the calendar to your Mac or choose whichever theme is the most readable to you.

To add an event to your calendar, simply open Fantastical with a simple click or keystroke, begin typing the event’s name and details, click to add it, and that’s all there is to it. Both the event list and calendar have infinite scrolling, allowing you to view your events as far back or ahead as you could ever need to see. Additionally, you can add notes, URLs, images, and more to your events, then search for an event using a keyword that could be in the event’s title, info, or notes. Fantastical isn’t free, but it’s an incredibly intuitive, capable, even enjoyable calendar app for Mac users who feel less than satisfied by the native Mac calendar. Give it a try and you’ll agree that once you go Fantastical, there’s no going back. To learn more, head to Modernize.com.