As a designer, having the right set of tools can make all the difference when it comes to efficiency and productivity. Apple ecosystem and macOS environment offers a wide variety of apps and tools that can ease anyones workflow, but especially designers can enhance their toolkit with many useful apps. In this post, we’ll introduce some of the best Mac apps for designers that we use daily to enhance our productivity. Some of these tools may already be on your computer.
In the list we will be covering many design focused apps but also there are extra productivity tools listed as well. Because being a designer or artist is not limited the creative process itself. There are always extra steps and responsibilities when sharing the work or communicating with clients. That’s why you will find various tools such as open source alternatives to design softwares, file compressors and managers, menu bar apps, clipboard manager and more!
We’ve grouped our selection of apps by category and they are mostly free or freemium. We aimed to provide best value for minimum extra cost to your wallets. Let’s start with design focused apps and move on to the productivity tools.
If you have any suggestions drop a comment or mail us, so we all can make the best list for starters and anyone who might be interested.
Scribus is an open source alternative to Adobe’s publishing software InDesign. It offers most of the features InDesign provides including layout, typography, and design tools. Scribus may not always be the most convenient option, but it can be a useful alternative when necessary.
Affinity Publisher is one of the strongest competitors of Adobe’s InDesign software. It is award winning page layout software, which is basically have the same capabilities with Adobe InDesign. Affinity offers Universal Licence which is a bundle of Affinity’s 3 softwares; Publisher, Design, Photo. That way all of these tools comes with a much lower price.
Thanks to /u/Mstormer/ for pointing this one out and helps me to make this addition.
There are two popular alternatives for Adobe Illustrator. The first open-source alternative to Adobe Illustrator is Inkscape. It is free and offers many of the same features as Adobe Illustrator.
Affinity is an another company that creates comprehensive image, publishing and design tools softwares. Affinity Designer is the design focused tool that capable as Adobe’s illustrator.
Affinity Designer is not a free software but the company sells the Affinity Designer with full ownership in one time purchase. The biggest advantage is that it is sold as a one-time purchase, rather than a subscription-based model.
A clipboard manager is a necessary tool for many professionals. It’s useful for tasks such as copying color palettes, taking screenshots, and more. Each clipboard manager has its own unique features and user interface. We didn’t include Spotlight Search alternatives like Raycast or Alfred because they are in a whole different vertical.
Maccy
Maccy is an open source free clipboard manager. Maccy opens with a pop up with keyboard shortcut and it remembers 80+ recent copied images and texts.
Color Picker tools are essential for designers and are often among the top 5 tools used. Regardless its an in-app feature or stand alone software, Color Picker tools are essential. There are many Color Picker alternatives available, each with their own unique features and experiences. Color Picker tools typically include features such as color palettes, conversions between color formats, contrast checking, and multi-platform support. We picked the best 3 free alternatives in the vertical, we are sure that you will find one of these are very handy.
ColorSlurp
ColorSlurp claims to be the best Mac color picker and includes features such as a magnifier, editor, color formats, palettes, contrast checker, iOS support, and iCloud sync.
Pricing: Offer Free and Pro versions. Most of the features are behind the Pro version.
Sip is another popular color picker tool that boasts being “a better Color Picker for your Mac”. Sip sits in your menu bar and it’s ready to pop up whenever you need it with editor, palettes, smart formats, custom formats, contrast checker, color deck features.
Pricing: Free Trial for 15 days, after that time it needs a license.
In business, we often encounter clients who share files in the RAR format, which can be a hassle to open. File archiving is a simple way to share bulk files, but dealing with RAR files on macOS can be a stressful process. But there some apps to ease this.
Keka
Keka is a simple, supportive, and user-friendly file archiver that supports many formats. It is free to download from their website, but users can also purchase it from the App Store to support the developer.
Let’s say you have a bulk of images or project files you need organize. But the files you want to move are scattered around different folder but they should moved into a one folder. Usually moving them folder by folder is the natural solution. But putting everything into a file shelf as a temporary popup screen could save so much time. These types of tools are particularly useful when working with large volumes of files. Dropzone and Dropover are popular solutions in this category.
Dropover have a floating popup right above your cursor. The files can be stashed, gathered or moved with this popup without needing a separate window side by side.
Dropzone works in the menu bar and it comes with extra features. Dropzone’s menu pops up when you drag an item and shows the shelf. Additionally, it can also upload it to Imgur or create a shortened link. Dropzone also have an Pro plan which grants access to extra features. Without these, Dropzone is free to use.
Pricing: Free on App Store, Pro plan $40 one time purchase or $1.99/month
Managing time and time zones can be difficult when working with people in different locations. Honestly, finding the right time windows for each party can be frustrating. I’ve used many apps for managing time zones, but Hovrly has the best user interface. It’s customizable and allows you to add multiple time zones and locations to the same menu.
Clocker is a small sized but capable world clock. It’s main value proposition is keeping track of friends and colleagues from the menubar. It’s much more smaller app than Hovrly. It can be downloaded from App Store but also present in GitHub.
Many thanks to /u/100WattWalrus for sharing Clocker and improving this list!
Quickly Open Apps or Folders with Two Keyboard Combo
HotKey App
HotKey App is a simple and effective Mac app developed by Peter Vorwieger. It can be customized to suit anyone’s needs. HotKey App is useful for people who regularly opens specific folders and app but doesn’t want to put them on Dock or favorites menu on Finder.
Say Goodbye to Bloated Data in Your Images and Videos
ImageOptim
ImageOptim is one of the softwares I have used for the longest time in this list. It has a purpose for designers, developers, writers and anyone who upload images to the web. It removes unnecessary metadata and compresses images to save disk space and bandwidth without compromising on quality.
Keyboard shortcuts are always a time saver. I couldn’t imagine using a software or navigating on web without using shortcuts. They help the designers and creative to save time and work efficiently. But it’s not always easy to know or guess the right shortcut combination. Sometimes we have to open preferences or make a quick Google search to learn it. CheatSheet just solve this hassle by long pressing the Command key (⌘). It’s free and works on every software.
MenubarX is a small, versatile web browser that lives in your menu bar. It has many useful bookmarks and is easily accessible for listening to music, videos, or using other web tools. Also, it can be opened quickly from a keyboard shortcut.
Gimp is one of the OG open source softwares. Gimp’s initial release date is November 21, 1995 and you can see it’s been here for a long time. Gimp is a reliable and efficient option for quick editing needs.
Just like Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo is a direct competitor of Adobe Photoshop. It can handle editing and retouching images, creating multi-layered compositions. Affinity Photo works on macOS, Windows and iPad and it has great reviews and awards across organizations.
While Apple’s built-in screenshot and image editing features are robust, external apps can offer additional capabilities. But there is always external apps to help you reach out to new heights. And most of the time eventually Apple add some of the features in these 3rd party apps to their native os’. Screenshot management is another field for this matter. CleanShot X and Shottr are some of the examples of taking clean screenshots and editing them in the same page.
CleanShot X
CleanShot X is a super app itself. It feels like 7 apps and over 50 feature combined into one in form of screenshot app. CleanShot X offers a wide range of features, including annotation, blurring, and text recognition, as well as advanced capture modes and a basic video editor.
Pricing: App + Cloud Basic plan is $29 as one time payment and App + Cloud Pro plan is $8 per month with both plans comes with 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.
Shottr is simply a screenshot tool for designers, front-end engineers, mobile developers, and those who care about pixels. It’s a side project and that’s why the app is free. But this shouldn’t deceive you about it’s not capable for you need. Main features of Shottr are using it as screen ruler, zooming in for precision, pinning images, scrolling screenshots on web pages, pixelate or remove objects, adding annotations, color picker and text recognition.
From time to time we all have to give our email to obtain some value from companies or 3rd party sources. Let’s be frank, sometimes no one wants to share their primary contact address. Tempbox solve this hassle because just a disposable inbox. It can easily create many mail address’ and use it in minutes. Platform provides 40 MB of storage for each address and it’s enough for text only emails and stuff.
Blender needs no introduction. It’s a whole package from 3D modelling to animation, node based processes. Blender offers various features for both professionals and the people who just started to learn 3D design.
Cheetah3D is a freemium 3D modelling software. Cheetah3D is a 3D modelling software that offers a range of features, including UV unwrapping, texture painting, and joint-based character animation. It is free to use, but a serial number is required to export your creations.
One reply to “28 Best Mac Apps for Designers in 2023”
Florence Carter
I’m thrilled to dive into the world of the best Mac apps for designers in 2023. These apps have undoubtedly revolutionized the design landscape and empowered creatives to bring their visions to life. Sketch tops the list with its robust vector editing capabilities and collaborative features, making it a go-to tool for UI and UX designers. Figma, with its cloud-based platform and real-time collaboration, has become a game-changer for design teams, enabling seamless teamwork and iteration. Adobe Creative Cloud remains an essential suite for designers, offering industry-standard tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Apart from that I would like to recommend about Moon Invoice which provides unlimited invoices, estimates, expenses and more features. Even you can get 10X faster payment. With these best Mac apps for designers, 2023 promises to be a year of boundless creativity and stunning design work.
28 Best Mac Apps for Designers in 2023
As a designer, having the right set of tools can make all the difference when it comes to efficiency and productivity. Apple ecosystem and macOS environment offers a wide variety of apps and tools that can ease anyones workflow, but especially designers can enhance their toolkit with many useful apps. In this post, we’ll introduce some of the best Mac apps for designers that we use daily to enhance our productivity. Some of these tools may already be on your computer.
In the list we will be covering many design focused apps but also there are extra productivity tools listed as well. Because being a designer or artist is not limited the creative process itself. There are always extra steps and responsibilities when sharing the work or communicating with clients. That’s why you will find various tools such as open source alternatives to design softwares, file compressors and managers, menu bar apps, clipboard manager and more!
We’ve grouped our selection of apps by category and they are mostly free or freemium. We aimed to provide best value for minimum extra cost to your wallets. Let’s start with design focused apps and move on to the productivity tools.
If you have any suggestions drop a comment or mail us, so we all can make the best list for starters and anyone who might be interested.
Table of Contents: Best Mac Apps for Designers
Adobe InDesign Alternatives
Scribus
Scribus is an open source alternative to Adobe’s publishing software InDesign. It offers most of the features InDesign provides including layout, typography, and design tools. Scribus may not always be the most convenient option, but it can be a useful alternative when necessary.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Affinity Publisher
Affinity Publisher is one of the strongest competitors of Adobe’s InDesign software. It is award winning page layout software, which is basically have the same capabilities with Adobe InDesign. Affinity offers Universal Licence which is a bundle of Affinity’s 3 softwares; Publisher, Design, Photo. That way all of these tools comes with a much lower price.
Thanks to /u/Mstormer/ for pointing this one out and helps me to make this addition.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Adobe Illustrator Alternatives
Inkscape
There are two popular alternatives for Adobe Illustrator. The first open-source alternative to Adobe Illustrator is Inkscape. It is free and offers many of the same features as Adobe Illustrator.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Affinity Designer
Affinity is an another company that creates comprehensive image, publishing and design tools softwares. Affinity Designer is the design focused tool that capable as Adobe’s illustrator.
Affinity Designer is not a free software but the company sells the Affinity Designer with full ownership in one time purchase. The biggest advantage is that it is sold as a one-time purchase, rather than a subscription-based model.
Pricing: €84.99 or $69.99
Website – Download
Clipboard Managers With Many Features
A clipboard manager is a necessary tool for many professionals. It’s useful for tasks such as copying color palettes, taking screenshots, and more. Each clipboard manager has its own unique features and user interface. We didn’t include Spotlight Search alternatives like Raycast or Alfred because they are in a whole different vertical.
Maccy
Maccy is an open source free clipboard manager. Maccy opens with a pop up with keyboard shortcut and it remembers 80+ recent copied images and texts.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
PastePal
PastePal is a universal clipboard manager for Apple ecosystem with bigger menu and UI and more flexible customization options.
Pricing: Requires subscription for pasting
Website – Download
CopyClip
CopyClip is one of the most simple and functional Mac apps. It only caches the text format and it sits in the menu bar.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
All Around Color Pickers on Your Mac
Color Picker tools are essential for designers and are often among the top 5 tools used. Regardless its an in-app feature or stand alone software, Color Picker tools are essential. There are many Color Picker alternatives available, each with their own unique features and experiences. Color Picker tools typically include features such as color palettes, conversions between color formats, contrast checking, and multi-platform support. We picked the best 3 free alternatives in the vertical, we are sure that you will find one of these are very handy.
ColorSlurp
ColorSlurp claims to be the best Mac color picker and includes features such as a magnifier, editor, color formats, palettes, contrast checker, iOS support, and iCloud sync.
Pricing: Offer Free and Pro versions. Most of the features are behind the Pro version.
Website – Download
Sip
Sip is another popular color picker tool that boasts being “a better Color Picker for your Mac”. Sip sits in your menu bar and it’s ready to pop up whenever you need it with editor, palettes, smart formats, custom formats, contrast checker, color deck features.
Pricing: Free Trial for 15 days, after that time it needs a license.
Website – Download
System Color Picker
System Color Picker is a simple and neat alternative with only works as eyedropper tool and color palette.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
File Archiver Tools
In business, we often encounter clients who share files in the RAR format, which can be a hassle to open. File archiving is a simple way to share bulk files, but dealing with RAR files on macOS can be a stressful process. But there some apps to ease this.
Keka
Keka is a simple, supportive, and user-friendly file archiver that supports many formats. It is free to download from their website, but users can also purchase it from the App Store to support the developer.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
The Unarchiver
The Unarchiver claims that it’s the only app you need to open RAR on Mac. It has a very clean UI and it supports countless file formats.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
File Shelf for Temporary File Management
Let’s say you have a bulk of images or project files you need organize. But the files you want to move are scattered around different folder but they should moved into a one folder. Usually moving them folder by folder is the natural solution. But putting everything into a file shelf as a temporary popup screen could save so much time. These types of tools are particularly useful when working with large volumes of files. Dropzone and Dropover are popular solutions in this category.
Dropover
Dropover have a floating popup right above your cursor. The files can be stashed, gathered or moved with this popup without needing a separate window side by side.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Dropzone
Dropzone works in the menu bar and it comes with extra features. Dropzone’s menu pops up when you drag an item and shows the shelf. Additionally, it can also upload it to Imgur or create a shortened link. Dropzone also have an Pro plan which grants access to extra features. Without these, Dropzone is free to use.
Pricing: Free on App Store, Pro plan $40 one time purchase or $1.99/month
Website – Download
World Clock on Menu Bar and Local Time Converter
Hovrly
Managing time and time zones can be difficult when working with people in different locations. Honestly, finding the right time windows for each party can be frustrating. I’ve used many apps for managing time zones, but Hovrly has the best user interface. It’s customizable and allows you to add multiple time zones and locations to the same menu.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Clocker
Clocker is a small sized but capable world clock. It’s main value proposition is keeping track of friends and colleagues from the menubar. It’s much more smaller app than Hovrly. It can be downloaded from App Store but also present in GitHub.
Many thanks to /u/100WattWalrus for sharing Clocker and improving this list!
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Quickly Open Apps or Folders with Two Keyboard Combo
HotKey App
HotKey App is a simple and effective Mac app developed by Peter Vorwieger. It can be customized to suit anyone’s needs. HotKey App is useful for people who regularly opens specific folders and app but doesn’t want to put them on Dock or favorites menu on Finder.
Pricing: Free
Download
Say Goodbye to Bloated Data in Your Images and Videos
ImageOptim
ImageOptim is one of the softwares I have used for the longest time in this list. It has a purpose for designers, developers, writers and anyone who upload images to the web. It removes unnecessary metadata and compresses images to save disk space and bandwidth without compromising on quality.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
ShrinkIt
ShrinkIt is a companion app and video equivalent of ImageOptim. It compress mp4 and mov files to less than 80% of their original size.
Many thanks to /u/100WattWalrus for sharing ShrinkIt and improving this list!
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Expose the Keyboard Shortcuts
CheatSheet
Keyboard shortcuts are always a time saver. I couldn’t imagine using a software or navigating on web without using shortcuts. They help the designers and creative to save time and work efficiently. But it’s not always easy to know or guess the right shortcut combination. Sometimes we have to open preferences or make a quick Google search to learn it. CheatSheet just solve this hassle by long pressing the Command key (⌘). It’s free and works on every software.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Floating Browser Sits on Your Menu Bar
MenubarX
MenubarX is a small, versatile web browser that lives in your menu bar. It has many useful bookmarks and is easily accessible for listening to music, videos, or using other web tools. Also, it can be opened quickly from a keyboard shortcut.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Photo Editor Alternatives
Gimp
Gimp is one of the OG open source softwares. Gimp’s initial release date is November 21, 1995 and you can see it’s been here for a long time. Gimp is a reliable and efficient option for quick editing needs.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Affinity Photo
Just like Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo is a direct competitor of Adobe Photoshop. It can handle editing and retouching images, creating multi-layered compositions. Affinity Photo works on macOS, Windows and iPad and it has great reviews and awards across organizations.
Pricing: €84.99 or $69.99
Website – Download
Screenshot Management
While Apple’s built-in screenshot and image editing features are robust, external apps can offer additional capabilities. But there is always external apps to help you reach out to new heights. And most of the time eventually Apple add some of the features in these 3rd party apps to their native os’. Screenshot management is another field for this matter. CleanShot X and Shottr are some of the examples of taking clean screenshots and editing them in the same page.
CleanShot X
CleanShot X is a super app itself. It feels like 7 apps and over 50 feature combined into one in form of screenshot app. CleanShot X offers a wide range of features, including annotation, blurring, and text recognition, as well as advanced capture modes and a basic video editor.
Pricing: App + Cloud Basic plan is $29 as one time payment and App + Cloud Pro plan is $8 per month with both plans comes with 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.
Website – Download
Shottr
Shottr is simply a screenshot tool for designers, front-end engineers, mobile developers, and those who care about pixels. It’s a side project and that’s why the app is free. But this shouldn’t deceive you about it’s not capable for you need. Main features of Shottr are using it as screen ruler, zooming in for precision, pinning images, scrolling screenshots on web pages, pixelate or remove objects, adding annotations, color picker and text recognition.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Temporary Email Service at Your Disposal
Tempbox
From time to time we all have to give our email to obtain some value from companies or 3rd party sources. Let’s be frank, sometimes no one wants to share their primary contact address. Tempbox solve this hassle because just a disposable inbox. It can easily create many mail address’ and use it in minutes. Platform provides 40 MB of storage for each address and it’s enough for text only emails and stuff.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
3D Modelling
Blender
Blender needs no introduction. It’s a whole package from 3D modelling to animation, node based processes. Blender offers various features for both professionals and the people who just started to learn 3D design.
Pricing: Free
Website – Download
Cheetah3D
Cheetah3D is a freemium 3D modelling software. Cheetah3D is a 3D modelling software that offers a range of features, including UV unwrapping, texture painting, and joint-based character animation. It is free to use, but a serial number is required to export your creations.
Pricing: $99 (Around €91)
Website – Download
You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram.
One reply to “28 Best Mac Apps for Designers in 2023”
Florence Carter
I’m thrilled to dive into the world of the best Mac apps for designers in 2023. These apps have undoubtedly revolutionized the design landscape and empowered creatives to bring their visions to life. Sketch tops the list with its robust vector editing capabilities and collaborative features, making it a go-to tool for UI and UX designers. Figma, with its cloud-based platform and real-time collaboration, has become a game-changer for design teams, enabling seamless teamwork and iteration. Adobe Creative Cloud remains an essential suite for designers, offering industry-standard tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Apart from that I would like to recommend about Moon Invoice which provides unlimited invoices, estimates, expenses and more features. Even you can get 10X faster payment. With these best Mac apps for designers, 2023 promises to be a year of boundless creativity and stunning design work.
Related Posts
75 AI Powered Design Tools to Boost Your Productivity in 2023
It’s our turn to aim to make one of the most valuable AI design tools to benefit you and your creative process.
45 Best Free Fonts for Designers and Creatives in 2022
We collected the best free fonts that fits perfectly in your creative process in 2022, you can get every font in this list for free.