If you think you might need an FTP app, CyberDuck is an oldie but a goodie - and can be downloaded for free. If you go to the Mac App Store, it'll cost you £17.99. Go to the website. We outlined the best calendar apps and learned a lot doing that. Now we're focusing specifically on macOS calendars. We tried all of the top calendar applications, both inside the Mac App Store and outside it, and surfaced only the best of the best. And these apps all have a few things in common. The best calendar apps for Mac do the following. In researching the best free apps for the Mac, I started by using Apple's category list. This makes it easier to cover the wide variety of content available. If an app is on the Mac App Store, it is in one of the 21 categories that Apple has listed. The app is basically the best unarchiving app you can get for your Mac, free or otherwise. The Unarchiver cannot only unarchive common formats such as Zip, RAR (including v5), 7-zip, Tar, Gzip, and Bzip2, but it can also open formats such as StuffIt, DiskDoubler, LZH, ARJ, ARC, ISO and BIN disc images, Windows.EXE installers and more. Indeed, the Mac App store is positively packed with free games, and you can pick up some amazing Mac games elsewhere that are great fun to play without paying a penny.
After you buy a new Mac computer, or update your macOS to the latest 11 Big Sur, you may need to install new apps. What are the best apps to install on Mac ? Check the must-have Mac apps here.
Any best free apps for Mac (macOS Big Sur) to install on the new Mac? Beside those built-in default apps, you may need some more for specific purposes. If you're struggling to figure out the best free Mac apps for MacBook Pro/mini/Air/laptop from the thousands of software programs, check this article. Here we list 2021 top best Mac apps free for photo editing, music & video download, game, design, productivity and more.
1.0 Video
It's a common choice to watch movies or videos on Mac when we're free. Therefore, watching movies on a Mac shouldn't be quaint or inconvenient. If you have QuickTime failure opening certain movies, there we share you the best free Mac apps to play videos on Mac computer.
* Best Mac app free for video conversion - MacX Video Converter Free
If you're a big movie fan and use mobiles to watch movies a lot, you will need a movie converter that will convert videos/movies among different formats. Here the must-have free app to convert videos on Mac OS X is MacX Video Converter Free, a free DVD converter app for macOS Big Sur and earlier. It will free convert among MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, 3GP all formats in 4K, HD 1080P/720P, SD to fit iPhone, iPad, Samsung, Android mobiles fast with excellent quality.
* Best free Mac app for video playing - 5KPlayer
Video player is an essential app to install on Mac and when it comes to Mac video player apps, there are many good choices like VLC player, QuickTime player, Cisdem VideoPlayer and many more. 5KPlayer, a fast-rising video player free app for Mac OS X (macOS Big Sur incl.), is simple, light and clean. It professionally handles video and audio in any formats, from SD resolution to HD, 4K UHD and 5K. It also features a video downloader, AirPlay receiver/sender and radio player. If you're tired of those common free Mac player apps, try it.
2.0 Entertainment
When it comes to entertainment with Mac, movies are one of the major topics. To this end, two popular free apps working on Mac OS X that help you to get free movies, videos as well as songs are provided.
* Top free app to download YouTube videos for Mac - MacX YouTube Downloader
When you want to watch YouTube or online videos when there is no internet connection, the best free YouTube downloader app for Mac OS X (macOS Big Sur) will help. MacX YouTube Downloader is a totally free and safe app to download videos on MacBook Air/Pro, iMac etc from YouTube, Dailymotion, Vevo, FaceBook, Vimeo and 1000 more online sites. Any MP4, WebM, FLV in 4K UHD, HD, SD, 3D, 360 vr videos are all supported. It's fast and easy to download YouTube videos to iPhone, iPad, iPod with this app.
* Best free app for Mac to rip DVD movies - Handbrake
Almost all users who have the need to rip DVDs will have Handbrake installed on computer. Handbrake is one of the best free app on Mac to convert DVD or Blu-ray discs into MP4, M4V or MKV. The app is simply, fast and will generate excellent quality. However, if you want to rip protected DVDs on Mac computers running on macOS Big Sur, you will have to switch to other best free Mac apps for DVD ripping like MacX DVD Ripper Mac Free.
Best Free Apps For Mac Mini
If your footage calls for editing or you want to embellish it with interesting effects before ripping files to DVDs, you should use reliable video editing software for Mac.
3.0 Music
If you are a big music lover, music apps will be the must-have software to install on Mac computer. To get free music with good quality, try the free apps on Mac OS X below.
* Top free apps for Mac audio editing - Audacity
Audacity is an open source free audio editing and recording app for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and others. With this free app on 2017 MacBook Pro/Air, mini, you can listen to music, record audio from various sources in high quality, edit and mix it, import and export music into WAV, MP3, AIFF and OGG files. Besides that, various of audio editing features are available to edit sounds, add audio effects, mix tracks, cut and paste recording etc.
Other best free Mac apps for audio editing include Gtuner, Mixxx, Hydrogen, Reaktor 5 Player etc.
* Best free apps for Mac music - Spotify
If you are looking for the best Mac apps free for music playback, you can try Spotify if you're not using Apple Music. Spotify is a streaming music service that offers you a new way to enjoy millions of songs. Once you sign up a Spotify account, you can listen to music freely on the Spotify app installed on Mac. Spotify offers massive music collection with excellent high quality, as well as a slew of useful features.
Similar top free music apps for Mac are Google Play Music, Vox, Tomahawk and also 5KPlayer.
4.0 Photos & Graphics
With sharing selies on social sites getting popular, how to take the best photos as well as further editing gets more important. Which free photo editing apps for Mac are easy to use while generating the best effects? Check below.
* Best free photo editing app for Mac OS X - GIMP
When it comes to the best free photo apps for MacBook Pro/Air, mini, iMac, the first thoughts may be Photoshop or iPhoto. Besides them, there are many other top free Mac apps for photo editing, just like GIMP. Similar to Photoshop, GIMP offers wide range of photo editing tools with which you can make subtle adjustments and colorize, remove barrel distortion, create impressive monochrome conversions, and do everything like Adobe photo app.
The best free Mac apps for photo editing also have Affinity Photo, Lightroom, Pixlr, Preview.
* Best free Mac OS X apps to manage photos - JetPhoto Studio
After we learn the best free photo editing for Mac OS X, the programs to mange photos are also among the sought-after best free photo apps for Mac. JetPhoto Studio is one of the best free apps to mange photos on Mac. It allows users to create flash or web galleries from the photos, send photos to mobile phones, share photos on websites and more. It also features soome image management and editing features.
Similar best free Mac photo apps include MacX MediaTrans, Phototheca, XnView MP, IrfanView etc.
5.0 Games
Do you often play Mac games? Besides those famous games on Mac, you may have missed out some truly greate yet totally free games. We have the best free game apps listed under each category below.
When you want a free game app on Mac, there are countless choices. Actually, there are so many categories that it may be hard to choose the best. No worry, below we list some top-rated free Mac game apps for you.
Best strategy game for Mac: League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, Hearthstone, Starcraft II, Heroes of Newerth.
Best free car racing game on Mac: Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, Grid 2, Dirt 3, TOCA Race Driver 3.
Free first person shooter game apps for Mac: Marathon Trilogy, Team Fortress 2, Assault Cube, Red Eclipse, Warsow, OpenArena, Cube 2 Sauerbraten, UberStrike.
6.0 Data Backup
Are you sure you have made a safe copy of your favorite photos, videos, data, apps, memories? Accidents happen all to often. The best free Mac apps below will make sure all your important files are safely kept.
* Best free apps for Mac to backup Mac data - Time Machine
Time Machine is among the top choice for the best free Mac app to backup the computer data. As an inbuilt free Mac data backup app, Time Machine will save hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for data older than a month. Note that Time Machine will delete the oldest backup to make space for new data. So you're suggested to use other free Mac backup apps together.
Other best free Mac apps for data backup: FileFort, Backuplist+, CrashPlan, iBackup, SilverKeeper.
* Best free app to backup iDevices on Mac - MacX MediaTrans
MacX MediaTrans is a rising data backup app that helps to backup data from iDevices to MacBook Air/Pro, iMac, Mac mini on macOS Big Sur and earlier. It excels iTunes or iCloud for its superfast speed and simplicity. By only a drag and drop, data on iPhone, iPad and iPod will be backed up to Macs, including videos, music, photos, ringtone, iBook, Podcast and more. It also features strong iOS (10) file management ability. It offers free version for unlimited time.
Similar best Mac apps free for iDevices data backup: iFunBox, CopyTrans Manager, AirMore, Apowersoft Phone Manager, iPhone Explorer.
7.0 Productivity
In fact, there are some good free apps that will make your task on Mac faster and more efficient. Nowadays, it's important to stay productive and get your tasks done in less time. You will be amazed at the features of those samll, free but useful apps.
* Best free app for Mac OS X app launching - Alfred
Alfred is a free application launcher app for Mac. It maximizes users' efficiency on Mac by facilitating the access to various programs. This simple and free app makes it fast and easy to launch apps, find files, search web, solve calculations, and do many more with keyboard shortcuts. It will track the app your often use to make you more efficient.
Other top free launcher apps for Mac include: Quicksilver, LaunchBar, Spotlight, Butler.
* Top free app on Mac to manage tasks - Wunderlist
Wunderlist is among the best task manager apps for MacBook Pro/Air, iMac that it allows you to make lists. With this free app on Mac, you can create lists of different tasks with deadlines, share them with friends and access from different devices. You won't miss any task, to-dos, due dates or additional information.
Other excellent free Mac task manager apps are Any.do, Evernote, Todoist, TickTick.
* Best free Mac apps to manage Mac screen - f.lux
f.lux is a small, free and extremely helpful app that will adjust the color of the monitor based on the time, sunlight and temperature of the day. By adjusting the brightness and color temperature of Mac's display, it helps eyes relax and reduces strain on our retinas.
Best Mac Air M1 Software
Other best free apps for Mac to protect our eyes include Redshift, RedshiftGUI, Twilight.
8.0 Storage
It's really frustrating to have Mac out of storage space. Getting the right tool will help you clean up more space, check the storage being used, delete unnecessary files and eventually speed up the Mac performance.
Free Mac Apps Downloads
Dr. Cleaner is the only and also best free app for Mac OS X to optimize memory and clean disk to speed up Mac computers. It will help you to scan the large files to delete, clean whole system, automatically optimize memory, scan junk files, clean disk, delete cache and unnecessary files, empty temporary files, cache files, system files, log files and do more. You will see a significant performance boost with this free app.
9.0 Social Network
Everyone is online nowadays. Famous networking apps like YouTube needs no introduction. But you may have missed some tiny and interesting free networking apps for Mac that make it easier to get contact with friends.
* Best free social networking app for Mac - Twitter for Mac
No doubt that Twitter for Mac is one of the most popular and also top best free Mac apps for social networking. As the official client for Twitter, it allows you to do everything you can on Twitter, for example, you can sign in multiple accounts, read notifications, send messages, check trending topics and hot spots, search contents and more.
Similar good free apps for Mac networking: Face Tab, Echofon, Social Lite, FlipToast.
* Best free apps Mac for chatting - Skype
If you want to contact friends around the world via video or voice chat, Skype will be your first choice. Skype is a simple and free app for Mac OS X that makes it easy to text messages and make free calls to anyone else on Skype. It's quite stable with excellent video and audio quality.
Other free apps for macOS Big Sur chatting: Google+ Hangouts, Facetime, VOXOX, Viber, Line, Jitsi.
10 Mail
Mac computer has a free email app built-in, but that's not always the best solution for daily mail use. There are third-party free apps for Mac OS X (macOS Big Sur) that offers better solution to manage emails.
Speaking of the best free mail app for Mac OS X, Airmail will a be must-have app for MacBook Pro/Air, iMac or mini. As the recommended mail app for Mac, Airmail delivers Mac users a quick, modern and easy-to-use experience to read and manage emails. It supports iCloud, MS Exchange, Gmail, Google Apps, IMAP, POP3, Yahoo!, AOL, Outlook.com, Live.com. It has advanced features for single and multiple accounts.
Good free mail apps for Mac computer: Apple Mail, Polymail, Thunderbird, Inky, CloudMagic.
- January 02, 2021
- 18 min to read
Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.
But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.
1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)
Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.
2. Luminar (7 days trial)
Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.
Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.
Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.
3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)
Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.
All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?
Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!
4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)
As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.
Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.
Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.
5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)
Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.
6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 (Trial link)
Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.
In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.
7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)
Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.
Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.
8. Google Photos
Best Free Apps For Mac Mini 2019
Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.
Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.
Macbook Air M1 Best Apps
9. PhotoScape X (Free)
A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.
The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.
The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.
Best Free Apps For Mac Mini M1
10. Gimp (Free)
Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.
Best Free Apps For Mac Mini 2020
Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.