Five Mac Apps Worth Checking Out - July 2019

Apps designed for the Mac often don't receive as much attention as apps made for iOS devices, so we have a series here at MacRumors that's designed to highlight useful and interesting Mac apps that are worth checking out and potentially investing in.

This month's picks include apps for making your Touch Bar more functional, adding quick switches to the Menu bar, creating to-do lists, replacing the dashboard that's now defunct in macOS Catalina, and easily accessing Spotify and iTunes controls.


- Pock
(Free) - Pock is a simple little Mac app that's designed to make your Touch Bar more useful by adding your dock to your Touch Bar so you can quickly access your apps and even files within folders. The Pock options are customizable, so you can choose what you need most, adding options like a now playing widget for controlling music, a status widget for getting info like WiFi connection of battery level, and more.

- One Switch ($4.99) - One Switch is a nifty Mac menu bar app that adds various switches to the Mac's menu bar. You can add toggles that will do things like hide desktop options, activate dark mode, keep the Mac awake, connect to headphones, toggle on Do Not Disturb, activate Night Shift, bring up the Screen Saver, and more. Options are customizable so you can make your One Switch menu do just want you need.

- Microsoft To-Do (Free) - Microsoft earlier this month brought its popular Microsoft To-Do app to the Mac, making it more functional than ever because it's now available across all of your devices. Mac users no longer have to rely on the web app, and can access features like task syncing between devices, file attachments, list sharing, color coding, and reminders for due dates, among other options.

- Flotato (Free) - Flotato is designed to create web apps from your favorite website, so you can get quick access to the web services that you use most often. Flotato web apps can be dragged right into the dock, so you can set up quick access for things like Google Docs, Facebook Messenger, Netflix on the web, favorite news sites, and more.

- Spotmenu (Free) - Spotmenu is another Mac app that's super simple but super useful, especially for Spotify and iTunes users. Spotmenu lets you access Spotify and iTunes content from your menu bar, allowing you to see what song is playing, pause music, play music, and skip tracks.

If you have a favorite must-have Mac app that we haven't highlighted yet, let us know in the comments, and we might feature it in a future video. For more of our Mac app picks, make sure to check out our Mac app archives.

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Top Rated Comments

Plutonius Avatar
82 months ago
At least they aren't recommending MacKeeper :(.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BWhaler Avatar
82 months ago
“Make your Touch Bar more useful”

Classic. Someone at Macrumors had a great sense of humor.

Separately, I love these types of articles. Let’s see more attention brought to software developers. Too much hardware fetish in the Apple world, and it’s thw software that makes or breaks the platform.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
oneMadRssn Avatar
82 months ago
I love these articles. Though none of these apps interest me, please keep them coming. Always good to learn about useful Mac apps.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mrboult Avatar
82 months ago
Better touch tool !

This app makes multi touch on the Mac track pad soooo much more useful! You can set almost any gesture you like to do almost anything.. Either app specific, or across the entire system. I LOVE IT!
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
SecuritySteve Avatar
82 months ago
But seriously, where can we find that coffee mug in the still of the video?
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rlhamil Avatar
82 months ago
BetterTouchTool, in addition to mapping additional touchpad gestures (and keystrokes, Magic Mouse, etc) can now put the Dock on the Touch Bar too; it has for some time now been able to do other things with the Touch Bar, while coexisting with system or application specific uses thereof.

Formerly free, still quite cheap.
[doublepost=1562114369][/doublepost]
I wish someone would revive Temps, the menu bar weather app.
I use CARROT for that; choose the "boring" rather than "snarky" personality setting if you wish. :) I think its data is mostly from Dark Sky, which is about the best for local weather. Here in Maryland, if you don't like the weather, wait an hour or drive a few miles, and it'll change; so good location awareness counts for a lot.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)