Photo by Mia Baker

We are arguably living in a golden age of Apps. With so many to choose from, which will help you achieve your goals faster and which will end up slowing you down?

I often ask myself that question. Over the years I’ve tested dozens of apps, a few of which I still use regularly.

Here is a list of 17 utility apps (in no particular order). Some are free, some are paid. I hope you will find something that helps you be a more effective Mac user 😁

All your colour needs taken care of with one click: pick colours, check contrast, save themes and more.

Sip is very powerful and one of my all-time favourite apps.

You can use it to pick colours anywhere on your screen and on any app. It as a handy colour contrast tool so you can make sure your designs are AA+ accessible. You can also save your most used colours and paste custom values depending on the app you are using (e.i HEX in Figma and RGBA on VSCode).

What I love most is that it doesn’t interrupt my workflow, thanks to its keyboard shortcuts I can find, copy and paste any colour in less than 3 secs.

Price: $10 for a year of updates.

Usefulness rating: 5 of 5

Compress any image super quickly.

A super simple, lightweight, open-source app that can quickly compress any JPEG or PNG image. I personally like to keep it pinned to my doc and just drag and drop a file in. Easy 😁

Price: Free

A smarter spellcheck.

Spelling mistakes are embarrassing, and as a dyslexic, non-English speaker, I need all the help I can get. That’s why I love Grammarly. Grammarly checks for spelling, punctuation, conciseness, context and more. I also find that its suggestions are a lot better than any other spell-check.

For example, I sometimes mix up it’s and its. Grammarly is great pointing these mistakes out that most other spellcheckers would miss.

I’ve paid for the premium, but, to be honest, the free version is plenty powerful for most people.

Price: Free

Manage your clipboard like a pro.