The Best MacApps for Productivty — My TechStack
I am going to be sharing the apps that I use on a daily basis as a someone who works remotely and spends almost all of my time on my macbook. I am of the belief that because of the lifestyle that I have it is very important to have the right tools to be productive and efficient. I also think that everyone should use technology to help them make their life easier in one way or another. Just spend a little money on an app that’s going to make your life easier and exchange that money for time that you get back. I’ve mentioned some of these apps before in my Must Have Mac Apps article which you can check out, but here is the list of apps in my current daily tech stack.
Raycast
It is a replacement for spotlight search on mac. It helps make me more efficient with my mac using shortcuts and hotkeys for various actions like file searching and window management. I’ve also added extensions for some of the other apps I use frequently to help speed up any action I may need to take. I can join meetings on my calendar through Raycast, go into Figma files and even just have a look at my calendar if I don’t feel like window switching to see my calendar. It’s very useful and I’m working on a blog just about Raycast with a friend that should be coming soon!
Cron
Cron is my calendar app of choice. I’ve tried a few but so far Cron has definitely had a greater influence on my time management than the others that I’ve used. With Cron, I can use keyboard shortcuts and cmd + k to do some neat stuff. I can view the availability of my team members, schedule meets and create events with just that one command. PS Any app with keyboard shortcuts makes me very happy because I rarely use my mouse, I don’t know why it’s just a habit I have.
Spark
Spark is my email app of choice. Spark has a smart inbox feature that makes it super easy to go through emails quickly. It sorts your inbox by, notifications, newsletters and pinned. I get through emails super quickly because I basically go straight to what I need without having to really look at email subjects and see what is what. It also has a section where it shows your calendar and you can add events to your calendar within the app. It also detects dates and other features inside an email and suggests how you can add it to your calendar or take another action.
SigmaOS
I swear this is my favorite part of my tech stack. SigmaOS is a browser for mac OS built on Safari. The browser allows you to use keyboard shortcuts for almost every browser action and organise your tabs into workspaces. You can create a workspace for anything. I have a workspace called “Warm Up” and inside that workspace I have my meditation, workout, habit tracking, journaling and reading apps. The purpose of this workspace is to get myself warmed up before work, just like warming up before a workout. This is only possible because of the workspace feature where I can literally just leave the workspace and snooze the apps after I’m done with them till the next day and when I’m ready for them again the next day I just go straight back into my workspace. It’s still in beta and the Sigma team have a great community on Slack where they keep users updated on what they’re doing with the app. If you’re on mac give it a try I highly recommend. I might just do a proper review of SigmaOS as well.
Habitica
I spoke a bit about Habitica in a previous blog on the apps I use for habit tracking you can check it out here. Habitica is a habit tracking productivity app that aims to help you gamify your life. It has helped me a lot since I love gaming and I’ve got into playing mobile games alot more since I don’t have my PS4 anymore. You can treat it like a to do app and the more you do and tick off the more rewards you get and level up your character. You can buy items from the shop with your reward points, join parties and take on monsters and other challenges as well.
Slack
Slack is a communication app that we use to organise our conversations into channels which make it easier to retrieve information and also easy to keep the conversation focused on one topic.
Notion
I fell in love with Notion sometime last year and honestly it just keeps getting better for me. There’s not better place to store information in my opinion. You can do so much with Notion, create project management workspaces, onboarding systems for clients, system outlines for services and much more. At the moment I mainly use it to keep track of progress on goals, projects that I’m working on and also client projects. I see people creating websites in Notion and there is just all sort that can be done with Notion.
TwosApp
Twos is the app I use for taking quick notes. This is my digital life notepad with a some enhancements. Think of how you would use a notepad in real life. I would write down anything I need to do, write reminders, any ideas that I have while I’m just wandering in space. I also use it a lot when I’m in meetings and I’m taking meeting notes. The best part about it is, I can reorganise the format of the notes later on when I come back to it. I can make some of the notes a To Do or as I like to call it an Action Item. It also syncs with my calendar so I can also add it into my calendar in a certain timeslot to make it even more actionable. I believe it is also still in beta but I’ve been having fun using it and becoming more productive as well.
Dropbox
I have been using Dropbox as my cloud storage app for I believe almost 5 or 6 years now. Within that time they’ve added a lot of features. I know they recently acquired HelloSign for digital signatures. They also have Dropbox Password which is my password manager of choice because I figure why not use it and save myself some money so that I don’t have to get another one and It’s worked great so far.
Figma
Figma is my UI Design & Prototyping app of choice. If I have to get into Figma and all the plugins and ways I use it we’ll be here all day. I use Figma to design products, map out user flows, collabrate with team members and clients on design elements and much more. Also loving their new update to the app.
Endel
Endel is my sound app of choice while I’m working. It is an AI powered personalised soundscape tool. There are different modes that help you can use to help with different things. The main modes that I use are called “Focus”, I’m sure you can guess for focus time and deep work periods. The other is called “Relax” and again I’m sure you can guess to relaxation periods.
I hope you’ve managed to find at least one app in here that peaks your interest. Check them out and be sure to tell me what you think of any of them. Let me know what you’re tech stack is. You can also take part in my short survey to help me validate a product idea about apps people use as part of their daily tech stack here. Thank you in advance!
