Productivity apps for Mac: launchers, windows, capture
Ten macOS productivity apps installable via Homebrew: Raycast and Alfred launchers, window managers, clipboard history, app switching, screenshot tools, note-taking and file automation.
macOS ships without a window manager, without clipboard history, and with a Spotlight that indexes files but does not run commands. These ten apps fill those gaps, and most of them earn their place by removing a repeated action rather than adding a feature.
Launchers replace more than Spotlight
Raycast and Alfred both start as a faster Spotlight and end up as a command layer over the whole system: window management, clipboard history, snippets, calculations, and scripts you write yourself. Raycast is free for personal use with an extension store; Alfred is a one-time paid Powerpack with a longer history and a more scriptable workflow model.
Picking between them is mostly about whether you want a curated store or a workflow editor. Both make the other apps on this page partly redundant, which is worth knowing before installing five separate utilities.
Windows and switching
Rectangle does one thing — snap windows to halves and quarters with a keyboard shortcut — and it is free and open source. AltTab replaces the macOS app switcher with a Windows-style one that shows every window rather than every application, which is the difference that matters when three browser windows are hiding behind one icon.
Both are small enough that the argument against them is only that macOS should have shipped them.
Capture and notes
Shottr and CleanShot X overlap heavily: both do scrolling capture, annotation and pinned overlays. Shottr is free with a paid tier; CleanShot is paid outright and includes cloud upload. If you take two screenshots a week, the built-in tool is fine; if you write documentation, the difference is real.
Notion and Obsidian are the same split in note-taking — Notion is a hosted database with documents on top, Obsidian is local Markdown files with a graph over them. The deciding question is not features, it is whether your notes should still open in ten years without an account.
Hazel is the outlier: it watches folders and acts on rules, which turns the Downloads directory from a landfill into something self-maintaining.
Raycast is a launcher that replaces Spotlight and half the utilities on this list: app launching, clipboard history, window management, snippets, calculator, and thousands of extensions. Custom bash/python scripts become first-class commands. The free tier covers almost everything.
brew install --cask raycast- Replaces Spotlight and beats it at finding apps and files
- Extensions turn the search bar into a control panel: window management, clipboard, tasks, doc search
- Clipboard history and text snippets work out of the box, no separate apps needed
- Shell or Python scripts run as ordinary commands — a personal tool takes five minutes to add
Raycast or Alfred?
Raycast is free at the base tier and ships window management, clipboard, and an extension store immediately. Alfred needs the Powerpack for workflows but offers deeper customisation and a longer history — some people stay for workflows they already built.
What costs money in Raycast?
Personal use is free, store extensions included. The paid subscription adds cloud settings sync, AI features, and team capabilities.
Alfred is the granddaddy of macOS launchers: search, snippets, and clipboard history long before Raycast existed. Its hallmark is the visual Workflows builder (in the paid Powerpack) powering automations of any complexity. One-time purchase instead of a subscription.
brew install --cask alfred- Workflows are built visually from blocks and can do nearly anything, from batch renaming to calling APIs
- Configurable deeper than any competitor — result ordering, per-action hotkeys, everything
- Over a decade old and reliably stable across macOS upgrades
- Universal file actions straight from the search results
What does the Powerpack add?
The Powerpack is the paid add-on that unlocks workflows, clipboard history, snippets, and file actions. Plain app launching is free, but nobody installs Alfred for that alone.
Should I switch from Alfred to Raycast?
With no workflows built up, Raycast starts faster and costs nothing. If your workflows are load-bearing, moving means rewriting them from scratch — the ecosystems are not compatible.
Rectangle is a free window manager: Ctrl+Option+arrows snap windows into halves, quarters, and thirds, and edge-dragging works like Windows. No magic — it just does what Apple still hasn't finished in macOS. The first install on every new Mac.
brew install --cask rectangle- Snap a window to half, a quarter, or the full screen with a keystroke — no mouse dragging
- Free and open source, with no account and no telemetry
- Familiar shortcuts for anyone arriving from Windows Snap
- One minute of setup and it never asks for attention again
Do I still need Rectangle now that macOS tiles windows?
The system feature covers the basics through menus and edge dragging. Rectangle gives every position its own hotkey, including thirds of the screen, and behaves identically across macOS versions.
What does the paid Rectangle Pro add?
Pro adds custom zones, drag actions, and more elaborate scenarios. The free version is enough for the vast majority — start there.
AltTab brings proper window switching to macOS: thumbnails of every window (not just app icons), title search, and quick close/minimize from the switcher. Everything is configurable — from delay to preview appearance.
brew install --cask alt-tab- Switches between windows rather than apps — the thing stock ⌘⇥ never does
- Shows a preview of each window instead of an app icon
- Includes minimised windows and windows on other desktops
- Free, open source, and configurable down to which windows appear
How is this different from the system ⌘⇥?
The system switcher works on apps: three editor windows are one entry. AltTab lists actual windows, so hopping between two projects in the same app becomes a single press.
Does it clash with ⌘⇥?
By default AltTab binds to ⌥⇥ and leaves the system shortcut alone. You can swap the roles in settings if you prefer.
Maccy is a minimalist clipboard manager: keeps copy history locally, opens with a hotkey, and finds items by the first letters. No accounts or sync — data never leaves the Mac. Weighs a couple of megabytes and lives in the menu bar.
brew install --cask maccy- Clipboard history behind a hotkey — what you copied last week is still there
- Search the history instead of scrolling a list
- Lightweight and open source: a few megabytes of memory, no cloud
- Passwords copied from password managers never enter the history
Is keeping clipboard history safe?
Maccy honours the confidentiality flag password managers attach to copied secrets and skips those entries. You can also cap the history size and exclude specific apps.
Why bother when Raycast and Alfred include clipboard history?
No reason, if you already use one of them. Maccy is for people who want clipboard history alone without a whole launcher.
Shottr is a screenshot tool made by a developer for developers: pixel distance measurement, scrolling capture, text OCR, screenshot pinning over windows, and blurring of private data. It can even un-screenshot back into a live window. Completely free.
brew install --cask shottr- Scrolling capture: a long page comes out as one image instead of screen-by-screen
- Text recognition on the shot itself — copy text straight out of a picture
- A ruler and colour picker for measuring spacing and colours in designs
- Tiny, fast, and free for personal use
Shottr or CleanShot X?
Shottr is free and strong at measuring, OCR, and scrolling captures. CleanShot X is paid and adds screen recording, cloud storage, and richer annotation. For inspecting layouts, Shottr is enough.
Does it replace the system ⌘⇧5?
Entirely: its own hotkeys, its own editor over the capture, its own saving rules. The system panel keeps working if you still want it.
CleanShot X is the most feature-packed screenshot tool on macOS: images, video, GIFs, scrolling capture, beautiful annotations and social-ready backgrounds, plus its own cloud with instant links. Paid (also in Setapp), but saves hours for anyone writing docs or blogging.
brew install --cask cleanshot- Annotation on par with a dedicated image editor: arrows, callouts, blurring private data
- Screen recording to video and GIF with trimming and pause removal
- Captures with a cleaned desktop and hidden icons — tidy for docs and articles
- Cloud upload with short links for sending to colleagues
One-time purchase or subscription?
The licence is bought once and includes updates for a defined period; cloud storage is a separate subscription. CleanShot is also part of Setapp.
Worth paying when the system tool exists?
If screenshots are a work tool for you — docs, bug reports, tutorials — the difference shows up daily. For occasional captures, the built-in ⌘⇧5 is fine.
Notion is a workspace construction kit: documents, databases, kanban boards, and wikis built from blocks like LEGO. Offline mode has historically lagged, but collaboration and templates are best in class. The free plan suffices for personal use.
brew install --cask notion- Documents, databases, and tasks in one space, cross-linked to each other
- Databases with multiple views: table, board, calendar — the same records from different angles
- Real-time collaboration with inline comments
- Ready-made templates for project docs, sprints, and knowledge bases
Does Notion work offline?
Only partially: previously opened pages come from cache, but working without a connection is not the design — the data lives on Notion servers. For an offline-first approach, look at Obsidian.
Is the free plan enough?
For personal use, yes — there is no page limit. Payment starts with team features: granular permissions, version history, and guest access.
Obsidian is a knowledge base over a plain folder of Markdown files: bidirectional links, a connection graph, and hundreds of plugins. Your files stay yours forever — put them in git or iCloud. Free for personal use; their sync service is a paid option.
brew install --cask obsidian- Notes are plain markdown files on your disk: they outlive any service and open in any editor
- Backlinks and a graph view — the knowledge base grows structure on its own
- Fully offline, with syncing your choice: git, iCloud, or the paid Sync
- Plugins cover the rest: tasks, tables, diagrams, publishing
Obsidian or Notion?
Obsidian means local files, offline access, and full control, but weaker collaboration. Notion means cloud and teamwork, but your notes live on someone else's servers. For a developer's personal knowledge base, Obsidian is the safer bet.
What does Obsidian cost?
Personal use is free with no limits. The paid parts are Sync and Publish — both replaceable with git and static hosting.
Hazel is a quiet file-system automator: it watches folders and applies rules — move invoices to "Finance", delete month-old downloads, rename screenshots by date. Set it up once and order maintains itself. One-time purchase.
brew install --cask hazel- Rules watch folders and file things for you: receipts to accounting, screenshots to an archive, installers to the Trash
- The Downloads folder stops being a dumping ground with zero manual effort
- Conditions combine name, type, date, contents, and tags — and can run your own scripts on a match
- Cleans up leftover files when an app is moved to the Trash
Could Hazel delete something it should not?
Rules do exactly what they say, so build the first ones with a "move" action rather than "delete" and test them on a scratch folder. The rule editor previews which files match.
Is there a free alternative?
Partly: Automator folder actions and launchd scripts cover simple cases for free. Hazel wins on convenience and the breadth of conditions, and that is what you pay for.
GhostPepper is a voice dictation utility powered by local neural networks (Whisper). Runs entirely on your Mac's Apple Silicon CPU and Neural Engine without sending audio streams to external servers. Dictate messages, documentation, code, and emails into any active window with a single global shortcut.
- Speech-to-text recognition powered by state-of-the-art local Whisper models
- Total privacy: audio is processed locally via Apple Neural Engine and never sent to external servers
- Instant voice typing via global hotkey directly into any focused input field, chat, or editor
- Multilingual support with smart punctuation and zero network latency
Does GhostPepper require an internet connection?
No, all AI transcription models run 100% locally on your Mac. The application functions flawlessly even in airplane mode with no internet connectivity.
Does voice dictation strain the CPU and battery?
On Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) chips, inference is heavily optimized for Metal and Neural Engine, resulting in near-instantaneous transcription with minimal battery drain.