Are you looking to add a boost to your work productivity and steer clear of all those pesky distractions? The best productivity apps for Mac can help you optimize your workflow and reduce turnaround time.
When it comes to productivity, Mac users do not compromise. They pay extra for high-end operating systems and always strive for the best. So the best Mac productivity app should be able to best match the operating system of your choice.
With that being said, let’s dive into the best Mac productivity app to streamline your workflows in 2024.
Top 5 Mac Productivity Apps for Smoother Workflows
When it comes to choosing the best productivity app, there is no one-size-fits-all. Productivity is individually defined. Everyone has their own productivity peak times and what works for you may not work for everyone else. But, distractions, Social media, lack of time management? We can all agree on these.
So, let’s explore the best Mac productivity apps to tackle these and get more done in less time.
1. SelfControl — Best for Blocking Distractions
You have tons of tasks on your to-do lists that are waiting to get marked as complete. While you finally sit down to work after possibly procrastinating for hours, a notification pops up. It’s the newsletter you’ve subscribed to, an email from a client, or a notification from an app pestering you to open it.
SelfControl is your knight in shining armor for times like these. It is a free Mac productivity app that locks you out of all the distracting websites. Whether it is a mail server, YouTube, or anything else on the internet yearning for your attention, SelfControl is the shield you need to ward off all these sites.
Let’s look at some highlighted features of this app.
Highlights
● Simple and easy to use.
● Blocks websites by adding URLs to its blacklist.
● You can select the duration for blocking the websites.
● Free and open source software.
Key Takeaways
A survey by Vouchercloud shows that about 47% of most time-wasting distractions are checking social media. While reading news websites constitutes 45% of distractions. With apps like SelfControl, you can save a tremendous amount of time otherwise spent or being unproductive.
Data Source — Vouchercloud
2. Airlight — Best for Quick Browsing on Mac
Do you find yourself struggling to go back and forth between bazillions of tabs when working? It is natural to get lost in the plethora of knowledge the internet has to offer. But at the same time, we don’t want your page loading into another. So, the tabs keep piling up until you cannot figure out which one is what.
Browsing apps like Airlight can help you access numerous sites without switching back and forth between tabs. With Airlight, you get a micro-browser that makes your most-used apps easily accessible with keyboard shortcuts.
Highlights
● Instant access with keyboard short keys.
● Uses Perplexity as the default browser.
● Does not replace your Mac browser.
● Greatly reduces time spent on juggling tabs.
Key Takeaways
Airlight is a great Mac productivity app for people with short attention spans and memory lapses. Research shows that media multitasking can be the culprit behind attention lapses and memory failure, accounting for why you may forget something in the moment.
Juggling numerous tabs while browsing and researching is similar to multi-tasking with constant context switching. You may end up losing track of what you read where and how to re-access it. With Airlight, you have nothing to worry about. All the tabs you need are just a hotkey away, contributing immensely to your productivity.
3. Focus — Best for Setting Pomodoro Timers
We’ve all heard of the Pomodoro technique and we all wish to use it for productivity. However, it can be hard to effectively manage the Pomodoro periods with regular breaks. Therefore, apps like Focus can help you set Pomodoro timers along with timers to track your focus duration.
If you want to stay on top of your goals and keep track of your performance, Focus is the go-getter for you. Before starting your day you can create a schedule of what you want to do. Then select a task and start the timer to work on it. This a great way to break your day-to-day goals into smaller more manageable tasks.
Let’s look at some key features of this app
Highlights
● It offers a Focus Timer as well as a dedicated Pomodoro timer.
● You can fully customize the Pomodoro timer to fit your needs.
● Focus also helps you stay on track by creating daily, weekly, and weekend schedules.
● It lets you block distracting websites to avoid losing focus.
Key Takeaways
Apps like Focus can help you prioritize tasks and work on them in an organized way. Instead of juggling multiple tasks at once, you can focus on what matters the most all the while avoiding any distractions.
While it may seem tempting when you’re getting buried under a myriad of tasks, multitasking can reduce your productivity by 40%. Multi-tasking may even cost 20% of your capacity per task resulting in months of delay in reaching the goals that you could’ve reached in weeks.
Data Source — Atlassian
4. UPDF — Best for AI-assisted Document Management
Imagine you have a bunch of scanned documents that need to be converted into editable format. Then you need to summarize it, organize the pages, make edits, provide feedback, and share it for further collaboration. That’s a lot on your plate.
However, Mac Preview does not have an OCR or dedicated summarization feature. With productive document management apps like UPDF, you have nothing to worry about.
UPDF is a full suite of powerful PDF solutions for productive document workflows. Whether you need to convert scans to editable files or convert PDF to or from other file formats, UPDF has your back. Plus, you can use its GPT 4-based AI assistant to directly handle large and complex data within seconds.
Some major highlights of UPDF include the following.
Highlights
● Read, edit, annotate, compress, convert, and organize PDF documents.
● OCR tool to convert scanned documents to editable and searchable PDF files.
● Powerful AI assistant to directly summarize, translate, and explain selected text.
● Ask AI feature lets you upload a document and ask related questions to AI.
● AI Chat lets you ask anything to UPDF AI using text prompts.
● Create and fill PDF forms and add handwritten, digital, and electronic signatures.
Key Takeaways
Apart from these, UPDF also lets you password-protect, redact, and batch-process PDF files. With its Cloud storage, you can seamlessly access your documents across all platforms even Windows and Android devices.
Research shows that 21% of overall staff productivity loss is attributed to ineffective document management. And, 80% of employees are seeking cloud-based file sharing. UPDF provides an efficient solution to all these concerns and enhances overall work productivity.
5. Things — Best for Organizing To-do Lists
So many ‘things’ to do, so little time. I know you have a long list of all the things you’ve been waiting to do, all the tasks you need to complete, and all the goals you wish to reach. But you have no idea how to keep track of all these things in the jumbled world that is our brain.
That’s why ‘Things’ exists to help you handle your tasks and reach your goals in an organized way. ‘Things’ is your personal task manager that breaks down larger goals into smaller more manageable tasks.
This way, you can keep everything off your mind and onto a sleek well-organized list. And if the name is not enough, the app design is also very Mac-friendly; minimal, and modern with all the extras neatly tucked away.
Some highlighted features of the app are as follows.
Highlights
● Neat and minimalist UI design.
● Beautifully organized to-do lists that can be broken into smaller tasks.
● You can add tags, start dates, deadlines, and more.
● Conveniently displays calendar events together with tasks.
● Allows you to separate work-related tasks from things you need to do at home.
Key Takeaways
So, why do you need Things? Because to-do lists matter. Everyone is creating them and looking for more organized ways to handle them. Did you know that over 33% of people use to-do lists to manage their time? That’s way higher than the Pomodoro technique, used only by less than 5% of people.
And if you want to stay on top of your task management game, Things can help you keep things under control.
Other Mac Productivity Apps — Notable Mentions
Apart from our top 5 picks of the best Mac apps for productivity, several other productivity apps are also worth mentioning. These apps can help streamline your workflows by automating various important tasks. Let’s have a look.
1. Trello
Three words to describe Trello are flexible, powerful, and simple. It is a task and project management Mac productivity app that lets you create and assign cards. You can add due dates, attachments, and checklists and automate workflows to greatly enhance your team’s productivity.
2. 1Password
If you tend to forget your passwords or have trouble creating new ones, let 1Password handle it. It manages your online security, auto-fills personal information and passwords, and stores credit cards, medical records, and even your front door code, saving you a tremendous amount of time.
3. Reclaim.ai
Reclaim.ai is the AI assistant that automatically plans your daily schedule by adding recurring events, automatically time-blocking tasks, finding the best time for your meetings, and more. It tracks the time spent on your habits, tasks, and meetings to boost your overall productivity.
More Strategies to Enhance Your Productivity at Work
Still, looking for more ways to enhance your productivity? While the technology can help automate and organize your workflows, it all still comes down to the sheer power of determination and smart planning. With that in mind, here are some important strategies to boost your productivity.
● Manage your Work Energy: When it comes to productivity, managing your energy effectively matters. Try to plan your day ahead of time and set tasks around your energy peak hours.
● Pay Attention to Your Workspace: Your workspace decides all the magic that happens. Declutter. Decorate. Colorize. Also, adding horticulture can help reduce stress and keep you moving.
● Learn to Set Priorities: That dreaded task nesting in your to-do list, that one needs to go first. Don’t procrastinate. You can use the Eisenhower Matrix to set your priorities right.
● Create a Recharge List: Don’t let your work tasks overpower your to-do lists. Create a list of all the things you enjoy too. It could be a movie or a book, whatever helps recharge your energy.
● Avoid Context Switching: Context switching can confuse the brain and reduce overall productivity. So, group similar tasks together to work on them simultaneously.
Bottom Line
When it comes to supercharging your productivity on Mac, the best Mac productivity app can make all the difference. We have provided a list of the best productivity apps for Mac users to stay ahead of the game.
Whatever area of the work you wish to improve, there is an app for that. From building self-control, browsing efficiently, and keeping things (or tasks) under control to managing documents like a pro, you will find the one app made just for your needs.
No matter what app you use, we hope it makes your 2024 and the years to come more productive than ever before. Stay focused and stay productive ticking one task off your to-do lists at a time!
