Buying all the apps you need for your Mac can get pretty expensive, which is why SetApp has turned out to be such a useful service. The monthly subscription you pay gets you unlimited access to a long list of great Mac apps that’ll cost you a lot less than picking up each app on its own. Here’s our list of five must-have apps from the SetApp collection.
SetApp has over 100 apps available for its US$9.99 a month subscription fee. You can download and use as many apps as you want, and if at some point you decide their service isn’t your thing you can unsubscribe without losing any of your documents or data; just buy the apps you want from the developer or Mac App Store.
Check out these five apps we think make SetApp’s monthly subscription worth the price:
Ulysses
Ulysses is versatile writing app that doesn’t get in your way despite everything it does. You can sync across multiple devices—including iPhone and iPad—via iCloud, organize your writing projects, publish to WordPress or Medium, use Markdown formatting, and more. Ulysses costs $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year if you aren’t a SetApp subscriber.
iStat Menus
iStat Menus is powerful set of system monitoring tools for your Mac that lives in the menu bar. It includes real-time monitoring for CPU and GPU activity, memory usage, and network activity tracking. It also shows internal temperature sensor data and lets you control your Mac’s fans. As if that isn’t enough, it also gives you a customizable menu bar clock and world clock with with sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset data for over 120,00 cities. Outside of Setapp iStat Menus costs $14.99.
Bartender
It’s crazy how fast your Mac’s menu bar can fill up with stuff that gets harder and harder to manage. Bartender fixes that by letting you group the things you don’t always need to see in a single pop-out menu bar item. It can also temporarily display menu bar items that need your attention, and includes keyboard shortcuts for navigating your ever-growing collection, along with a hotkey for searching and quickly finding the item you need right now. Bartender costs $15 on its own.
BusyCal
Apple’s Calendar app is nice, but it isn’t nearly as powerful as BusyCal. The app packs in customizable day week and month views, smart filters, natural language input, floating alarm windows with customizable snooze options, and a unified calendar and to-do view. BusyCal uses the same databases as Apple’s Calendar and Reminders apps, so your schedule and to-dos sync transparently between all your devices. BusyCal costs $49.99 if you aren’t using SetApp.
iMazing
iMazing is the Mac to iPhone and iPad file transfer tool Apple should’ve made. You can move files on to your iOS devices, copy files to your Mac, and even move songs to your Mac. You can extract voice memos and export your message history, too. It also backs up your iOS devices and lets you selectively restore items, unlike iTunes or iCloud backups that are all-or-nothing. iMazing costs $54.99 for a single computer, unless you’re a SetApp subscriber.
Making SetApp More Useful
Need a utility for a one-off task on your Mac? If it’s available on SetApp you can download the app, use it, then delete it. The next time you need the app just download it again. There aren’t limits on how often you download apps, so you don’t need to keep everything installed for just in case.