What's on my Mac

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

I am a minimalist, and that extends to my computing setup. I install very few apps on my computers. Most of what I need my computer to do is built into the OS and its system apps. As an Apple user, there are great third-party apps out there that rival and arguably surpass the first-party offerings. But if we look for the best tool instead of the tool we have, it creates a choice paralysis. There is always an app with more features, or an app with a nicer design. Deciding to always use the first-party option eliminates the choice. For this reason, the core of my computing setup is Apple’s first-party apps.

However, there are certain tasks that I can’t accomplish with Apple’s system software. For those tasks I use the following apps.

BBEdit: TextEdit works, but it’s a basic text editor. BBEdit is the quintessential Mac text editor: powerful, capable, and never in my way. Despite all its power, it feels lightweight, fast, and native.

NetNewsWire: I guess I could catch up all the blogs I read using Safari, but an RSS reader seems like a much more suitable tool for the job. Apple does ship its Podcasts app which supports RSS, but they don’t ship an RSS news reader. This means I must use a third-party solution. When looking for a third-party app for a task, the main criteria I personally look for are: (1) whether it does the basic tasks I need it to, and (2) whether it looks and feels native. I want an app to feel native because then it feels like it’s part of the operating system itself. It reduces cognitive load. I want it to follow all the conventions of the operating system and work like all my other first-party apps. The RSS reader that fits my criteria best is NetNewsWire. It looks like an RSS reader that took every single Apple Human Interface Guideline to heart. As a bonus, it’s free and open source.

Wipr 2: Ads on the web can be annoying, disruptive, and invasive. Wipr blocks them. Wipr works in the background so I never really have to interact with its UI, but when I do it is pleasant and lightweight.

ChatGPT: Although I could use the ChatGPT web interface in Safari, it is nice to have my interactions with the LLM in an app, separate from my browser tabs. I often use the companion window feature to have an LLM chat window next to whatever I’m working on. I haven’t used Gemini or Claude much, simply because I’ve been so impressed with ChatGPT and its native Mac app.

Transmission: A native macOS BitTorrent client.

Optimus Player: For opening video files that aren’t supported by the built-in QuickTime Player, like MKV and AVI. This app feels like a sibling to QuickTime Player.

iSubtitle: This app takes video files of any format and adds them to the TV app (which I can then watch on my Apple TV using the Computers app there). It automatically pulls metadata from TMDB and can add subtitle tracks as well.

Minecraft: The only video game I play on any platform.

AppCleaner: While the apps I’ve listed here are the core apps installed on my Mac, of course I will from time to time download an app for a specific task or just to try it out. Afterwards, I will use AppCleaner to make sure there are no traces of it left cluttering my Library folders.

That’s it. I have just nine third-party apps on my Mac.