9 best Mac apps to fix what macOS leaves out (2026)

Introduction

macOS handles the basics and leaves real gaps. There is no built-in way to save a window layout and bring it back. Clipboard history stops at your last copy, the menu bar fills up, and switching work contexts means dragging windows by hand. This roundup of the best Mac apps covers 9 tools that close those gaps across window management and workspaces, clipboard managers, and launchers. We picked them on what they actually do, their pricing, and third-party reviews with live links. One disclosure up front: Spud is ours, and we flag that plainly on its card.

Key takeaways

• Spud restores a whole named workspace (apps, browser tabs, window positions) in about a minute. Free forever, or $4.99/month for Pro.
• Rectangle is the best free window snapper, and Maccy is the best free clipboard history. Both are open source.
• Paste syncs your clipboard across Mac and iPhone over iCloud, while Pure Paste keeps pastes as plain text.
• Raycast is the strongest free launcher platform, and Alfred wins for scripted workflows.
• Spud fits when you juggle several work contexts and want the whole layout back at once.

The best Mac apps at a glance

Here are all 9 tools side by side, sorted by category, with pricing and the one feature each is known for. Details and reviews follow below.

Window management and workspaces

macOS can arrange windows, but it does not remember an arrangement and bring it back. These four tools handle that job at different levels, from single-window snapping to restoring a full desk of apps.

Spud

Spud is a menu-bar workspace manager for macOS. It snapshots every open app and window, including positions, sizes, stacking order (z-order), and browser tabs, then restores them with one click.

What it does best is full-context restore. Restore relaunches closed apps and reopens closed browser tabs without duplicates. It remaps layouts proportionally onto whatever displays are connected, whether you are docked or on the laptop. It is keyboard-first. The switcher opens with ⌃⌥ Space, you save a layout with ⌃⌥ S, and jump back to the previous one with ⌃⌥ Z. Switch to the Nth workspace with ⌃⌥ 1…9. It also bundles searchable clipboard history, a screenshot history, snippets (⌃ Space), and Talk, which reads copied text aloud (⌃ T).

The honest trade-offs: Spud needs Accessibility permission to move other apps' windows. It lives in the menu bar with no Dock icon, and it requires macOS 26 Tahoe. It is not on the Mac App Store. You download it directly from eatspud.com. That is a plus here, since staying outside the sandbox lets it move and manage other apps' windows freely.

Pricing is a free tier forever (up to 2 saved workspaces, the last 10 clipboard items, 5 snippets). Spud Pro is $4.99/month. The 10-day Pro trial needs no card and no sign-up, and nothing you make in the trial gets removed.

Review: no independent third-party review of Spud was available at the time of writing, so we are not quoting one.

Rectangle

Rectangle moves and resizes windows using keyboard shortcuts or snap areas, so you drop a window on a screen edge or corner to snap it. Repeat a shortcut to cycle through window sizes, and portrait display layouts work too. It runs on macOS 10.15 and later, on Intel and Apple Silicon.

It is free and open source on GitHub, which is the main reason it shows up on so many Mac setups. If you want more, Rectangle Pro is a separate paid upgrade with quicker snapping and custom shortcuts for any size or position. One Pro license can be active on 3 devices at a time.

According to Tom's Guide, Rectangle is the one Mac app the writer "can't go without." The review also notes "there's also the $10 Rectangle Pro" (Tom's Guide).

Magnet

Magnet snaps windows into organized tiles. You trigger it by dragging, by customizable keyboard shortcuts, or from the menu bar. It supports fullscreen, halves, quarters, and thirds. Drag to corners for quarters, side edges for halves, the top edge to maximize, and the bottom edge for thirds. It handles up to six external displays and adapts to vertical or portrait screens.

Magnet is sold on the Mac App Store as a perpetual license, with no subscription and no in-app purchases, and optional iCloud sync.

Users back it up on the store: Magnet holds a 4.9 out of 5 rating across more than 167,000 ratings (Mac App Store).

Moom

Moom, by Many Tricks, adds a pop-up palette when you hover over a window's zoom button. You can add up to 61 actions, including Folders, Layouts, and Grids, and chain them together. Saved layouts restore a standard set of apps and windows. That is handy on a laptop that connects to an external display. Moom 4.5.1 requires macOS 10.13 High Sierra or newer.

Moom 4 costs $15 for new users, with an $8 upgrade for existing owners. There is no subscription. You own the version you buy and get at least one year of free updates. Moom 4 is only available directly from Many Tricks, while the older Moom Classic stays on the Mac App Store.

Macworld titled its review "Moom review: Bring click-and-drag order to macOS windows." It credits the snapping, grid resizing, and saved window configurations Moom brings to macOS (Macworld).

Clipboard managers

The Mac clipboard remembers one thing: your last copy. These three tools give you history, sync, or clean pastes, depending on what keeps tripping you up.

Maccy

Maccy is a clipboard manager that keeps your copy history at hand. It is lightweight, open source under the MIT license, and keyboard-first, so you type to search and hit Enter. It uses a native macOS UI, stores everything locally, and respects password-manager clipboard clearing. It requires macOS Sonoma 14 or higher.

The whole app is free, with full source on GitHub. That makes it an easy pick if you want history without a subscription or a cloud account.

On Product Hunt, one reviewer said Maccy "works really well (I especially like the ability to search through your clipboard history) and I also appreciate that it's open source!" (Product Hunt).

Paste

Paste is a clipboard manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It saves everything you copy with no limit, lets you search your whole history, and lets you pin snippets, links, colors, and templates. Your clipboard syncs across Apple devices and stays on device and in private iCloud, and you can set it to ignore passwords and sensitive apps.

Pricing is a 7-day free trial, then $2.49/month billed annually. It holds a 4.5 App Store rating across more than 16,000 ratings, after 10 years on the store.

MacStories' John Voorhees summed up the polish: "Paste feels like the kind of clipboard manager Apple might make" (MacStories).

Pure Paste

Pure Paste is a menu-bar utility that pastes as plain text by default. It automatically clears formatting like fonts, colors, bold, links, and tables, while preserving files, images, and passwords from password managers. It can also remove invisible characters (including AI watermarks), normalize quotes and lists, and strip tracking parameters from URLs. If you prefer, you can clear formatting manually instead of automatically.

Pure Paste is a $4.00 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store by Sindre Sorhus, and it requires macOS 26 or later.

Softpedia's reviewer said Pure Paste "offers the kind of customization options that we wish were available in macOS" (Softpedia).

Launchers and automation

A launcher replaces the mouse trips: you press a hotkey, type, and act. Both of these go well beyond Spotlight, and both start free.

Raycast

Raycast is an extendable keyboard launcher with thousands of extensions. Its core includes Clipboard History, Quicklinks, Calculator, Snippets, Window Management, File Search, and AI, so it overlaps with several other tools on this list. The core plan is free forever.

Raycast Pro is $8/month billed annually (or $10/month month to month) and adds AI, Cloud Sync, custom themes, and unlimited clipboard history.

XDA Developers rated it highly, with the reviewer saying Raycast "replaced Spotlight for me almost entirely" (XDA Developers).

Alfred

Alfred is a productivity app for macOS built on hotkeys, keywords, and text expansion. You can search your Mac and the web, launch apps, and find files, and it adds Clipboard History and Snippets that auto-expand abbreviations. Its Workflows, unlocked by the Powerpack, link hotkeys, keywords, and actions with no coding, and there are thousands of community workflows. Version 5.7.3 supports macOS 10.14 and later on Intel and Apple Silicon, and it is Developer ID signed and notarized.

Core Alfred is free forever. The Powerpack is a one-time purchase. A Single User License covers one user on two of their own Macs, and the Mega Supporter License adds lifetime free updates. There is no subscription.

On G2, reviewers praise "the ability to customize and tailor to specific needs" along with Alfred's community-added functionality (G2).

Buying guide

Start with the one problem that annoys you most, then match a single-purpose tool to it. If windows are the issue and you want it free, Rectangle handles keyboard snapping on any Mac. If you would rather drag than memorize shortcuts, Magnet's guided edges are a one-time purchase. Moom is the pick when you want repeatable grids and preset layouts you can restore on demand.

For the clipboard, Maccy covers free local history. Paste adds sync across your iPhone and iPad, and Pure Paste fixes the narrow problem of formatting following your text. For launching and automation, Raycast is the extendable platform, and Alfred rewards anyone who wants to script deep workflows.

A multi-tool like Spud makes sense when context switching is the real problem. If you rebuild the same set of apps, tabs, and positions several times a day, a named workspace restores in about a minute. That saves more than snapping ever will. Spud also folds in clipboard history and snippets, so you can consolidate a few of the tools above.

FAQ

What is the best free Mac app for window management? Rectangle. It is open source, snaps windows by keyboard shortcut or screen edge, and runs on macOS 10.15 and later, per rectangleapp.com.

What is the best free clipboard manager? Maccy. It is open source under the MIT license, keeps local history, and needs macOS Sonoma 14 or higher, per maccy.app.

Do I need both a window manager and a launcher? Not necessarily. Raycast includes Window Management and Clipboard History in its free core, and Spud bundles clipboard history alongside its workspaces, so you can often consolidate.

Is Spud on the Mac App Store? No. You download Spud directly from eatspud.com, and it is signed and notarized by Blastoise, LLC. Staying outside the sandbox is what lets it move other apps' windows.

What permission does Spud need? Accessibility permission, so it can read and move other apps' windows. Spud runs in the menu bar with no Dock icon and requires macOS 26 Tahoe.

Conclusion

For free keyboard snapping, pick Rectangle. For guided drag-to-edge tiling, pick Magnet. For repeatable grid layouts, pick Moom. For a free clipboard history, pick Maccy; for cross-device sync, pick Paste; for clean plain-text pastes, pick Pure Paste. For an all-in-one launcher, pick Raycast, or Alfred if you script your own workflows. And if the thing that drains your day is rebuilding the same workspace over and over, that is exactly what we built Spud to fix.

Try Spud free →