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The 14 Best Mac Productivity Apps in 2025
Image: Generated with Dall-EAs a Mac user, you’re likely tech-savvy, quality-conscious, and expect high performance from your tools. With increasing demands for efficiency, remote work, and task management, finding the best productivity apps for Mac is essential to optimizing your workflow and making the most of macOS’s seamless integration.
Mac apps aren’t just about functionality—they are designed to feel native, leveraging Apple’s robust system capabilities to deliver unmatched stability, performance, and a refined user experience. Alongside these powerful apps, mastering Mac keyboard shortcuts can further boost your efficiency, helping you execute tasks swiftly and navigate your Mac with ease.
The growing ecosystem of Mac productivity apps makes it easier than ever to build a personalized tech stack that supercharges your workflow. Innovative tools like Timing’s automatic call tracking and Screen Time tracking across devices, or BetterTouchTool’s Mac window management, allow you to customize your setup, making your workday smoother and more intuitive.
To help you navigate the best options, here’s a curated list of the best productivity apps for Mac that will elevate your efficiency and help you work smarter.
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Multitasking vs Multitasking Skills: Why Understanding the Difference is the Key to Greater Productivity
Image: Generated with Dall-EThere’s barely a job ad, resume or workplace intro pack that doesn’t stress the importance of multitasking. The ability to switch seamlessly between different tasks or projects, we’re constantly told, is an admirable quality — something we should all strive towards. But what is multitasking exactly, and is it deserving of such high praise? Should we be developing our multitasking skills instead?
Hang on a second. Multitasking vs multitasking skills? What’s the difference? Surely this is just a matter of semantics?
Not quite. While they’re related concepts, we’d argue that there are some important distinctions between the two. And improving your multitasking skills can help you get the most out of your attempts to multitask.
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ADHD Time Management: The Benefits of Time Tracking with ADHD
Chris Cameron is an expert in productivity and workflow automation who was recently diagnosed with ADHD. In this article, Chris shares how Timing has empowered him to manage his time and attention more effectively. You can discover more insights on ADHD and productivity on his blog and website, learnwith.cc. In addition, Chris is offering a special 25% discount to Timing users on enrollments for his upcoming course, Mastering Workflow Automation with ADHD.
If you have ADHD like I do, managing time effectively is crucial for maintaining focus. But this is easier said than done. One minute you’re focused on a task, and the next, you’re down a rabbit hole with no recollection of how you got there. That’s why traditional time-tracking methods often fall short. But what if there was a tool that did the heavy lifting for you? That’s where Timing comes in. This macOS app automates the time-tracking process, making it easier to manage your day without adding another task to your list. Stick around and I’ll show you why Timing has become an indispensable part of my ADHD time management toolkit.
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Time Blocking: The Productivity Hack used by the World’s Most Efficient People
Image: Gaining VisualsFeeling overwhelmed, unfocused and exhausted? Swamped with deadlines and unable to complete them on time? Perhaps it’s time to look at how you’re structuring your days. Jumping from one task to another may seem necessary — there’s just so much to do, after all — but this approach can be time consuming and counterproductive. If you’re looking for a solution, time blocking can help.
Time blocking is a time management practice that involves being intentional about how you spend your time. It’s about evaluating your most important tasks. Assessing how long they’ll take to complete. And blocking off time to work on them without distraction. The result? Designated time for deep work and shallow work, improved focus and productivity, and a greater sense of control.
Here, we define time blocking, look at some of its challenges (and solutions), and offer a step-by-step guide to make it part of your daily life.
Let’s get started.
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Do a Time Audit To Find Out Where Your Time Goes
Image: Studio RepublicWhere do the hours go? Why do you feel like you’ve been working consistently all day, but you’ve only ticked one item off your to-do list? Did that task really only take you a couple of hours, as you’d planned? Or was it maybe more? Knowing exactly how you spend your time on any given day can be tricky. Fortunately, a time audit can help.
A time audit involves recording the hours and minutes of your workday. It helps you account for how you spend your time, and provides valuable insight that you can use to boost your focus and productivity, prevent burnout, and run your business better.
Here, we explore the ins and outs of time audits, including their benefits and how to do one.
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Setting Work Boundaries: 7 Steps for Better Work Satisfaction
Image: CoWomenBoundaries refer to the limits we set for ourselves. They’re a line in the sand that indicates we’re prepared to go so far and no further. Boundaries are important in all aspects of our life, including at work. Work boundaries help us to stay focused and productive, establish work-life balance, maintain constructive working relationships, boost work satisfaction, and prevent burnout.
If you battle to communicate your needs at work, if the lines between your professional and personal lives regularly blur, or if you constantly feel overwhelmed or exhausted, it’s worth paying attention to the boundaries you have in place. Are they strong enough? Do you need to renegotiate or reinforce them? Examining your boundaries critically can help you stay on track mentally, emotionally and physically.
Here, we explore the different types of boundaries at work. And we offer seven steps that will help you keep good boundaries in place — and reap the rewards.
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How Work Breaks Help to Boost Focus and Productivity
Image: Brooke Cagle
Contemporary work culture tends to glorify busyness. We often feel pressured into working constantly, pausing only to lament how few hours there are in the day. But our frantic schedules tend to neglect one important fact: working incessantly isn’t sustainable. It isn’t healthy and it doesn’t result in good quality work. In fact, part of working hard — and well — involves integrating work breaks into our day.
This may seem counterintuitive at first, especially if you’re struggling to get on top of your workload and meet your deadlines. You need to work more, not less, right? Not necessarily. Scheduling 10 to 15-minute breaks throughout your day can actually help you get more done, more quickly. Breaks can boost your productivity, improve your creativity, and prevent you from experiencing productivity-killing burnout.
Here, we take a look at the benefits of work breaks, the different types you can take, and why burnout is such a big deal. We also offer a practical solution to help you step away from your desk from time to time.
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Asynchronous Work: How to Stay Focused and Productive in the New World of Work
Image: Al ghazaliWorking environments aren’t what they used to be. The days of masses of people huddled in cubicle farms has largely become a thing of the past. Teams are now increasingly decentralized, with a growing number working in various locations, across different time zones, and according to their own schedules. The former synchronous working model we used to live by has been replaced with a new one. Welcome to the world of asynchronous work.
While this trend was gaining traction before the pandemic, there’s no doubt that Covid helped it to become an international phenomenon. Leaders and employees who thought their companies couldn’t work asynchronously were proven wrong. And after working remotely or on a hybrid basis in the years since then, many aren’t going back. A massive McKinsey study has revealed that 58% of employees work today remotely at least part of the time.
Of course, if you’re a freelancer, you’re probably familiar with async work. Some freelancers are expected to work specific hours, be available during certain windows, or even work from a client’s office occasionally. These cases are rare, however. Many dictate their own working hours and habits.
But this doesn’t mean that synchronous work is pointless or outdated. There are plenty of good reasons to work at the same time as, and alongside, other people. Let’s take a look at asynchronous work vs. synchronous work. The pros and cons of each. And how you can stay productive no matter how or where you work.
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The Complete Guide to Project Time Tracking
Image: Louise ViallesoubranneWhile there are many variable metrics that feed into project management, there are always three primary pillars: quality, cost and time. In order to pull off a successful project, you need to complete high-quality work within an agreed budget and a set timeframe. Everything flows from there. Project time tracking is critical to how you manage the third pillar, and affects pillars one and two as well.
When you start a project, you have to assess how much time you need to produce good work. And you need to consider how many of these hours are billable hours, and how much profit you’re likely to make. Keeping track of these hours as the project progresses is important, too. How much time have you used to date? Are you on track? And when you finally invoice, was your original estimation accurate?
An automatic project time tracking tool (like Timing) is the best way to predict, manage, and evaluate the time you spend on a particular project. Let’s look at project time tracking in more detail, including why it’s so important and how to implement it.
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Top 10 Time Management Tips: Work Less, Achieve More
Image: Firmbee.com
What constitutes a working week for most people? Does the old Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, norm still stand? Well, if the results of the world’s biggest four-day workweek trial are anything to go by: probably not. In fact, it’s likely safe to say that the working week revolution is underway. Now more than ever, businesses are using smart time management tips that can help professionals live more productive balanced lives.
The old nine-to-five workweek structure goes back over 200 years. So, it’s been due for a revamp for quite some time. Part of dismantling this system and implementing a new solution, however, has involved understanding how to manage time effectively.
Freelancers and professionals who need to bill time accurately have always understood the importance of effective time management strategies. The pandemic fuelled interest in this issue among broader business groups. We balanced our professional endeavors with our domestic commitments in increasingly blurred ways during the early 2020s. And as we did, we started to ask ourselves: are there time management tips that could help us do more and work less?
The answer is yes. Let’s dive in.
