MacBook Tools Worth Installing, Plus the Free Ones Built In

macOS already comes with good free tools: Activity Monitor, Storage settings, Preview, Dictation and the Screenshot toolbar. Try those first. Add an app only when one of them keeps letting you down. When you do, look for one that works on your Mac, doesn't need an account and costs one payment, not a monthly fee.

Below are the built-in tools most people overlook. After that come the jobs where a separate app helps most: keeping windows in place, finding what's slowing the Mac down, freeing space safely, and working with PDFs, dictation and the clipboard without uploading anything.

What makes a good MacBook tool

Most Mac utilities have the same goal: save you a few seconds many times a day. The ones that last tend to share a few traits:

• They work on the Mac. Your files, voice, screen and clipboard stay on your machine. The tool doesn't need a network and has nothing to leak.
• No account. A utility that moves windows or measures your disk has no reason to know your email address.
• They're honest about what they do. Be wary of any app that promises to "speed up your Mac" or "free RAM". Good tools show you what's happening and let you decide.
• They can be undone. A cleaner should let you restore things. A window manager should let you undo a rearrangement.
• A fair price. Over three years, a $4.99-a-month app costs $179.64. A pay-once app costs what it says.

Built-in macOS tools most people overlook

Before you install anything, check these. They're all free and already on your MacBook.

• Activity Monitor (Applications › Utilities). It shows every process and what it uses in CPU, memory, energy, disk and network. If the fans spin up, look at the CPU tab.
• Storage settings (System Settings › General › Storage). It breaks your disk into categories and offers recommendations. It's a good first look when space runs low.
• Preview. Besides opening PDFs, it can merge pages, sign documents and shrink files. Choose File › Export, then set Quartz Filter to Reduce File Size. The catch: that filter treats every image the same way, so photos often come out soft.
• Dictation. Turn it on in System Settings › Keyboard, press the shortcut in any text field and talk. On Apple silicon, many languages are handled on the device.
• The Screenshot toolbar. Press ⌘⇧5 to capture the screen, a window or an area, or to record the screen. Nothing needs a cloud account.
• Displays and Mission Control settings. In System Settings › Displays, click Arrange… and match the screens to where they sit on your desk. Under Desktop & Dock › Mission Control, leave "Displays have separate Spaces" on.
• Terminal one-liners. pbcopy < /dev/null empties the clipboard. That's handy right after you paste a password or API key.

For plenty of people, that's the whole toolkit. The sections below cover where it runs out.

Keep windows in place: window managers

If you plug your MacBook into a monitor, you've probably seen this happen. You unplug for a meeting, plug back in, and every window is stacked on the laptop screen. Sometimes the Mac just sleeps overnight and the windows wander anyway.

When a display goes away, macOS moves its windows to a screen that's still connected. It doesn't reliably move them back. Some monitors and docks also report themselves as disconnected while they sleep, so the same shuffle happens while you're away. We cover this in detail in how to stop Mac windows moving when you unplug a monitor.

macOS settings make the shuffle smaller but don't stop it. To get every window back, something has to remember where each one was. Our app Roost does that:

• It remembers a layout for each set of screens: the MacBook alone, at the home desk, at the office. It can tell two identical monitors apart.
• When you dock, undock or wake the Mac, windows go back to their places. An Undo card stays up for 30 seconds afterwards.
• You never save a layout. Roost picks up a new screen setup the first time it sees it and keeps up as you move windows.
• ⌃⌥ with the arrow keys or a letter snaps the current window to a half, third, quarter, the centre or the full screen. One click arranges every open window.

Roost is free for 7 days, then $7.99 once ($14.99 for three Macs). It needs macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon or Intel. It isn't on the Mac App Store, because the sandbox doesn't let one app move another app's windows.

See what's slowing you down: activity monitors

Activity Monitor tells you what's busy right now. That doesn't help when the Mac stuttered an hour ago and has since recovered. It also lists browser tabs and helper processes as separate rows, so it's hard to see what an app costs in total.

What an activity monitor app can add:

• History. Being able to look back at "what happened at 3:40" is the main reason to install one.
• Grouping. An app's helpers counted together under that app.
• Alerts. A heads-up when something stays busy.

Our app Almanac lists every process, like Activity Monitor, with a process tree and a choice of columns. It also groups each app's helpers under the app. It keeps up to 90 days of history and ranks apps by one impact number that combines CPU, memory, GPU, disk and network. It names macOS services such as WindowServer and Spotlight's indexer, so a stuck one can't hide. It also shows what's keeping the Mac awake, battery health, and your Claude Code and Codex plan limits.

Almanac is free for 3 days, then $9.99 once. It needs macOS 15 or later.

Free up space safely: Mac cleaners with undo

Mac cleaners have a poor reputation, and some of it is earned. Many show alarming red numbers, promise speed-ups, and delete files for good. A careful cleaner does three things differently:

1. It explains each item: what it is, whether it comes back by itself, and what you lose if it goes.
2. It ticks only safe items for you, such as caches, logs and build data that apps rebuild.
3. It gives you a way back, so a mistake costs you a click, not a file.

Storage settings is the free starting point. It's less helpful with the large grey "System Data" bar, which it shows as a single block.

Our app Winnow works that way. It measures your home folder and Applications in about a minute on a well-used Mac, and it only reads until you choose something. It ticks only items that come back by themselves. Everything it removes goes to the Trash first, and Restore puts it back exactly where it lived. Winnow empties its own items from the Trash after 7 days by default, or after 1 or 30 days, or never. It doesn't touch your documents, Desktop, iCloud Drive, Photos library, Mail, Messages, keychains or macOS's own caches. Developers get proper cleanup for Xcode build data, simulators, npm, Homebrew, Rust crates and similar tools. Winnow also finds exact duplicate files and files left behind by apps you've deleted, and it splits System Data into parts you can understand.

Winnow is free for 7 days, then $9.99 once. It needs macOS 15 or later.

PDF, dictation and clipboard tools that stay offline

These three jobs push you toward uploading things, even though your Mac can do the work itself.

PDFs

Most "compress PDF" results online ask you to upload the file. That's a strange trade for a bank statement or a signed lease. Preview's Reduce File Size filter is free but blunt. You can build a gentler filter in ColorSync Utility.

We're building Sheaf, a Mac app that puts PDF tools in one place: compress, convert, sign, redact and edit, all on your Mac. It isn't out yet. When it arrives, it will be $14.99 once.

Dictation

Built-in Dictation is fine for a sentence or two. It struggles with names and jargon, and it keeps no record of what you said. Most dictation apps that do more are subscriptions, and many send your audio to a server.

Our app Wren works like this: you hold a key, talk, and the words are typed where your cursor is, in any app. Speech runs on the Mac. Wren is free for 7 days, then $9.99 once.

Clipboard

Clipboard managers keep everything you copy, often for months, and that includes API keys copied from a dashboard or a terminal. There are free fixes. In zsh, setopt HIST_IGNORE_SPACE keeps commands that start with a space out of your history. pbcopy < /dev/null clears the clipboard.

Our app Tacet is a clipboard history that hushes API keys, tokens and passwords as you copy them, and keeps them out of shell history. Tacet is free for 7 days, then $9.99 once.

Two more along the same lines: Oriel handles screenshots and screen recordings that stay on your Mac, with markup and search across the text inside captures. Lantern lists every device on your Wi-Fi. If you're a developer, Porter is free and gives your local dev servers real .local names with trusted HTTPS.

How to choose without paying for subscriptions

1. Name the problem first. "My windows pile up when I undock" leads to one tool. "I want a productivity app" leads to ten.
2. Try the built-in option for a week. If it's good enough, you've saved money.
3. Use the free trial on the real problem. Dock and undock during the trial, or run a cleanup and then restore something.
4. Read the privacy page. Check what leaves the Mac, whether you need an account, and whether there's analytics.
5. Check the system requirements. Some newer apps need a recent macOS or Apple silicon.
6. Do the three-year maths. A one-time price beats a cheap monthly price surprisingly quickly.

All of our Mac apps are listed on the Papermint Studio home page.

Questions

What tools come free with a MacBook? Activity Monitor, Storage settings, Preview, Dictation, the Screenshot toolbar (⌘⇧5), Disk Utility and Terminal all come with macOS. Recent versions also let you tile windows by dragging them to a screen edge.

Are Mac cleaner apps safe? They're safe when they only remove things that apps rebuild, such as caches, logs and build data, and when they let you restore what they removed. Avoid any that promise to free RAM or speed up your Mac.

Why aren't some Mac utilities on the App Store? The App Store sandbox limits what one app can do to others. For example, it doesn't let one app move another app's windows. Apps like that are sold directly instead, and Apple notarizes them.

Do I need a subscription for good Mac tools? No. Many good utilities are sold for one payment with updates included, and the built-in tools cost nothing.