Free Software Collection
Free macOS Software
What unsettles people about a new Mac is usually not a missing flagship application but a few small motions that do not work: dragging a window to the edge does not make it half the screen, ⌘Tab switches applications rather than windows, and a copied item is gone once overwritten. The macOS productivity ecosystem skews paid and increasingly subscription-based, yet all three of those have well-maintained free and open-source answers. This list sorts five ways — filling system gaps, everyday work, development, media, and privacy.
15 curated recommendations
Selection Criteria
- Runs natively on macOS rather than as a barely-working port.
- Core features are free, with no everyday capability behind a subscription.
- No ads and no forced registration.
- Open source, actively maintained and native on Apple silicon are preferred.
Recommended Tools
Rectangle
Gives macOS the window snapping Windows has had for years
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
AltTab
Windows-style Alt-Tab, brought over to macOS intact
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Maccy
Clipboard history for macOS — ⇧⌘C brings back what you copied
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
IINA
mpv wearing a proper macOS coat
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Ghostty
A native terminal written in Zig — the fastest-rising of the group since its 2025 release
- Open Source
- Offline
- Cross-platform
- No Ads
VSCodium
Clean, telemetry-free builds of VS Code
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Obsidian
A local-first knowledge base — your notes stay yours
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
- No Sign-up
LibreOffice
A complete office suite, Office-compatible, free forever
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
KeePassXC
A fully offline password vault — one encrypted file holds it all
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Bitwarden
An open-source password manager whose free tier covers a lifetime of personal use
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Cross-platform
LocalSend
Move files between phone and PC without the cloud, a chat group or recompression
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Syncthing
Peer-to-peer real-time file sync, no cloud needed
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
HandBrake
The open-source video transcoder — compress and convert entirely offline
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
mpv
A minimalist, high-performance open-source media player
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Brave
A Chromium browser with ad blocking built into the engine
- Open Source
- No Sign-up
- Cross-platform
FAQ
- First three to install on a new Mac?
- Rectangle, AltTab and Maccy. They restore the three basic motions macOS lacks: snapping windows to edges, switching by window instead of by application, and clipboard history. All three are open source, sit in the background using almost nothing, and together they make muscle memory carried over from Windows line up again.
- Why are the paid productivity suites missing?
- This site lists tools whose core features are permanently free, ad-free and usable without registration. Many Mac productivity applications moved to subscriptions in recent years and degrade when you stop paying, which fails that criterion. Whether they are good software is a separate question we are not judging here.
- Do Rectangle and AltTab conflict?
- No — they handle different things: one decides where a window goes, the other finds the window you want among many. Both need Accessibility permission, and AltTab also needs Screen Recording, because a window thumbnail is mechanically a capture of another app's window.
- IINA or mpv for video?
- IINA's core is mpv; the difference is the shell. IINA builds a complete interface to macOS conventions with trackpad gestures, picture-in-picture and online subtitle search. mpv is a minimal playback core driven by config files and the command line, suited to people who already have their own setup. For everyday watching, IINA.