We’ve come across remarkable resources for designers and developers in the year 2023.
The second compilation in the series, titled “What’s New for Designers & Developers from 2023,” will highlight some of the most impressive and useful applications designed for both Mac and Windows (with a smaller selection for Linux). These applications, whether newly launched or updated, range from tools aiding development, design, productivity and many other types of applications.
While eagerly anticipating the developments that the web will unfold in 2024, let’s take a moment to revisit the standout Mac and Windows apps of 2023. Enjoy the retrospective!
January
Aurora Editor – Mac App
AuroraEditor is a IDE built by the community, and written in Swift for the best native performance and feel for macOS. It will support everything you could expect from an Xcode-inspired application, project planning, and your favourite built in editor tools.
Price: Free
Balance – Mac App
More and more people are working from home these days, and work-life balance is becoming an increasingly important topic. Without work-life balance, work and life start to blend together, which can lead to burnout. Balance is an app that hopes to solve that.
Price: Free but has In-App Purchases
February
Aptakube – Mac/Window App
A modern, lightweight and multi cluster desktop client for Kubernetes. Connect to multiple clusters simultaneously as if it was just one big cluster. View logs and manage all your Kubernetes resources from your machine!
Price: $99.00 for Personal License or $89.00 device Team License
Homerow – Mac App
Keyboard shortcuts are fast and awesome. But there are still many actions that require you to reach out for the mouse. Homerow solves this by allowing you to search and click on every button or link in macOS.
Price: Pay once, use forever. It’s between $29.00 and $49.00
March
Glint – Linux, Mac & Windows App
Glint is a graphical user interface for Git with heaps of functionality packed into an intuitive and friendly interface. Both powerful and easy-to-use, Glint lets you break free from the command line and manage your repositories in an easier, more visual way.
Price: Free
Folders – Mac App
Folders File Manager is designed for users who recently transitioned from a PC as well as for those who have always missed a tree-style file manager on their Mac.
Price: $9.99
April
Sidekick – Mac & Windows App
Sidekick 3.0 transforms the game of browsing by protecting you against online distractions. Built by ADHDers for ADHDers and professional onliners, Sidekick is ultra-fast and packed with great tools for focusing.
Price: Free
IconSim – Mac App
The perfect tool for an icon designer to test their mac app icons. No more back & forth conversations with the developer. If you’re a designer, you can test your icons right away with this tool. It supports both the main app icon as well as menubar icon.
Price: .99c
Cliptonite – Mac App
This MacOS app helps you to makes maintaining your clipboard history fun. Cliptonite lives inside the menubar and lets you quickly copy and paste items from your clipboard history.
Price: Free, also offers in-app purchases
May
Watson – Mac App
Watson lets you draw or note onto your screen. With all the handy shortcuts, and tablet stylus support. So make sure that Watson is yours must-have daily app.
Price: $7.99
MajorM – Mac, Linux & Windows App
MajorM is a desktop app for people using MongoDB. It offers features such as a visual query builder, relational navigation, inline editing, and color-coded connections, all aimed at simplifying and accelerating the search, editing, and retrieval of data.
Price: Free
June
Summon – Linux, Mac & Windows App
Summon is an integrated workspace for GitHub, Jira, Google Calendar and Slack. Single pane of glass to access GitHub and Jira, End-to-end workflows to get work done, Unified search, Assistant to manage notifications and tasks
Price: Join Beta
Essential – Mac App
Essential is a MacOS app built for developers. It is like having a second set of eyes on your screen to help you be more productive. It can suggest code fixes to error messages you see on screen, and help you remember your workflows.
Price: Free
Breveto – Mac App
Breveto, an exquisite writing application designed for macOS, offers a seamless experience for composing both lengthy compositions and concise notes, ranging from essays to shopping lists.
With its user-friendly interface, organizing your content becomes effortless, making it an ideal choice for crafting compelling web copy. Moreover, Breveto incorporates advanced AI capabilities, enabling you to refine your text with ease.
Price: Free (Offers In-App Purchases)
July
Ivory – Mac App
Ivory is a brand new app that brings over a dozen years of experience building the award-winning Tweetbot for Twitter, over to the Mastodon network. We obsess over every detail and put good design and experience first. Download and experience it for yourself. If you liked Tweetbot, you’ll love Ivory!
Price: Free (Offers In-App Purchases)
DevPod – Linux, Mac & Windows App
DevPod is a tool used to create reproducible developer environments. Each developer environment runs in a separate container and is specified through a devcontainer.json. DevPod providers can create these containers on the local computer, any reachable remote machine, or in a public or private cloud. It’s also possible to extend DevPod and write your own custom providers.
Price: Free
August
Finbar – Mac App
Finbar allows you to have your very own command palette in every app on your Mac. With blazing–fast performance, fantastic fuzzy search and smart learning capabilities, it’s far superior to the Mac’s built–in menu bar search feature.
Price: Try it for Free or Buy it at $9.99
QuickScreen – Mac App
Are you tired of the limitations of QuickTime screen capture? The developer of the app was too. So introducing QuickScreen. Where you can quickly record any window or screen on your Mac. And apply zooming effects. This app helps you create more professional and engaging videos!
Price: $7.99
September
LocalCan – Mac App
Forget about creating HTTPS certificates manually 😩, remembering port numbers and IP addresses 😢, or editing /etc/hosts 😭! All of this is handled by LocalCan, so you can focus on you app and not the setup.
Price: $19.00 for 1 macOS device, $29.00 for 2 macOS device, $99.00 for 10 macOS device
Cork – Mac App
Cork is a lightning-fast, macOS-native graphical companion to the Homebrew package manager. It lets you install packages, add taps, maintain your Homebrew installation, and much more.
Price: Free
October
OrbStack – Mac App
OrbStack is the fast, light, and easy way to run Docker containers and Linux. Develop at lightspeed with our Docker Desktop alternative.
Price: Free to $8.00 per user/month
Scripion – Mac App
Scripion provides a user-friendly application that simplifies the process of handling basic scripts, allowing you to focus your valuable terminal resources on more critical tasks.
Price: Free
Dashcam – Mac & Window App
Dashcam represents the quickest means to troubleshoot any issue. Developers often allocate 35% to 50% of their time to debugging tasks. Dashcam takes the initiative by automatically identifying coding errors, offering potential solutions, and replaying your screen alongside terminal, console logs, and network requests in perfect synchronisation.
Price: Free
November
SSL Montior – Mac App
A simple and completely free SSL certificate monitoring app that checks for the most common issues and sends out notifications in case of failure. The app also can be used to obtain SSL certificate hash values without any scripts to run from the terminal.
Price: Free
Ducklet – Mac App
Ducklet is a native macOS GUI for SQLite. You can easily query your data, understand your database schema and view comprehensive database statistics.
Price: Free
December
OptiClean – Mac App
OptiClean is a specialized image cleaning app that is crafted for macOS. It swiftly and conveniently eliminates flaws, unwanted objects, or people from images. OptiClean’s AI model operates locally, utilizing the Apple CoreML framework and maximizing the performance of M1/M2 chips. Notably, your images remain secure, as they are not uploaded to any external servers.
Price: $9.99
Shortcut Wizard – Mac & Windows App
Organise your frequently used keyboard shortcuts for quick and convenient access. A straightforward “Shift + Space” command opens up a universe of possibilities, enhancing efficiency. It’s not merely about productivity; it’s about being the most productive individual on your team.
Price: 7 days free or $12 – One time payment
