My list of essential tools and apps for design & front-end development

These are the best Mac apps out there for the job

This is a personal list featuring the essential tools and apps for my daily workflow, which is mainly focused on management, design and front-end development. Most of them are productivity apps so you’re going to see some pretty obvious options here, but I think it’s important to see the big picture, not only the pro apps.

I use an Apple ecosystem and the apps listed below are mainly for macOS and iOS. But since I prefer cross-platform apps, some of them may also be available for other systems or as web apps. Do you know better options than the ones below? Please let me know.

Google Drive

If I could only have one app or tool my choice would definitely be Google Drive. For three reasons: data synchronisation between all my devices, backup redundancy and collaboration (Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Forms, etc.).

Nowadays I only save data inside the Google Drive folders on my devices, which enables me to have an always up-to-date backup of my work, on all my machines (but with the selective sync turned on) and accessible online and everywhere. The biggest caveat of the Google Drive is that the macOS client doesn’t have automatic updates, from time to time you should update it manually.

Yes, I tried Dropbox, but it can’t compete with the value proposition of the G Suite (disclaimer: I also have a monthly iCloud plan to sync my photos across all my Apple devices—moving the Photos App library inside the Google Drive folder isn’t a good idea).

Get it on drive.google.com.
Cost: free and paid plans. I pay €9.99/month for 1 TB.

Mail & Calendar

When things work why should you complicate? The Mail and Calendar app (along with Slack and Todoist), are my main communication and management tools (ok, Asana also, but only to manage the team projects at Técnico Lisboa). At first I struggled to incorporate the use of the…