The best Mac apps for researchers and academics

Macs are fantastic for research. I have been using a Mac ever since I started university back in 2007 and stuck with it through thick and thin (little Mac pun here). Of course, the computer is only as good as the apps that you can use with it. So, here are my current top picks of the most useful apps for academics and researchers.

Photo by Wesson Wang on Unsplash

Communicating with others

My email client of choice is Spark. It works flawlessly across Mac OS and iOS, has a pleasingly clean interface, and offers a lot of features that are missing from the native Mail app. The most intriguing feature is the automatic sorting of incoming e-mails. Messages from people and notifications are automatically grouped. That makes it much easier to stay on top of emails and spot potentially important messages. Spark also has the option to create email templates and populate them with the name of the recipient and the date. I often have to write similar messages, e.g. to ask students to attend my office hours. The templates prevent me from typing out or copying over the same message again and again. Another useful feature is that Spark can schedule messages. For instance, when I compose an email at 5 am on Sunday, I do not necessarily want it to go out at that time. With the scheduling feature, I can get the message sent during regular office hours.

Scheduling an email with Spark (screenshot by the author)

Taming a busy schedule

I thought I would never need a dedicated calendar app, but ever since I tried Fantastical, I cannot live without it. I use the calendar to keep track of my scheduled appointments. Fantastical supports different time zones, which makes it much easier to be on time when travelling or meeting with people in a different area. It also integrates directly with many video conferencing platforms like Zoom and MS Teams. Thanks to that integration, I can just click on the meeting in my calendar without having to look through my emails to find the link. It also features natural language processing for quick entry. For example, typing “project meeting on Monday at 11” will automagically add a meeting with the title ‘project meeting’ for the next Monday at 11…