There are a bunch of great apps you can install on your Mac—no question there. Separating amazing apps from must-have apps is the hard part, and we don’t want you to spend hours analyzing the Mac App Store (or scouring the web) to find the very best and most useful apps. We’ve made a list of champions across four categories: productivity; Internet and communications; music, photos, and video; and utilities.
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I have a mid-2012, non-Retina, 13' MacBook Pro with a 2.5 Ghz i5 and 8 GB of RAM. My current OS is 10.9.1. I've played Starcraft 2 for some time without any problems, but there are a few newer games on the Mac App Store that look like they'd be no fun with a keyboard and mouse. Shop Best Buy's Apple brand store for great prices on a new or refurbished Mac Pro, MacBook, iMac and Mac mini. We test the top contenders to identify those offering the best Mac antivirus protection. Avast Security Pro (for Mac). The 50 Best iPad Games. Best Touch Bar games and apps: How to have fun with your Macbook Pro’s Touch Bar. We list the best games and weird uses for the Macbook Pro’s Touch Bar, from Pac Man and Pong to Knight Rider. The Mac Pro is designed with multi-core processing in mind, and the Mac Pro does its best when using apps that can take advantage of multiple cores -- high-end video editors, 3D renderers, audio.
The Lifehacker Pack is an annual snapshot of our favorite, essential applications for each of our favorite platforms. For our always-updating directory of all the best apps, be sure to bookmark our App Directory, where we profile amazing apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS each week—browser extensions, too.
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Productivity
Alfred (free-ish)
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You can do a lot with Spotlight in macOS, but Alfred is still our favorite application launcher for yourMac. This easy-to-use tool can do so much more than pull up apps, files, and and keyword-driven automation. Plunk down £19 for the Powerpack, and you’ll get a clipboard history, access to workflows (that you can use to combine different actions, hotkeys, and keywords to do even more), hotkeys, 1Password integration, and even text expansion. In other words, paying for Alfred covers a number of activities that you’d have to download separate apps for—some featured in this very Lifehacker Pack. If you’re a new Alfred buyer and feeling little overwhelmed, be sure to check out our beginner’s guide to the app to get a handle on all the amazing things you can do with it.
If you don’t want to pay anything for an app launcher that has similar (but fewer) features under the hood, check out LaunchBar 6: free, if you don’t mind a little bother here and there. That, or consider tricking out Spotlight.
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Bear (free-ish)
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This cutely named app is one of the best note-taking apps you can get, with one small caveat—to synchronize notes between your devices or use custom themes, you’ll need to pony up $15/year for the app’s subscription. Otherwise, Bear is completely free to use (and looks great).
Within the app, you organize your notes by hashtags rather than unwieldy folders. You can also link notes to one another, which makes it a lot easier to chain together related thoughts instead of having to dump everything into one giant Super Note or remember that you had a few things to say, split into different notes, about a particular topic. Install Bear’s browser extension for Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, and you’ll be able to create new notes from whatever portion of a webpage you select. Also, Bear makes it easy to import notes from other services, including Apple Notes, so you really have no reason to not give it a spin.
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If you need to sync notes and don’t feel like paying for it, consider apps like OneNote, Google Keep, or Simplenote—all good choices, but none that can beat our Bear for usability and looks.
aText ($5)
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Who would have thought that text expansion, otherwise known as typing shortcuts, would be so expensive? While it’s true that you can create these kinds of shortcuts yourself directly within macOS, a full-fledged text expansion app is going to save you a lot of time and trouble. We like aText if for nothing else than its price—$5—given that much-loved alternatives like Textexpander ($3.33/mo on an annual plan; $45 for an older standalone) and TypeIt4Me 6 ($20) are anywhere from a bit to a lot more expensive.
As for aText, using it is simple. You set it up so that whenever you enter little words or phrases, the app drops in something else. So, you can finally correct that annoying “ducking” issue forevermore,
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Text expansion, also known as typing shortcuts, can save you hours of typing each day. You type a small word or combination of characters and it’ll expand into full, complex sentences that you often use. We love aText because it offers so many great features and only costs $5. If you haven’t yet jumped on the text expansion train, it’s time.
Todoist (free-ish)
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For simple note-taking and note-organizing, you can’t go wrong with Todoist. The app is completely free—unless you want to pay $39/yearly for more advanced features like automatic reminders, backups, themes, and an activity overview, to name a few features. Otherwise, the basics are great. It’s easy to create and synchronize tasks (and subtasks) across all of your Todoist-using devices, and browser extensions (including a Gmail addon) will help you make Todoist, and your growing task list, an ever-present part of your daily life. You won’t have that same kind of experience with plain ol’ Notes, especially if you’re trying to access your items on multiple platforms.
If you’re a big Google fan, we also love Google Tasks, which you’ll find directly integrated into the latest version of Gmail (and as a direct app for iOS and Android). You can also add to-do items into our note-taking app, Bear. The app Things 3 is a super-comprehensive task manager, but it costs quite a bit: $50 for Mac, $10 for iPhone, and $20 for your iPad. If the first item on your to-do list is “rob a bank,” however, it’s a gorgeous, fully featured app. And if you want to harass yourself about things you have to get done on your Mac, consider giving the quicky Effortless a try—which drops a countdown timer for your tasks directly into your Mac’s menu bar.
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Google Drive and Office Online (free)
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We don’t really have to introduce Google Drive, because Google’s offerings should be pretty well-known by everyone at this point. Docs and Sheets are great, free tools for creating and collaborating on documents and spreadsheets (of course), so much so, that a number of businesses solely rely on Google’s offerings instead of anything fancier or pricier.
If you’re a Microsoft convert, or you really love Word and Excel, you can access basic, online versions of both programs directly from Microsoft—no Office 365 subscription needed. If you’d rather work offline, Apple’s Pages and Numbers are the obvious, free choices, and LibreOffice is still the best open-source office app around.
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Airmail ($5)
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If you really don’t feel like fussing around with Mail, which is fine enough for most macOS users, consider giving Airmail a try. It’s been our favorite third-party mail app for some time given its low price and ample customization. It also hooks into a ton of other third-party apps and services, including Trello, Evernote, your favorite cloud storage service, and Apple’s mighty Workflow app (on iOS, that is).
If you don’t need power options and want easy, simple email, the free Spark is definitely worth checking out—especially since it can help you automatically sort your inbox to make it feel less like an ever-growing pile of things you’ll never read. Boxy 2 is great if you’re a Gmail user who wants the powers of its Inbox app on your desktop (and don’t mind paying $5 for it), and Mailplane 4 ($30) is a solid app if you prefer an interface that looks like the regular ol’ Gmail. Power users might want to investigate Wavebox ($20/year), which lets you access Gmail, Inbox, Outlook, and all sorts of other amazing web apps directly from one, easy-to-use interface.
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Internet and Communications
Google Chrome and Firefox Quantum (free)
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The browser you use is likely going to be dictated by the browser you’ve been using. In other words, if you’re a Google Chrome loyalist, it’ll probably take a lot to get you to switch over to Firefox Quantum (if you’re at all intrigued). And if you’ve been with Firefox from day one, you’re probably a lot less likely to want to move all of your bookmarks, extensions, and other settings over to Chrome.
So, which browser is best? It’s not so much that one excels over the other; it’s more important to say that both, finally, are pretty competitive. Depending on the benchmarks you look at—here are a bunch from ZDNet, for example—the browsers appear evenly matched for speed. I haven’t gone through and assessed the most-recent version of each, but I have used both Firefox Quantum and Google Chrome, and they both feel, well, fast. That said, Chrome still feels a bit like a hog when you’re trying to load a ton of tabs at once, but it’s pretty good about using less of your CPU and memory than other browsers.
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If you don’t like either, Opera is a viable alternative that’s actually pretty speedy in its own right—and we can’t complain about its built-in VPN, either, nor its awesome integration of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram directly into an easy-to-launch sidebar.
Goofy and Franz (free)
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Years ago, it felt like everyone used one chat client to cover a bunch of services (ICQ, AIM, IRC, Jabber, et cetera). Most people nowadays probably have their favorites locked in: Messages for texting, Facebook Messenger for everything else, WhatsApp for sending government secrets or expiring pictures of your booty, Discord for any and all things gaming, Slack for all things not-gaming, et cetera. So, rather than go into detail with all the more obvious apps, we’ll highlight two unique ones.
Facebook Messenger, as you know, requires you to be on Facebook to use it. If I’m correct, you used to be able to essentially connect Facebook’s service to Messages itself, so you could send and receive your Facebook chats without having to have your browser open all the time. And if I’m right (again), you can no longer do that. Instead, you’ll want an app like Goofy, which basically drops the Facebook Messenger interface into a simple application that you can access from your desktop.
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We’re also fans of Franz, which offers the same treatment for a variety of other services (as well as Facebook Messenger). If you don’t want to keep 20 programs open to chat with people, Franz lets you access apps like Slack, WeChat, WhatsApp, Skype, Google Hangouts, and Facebook Messenger all from one, single interface.
Skype (free)
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Everyone also probably has a video chat app they love to use. And there are plenty to pick from: FaceTime, which comes baked into macOS by default; the aforementioned WhatsApp; Google Hangouts; Houseparty; and even good ol’ Facebook Messenger itself.
If you’re looking for a standalone messaging app that can do it all—for personal and business use, too—we still recommend Skype, which Microsoft recently overhauled. Its interface feels cleaner (and comes with a dark mode), it’s still as easy as ever to send text messages, video messages, and files to contacts, and you can even @ message your friends to get their attention.
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That said, we live in an time where most messaging apps have some kind of video or calling component—or so it feels. So if you need that human contact beyond simple texting and emoji, odds are good that you can already do it in the chat app you love.
Music, Photos, and Video
VLC (free)
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VLC is the best media player you can put on your Mac, period. It works perfectly with minimal fuss once you install it, and it can play almost any file you throw at it. If you’re a power user, it has a sea of options that would take the entire rest of this article to describe to you.
We enjoy all the improvements VideoLAN tosses VLC’s way, including its new support for 10-bit color depth and HDR, 360 videos, and improved decoding that allows less-powerful systems to play full 4K videos—even if that’s overkill for your Mac’s display resolution. You can drop a number of plug-ins and extensions into VLC to extend its functionality, and you can even use the app to stream videos to your Chromecast, if you’ve allowed Google to get a foothold into your Apple-only household.
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HandBrake (free)
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HandBrake is a free video conversion tool that, when coupled with an app like MakeMKV, will turn you into a ripping and converting powerhouse. HandBrake is pretty easy to use, but there are still plenty of settings that might give you a little anxiety when you first load the app. We have a guide to help out with that. Once you’ve mastered the basics, queuing up multiple videos and converting them to all kinds of different formats will feel second-nature. Also, don’t forget to grab VLC, mentioned above, so you can actually watch all of your creations.
Adobe Bridge CC, digiKam, and Google Backup and Sync (free)
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Apple’s standard Photos app does a pretty decent job organizing your sprawling photo, thanks to collections, tags, and the ability to view photos by when (and where) they were taken. You can even do a little light editing, too.
If you need a little more organizational oomph, consider Adobe Bridge CC—completely free to use, even though you might have assumed it was a paid app. You can’t do a lot of editing in Bridge (well, any retouching, really), but what it lacks in tools, it makes up for in data. You can easily see all sorts of compelling metadata about the images you’ve taken, and organizing them via ratings, keywords, and labels is easy. Well, setting it up is easy. Actually organizing your sprawling photo library might take a little time, but it’ll be worth it in the end, trust me.
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The open-source app digiKam has organizing, editing, and a UI that’s fairly similar to what you’d find in Adobe Bridge CC. If you’re not used apps like Adobe’s Lightroom, digiKam might feel a bit advanced—possibly even overkill for your needs—but it’s a powerful app for pro users that would rather spend their cash on camera hardware than more software.
Google Backup and Sync isn’t a photo organizing app itself, but it’s what you’ll want to use to get your photos uploaded into Google Photos—a great online tool and compelling alternative to iCloud as a result of the unlimited storage space you get for photos. It’s easy to create collections and share photos with others (Google will even make suggestions for you based around where and when you’ve taken your shots). And we also like that you can get pretty creative with your searches when sorting and organizing your sprawling photo library.
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Spotify ($10) and Amazon Music Unlimited ($8)
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Which music streaming service you pick is largely a matter of preference: one might carry your favorite band, one might have an app interface you greatly prefer, one might have all your friends on it. If you aren’t into Apple Music for these, or any other valid reasons, Spotify is the next obvious choice (sorry Tidal). It has a huge library, its social features are great, and we love the thought it puts into its playlists—human-curated and automatically generated.
If you’re already an Amazon Prime subscriber, you should also consider checking out the company’s Amazon Music Unlimited service. You’ll have to pay $8 on top of your Prime subscription, but that still makes it slightly cheaper than an Apple Music ($10) or Spotify Premium ($10).
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Pixelmator ($30) and Affinity Photo ($50)
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Pixelmator is one of the best image editors on the Mac, but it’s no longer the only game in town. Though its $30 asking price might seem high, it’s a bargain considering all the incredible editing tools you get to play with—rivaling more comprehensive apps like Adobe’s Photoshop CC for a fraction of the price. (And if you want features like Touch Bar support, automatic color adjustments, and advanced compression—as well as HEIF exporting—you’ll want to pick up the pricier Pixelmator Pro for $60)
Affinity Photo is a compelling, albeit costlier alternative to Pixelmator that’ll set you back $50 for a professional-grade suite of tools, including full RAW editing and a UI that looks a lot like the Photoshop you might prefer (but don’t want to pay a subscription to get). That includes support for “Personas,” which mimics Photoshop’s Workspaces feature by allowing you to set your screen’s many options and buttons based on whatever it is you’re working on—if you prefer one set of tools for a simple editing and another set of tools for something more complex, like pre-processing images for print.
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If you’re looking for basic image editing and your Mac’s built-in Photos app isn’t enough, you can always give the open-source app GIMP a try. What it lacks in polish, it makes up for in price.
Utilities
Dropbox, Google Drive, and Mega (free-ish)
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These cloud storage services should all be household names at this point. We’ve covered their costs, and their peers’ pricing models, pretty extensively. Which one you go with depends on your budget, preferences, and needs. Dropbox is a great, all-encompassing solution for cloud storage, but you’ll need to get creative to get more than 2GB of free space with the service. Google Drive is a no-brainer, since you get 15GB of space and can easily synchronize files to your laptop or desktop to work on them offline.
With Mega, you get 50GB of free cloud storage to play with and a handy app (MEGAsync) that you can use across your Windows and Mac computers. Mega does have an annoying transfer quota of around 1GB or so in a 24-hour time span, but that’s a small price to pay for a free 50 gigs. Take that, thumbdrives
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qBittorrent or Deluge (free)
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Ever since Transmission had all those malware issues some time ago, and uTorrent filled its installer full of crap and cryptocurrency miners, we’ve been on the hunt for a simple BitTorrent app, and we’ve settled on qBittorrent. It’s an open-source downloading tool that should look pretty familiar for anyone who has used an app like uTorrent or Transmission previously. No big surprises with qBittorrent’s UI or features. We like that the app is ad- and crap-free, is completely open source, and can automatically quit or shut down your PC when your download is done. Deluge is a good BitTorrent app alternative, but the app hasn’t been updated since May of 2017 (when we wrote this), and we prefer something with more active development.
Backblaze ($5/mo)
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If you want to keep your important files on the cloud, rather than a Time Machine backup, that’s fine—you might not have spare storage sitting around, after all. Backblaze is our new top pick for backup services, since it costs half the price of Crashplan (previously great) and does all the same things. Install the app, pick the files and folders you want to back up (encrypted, no less), and hope you never have to use the service’s restoration features.
The Unarchiver (free)
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If you have file archives that your Mac can’t open, give The Unarchiver a shot at them. It’s free, it’s quick, and it does a good job of opening that which your Mac cannot open itself. It also works directly out of Finder, so you won’t have to (annoyingly) open up a separate app before you take a crack at your archives.
A good alternative is Keka, which is also free, also opens a bunch of different archive formats, and can even be faster than The Unarchiver depending on the archive format and size. If you have issues with one app, try the other, and you might find that it does a better job extracting your files.
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(This story originally ran in July 2016, written by Alan Henry. It was updated in July 2018 by David Murphy.)
To enable your Mac to handle the demands of Virtual Reality (VR) games or Augmented Reality (AR) and work with a VR Headset on your Mac, an External Graphics Processing Unit (eGPU) is essential.
Even if you’re not interested in VR gaming or apps, an eGPU is a modest investment that makes a massive improvement to the performance of your Mac.
If you’re into gaming, an eGPU opens up a whole new world of gaming possibilities on macOS.
Although there are other innovative gaming solutions like NVIDIA’s GeForce Now, they don’t compare to the advantages of having an eGPU box connected to your Mac.
An eGPU allows you to play graphics intensive games such as Apex Legends on Mac at maximum frame rates just as if you were playing it on a PC – even on older Macs.
If you use demanding applications such as graphic design tools, CAD programs or do lots of 4K video editing on your Mac, an eGPU makes a huge difference.
However, not all eGPUs are compatible with the MacBook Pros or iMacs – you have to be very careful which one you choose.
So we’ve done the hard work for you and looked at the best eGPUs for Mac users in 2019.
What Is An eGPU?
An eGPU is basically an external unit that houses a powerful graphics card which will allow your MacBook Pro or iMac to deal with graphic intensive applications.
Not only this but an eGPU unit turns your humble MacBook into a powerful desktop gaming system or 4K video editing system capable of competing with the very best.
Advanced 3D graphics platforms such as NVIDIA CUDA, which are way beyond the capabilities of current Macs, suddenly become accessible with an eGPU. It also means that highly demanding games can be played at maximum resolution on Mac – something that current Macs struggle with or can’t handle.
Most exciting of all however, is that eGPUs open-up the world of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to Mac users.
The great thing about an eGPU is that because it’s external, you can leave it at home for gaming or VR use and still enjoy the portability of your MacBook if you want to take it with you somewhere.
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eGPUs are not all about gaming though.
They can also provide much greater number crunching power when it comes to analyzing data with complex statistical software, forecasting, 3D modelling for CAD design, big data and more.
System Requirements For eGPUs
Unless you’re lucky enough to own one of the latest $4,999 iMac Pros which can handle VR out of the box without the need for an eGPU, you’ll need to make sure your Mac meets some basic minimum requirements.
The main requirement Mac users should be looking for in an eGPU is that it supports Thunderbolt 3 as it requires the high data speeds of up to 40Gps that only Thunderbolt 3 connections can deliver to your Mac.
This means ideally you need a MacBook Pro from 2016 onwards or an iMac from 2017 as they are the only Macs which have Thunderbolt 3 ports.
However, with a MacBook Pro from early 2015 or iMac from mid 2015 or later using a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter, you can also connect an eGPU unit.
To use a VR helmet too though, you’ll need a Mac with an Intel Core i5 chip or higher.
This is because the best VR headset for Mac that officially supports macOS is the HTC Vive which requires an Intel Core i5 or higher present in 2015 Macs.
The following Macs only have Thunderbolt 2 ports although those made before 2015 do not have the Intel Core i5 chip:
- MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) and later
- iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2015)
- iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015)
- iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) through 2015
- Mac mini (Late 2014)
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) through 2015
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) through 2015
- Mac Pro (Late 2013)
Note that we generally don’t recommend daisy-chaining an eGPU unit via a Thunderbolt adapter.
It’s not officially supported in High Sierra or Mojave and you’ll get more reliable performance by using a Mac which already has a Thunderbolt 3 port.
eGPUs & Graphics Cards
The other major thing you’ll need of course is a graphics card to put inside the eGPU unit (unless you buy an all-in-one solution like the excellent portable Sonnet Puck).
You have to be careful with this because not all graphics cards are supported by macOS High Sierra and Mojave yet. At the moment, AMD graphics cards based on Polaris are the safest bet which includes the Sapphire Pulse and WX range.
In particular, the AMD Radeon Sapphire Nitro works perfectly and is a safe option for Mac users if you want to save yourself compatibility headaches. Mac users should think twice before using NVIDIA cards for now as although NVIDIA has updated its graphics cards drivers recently and has issued Pascal drivers for the ultra powerful Titan X Pascal graphics card to work on Mac, there are still some issues with them working with eGPUs on High Sierra.
Most users have found more success with AMD cards but as High Sierra is updated and the price of the Titan X comes down, there will be better support.
Another thing to bear in mind is that if you’re using a MacBook Pro, you’ll need to make sure that the eGPU unit can provide enough power to power both the graphics card and charge your Mac.
The eGPU chassis needs to provide at least 85 watts of charging power to achieve this. All the eGPU units reviewed in this article all provide enough power to do both but if you choose a different model, double-check this with the manufacturer.
You’ll also need to be running the very latest version of macOS 10.13 High Sierra or macOS 10.14 Mojave so make sure you’ve updated through the App Store.
Throughout early 2018, Apple slowly updated High Sierra to perform better with eGPUs as initially there were various bugs and stability issues such as having to log in and out of macOS when you connect and disconnect eGPU units.
Mojave provided much better support for eGPUs with fixes for connection issues, acceleration for Metal, OpenGL or OpenCL and support for more VR headsets.
The beta versions of macOS are always at the cutting edge of VR development but you can only install them if you’re a member of the Apple Beta Software Program.
Although the beta versions offer enhanced VR support earlier, it’s recommended that you wait for the final releases as beta versions can be unstable and conflict with other apps on your Mac.
macOS Mojave & eGPUs
The latest version of macOS Mojave brings the best eGPU support yet.
The biggest improvement is that Mojave allows you to use your MacBook Pro or iMac display as your main monitor.
Previously, the full benefits of using an eGPU were only fully realized with an external monitor connected to your Mac. Even better, it also allows you to choose which applications benefit from eGPU acceleration.
Unfortunately, NVIDIA cards still aren’t supported in Mojave and our advice is to stick to AMD for now.
Now you’re better informed, here is our list of the best eGPUs for Mac of 2019 in order of ranking.
1. Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Puck Radeon RX 570
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There are three things that make the Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Puck Radeon the best eGPU for Mac currently available: convenience, size and Apple endorsement.
Convenience because it’s an all-in-one setup. It’s an eGPU unit with a Radeon RX 570 graphics card built-in – there’s no need to buy and fit a separate graphics card to go in it.
We love the size because it’s the only portable eGPU for Mac on the market. eGPUs are pretty large units and take quite a bit of space on your desk – they’re certainly not designed to be portable. The Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Puck is the exception because at 6x2x5.1 inches, it’s small enough to put in your rucksack or laptop bag and take with you.
Finally, Apple officially endorse both Sonnet’s Puck and Breakaway Box (see review below) as recommended eGPUs for macOS.
Despite it’s size, you don’t need to carry your MacBook Power supply with you either because it can charge your MacBook. The other impressive thing for an eGPU this small is that there are ports three DisplayPorts and one HDMI port meaning you can connect up to four 4K displays.There used to be both a Radeon 560 and Radeon 570 version of the Sonnet Puck but now there’s only the Radeon 570 version. The Radeon 570 card is more than powerful enough to handle what’s coming over the next few years time as VR apps and games on Mac really take off.
You can check out our full review of the Sonnet Puck for more.
Pros:
No need to purchase a graphics card – it’s all included
The only portable eGPU for Mac
Connect up to four 4K displays
Extremely quiet
Cons:
Power Pack is quite large
2. Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box
The Sonnet eGFX is officially endorsed by Apple to developers so you can safely say that it provides rock solid compatibility with Macs. In fact, Apple are selling the Sonnet eGPU as part of its External Graphics Development Kit for $599 for those that want to develop VR apps and games on Mac. The kit is only available to members of the Apple Development Program however and includes the Sonnet eGFX Breakway Box, AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB graphics card and Belkin USB-C to 4-port USB-A hub.
This is actually a very good deal because although you can buy the Sonnet eGPU cheaper on it’s own, the Radeon RX 580 graphics card will set you back several hundred dollars plus you’ll need to purchase the Belkin Thunderbolt Hub However, if you’ve already got a graphics card, it’s cheaper to buy the Sonnet eGFX and Thunderbolt Hub. If you’re not part of the Apple Developer Program though, you can’t take advantage of the Apple deal anyway and have to purchase everything seperately.What we like about the Sonnet is that it’s extremely quiet. In fact even under extensive use and heavy load we’re yet to hear the fans whir. It comes with its own 350W power supply and the neat thing is that once connected to your Mac via Thunderbolt 3, it actually provides power to your Mac too – useful if you don’t have access to a power supply.
Like most eGPUs, it’s extremely easy to slot in a graphics card and your Mac will automatically detect it when you connect the Thunderbolt cable. If it doesn’t for any reason, try logging in and out of your Mac as High Sierra is still a bit temperamental when it comes to eGPU plug and play although the latest updates to High Sierra have improved this.
On the downside, it does feel like a big unit especially if you don’t have much space on your desk. It dwarfs most external drives and it needs to be fairly close to your Mac due to the rather short 0.5m Thunderbolt 3 cable.
There used to be a few minor bugs with High Sierra such as the device not appearing in the “About This Mac” Menu but these also have been fixed with the latest High Sierra updates. Some Adobe applications don’t appear to utilize the full GPU memory though and this may take longer to fix if Adobe need to issue a fix.
Note that the Sonnet also does not support running Windows through Boot Camp. We don’t recommend this anyway now that High Sierra supports eGPU units but if you are thinking of running Windows on your Mac, bear this in mind.
You can watch an interesting setup of a Sonnet Breakaway being used with an HTC Vive Headset to play VR games on High Sierra here.
You can also watch here how the Sonnet Breakaway eGPU makes some impressive improvements to 4K video editing on Mac.
For a more in-depth look, you can check out our full Sonnet Breakaway Box review.
Pros:
Extremely quiet
Supports Thunderbolt 3
Easy to plug and play graphics card
Also charges your MacBook Pro (both 550W and 650W Models)
Cons:
Size – extremely big if you’ve got a small desk
Thunderbolt cable length (0.5m)
Some bugs with High Sierra but improving
Does not support Boot Camp
3. Akitio Node
The Akitio Node is currently the biggest competitor to the Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box and retails for around the same price. Akitio is based in California and specializes in doing everything in-house designing and creating new Thunderbolt peripherals such as external hard drives for Macs and now eGPUs.
The products are extremely reliable, functional and are quickly gathering a dedicated following.
Like the Sonnet, the Akitio Node is very easy to set up and use with plug and play support for graphics cards. The Akitio Node has a PCIe (x16) slot that will take full-sized and also double-width cards. The Node also has a built-in power supply which can help if not enough power is getting to your graphics card.
The Akitio Node is pretty quiet although the extra power supply makes it slightly noisier than the Sonnet. On the downside, like the Sonnet it’s also a very big unit and takes up a lot of space on your desk. It’s also quite soft at the front of the unit so be careful when moving it around not to dent it. It does however have a useful carry handle on the back which makes it a bit easier to transport and move around than the Sonnet.
If you want to try installing Windows on your Mac using Boot Camp, the Akitio does support running Windows in Boot Camp too but as mentioned earlier, there’s really no need to do this now that High Sierra supports a growing number of eGPUs.
Pros:
Easy to set up and use
Accepts all sizes of graphics card
Includes extra power supply
Supports running through Boot Camp
Cons:
Size
Power supply makes more noise than Sonnet
Thunderbolt cable length (0.5m)
4. Akitio Node Pro
The main attraction of the Akitio Node Pro is that it has an extra Thunderbolt 3 Dedicated DisplayPort to add another monitor to your display setup.
Other than that, there aren’t many differences between it at the standard Akitio Node although it has a metallic finish and a handle on the top rather than on the sides. It’s also a bit noisier than the Akitio Node which in itself is a bit noisier than the Sonnet although nothing that becomes too disturbing or disruptive.
There is a mesh panel which helps dissipate the heat from the fans too. Unless you need an extra monitor, you don’t really need the Akitio Node Pro which retails in the region of around $350 – almost $100 more than the standard version. However, it’s definitely well worth the extra dollars if you’re going to be doing VR video editing because of the added 4K monitor support
Pros:
Extra Thunderbolt 3 port for connecting external monitor
Metallic finish
Handle on top rather than at the back
Cons:
Noisier fans than the Akitio Node
Thunderbolt cable length (0.5m)
Price
5. Mantiz Venus
The Mantiz Venus is a Thunderbolt 3 compatible eGPU unit with an extra 5 USB 3.0 ports and an Ethernet connection port. There’s also room for a SATA connector if you want to add an external hard drive to it.
Setup of the Mantiz Venus is very easy as your Mac will automatically detect and install the necessary drivers to run graphics cards in it. On the downside, the HDMI refresh rate seems to be quite low for VR gaming although it’s not clear if this is an issue with a box or High Sierra. Like the Akitio Nose, it also supports both VR gaming in Windows via Boot Camp and macOS High Sierra.
The Mantiz Venus is also almost twice the price of the Akitio Node and Sonnet at just under $400 but will mainly appeal to those that want plenty of USB 3.0 ports.
Pros:
5 USB 3.0 Ports
Sleek metallic finish
Easy to setup
Cons:
Price
No carry handle
Thunderbolt cable length (0.5m)
6. OWC Mercury Helios FX
The OWC Mercury Helios FX eGPU works with both AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards. The Helios FX is a good option for video editors as it supports PCIe cards including Red Rocket and AVID Pro Tools for video editors.
It’s quite a big unit and log enough to accept full-sized, double width GPU cards and provides enough power to run both the eGPU and charge your MacBook Pro at the same time.
The OWC Mercury Helios FX is endorsed by Apple to be fully compatible with High Sierra. Although OWC state that it’s fully compatible with NVIDIA cards, Mac users should stick to AMD for now as there are still incompatibility problems with NVIDIA cards and High Sierra.
Pros:
Best Games For Mac
AVID Pro Tools support
Fully compatible with both AMD and NVIDIA cards
Accepts full length and width GPU cards
Cons:
Lack of ports
NVIDIA support not much use on Mac at the moment
These are currently the best eGPUs for MacBook Pros and iMacs on the market.
One common practical problem we noticed with all of them was the length of the Thunderbolt 3 cable that comes with them.
Since the manufacturers only provide a 0.5m cable, it means you must have the large units close to your Mac which isn’t always convenient if you haven’t got much space. However, for an extra 50 bucks you can get 2 meter Thunderbolt 3 cables which are definitely worth the investment so that you can store the units on the floor or away from your Mac.
Best Games For Macbooks
If you have any questions about these eGPUs or have problems using them with your Mac, let us know in the comments below and we’ll try to help.
Best Racing Games For Mac
If you enjoyed this article, you may also be interested in our review of GeForce Now for Mac – NVIDIA’S impressive solution to gaming on Mac (although it doesn’t support VR).
Free Games For Mac Pro
You can also see below what an eGPU can do when connected to your Mac.