Featured organizers
Anxiety
Quite possibly the coolest to-do list ever. A translucent window floats above your work, allowing you to add to-do items. The items automatically sync with your lists in Mail and iCal. Leopard only.
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BirthdayBook
Get a customizable popup message to remind you of birthdays, anniversaries and other important events. Lots of features.
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Books
Book cataloguing system lets you store and search your personal library. Books can be sorted by title, author and other attributes. Quickfill feature allows you to get information from Amazon or the U.S. Library of Congress.
Calendar
Slick menu bar calendar not only lets you see the day’s date, but also brings up an overview of your schedule. Hover to see details of the day’s agenda. Works with iCal events.
Cashbox
Have you got a hole in your pocket where the money runs out? Cashbox might not plug the hole, but at least you’ll be able to keep better track of your finances.
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Also try: iCompta
Chandler
Organize your life with a powerful task manager that lets you create calendars, share them online and exchange notes by e-mail.
ClipMenu
Menu bar app keeps a history of text and graphics you’ve copied, plus has a section for snippets you can create in categories for use when needed. Completely accessible via the keyboard, using a floating palette.
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Cobook
Address book that lives in the menu bar puts the Apple version to shame. Easily find contacts, add new ones and edit them. App is smart enough to know where to place your edits. Syncs with iCloud. Free while in beta — can’t guarantee it will remain free.
DateLine
Display the month’s dates in an attractive, minimalist line across your desktop. Preferences allow you to tweak the colours and transparency, and decide whether you want it to float above other windows. You can also decide whether you want an icon in the dock.
Deep Notes
Outline ideas and lists with this hierarchical note-taker. Keyboard shortcuts allow you to navigate without resorting to the mouse. Indexed by Spotlight. A nice little alternative if you don’t have $40 for OmniOutliner.
Do It
Manage categorized to-do lists with the option of linking each item to a file on your computer, a URL or a contact from your address book, which can be opened directly from the Do It window. Items can be set as reminders in iCal.
Flycut
Open source fork of Jumpcut pops up a bezel containing recent items that you’ve copied. You can go through them with arrow keys to find the one you want and paste it. Default hotkey is Shift-Command-V.
iGTD
Sort tasks by project, priority, due date and, in the getting-things-done spirit, by context. No longer being developed, but still beloved by many.
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iProcrastinate
Organize your university and college courses and assignments in a way that makes so much sense, you’ll breeze right through post-secondary education.
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Jumpcut
Save up multiple snippets of text and paste them at will from the menu bar or from a translucent display invoked by a keyboard shortcut. KoolClip works in a similar manner.
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Also try: KoolClip
ClipMenu
Lumina
Keep track of your time. Lumina lets you create projects and divide them into tasks, each of which can be timed separately. Furthermore, tasks can be fine-tuned into a series of “durations” with their own notes. And if your time means money, you can also track hourly rates.
Measuring Cup
Organize your recipes the same way you do with iTunes or iPhoto. Create your own categories and sub-categories, and carry out searches.
Meridian
Enhanced menubar clock adds timers, stopwatches, alarms, time zones and chimes. Alerts produce on-screen messages — plus use built-in sounds or iTunes. Timers count down to zero and notify you when they’re done. The menubar display can be customized by font and colour.
mini$
Money manager with simplicity and power in a small package. Features include checkbook-style transactions, purchase itemization, spending management, reporting tools, and support for importing and exporting data
Minuteur
Keep track of the passage of time with this combination egg timer and stop watch. Very nice design.
Moof! Notes
Add notes to the edge of your screen with Moof the classic cow dog showing the way. Also works as a menu bar item.
MyMind
I don’t know much about outliners, but at first glance MyMind seems to be pretty good. And if that’s not what you had in mind, there’s always FreeMind. Another one that may be more to your liking is Idea Knot.
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Also try: FreeMind
Namely
Activate Namely with a shortcut, then start typing part of an application’s name to see a list of matches. Pick the one you want and launch it. Over time, Namely learns your most-used apps.
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Notational Velocity
Nodeless note-taking with instantaneous incremental searches and full access from the keyboard.
NotesTab
Available for notes at the click of a button in your Mac’s menu bar. Saves instantly, remains visible above other apps, shares by email, has time stamps, allows for searches, and has customizable hotkeys.
PandoCalendar
PandoCalendar is frequently recommended and I can see why — it’s quite well done. But I still prefer iCal.
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Pastor
Pastor is a password-protected spot to stash serial numbers, passwords and the like. Once you get started, you’ll be amazed at how many you have. Keep them all in one, easy-to-find place instead of all over the place. Try KeePassX for a cross-platform alternative.
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Also try: KeePassX
PTHPasteboard
Keeps track of the last 20 (changeable in preferences) items that you copied or cut and allows you to paste them at any time.
Read Later
Access to your Pocket (formerly Read It Later) or Instapaper accounts in a single easy-to-use application. Within Read Later you can manage your account without logging in to the services via browser. Stored articles are a mouse click away.
Remember
From the makers of Caffeine, a simple list of tasks that allows you to add folders. Focus feature shows items in one folder at a time. Can be a standalone window or a menu bar item.
Schoolhouse
Sort and organize your assignments, exams, and projects quickly and easily. Publish assignments to the web automatically for anyone to subscribe to. Chart scores over the course of the term.
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Sidenote
Here’s an amazing little program that allows you to organize all those miscellaneous notes that don’t seem to have anywhere else to go. Sidenote has lots of features and a spiffy interface.
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Also try: SlidePad
SimpleTask
To-do list lives in menu bar, dock or both. Tasks are either pending or complete, in order of when they were created — or move them where you like. Searches can be filtered by colour labels. Optionally use the keyboard for all functions.
SketchBox
A version of Sticky Notes with tabs revealing layers for text, drawings and alarm clock reminders. Arrange all your notes in thumbnail view or store them as searchable text.
SlipBox
Simple snippet keeper allows you to keeps notes, including pictures, files or links to files. A system of keywords — or “scents” — associates disparate notes in a hierarchy.
SpendThrift
Rob Colonna built this simple, personal finance app for himself, and he’s making it available for everyone. Just be careful. If you find a bug, he’ll likely be able to fix it. But maybe not.
TaskMate
Click to add, remove or complete tasks. Find completed tasks in a slide-out drawer. Use TextEdit to export tasks to other apps.
Think
If you have trouble concentrating on one program at a time, Think will cover the background clutter for you with an adjustably opaque screen. Think’s thought balloon in the dock lets you know which app it’s “thinking” about.
Time Tracker
As the name suggests, this app keeps track of how much time you waste — er, spend — on projects at your Mac. Projects can be divided into tasks and you can keep yourself honest with alerts for coffee breaks. Start and stop the timer with a menu bar icon, which also reminds you that time is indeed ticking.
TinyAlarm
Set your Mac to make the sound-alert of your choice at whatever time you want — just like an alarm clock — with this menu item.
Voodoo Pad Lite
Create your own little world wide web with hyperlinks to every bit of information you can imagine. Voodoo Pad Lite works the way you think. If you like the idea of own little WikiWikiWeb, look at WikiNotes.
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Also try: WikiNotes
Wunderlist
There are plenty of choices for to-do-list apps for the Mac, but they don’t come much slicker than Wunderlist. Nice animations and a selection of backgrounds combine with a feature set that includes the ability to make and search multiple lists, check off each item, and sync everything between your Mac and other devices. Also available as a web app.
xPad
Keep snippets, notes, pictures and other random items organized by category.