Apple Should Have Built These 7 Tiny Apps Into macOS (2026)
The small gaps you hit every day
macOS is great at the big things. It’s the small things that get you: a link that opens in the wrong browser, a YouTube video louder than your Zoom call, a photo you need cut out, and a website that wants you to upload it first.
None of these is a big deal on its own. But you hit them every day, and Apple still hasn’t fixed them in macOS 26.
These 7 tiny apps do. Each one fixes exactly one missing feature, most are free or cost less than a coffee, and none of them needs a subscription.
1. LinkRouter: choose the browser for every link
What macOS can’t do: you get exactly one default browser. Every link from Slack, Mail or Notes goes there, in whatever profile was used last.
So a client’s Google Doc opens in your personal Chrome. A Zoom link opens in Safari. A “reply to this email” link opens Gmail as the wrong account. Then you copy the link, switch windows, and paste it again.
LinkRouter fixes that. Click a link anywhere and a small picker appears at your mouse with every browser, every Chrome profile and every Google account. Click one, or press 1 to 5.
The parts that make it feel built-in:
- Rules: hold ⌘ while you pick and it remembers. Route links by website, by the app they came from, or by the email domain, so work links always open in your work profile.
- Email links: a mailto link opens Gmail compose as the Google account you choose, in the Chrome profile that owns it.
- Clean links: it unwraps Outlook Safe Links, Google and Slack redirects, and strips tracking junk before the page opens.
- Fix a mistake: if a tab lands in the wrong place, ⌃⌥B moves it to another profile.
It runs entirely on your Mac, with no account and no cloud. Quit it, and links simply go back to your old default browser.
Price: $5 once for 1 Mac, $10 for 3 Macs, or $15 for 5 Macs.
The catch: it asks every time until you set up a few rules, so the first day has a lot of picking. If you only ever use one browser with one profile, you don’t need it. It needs macOS 14 or later.
2. Faders: a volume slider for every app
What macOS can’t do: set different volumes for different apps. There’s one slider for everything, so a Slack ping blasts at the same level as your music, and a loud YouTube video drowns out your call.
Faders adds a mixer to your menu bar. Every app gets its own slider, a mute button and a live meter, and it remembers your levels.
- Calls: when a call starts, other apps fade down on their own. One shortcut mutes every microphone.
- Boost: quiet app? Push it up to 200%, with a limiter so it doesn’t crackle.
- External monitors: your volume keys finally work with HDMI and DisplayPort displays.
- Outputs: send one app to your headphones and another to your speakers.
It uses no drivers, about 15 MB of memory, and no CPU when idle.
Price: $5.99 once, for up to 3 of your Macs. That’s a launch price, and it goes up after the first batch of licenses.
The catch: each browser counts as one app, so every tab in Chrome shares one slider. It needs macOS 14.2 or later. I built it.
3. BGpeel: remove backgrounds without uploading your photos
What macOS can’t do: remove a background properly. The built-in “Remove Background” is fine for a quick sticker, but when it chops off hair or leaves a halo, there’s no way to fix it.
So most of us ended up on remove.bg. That’s changing: remove.bg is shutting down its standalone website on December 1, 2026, and background removal is moving into Canva, which means a Canva account.
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Honestly, I never liked that workflow anyway. Uploading personal photos to someone else’s cloud just to cut out a background always felt wrong.
BGpeel does it on your Mac. Drop in a photo and you get a transparent PNG in about a second. The AI runs on your Mac’s graphics chip, works offline, and your photos never leave your computer.
- Fine edges: a second pass cleans up hair, fur and whiskers on big photos.
- Fix the misses: Erase and Restore brushes, with undo, for the bits the AI gets wrong.
- Batch: drop in a whole folder, or paste from the clipboard, and export every cutout at once.
- No credits: no account, no per-image fees. JPEG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF and WebP all work, and your original is never changed.
Price: $9.99 once, for up to 3 of your Macs. That’s a launch price, and it goes up after the first batch of licenses.
The catch: it needs an Apple silicon Mac (M1 or newer) on macOS 14 or later.
4. LinearMouse: one scroll direction for the mouse, another for the trackpad
What macOS can’t do: let your mouse and trackpad scroll in different directions. “Natural scrolling” feels right on a trackpad and wrong on a mouse wheel, but macOS links the two settings. Flip one and the other flips too.
LinearMouse splits them. Keep natural scrolling on the trackpad and normal scrolling on the mouse, with settings per device. It can also turn off pointer acceleration and remap extra mouse buttons.
Price: free and open source.
The catch: it only matters if you plug in a mouse. If you live on the trackpad, skip it.
5. Amphetamine: keep your Mac awake on your terms
What macOS can’t do: give you a simple “stay awake” button. Your Mac sleeps in the middle of a big download or a presentation, and the only built-in fix is a Terminal command.
Amphetamine lives in your menu bar. Keep your Mac awake forever, for an hour, while a certain app is open, or until a download finishes. You can also set triggers, like “stay awake while this drive is plugged in and the battery is above 50%.”
Price: free on the Mac App Store.
The catch: the settings window is huge for such a simple job. Most people only need the menu bar’s quick options.
6. BetterDisplay: make your external monitor behave
What macOS can’t do: change an external monitor’s brightness with your keyboard. And on many 1440p monitors, macOS only gives you text that’s either tiny or blurry.
BetterDisplay fixes both. The free version lets your brightness and volume keys control the monitor itself. The Pro version unlocks sharper “HiDPI” scaling, so a cheaper monitor looks much closer to a Retina screen.
Price: the core is free. Pro is $21.99 once, with a 14-day free trial.
The catch: the sharp scaling is a Pro feature, and brightness control only works with monitors that support it.
7. AltTab: see every window, not just every app
What macOS can’t do: switch between windows with previews. ⌘Tab only shows app icons, so with three Chrome windows open you’re guessing which one you’ll get. Minimized windows don’t show up at all.
AltTab replaces that with a switcher that shows a thumbnail of every window, including minimized and hidden ones, across all your Spaces. Start typing to filter the list.
Price: free and open source. An optional Pro version is $9.99, and the free version keeps working after its trial.
The catch: it shows every window, so if you keep 40 windows open it gets busy. Set it to show only the current Space if that’s you.
All 7 at a glance
Four of them are free, and the three paid ones together cost about $21, once.
Which missing macOS feature drives you crazy? Tell me in the comments. It might be the next app I build.
I’m Ahmed. I build small Mac apps at Snugbits that you pay for once, and write about getting more out of your Mac. Follow me on X at @ahmedgagan11.
