5 Essential Apps You Need To Install On Your Mac Mini In 2026

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The Mac mini is one of the most interesting options for Mac users looking for a desktop option. While the current memory crisis no longer makes this computer the cheapest Mac available, it's still more affordable than most MacBook options and clearly better value than the Mac Studio. And if you already have the essential Mac mini accessories, the price is much easier to justify, whether you're going with the new M6 Mac mini or the M5 Pro option. Either way, a few essential apps can make your experience better, such as Opera One, Portal, and Ulysses.

We selected these apps based on personal experience and reviews from real customers. After all, selecting essential apps always depends on what kind of activity you do with your Mac, so a developer will say Xcode is an essential app for them. In contrast, a college student might say Pages or a Microsoft Office subscription is the best they can have. That is why we focused on more universal options that can help you through different phases of life and tasks throughout the day.

Safari is great, until it's not. Apple keeps promoting this browser as the fastest, most reliable option on the Mac, but that claim hasn't been true for a few years. Not only do I try to switch back to Safari after every macOS update, but I always end up returning to Opera One, a far more reliable browser that takes the best of Chromium without being power-hungry or RAM-consuming. More importantly, I'm not alone in this claim, as several Redditors also consider the current Safari experience a mess.

With Opera One, now in version R3, the company improves Tab Islands, which now intuitively and automatically group tabs and users can name and color-code these groups. It also adds AI with 20% faster responses and on-screen awareness based on what you're seeing in the browser, plus sidebar improvements with more integrated apps. In daily use, Opera One feels reliable and fast, and it has one of my favorite features: Split Screen between tabs with only one window open.

Opera One is free to download for Mac, and users who don't want to use all the features in Opera's main browser can also use Opera Air, a minimalist browser focused on cutting distractions and maximizing focus. Another option is Microsoft Edge, which, with a few tweaks, can become your new go-to browser on the Mac mini.

Whether you work on your Mac mini, go through long study sessions, or you just get hooked while browsing the web to discover your next trip, there's an app that should be on every Mac computer: Portal – Escape Into Nature. Created by indie developers from Portal Labs, it helps people manage well-being while working, browsing, or just taking it easy after a long day. Portal is a key productivity tool that brings you close to nature with vivid landscapes, spatial audio support, and even pairing with your smart lights, if you choose to.

With a recently added Circadian Flow feature, each landscape can match your current time zone, meaning you can start your day with a morning landscape and go all the way deep at night with another option that continues to match the vibe. According to the developers, time in nature can boost focus, spark creativity, ease anxiety, and improve sleep.

Portal currently offers over 100 landscapes, and it's been completely remade for the Liquid Glass interface. It features timers and alarms, deeper integration with Siri AI, and, most importantly, a lower price so more people can enjoy the feeling of being close to nature. Its premium subscription costs $2.99/month, $29.99/year, or $99.99 for lifetime premium access. The company also features a seven-day premium access trial without requiring any payment details. 

Suppose you write a lot — whether because you dream of becoming the next Carrie Bradshaw or you're a student, writer, or journalist — there's an app for you: Ulysses. While one can say that anything works to take notes, from Apple's Notes app to Pages or Microsoft Word, you might know that something specific can be a lot of fun. That is why Ulysses exists: it helps you focus on the creativity inside you.

Available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, the app shines most on Mac, where you get a bigger display to enjoy that whiteboard without interruptions. Most importantly, you have access to different folders, so you can categorize different projects, from books you're writing and novels to recipes, your personal diary, or even your office stuff. The app also features integrated grammar and style checks for over 20 languages. Ulysses can analyze the text and offer informed suggestions for capitalization, punctuation, semantics, redundancy, style, and more. The writing app also integrates with third-party software like WordPress, Ghost, Medium, and Micro.blog, so you can post your thoughts from one app to another platform in the blink of an eye.

Ulysses offers a trial, but requires a premium subscription to work. If you use it for a while and decide not to renew, your data stays in the app, though you won't be able to edit it. Regular tiers cost $39.99/year, though students can get reduced pricing of $10.99 for six months. 

It's true, you might find a lot of paid ads online about ExpressVPN, as the company usually promotes its product through tech YouTube channels and so on, but there's a reason why you should get ExpressVPN (or, really, any VPN service) on your Mac mini. A VPN not only gives you a more secure browsing experience by hiding your IP and avoiding trackers, but it also lets you access different pages and services without leaving home.

For example, I watched all three seasons of "Father Ted" on England's Channel 4 without using a sketchy method, and I can also check U.S. prices for my stories with ease, even without being based in America. With a tap, my browser understands I'm in a different part of the world and gives me access to information I wouldn't have before. This is useful if I'm trying to access a government's website when I'm not in my home country, access a blocked website due to geolocalization, and so on.

If your Mac mini usage requires you to be everywhere, or, let's face it, you just want to watch a different catalog of your streaming service, a software like ExpressVPN can be really handy. What's great about ExpressVPN is that it often offers significant subscription discounts, so you can pay once and enjoy it for a couple of years without remembering you paid for it, while also sharing it across a few devices.

Last but not least, there's an app every Mac user should have, which is Pixelmator Pro. Even though Apple bought all Pixelmator software a couple of years ago and even integrated this app into its Creator Studio subscription, I still highly recommend getting the original Pixelmator Pro experience. After all, this is one of the simpler photo editing tools. You can easily improve an image's quality using Machine Learning (the term before AI took over everything), clean a part of the image, double-copy and replicate a piece of the image, and so on.

If you don't do extra work with photo editing that requires something more complex than Adobe Photoshop, you'll find Pixelmator Pro straightforward. The original experience is available on the Mac App Store for $49.99 as a one-time purchase, and it's the software I still use.

Still, it's important to note that Pixelmator Pro is also part of Apple's Creator Studio, which is a $12.99/month or $ 129/year bundle with several apps that brings productivity tools like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and even the iWork suite with a few extra perks. For example, this edition of Pixelmator Pro also works on iPad and features AI capabilities, like Generate Fill. That said, if you just want an easy-to-use photo editor, the original Pixelmator Pro is still a must-have; if you want access to more apps or AI capabilities, look at the subscription model. 

BGR chose these essential Mac mini apps based on staff experience, as well as reviews from real customers and other media outlets. These apps also cover everyday use, so they are great options for a wide range of customers, not just people in a very specific field. After all, everyone needs to browse the web, concentrate on a task, write, watch content, and sometimes edit a photo.

Several apps could be worth it for Mac mini users, such as WhatsApp if you don't use iMessage; Slack, Trello, and Microsoft Teams depending on your work; Xcode and other developer tools; and so on. Still, BGR tried not to be too obvious with the selection, since while there is a lot of software available for Mac, finding the right one for everyday use can be challenging.

Most apps on this list require a one-time payment or a subscription, which might not suit every customer. Still, we recommend that users also look for free solutions in those categories. That said, whether this is your first Mac mini or you're just trying to diversify your current apps, this list offers a comprehensive selection of what we consider some of the best Mac apps available currently.