Best AI apps for Mac

MacBooks are arguably the greatest productivity tools one can own, but their capabilities are limited without the right set of apps. Plus, there are now a ton of AI-powered apps that can take your productivity to a whole new level.

So let's jump directly into our list of the best AI-powered Mac apps that you should install today.

Best AI apps for Mac

There are thousands of AI apps for your MacBook, but what will be the "best" for you will depend on your needs and usage. We'll be going through apps based on usage to help find the right set of apps that will help you improve your current experience.

Quick table of summary of apps listed below

Kerlig — an all-rounder AI assistant

Kerlig is a ChatGPT-style AI assistant that supports multiple providers like OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), and many more.

The key benefit of Kerlig is that you get access to all these AI providers without paying a monthly fee, and it can be accessed natively by pressing "Option + Space" or a shortcut of your choice. Kerlig serves multiple purposes and can effectively replace tools such as Grammarly and Apple Intelligence.

Apart from basic chat features, you can also upload PDF, docs, and webpages to ask questions about the content, summarize, translate, extract key points, and speed up research.

Top features:

1. Grammar and spelling correction
2. Rewrites text to improve writing
3. Translates text into multiple languages
4. Summarizes blogs, webpages etc

Arc — browser with smart AI features

Even though Chrome and Safari are the most popular browsers, Arc has recently grown to be a popular browser with some handy AI features.

The most popular features are smart renaming of downloads, ask anything on page and in-built ChatGPT. These features together improve your browsing experience and help you increase your productivity.

Features:

1. Auto groups and labels tabs by types/categories
2. Integrates ChatGPT that allows to you to ask anything about webpage

Dia — AI-powered productivity browser

Dia is the latest AI-powered browser from The Browser Company (makers of Arc), designed to make every browsing session more productive. Unlike traditional browsers, Dia integrates AI directly into your workflow, acting as a writing partner, tutor, personal assistant, and shopping concierge all in one.

What sets Dia apart is its ability to "chat with your tabs" - the AI assistant understands the context of what you're browsing and can help you with various tasks without switching between applications. Whether you're writing content, researching topics, planning projects, or shopping online, Dia's AI is there to assist you.

Features:

1. In-line copy editor - Edit and improve text directly in any text box without copy-pasting
2. Smart summaries - Get instant summaries of articles and web content to focus on what matters
3. Context-aware assistance - AI that understands your current tabs and provides relevant help
4. Shopping concierge - Compare products, analyze reviews, and make informed purchasing decisions

Note: Dia is currently in beta and available on macOS 14+ with M1 chips or later.

Claude

Claude is an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT, as it performs similar functions. You can use ChatGPT instead of Claude for general use cases, but where it excels is in its support for MCP.

MCP is a standardized protocol for connecting AI models to data sources and tools. Using this, you can pass data to Claude to get personalized outputs.

For example, Zerodha↗ (an Indian stockbroker) supports MCP, and by using it, you can pass all your portfolio information to Claude and ask personalized queries.

Features:

1. As an AI-assistant, you can do multiple things like content writing, translation etc
2. MCP support, which allows you to pass custom context from another app

Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence, although not technically a standalone app, functions as a powerful system feature that seamlessly integrates AI capabilities into your macOS environment. As a built-in part of macOS, it enhances your overall productivity through smart assistance and intelligent automation.

Features:

1. Helps with grammar checker and content writing
2. Supports image generation based on context
3. Adds ChatGPT to Siri, which allows you to ask various questions

A key point to remember is that it's only available in selected geographies and if you're already using a Mac app like Kerlig, most of these features are already available to you.

MacWhisper — AI transcriber

MacWhisper is an AI-powered audio transcriber for Mac that makes converting speech to text simple and efficient. It supports a wide range of audio formats and can distinguish between different speakers, making it ideal for transcribing meetings, interviews, or lectures. With its intuitive interface and powerful AI engine, MacWhisper is perfect for anyone who needs quick and accurate transcriptions.

Features:

1. Provides better audio-to-text transcription as it uses NLP + AI while Mac's built-in audio transcriber just relies on NLP, which can be inaccurate at times
2. Can transcribe meetings
3. Can convert YouTube videos into text summaries

Diffusion Bee

Diffusion Bee is a Mac app that allows you to run Stable Diffusion locally on your device. Not only does it allow you to generate images from text, but can also edit and upscale images.

Features:

1. Text to image
2. Add or remove objects from an image
3. Image upscaling
4. Generate animated videos

Notion — text editor and productivity tool with AI

Notion is a popular note-taking and task management app which also comes with other features like AI and database functionalities.

Its AI assistant can help with tasks like summarizing notes, generating content, and managing databases more efficiently. By utilizing AI, Notion helps streamline your workflow, making it a must-have for anyone looking to supercharge their productivity.

Features:

1. Take meeting notes
2. Translate any text/page into another language
3. Summarize pages
4. Search across apps like Slack, Notion, GitHub, Asana etc

Ollama

Ollama is a Mac app that allows you to run open-source LLM models like Llama 3.3, DeepSeek-R1, Phi-4, Gemma 3, Mistral Small 3.1 and other large language models locally on your system. Moreover, it can be used by other apps like Continue (a VS Code extension) and Kerlig↗ as an LLM provider.

Features:

1. Keeps data on device
2. Provides LLMs at zero cost

Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI is a smart search assistant that gives detailed insights and analysis from your questions. Unlike regular search engines, it looks at different data sources to give you complete answers, helping with better decision-making and research.

Features:

1. In-depth query analysis and insights
2. Personalized recommendations based on usage history
3. Integration with other productivity apps

Cursor — AI code assistant

Cursor is an AI-powered code assistant designed for developers. It integrates with popular IDEs and provides intelligent code suggestions, error checking, and documentation generation. With AI-driven insights, Cursor helps you write cleaner, more efficient code faster, making it an essential tool for developers aiming to boost their coding productivity.

Features:

1. Understands codebase and provides context
2. Find and loop errors
3. Auto fixes small errors like missed colons and quotes

Conclusion

These are just a handful of AI-powered Mac apps that can make your life easier, but it all depends on your use case. For most people, tools like Kerlig and Arc will be helpful, and for developers, the most helpful tool would be Cursor.

Simply analyze your workflow, understand what tasks you do on a day-to-day basis, and then find an app that can help you with that. It may or may not be on our list, but something like that surely exists — just search for it on Google or Perplexity AI ;-)