PopClip

PopClip does one thing. When you select text, a small bar appears above it with the actions that make sense for that text: cut, copy, paste, search, spelling. The reason people keep it for a decade is the extension list — translate the selection, append it to a note, open it as a URL, pipe it through a shell command, hand it to an app you already use. You install four or five, forget the other two hundred exist, and it turns into muscle memory.

Nick Moore has shipped it since 2011, which is the kind of record that makes the word "lifetime" mean something. The $26 Lifetime key gets every future update and works on up to five of your own Macs. The $12 Standard key is the identical app, but updates stop after two years; you keep the version you have and pay again for a newer one. If you are buying at all, buy the Lifetime one — the gap is $14 and it is the entire difference between owning the app and renting it slowly.

Skip it if you already live in Raycast or Alfred and have keyboard-driven versions of these actions, or if almost all your text work happens inside one app that already does what you need. One practical note: it is not on the Mac App Store any more, so a direct licence key or Setapp are the only ways in.