Categories

Tiling, snapping, spaces and multi-monitor control. The category where paying once still feels normal.

Editors, terminals, git clients, database GUIs and API clients that never learned to charge you monthly.

Long-form writing apps, markdown editors and note systems. Your words shouldn't be held hostage by a lapsed card.

Vector and raster editors, UI tools, icon and colour utilities. The main escape route from Creative Cloud.

Editors, transcoders, players and tag managers. Perpetual licences survive here better than almost anywhere.

File managers, duplicate finders, disk visualisers, archivers and clone-your-whole-drive backup tools.

Small, sharp tools that live in the menu bar and fix one thing about macOS properly.

The hardest category to buy outright. These are the holdouts that still sell you the app instead of renting it.

Screenshot tools, screen recorders, GIF makers and annotation apps that don't watermark you into a plan.

Firewalls, network monitors, encryption and password tools. Read the caveats here more carefully than anywhere else.

PDF editors, OCR, ebook tools and reference managers — the quiet alternative to per-seat document subscriptions.

Launchers, clipboard managers, text expanders and macro engines. Buy the keystrokes, keep the keystrokes.