The Mac's edges - the menu bar and the dock - are prime real estate for small utilities. These four indie apps put widgets, meetings, window management and transcripts one glance or one click away.
For glanceable widgets in a second dock
CoolDock adds a customizable second dock beside the original, packed with live widgets: music, todos, calendar events, weather, search, system stats and quick actions. One-time purchase, macOS Sonoma 14.0 or later.
For one-click meetings
MeetPaw creates or joins Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings from the menu bar: it opens the meeting, copies the link and launches it in one click. Free forever, open source, no sign-up, no tracking, macOS 14+ on Apple silicon and Intel.
For Windows-style window management
boringBar replaces the macOS Dock with a taskbar where every open window gets its own chip, organized by desktop and display, with hover previews, one-click desktop switching and a searchable app launcher under a global shortcut. It answers the classic switcher complaint: the Dock shows apps, not where your windows are.
For private, offline meeting transcripts
Trace turns any conversation into a clean Markdown transcript from the menu bar, with an optional on-device summary. A local speech model runs entirely on your Mac in dozens of languages - nothing is uploaded - and you can flag key moments mid-call. Requires Apple silicon.
Allow Google Analytics to help us understand how LaunchPerk is used? Optional analytics stays off unless you accept.