Review: Hundreds of Great Mac Utilities with Setapp

Some of the best developers in the world publish Mac utilities to improve, extend, or sometimes just fix awkward aspects of MacOS. Whether you’re on an iMac or MacBook Air, or have a beautiful 4K monitor plugged into a Mac Studio, there’s always a new app that can improve your user experience. The problem is how to find them and then how to try them without any limitations, perhaps even for a month or two, without having to manage dozens of subscriptions or annual payments.

And let’s not even talk about keeping everything updated. If it’s from the App Store, that’s automated, but if it isn’t? Well, I like MacUpdater, but that program’s going away in about a year, at which point we Mac users will be ready for a replacement. The tedious housekeeping of a modern computer.

Until Setapp. Setapp is a subscription service and application that encompasses over 240 different Mac apps and utilities. That you can use as a full paid user for the duration of your Setapp subscription. In other words, for the base price of $8.99/month, you could be running 40 different apps that would otherwise cost you $9.99-$39.99 per app.

I’ve been running Setapp for a month or so and it’s completely seamless: I picked the couple of apps I wanted to try, installed them, and have been using them without a pop-up, request to get a license key, or even having to interact with Setapp itself.

THE SETAPP APPLICATION

The system’s all managed within a Mac application that looks kinda like the App Store. That’s not a surprise since it’s a very similar purpose:

As you would hope, every app has ratings, an indication of what platform they’re for (there are a small number of iOS apps available too) and some big, bright screenshots to entice you. Notice the left side menu. Indeed, let’s start with the two apps I’ve installed that have already proven fantastic:

I know, I know, 240 apps and I’ve installed two. Like you, I’m busy. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

For comparison purposes, Al Dente Pro costs $12/yr and Downie is $19.99 one-time for a license. Versus $8.99/mo for both (and access to hundreds more).

ADDING A NEW SETAPP UTILITY

Time to add another utility to my Mac system. I’m running MacOS 15.0 Sequoia so it should be completely compatible with every app through the Setapp solution. A bit of poking around and I settle on CleanShot X. I take a lot of screenshots, so a utility that offers more flexibility seems like a no-brainer.

To learn more, I click on the app’s icon and get lots more information about it:

Here’s where Setapp is so glorious: I don’t have to worry about licenses, payments, online transactions, or being hobbled with a trialware version. A click on “Install” and…

Once installed, I can click on “Launch” and jump right into the program:

That’s so much easier and more pleasant than just rummaging around in the App Store and hoping that the program will work well without costing you lots of download, install, and configuration time!

MORE COOL PARTS OF THE SETAPP APP

The team behind Setapp have done a great job with it too, with a clean, crisp interface that makes exploring a pleasure. There’s also an entire AI (really generative AI) area that not only offers dozens of utilities, but prepaid query tokens for a higher subscription cost. Here’s the “Solve with AI+” category:

See the “AI Assistant” button along the top? Setapp has its own chatbot that has knowledge of every app in the library, which makes it even easier to explore offerings. Even meta-queries!

The importance here is that this all greatly improves app discovery, a long-time weakness of the Apple App Store. Anyone who has searched through its offerings knows exactly what I mean. Perhaps Apple Intelligence will change that experience, but for now Setapp’s ahead of the game.

Finally, there’s a handy All Apps view if you enjoy scrolling:

I will say that it’s really fun to explore and see the extraordinary creativity and innovation of app developers in the MacOS ecosystem. So many fun utilities!

WHICH BRINGS US TO THE MATH

The real question is cost versus benefit, as is always the case with subscription services. The base Setapp subscription cost is $8.99/month, while the top level AI subscription with 250 query tokens per month is $21.59/month. The latter also allows you to use Setapp on four Mac systems and four iOS devices too.

If you’re only going to actually run a couple of apps through Setapp, however, it might not be worth the cost. Consider my situation: For $19.99 + $12/year + $29 (and $19/yr thereafter) I can get all three of the programs I’m now running, or about $61 for the first year. Versus $8.99*12 = $107.88. But if I were running 10-15 apps or going through an evaluation period where I tried each of a set of apps for a few weeks, it could be a great solution. It’s certainly much easier to use and manage than a half-dozen or more individual subscriptions and license keys.

However, it’s important to realize that once you freeze or cancel your Setapp subscription, all of the associated utilities will switch to demo mode automatically; you only have licenses for the duration of your Setapp subscription. Again, if you’re a dilettante, Setapp can be a great way to research and test solutions, leading you to the few that are keepers.

You can check out Setapp with my affiliate link here: All About Setapp.

Disclaimer: Setapp gave me a one year subscription so I could test out their app and the associated utilities in return for this candid writeup and review. I will earn additional time for that subscription if you use my affiliate link herein. Prefer not to? No worries, just go to my.setapp.com instead.

Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Mac since the first release and have over a thousand helpful tutorials here on the site. Please check out my Mac help library for lots more useful content!