I’m a huge fan of desktop tools that can help me in blogging and increase my productivity.
I prefer desktop tools over online because with desktop tools, I can work without the internet. Working without the internet is especially useful because of how distracted I get when I try to write online. I end up opening at least 10-15 tabs and forgetting that I’m supposed to be writing!
If you also have the same condition as me, I suggest you start using software that can let you work offline. I know it’s hard to unplug from the internet, but if you do it once, you will notice the increased productivity that comes with this.
You will be able to do much more work in much less time.
I have compiled this list of the best blogging apps for Mac. These are all apps I currently use and you should also consider using them to increase your productivity.
(Note: Not all of them work offline…)
Best Blogging Software for Mac OS
-Desk for Desktop Publishing-
The very first thing that I like about Desk is it’s a Mac app for writers.
I first tried Desk in August 2015 and I was surprised by all the features it offered.
I particularly love the feature that allows you to save the draft into the iCloud drive. From the iCloud, you can edit your draft from your iPhone or iPad. Desk integrates with all the major blogging platform such as WordPress, BlogSpot, Tumblr, and Typepad (to name a few).
This is one writing and blogging app that I highly recommend to you and for any other writer/blogger on Mac OS.
Download Desk from App store ($19.99)
-Blogo-
If you are in search of an alternative to Open Live Writer or Desk App for Mac, you should go ahead and get this little beast.
This is one app you will love if you are blogging on the WordPress platform. The current version supports only WordPress, but the Blogo team promised to bring Tumblr and BlogSpot support soon.
With Blogo, you can write offline and publish a post directly from your desktop. Use Blogo on your Mac, iPhone or iPad & it all syncs up perfectly. You can also add images, assign a featured image, and live preview your post before publishing.
-Snag It-
Taking screenshots is part of our day to day blogging work and we need to edit the image and resize it before adding it to our blog post.
Snag It is an image editing tool that I have been using for last two years. This is a complete Mac image editing app that will take care of all your image needs. This is a premium tool, but you can download it for free for 30 days.
Once you start using the Snag It app, you will be hooked.
Check out the above video to learn how I use Snag It.
-ImageOptim-
A good post is incomplete without a good image. But before you add an image to your post, you need to compress it so that the image isn’t so large.
The smaller the size of the image, the faster your blog post will load. In the past, I have made the mistake of not optimizing my images, and they were as big as 1MB. Imagine if a post takes more than 10 seconds to load, would you wait around that long? Probably not.
With the internet world moving to smartphones, the goal is to make blogs load as fast as possible. Optimization of images is crucial in page load speed.
ImageOptim is a free image compression tool for Mac, and I have already talked about it earlier.
This lightweight app will help you optimize all of your images. Simply drag and drop the image on the ImageOptim workspace and it will do the compression automatically. This is a free app, and you can download it right now.
-Camtasia-
Video blogging is now a main-stream part of blogging, and it’s important for you to create videos for your blog.
If you are doing a white-board kind of video, you can use your DSLR camera or even your Smartphone camera. But if you want to do a video like the one I have embedded above (Screencasts), you need a video app that will let you capture, edit, and publish your screencast videos.
Camtasia is the best available video app for Mac, which every blogger and internet marketer should use. Again, this is a paid tool, but you can download it for free and try it for 30 days.
This is a seriously must-have Mac app for video bloggers.
-Mac FTP tool (CyberDuck) + (FileZilla)-
Being a blogger, you must have your own server where your website is hosted on. Chances are you will need to login to your FTP server at times to make changes.
It’s important that you have some kind of FTP software. There are various FTP apps for Mac, and I will suggest two of them:
You can use either of these FTP tools and both work great.
They are very lightweight and designed for efficiency. You can save your FTP login info within the tool for an even greater increase in productivity.
I personally prefer Cyberduck, but if you moved from Windows to Mac and have used FileZilla before, you will probably like using the same tool now.
Download CyberDuck || Download FileZilla
-Integrity-
This app is more like an SEO toolkit for your Mac OS.
It scans all the links of your blog and shows you which links are broken.
The best part is that it works with any blogging platform. If you are on WordPress, you can always use a broken link checker, but if you have a huge site, the broken link checker might end up freezing your hosting.
This is one reason I started using Integrity. You can read this tutorial to learn how to use integrity. It’s a free app, and you can download it for free from the Mac App store.
-WordPress app for Mac-
WordPress launched an official Mac app that works for WordPress.com blogs or self-hosted WordPress blogs using the Jetpack plugin.
WordPress for desktops will soon come to Windows & other operating systems. You can download the Mac version for free from here.
Here is a quick list of other Mac apps that I use for everyday blogging:
- Gramblr (For scheduling on Instagram)
- Evernote (For taking notes)
- Slack (For connecting with my team)
- Flux (Warm up the screen display at night. Highly recommended)
- Versions (To manage my WordPress plugins uploaded on Github repo)
- Mamp (For installing local version of WordPress on Mac)
- Flycut (Free & handy clipboard manager)
- Adobe Photoshop Light Room (For editing images for a seminar or meeting)
- MPEG Streamclip: (Free Mac app to compress video files. I will do a tutorial in the coming days.)
The above list provides must-have blogging apps for your Mac.
If you are using any other blogging apps on your Mac OS which are helping you with your blogging, I would love to know about them. Share you tips with me in the comments.
If you like this list, share it with others on Facebook and Twitter.
Though I don’t have Mac, I have tried Snag-It and Camtasia on Windows. Amazing software.
Hello Harsh
I am happy to see the list of Best Blogging Apps For Mac. I always use wordpress because it is easy to use and easy to install.
With wordress we can easily optimize our blogs..
Thanks…
Well, its impressive article, Its useful to all, thanks for this sharing for us and it’s interesting article, I got the best information and best service from your blog, I am very glad to wish and sure its very helps.
Hello Harsh,
liked this post on blogging apps for mac os
also want to know about blogging apps for Windows as well
Is there another article for that ?
Thanks for the post
Awesome Harsh. Happy to know about these useful apps. I was searching longer to find the best app for my ipad to manage blog writing time. And now i believe desk and blogo will satisfy me. Thanks for sharing.
If people are looking for mainly an editor and then copy/pasting to publish, I strongly suggest Ulysses for Mac and iOS. Currently for iPad, they’re releasing the iPhone app in a few months. I’ve been using the beta for months now and it’s great. It can publish to Medium, but not WordPress or Tumblr.
@James
Thanks for letting me know about Ulysses. I have seen them before but never tried as it was paid app. Downloading the demo version now & giving it a shot!
Hi, thanks for this post. Do you have anything to recommend for blogging offline with iPad? I usually prepare draft of my posts online, but then I keep them to be updated in a second moment (on a plane, normally). It would be great if you or anyone else here could give me her feedback. Thanks!
Thanks for the list, Harsh!
Just a quick feedback on Blogo. I purchased Blogo and it was ok to start with. But I started having problems once the number of blogs and number of sites started increasing (I have 5 sites with an average of 30 posts in each).
I wrote to the customer care. They are responsive, but are unable to solve the problem. I had recommended this earlier to a friend, and he also seems to have the same issue on his mac.
Last week, I had typed a 1000 word blog and the app crashed and restarted again. I assumed it has saved my work. Then it said there is a conflict between the local version and the wordpress version. Assuming that the local must be recent, I chose the local version, only to find that I had lost all my content! Very annoying.
But having said that, Blogo is a great piece of software, I just wish they sort out these bugs.
Thought of giving this info to help the readers of this blog. Just about to try Desk. Lets hope that works out.
@Arni
I would recommend you to try Desk (http://www.shoutmeloud.com/recommended/Desk/) This is awesome. You would fall in love with writing again after using it.
does it have free trail version to test?
I mainly Prefer Desktop Application to Update my Blog because it saves much of my time.
Web Browsers divert my interests to the social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter but desktop blogging applications keeps me concentrated especially on our blogs without diverting to other web stuffs!