macOS Missing Features: 12 Things macOS Still Doesn't Do

macOS Sequoia and the upcoming macOS 26 (yes, the version numbering jump) are excellent operating systems. They are also, like every macOS release before them, conspicuously missing features that Mac users expect at this point and that Apple has shown no interest in adding. The gaps are why the indie Mac utility market exists at all.

This list isn't a complaint. It's a map. Each gap is real, each is filled by at least one indie utility (often free), and each represents a genuine lever indie devs can pull to make a Mac more pleasant to use. I'm an indie Mac developer building utilities in this space; I have a vested interest in the gaps continuing to exist. I'd still rather Apple ship most of these natively. Until they do, here's what's missing and what to install.

1. Clipboard history

The Mac clipboard is exactly one item deep. Copy something new and the old contents are gone. Every other major OS, Windows, ChromeOS, modern Linux desktops, ships with clipboard history of some form. macOS does not.

Fill the gap with: Maccy (free, open source), TeenyClip ($4.99 lifetime), or one of several others. Full comparison.

2. Microphone mute keyboard shortcut

macOS has a system-level microphone, but no system-level mute. Each conferencing app rolls its own (Zoom's ⌘⇧A, Slack huddles' ⌘⇧Space, Teams' something different). When you're flipping between apps in a meeting heavy day, the muscle memory is impossible to keep straight.

Fill the gap with: TeenyMute, MicMute, or MuteKey. All work at the macOS audio level so the mute applies in any app.

3. System-wide color picker (with hex output)

The macOS color picker exists inside individual apps. There's no system-wide hotkey to grab a color from anywhere on screen and copy it as hex. The Digital Color Meter app (in /Applications/Utilities) gets close but copies as RGB integers, not hex, and the UI hasn't been updated meaningfully since Snow Leopard.

Fill the gap with: TeenyColor, ColorSlurp (freemium), or Sip (subscription).

4. Scrolling / full-page screenshots

The macOS screenshot tool (⌘⇧5) captures what's visible. It does not capture content that's below the fold of a scrollable window. Every modern note-taker, browser, and terminal has scrollable content that you sometimes need to capture in full.

Fill the gap with: Shottr or CleanShot X. Comparison.

5. External monitor brightness control

macOS lets you adjust the brightness of the built-in display with the F1/F2 keys. For external displays connected over HDMI or DisplayPort, those keys do nothing. The Display preference pane often doesn't show a brightness slider for external monitors. Many monitors don't expose brightness over the cable in a way Apple chose to support.

Fill the gap with: TeenyDisplay, MonitorControl (free, open source), or BetterDisplay.

6. Per-app system volume

Windows has had per-app volume mixing for years. macOS still does not. If you want Spotify quieter than Zoom, you adjust each app individually inside its own UI. There is no system-level mixer.

Fill the gap with: TeenySound, Background Music (free, open source), or BackgroundMusic forks.

7. Quick file shelf / parking lot

The Desktop is the de facto file shelf for most Mac users. It's a poor one, files pile up, they sync to iCloud whether you want them to or not, and the visual clutter affects every screenshot. macOS has no concept of a temporary shelf separate from the Desktop.

Fill the gap with: TeenyShelf, Yoink, or Dropzone.

8. Window snapping (until very recently)

macOS shipped its first native window-snapping feature in macOS Sequoia (2024). Before that, the platform had been twenty years behind Windows on this. The Sequoia implementation is fine for halves and quarters but doesn't handle the more complex layouts that Rectangle, Magnet, and Moom have done for a decade. macOS still doesn't have keyboard shortcuts for snap operations out of the box.

Fill the gap with: Rectangle (free, open source), Magnet ($7.99 once), or Moom ($10 once).

9. Menu bar icon hiding and reordering

macOS lets you ⌘-drag system icons to reorder them and lets you remove a few of them entirely from System Settings. Third-party menu bar icons cannot be hidden or organized through any system feature. The notch on recent MacBooks makes this worse, overflow icons get hidden in unpredictable ways.

Fill the gap with: Bartender, Ice (free, open source), Hidden Bar (free), or Dozer. Full comparison.

10. Detailed system stats in the menu bar

macOS shows a battery icon and (optionally) the time in the menu bar. It does not show CPU, RAM, network, GPU, fan speed, or any other system metric. Activity Monitor is the official answer and it's a separate app.

Fill the gap with: TeenyStat, Stats (free, open source), iStat Menus (subscription).

11. Multi-tool quick utilities

Casual one-shot needs, a ruler to measure pixels, a magnifier to read tiny text, a flashlight for video calls, don't have system-level answers on macOS. Spotlight does math and unit conversion but nothing visual. Each tool is its own separate app most of the time.

Fill the gap with: TeenyTool, Pixel Ruler, Magnifier (built-in but limited), or one-off utilities.

12. AirPods / accessory battery levels in menu bar

macOS shows the battery level of connected AirPods if you click the Bluetooth menu and dig into the submenu. It does not put accessory battery in the menu bar where you can see it at a glance. Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and AirPods all suffer from this.

Fill the gap with: Battery (free, open source), AlDente (battery management broader purpose), or TeenyStat when configured to show accessory state.

Honorable mentions: features that arrived eventually

Apple has, occasionally, shipped a feature that the indie market had been carrying for years. Worth noting for context:

Dark Mode (2018). Indie apps had been fighting for system Dark Mode for nearly a decade before Mojave shipped it.

Stage Manager and window tiling (2022, expanded 2024). Caught up to Rectangle's most basic features.

System-wide screenshot annotation (2018). Caught up to Skitch's basic features. CleanShot X and Shottr immediately moved upmarket.

Live Text and Visual Lookup (2021-2022). Caught up to Prizmo and other text-recognition utilities.

System-wide handwriting recognition (Scribble, 2020 on iPad; never properly on macOS). Indie tools still fill this on Mac.

The pattern is consistent: Apple takes 5-10 years to ship a system-level version of a feature the indie market has been quietly providing. Sometimes Apple's version is better and the indie tool fades. Sometimes (window management, screenshots) the indie alternatives stay several feature generations ahead and remain relevant.

Why these specific gaps stay open

Apple ships features when they're a system-design priority and avoids features when they're not. The pattern holds for the gaps in this list:

Clipboard history is genuinely a privacy/security concern at the system level. The OS collecting everything you copy is a different threat model than a user-installed app collecting it. Apple's answer is "use Universal Clipboard between your devices" which solves a different problem.

Microphone mute is per-app because the conferencing apps each have specific reasons for their mute UX (push-to-talk, server-side mute, etc.). A system mute can confuse the app, which then shows the wrong mute state in its own UI.

Per-app volume requires CoreAudio API surface that Apple has not chosen to expose. The indie tools that do it (Background Music) work by inserting a virtual audio device, which is a hack.

External display brightness requires a DDC/CI implementation that varies wildly by monitor manufacturer. Apple's answer is "use a Studio Display" which works fine but doesn't help everyone.

None of these reasons are surprising once you understand them. None of them stop indie developers from shipping the features Apple won't.

The complete fill-the-gap stack

If you want to add every feature in this list to your Mac with one purchase strategy:

• Free open source: Maccy + Rectangle + Stats + MonitorControl + Hidden Bar + Background Music + KeepingYouAwake. Total: $0.
• Indie paid bundle: TeenyApps family covers eight of the twelve gaps with lifetime licenses ranging from $4.99 to $14.99. Total: $59.92 if you buy each gap-filler individually, less with bundle pricing.
• Mixed: Maccy + Rectangle + Stats (free) + TeenyMute + TeenyColor + TeenyShelf + TeenySound + TeenyDisplay (paid). Total: ~$35 lifetime.

None of these stacks would be necessary if Apple shipped the features natively. They didn't, so the indie market did.

The bottom line

Every operating system has gaps. Linux and Windows have different ones than macOS. The macOS gaps tend to be specific kinds of utility behavior, quick toggles, system-wide capture, status display, that Apple has consistently delegated to the indie market for forty years. The result is the most interesting indie utility ecosystem of any platform.

The Mac you bought ships with the OS Apple thought you needed. The Mac you actually want is that OS plus a small handful of indie utilities. Pick from this list, install no more than you'll actually use, and your Mac becomes the machine you wish it had been out of the box.