macOS missing features: 12 things macOS still does not do

macOS Sequoia and the upcoming macOS 26 are excellent operating systems. They are also, like every macOS release before them, conspicuously missing features 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 is not a complaint. It is 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 am an indie Mac developer building utilities in this space; I have a vested interest in the gaps continuing to exist. I would still rather Apple ship most of these natively. Until they do, here is what is 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 flip 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 Core 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 is no system-wide hotkey to grab a color from anywhere on screen and copy it as hex. Digital Color Meter (in /Applications/Utilities) gets close but copies as RGB integers by default, and the UI has not been meaningfully updated since Snow Leopard.

Apple did add a real public loupe API (NSColorSampler) in macOS Sonoma, which third-party color picker apps now use. Apple has not surfaced it as a system-wide hotkey.

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

4. 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. If those UIs are buried (Spotify Connect, web apps), you are out of luck.

The good news, quietly: Apple shipped Core Audio Taps (CATaps) in macOS 14.2, the API that lets apps capture and modify per-app audio without virtual drivers. Modern per-app volume tools no longer require kernel extensions.

Fill the gap with: TeenySound ($9.99, CATaps-based), BackgroundMusic (free, virtual driver), SoundSource ($39, Rogue Amoeba).

5. External monitor brightness control

macOS lets you adjust the brightness of the built-in display with the F1 and F2 keys. For most external monitors, those keys do nothing. The Display preference pane often does not show a brightness slider at all. Many monitors do not expose brightness over the cable in a way Apple chose to support.

Apple Silicon Macs added an extra wrinkle: HDMI brightness control routes through a different driver path (IOAVService) than DisplayPort, and older monitor-control tools that did not handle that path silently failed.

Fill the gap with: TeenyDisplay ($9.99, handles both transports), MonitorControl (free, open source), BetterDisplay (free / $19 Pro).

6. Quick file shelf / parking lot

The Desktop is the de facto file shelf for most Mac users. It is 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.

7. 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, memory pressure, network, GPU, fan speed, or any other system metric. Activity Monitor is the official answer and is a separate app you switch to.

Fill the gap with: TeenyStat (focused three-metric), Stats (free, comprehensive), iStat Menus (subscription, deepest).

8. Visible daily screen time

macOS Screen Time exists in System Settings, but the data is buried. There is no live menu bar surface for today's running total. Most Mac users open Screen Time once during the first week of a new Mac and never again. The data accumulates invisibly.

Fill the gap with: TeenyScreeny (live menu bar counter), or open Screen Time daily and rely on discipline.

9. Window snapping (mostly resolved in Sequoia)

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 does not handle the more complex layouts that Rectangle, Magnet, and Moom have done for a decade. macOS still does not 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).

10. 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.

11. Multi-tool quick utilities

Casual one-shot needs (a JSON formatter, a JWT decoder, a base64 encoder, a regex tester, a Pomodoro timer, a unit converter) do not have system-level answers on macOS. Spotlight does math and unit conversion but nothing else. Each tool is its own separate app or website most of the time.

Fill the gap with: TeenyTool ($14.99, 75+ tools in one menu bar app), DevUtils ($29 once or $19/yr), or individual apps per need. If you are deciding whether a formatter, color picker, or PDF helper belongs in a browser tab at all, start with the local Mac utilities vs online tools rulebook.

12. AirPods and 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 Stats 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 to 2022). Caught up to Prizmo and other text-recognition utilities.

Public NSColorSampler API (Sonoma 2023). Removed the need for third-party loupe reimplementations.

Core Audio Taps (Sonoma 14.2, 2024). Removed the need for virtual drivers in per-app volume tools.

The pattern is consistent: Apple takes 5 to 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 the indie alternatives stay several feature generations ahead and remain relevant.

Why these specific gaps stay open

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

Clipboard history is genuinely a privacy and 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 required Core Audio API surface that Apple did not expose until macOS 14.2. Now that the API exists, modern per-app volume tools work cleanly.

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 does not help everyone.

None of these reasons are surprising once you understand them. None of them stop indie developers from shipping the features Apple will not.

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 + BackgroundMusic + 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: about $59.92 if you buy each gap-filler individually, less with bundle pricing.
• Mixed: Maccy + Rectangle + Stats (free) + TeenyMute + TeenyColor + TeenyShelf + TeenySound + TeenyDisplay + TeenyTool (paid). Total: about $50 lifetime.

None of these stacks would be necessary if Apple shipped the features natively. They did not, 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 will actually use, and your Mac becomes the machine you wish it had been out of the box.