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Black Friday brings some of the deepest discounts of the year for all sorts of tech products—and apps are no exception. If you’ve been holding off on buying any pricey paid, it’s worth taking another look this week. It might just be the perfect time to tap “Buy.”
Below, we’ve highlighted a few of our favorite apps currently available at a discount. The list is accurate as of publication time, but things may have changed by the time you read this, so if you see something you like, grab it before the deal expires. Many of these apps are good enough to be totally worth the full price, which makes these holiday bargains even sweeter.
Affinity Suite: A great Photoshop alternative
Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher are among the best alternatives to Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign apps, respectively. Affinity allows you to pay once and keeps these apps until the next major version update. Many people prefer this model over the recurring subscription fee that Adobe charges.
Since a new version of Affinity apps recently launched, you can grab all three apps on Windows, macOS, and iPadOS with a single license for $100 (regular price $170). If you don’t need the entire suite, all of apps are discounted individually too. Check this page for more details.
Savings: $70
Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is another excellent Photoshop alternative for macOS. The app has almost everything you need to edit your photos and it’ll serve you well as long as you exclusively edit on your Mac. It’s available for $20 (regular price $40).
Savings: $20
Acorn
Acorn is a beautiful image editor for macOS. Its appeal lies in its ease of use: If you’re new to image editors, Acorn is easy to get up and running, and yet it packs in enough features to suit your needs for a long time. It’s going for $20 via the Unclutter app bundle sale. The regular price is $40.
Savings: $20
TextSniper
TextSniper allows you to extract text from images on your Mac more seamlessly than the OS’s native tools (and without the need for an upgrade). It’s fast, lightweight, and reliable. You can use the coupon code TSBFG2022 to buy the app for a little under $5 (regular price $8).
Savings: $3
Halide
If you’re a manual photography enthusiast, Halide is a must-try iPhone app. It allows you to control the shutter speed, exposure, ISO, and aperture on the iPhone’s camera. The app is also pretty good at handling RAW images and it even unlocks certain Portrait modes on older iPhones. The app costs $12 per year, but you can get two months for free (and without paying anything) during Halide’s Black Friday sale.
Savings: $2
NotchCam
NotchCam’s novelty is it lets you hide the MacBook Pro’s camera notch. It also allows you to get a quick camera preview if you click in the part of the screen behind the notch. The app is free for Black Friday.
The same developer also makes Soor, which is a neat third-party app for Apple Music that we’ve previously recommended. You can get it for $3 (regular price $7).
Savings: $4+
StopTheMadness
If you keep getting frustrated with websites that block your ability to copy or paste, or if you want one Safari extension that can fix many broken things on websites, then StopTheMadness is for you. It has so many good features that it keeps appearing in our coverage. The extension is down to $7 on Mac and to $3 on Safari.
Savings: $3+
Food apps
Some of the best iPhone food-related apps are also on sale. Our favorites are:
Paprika is an excellent recipe manager app. It’s currently 40% off on all platforms.Crouton is an excellent meal prep app for iOS and Mac. The free version lets you save 10 recipes, and you can pay a one-time fee of $3 (regular price $17) to remove the limit if you buy within 24 hours after installing.Soosee lets you quickly scan ingredient labels to identify allergens. Its lifetime subscription is currently $6 (80% off).Useful Mac app bundles
There are plenty of Mac apps on sale in various bundles. Unclutter’s bundle has 12 apps for $84 (regular price $406). The best part is, you can pick and choose your apps individually if you don’t want the full bundle.
BundleHunt has another good bundle of 20 useful productivity apps, and you can mix and match to choose the ones you want—but note you’ll also pay a $3.50 unlock fee that gets added to the final price.
Even more great deals
You can find many more Black Friday app deals if you know where to look. For sales on iOS games, Touch Arcade has a great list. If you’re tracking sales from indie developers, go check out Indie Friday for an exhaustive collection of deals.
