4 Ways to Generate a List of Apps Installed on Your Mac – by Lori Kaufman

4 Ways to Generate a List of Apps Installed on Your Mac

Do you have tons of apps installed on your Mac, some of which you’ve totally forgotten about? You can take stock of them and keep a reference list of every program on your system in just a few moments.

Today we’ll cover four ways you can generate a list of installed apps on your Mac.

Why Would I Want a List of Installed Apps?
There are several reasons why it’s a good idea to create a list of your apps:

You bought a new Mac and need to set it up. Before getting rid of your old Mac, you should generate a list of the programs on it so you know what to install on your new computer.

Your Mac is misbehaving and you need to reinstall macOS. Perhaps your aging Mac is still running slowly even after you’ve tried the tricks to speed up your Mac. Generate a list of installed apps before reinstalling the system so you know what which apps to reinstall once you load the fresh OS.

You want to downgrade macOS. If you own an older Mac, the newer releases of macOS may not run well on your machine. The only option for downgrading is a fresh installation of macOS (or OS X). Having a list of installed apps before downgrading is useful so you know which apps to reinstall, if those apps work on the older system.

Let’s look at the best ways to make this list…