The best reference apps. Chosen by the community.
32 reference apps, chosen by the community. Top of this view: Mactracker — #71 overall. The overall rank spans all apps and changes with every vote. How the ranking works →
Reference apps are dictionaries, encyclopedias, translators, formula collections, star charts and identification guides for plants and animals. What they share is that they are needed the moment a question comes up — often in a hurry and sometimes offline.
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So offline capability is a real differentiator here, along with how large the downloaded data set is. After that comes the source: is there a publisher, a specialist editorial team or an open community behind the content, and is that disclosed? A reference work with no visible provenance is hard to judge. Then there is search comfort, tolerance for typos, cross-references between entries, and whether the app sends content to external servers to work. With translators it is also worth knowing how input that might be confidential is handled.
The order comes from community upvotes minus downvotes, not from an editorial team. When two apps are level, the one with more votes cast ranks higher.
