There is not shortage of free mobile and desktop applications available on the internet. Unfortunately, most of them are either rubbish or trick you into parting with your cash via in-app purchases. But if you take the time to sort the wheat from the chaff, you'll find plenty of excellent apps that truly are free.

We're thankful every day for all the free apps out there that improve our lives (and the developers that make them!). Here are 50 our favourites.

Though weather forecasting is a notoriously inexact science, thanks to voice assistants, pop-up notifications and buzzing smartwatches, it's easier than ever to keep tabs on the day's weather (and dress accordingly). Of course, checking the truncated weather forecast on your phone might be convenient, but it could also mean you're losing out on valuable information that could help you deal with the heat, rain, or general mugginess outside. That's where desktop weather apps come in.

Mac: Flexibits, creators of Lifehacker's favourite calendar app Fantastical, has released its command-line approach to contacts with Cardhop. This new contacts app is oriented around actions rather than your contacts database; you mainly use it by writing commands, kind of like talking to Siri. It's a potentially compelling interface -- if you can remember to use it.

The MacBook Pro's Touchbar is a polarising addition to the notebook. Many praised its versatility, while others bemoaned the removal of the traditional shortcut keys we've grown to know and love on Apple's keyboards. Since there's no tactile indication of whether or not you've hit a key on the Touchbar, it's a bit frustrating to find yourself tapping where you think the misaligned Escape key should be without getting a response.

Mac users, hello! Let's argue about which side of your screen is best for your dock. (PC users, please ignore this piece and don't make fun of us.)

The login screen greets you every single time you boot up your computer, but it's often neglected when it comes to tweaking and customising your system. Here's how to make changes to the login screen on macOS Sierra or Windows 10 so it's very much your own.

Your Mac comes packed with a perfectly fine calendar app, but it's lacking advanced features, multiple ways to view your calendar and external service integration. For all that and more, we like Fantastical.

Mac: If you're an avid Mac productivity app user, you know the cost of buying software can get a little out of control. Setapp, which was previously in beta, is a $US10 ($13)/month subscription service that gets you access to 61 different Mac apps.

Mac: If you use iTunes or Spotify for music on your Mac, you know that a small controller is a handy utility. MiniPlay is one of the better looking options out there, and it can work as an independent window or from the Notification Center.

Today, Apple released a new upgrade to its MacOS operating system, dubbed Sierra. Like previous upgrades, MacOS Sierra is a free download for Mac users. It comes with a host of useful improvements including in-built Siri functionality, a universal clipboard, integrated Apple Pay and automatic iCloud uploads. Intrigued? Here's everything you need to know about the new OS.

Mac: Securely deleting files isn't a total necessity for most of us, but if you want to make sure what individual files you delete are really gone for good, Shredo's a solid tool for doing so.

A Hackintosh is a machine dedicated to running the Mac operating system but it is strictly non-Apple hardware. Apple is notoriously restrictive with the official hardware that can run its operating systems so, of course, tenacious techies have found ways to work around it. There are whole communities of devotees that dedicate themselves to creating Hackintosh machines with different specifications. Recently, app developer Mike Rundle detailed his process of building a US$1200 Hackintosh. Sounds quite cheap. So how much would it cost an Australian that wants to buy all the parts locally? We did a breakdown of the costs bit by bit.

Using Google Drive to sync your folders with your computer used to be an "all or nothing" scenario, and that would eat into your hard drive space. With last week's update for the Google Drive desktop app on Windows and Mac OS X, that's no longer the case.

Apple has always packed a lot of decent software into OS X, but long time users may remember when the built-in options sucked so much that you had to install basic alternatives, like a PDF reader or image viewer, just to get something that worked well. Times have changed, and if you haven't looked lately, it's time to try a few of those built-in productivity tools again.

Not a fan of Launchpad's default five by seven grid for displaying apps? Defaults-write points out that you can alter it to just about whatever you want with a Terminal command.

You'd think a Microsoft operating system or the notorious Adobe Flash would top a list of software with the most vulnerabilities last year. But according to security firm CVE Details, they didn't nab first place on its annual software security bugs list. Apple's Mac OS X took the top spot with 384 distinct vulnerabilities, but this doesn't mean that Microsoft and Adobe should be cheering just yet.

Mac: If you share a computer, you might not want everyone who uses your computer to see your username in the login window or fast user switch menu. To hide your name, MacIssues points out you'll just need a little bit of Terminal skills.

Dictation may still have a little way to go before it's perfect, but it's still useful in a lot of cases. If you're a fan, OS X Daily points out that El Capitan added the ability to initiate dictation with a voice command.

Mac: If you spend a lot of time tweaking your display, you may have noticed that El Capitan seems to get rid of advanced options, including native and target gamma adjustment. Thankfully, these settings are just hidden behind a keyboard shortcut.