Default Apps 2023

I saw this floating around and thought I’d join in.


๐Ÿ“จ Mail Client: Airmail

๐Ÿ“ฎ Mail Server: Fastmail

๐Ÿ“ Notes:ย Obsidian (longer term working notes) and Drafts (short term temporary notes–nothing lives in Drafts long-term, it is more like Grand Central Terminal). Public notes get posted to https://notes.cagrimmett.com/

โœ… To-Do: Things

๐Ÿ“ท Photo Shooting: Daily: iPhone 14 Pro. When shooting photos for real: Canon EOS 6D Mark II.

๐ŸŽจ Photo Editing: Mostly: Photos. Heavier editing: Pixelmator.

๐Ÿ“† Calendar: Google Calendar and Apple Calendar.

๐Ÿ“ Cloud File Storage: Dropbox, iCloud Drive, and Google Drive for various files. Backblaze for full computer backups.

(I’m not happy with this approach that has been cobbled together over time. If anyone has a better one and has done consolidation migrations, I’d love to chat.)

๐Ÿ“– RSS: Mostly FeedLand, occasionally NetNewsWire

๐Ÿ™๐Ÿปโ€โ™‚๏ธ Contacts: macOS Contacts

๐ŸŒ Browser: Desktop: Chrome. iOS: Safari and DuckDuckGo

๐Ÿ’ฌ Chat: Slack, Messages, Texts, Signal

๐Ÿ”– Bookmarks: Larder and my own website via IndieBlocks

๐Ÿ“‘ Read It Later: Larder and Friends with Post Collections and Send to e-reader

๐Ÿ“œ Word Processing: Google Docs primarily, Pages if I must

๐Ÿ“ˆ Spreadsheets: Primarily Google Sheets, occasionally Numbers. Special mention to Datasette for exploring CSVs in more detail.

๐Ÿ“Š Presentations: Primarily Google Slides. I don’t give presentations often, but if I did, I’d probably use Nick Diego’s WP Block slide approach

๐Ÿ›’ Shopping Lists: Reminders on iOS and macOS, in a shared list with my wife

๐Ÿด Meal Planning: When we do it, it is mostly on an index card at home that we stick to the fridge. Occasionally a shared Reminders list.

๐Ÿ’ฐ Budgeting and Personal Finance: Google Sheets for high level tracking over time, otherwise we don’t track closely. We follow a 50/30/20 approach (50% of income goes to fixed expenses, 20% to savings and investment, 30% to everything else) and automate the 50 and 20, so we don’t have to closely track the 30.

๐Ÿ“ฐ News: RSS, social media.

๐ŸŽต Music: Spotify

๐ŸŽค Podcasts: Overcast

๐Ÿ” Password Management: 1Password

๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿ’ป Code Editor: VS Code

โœˆ๏ธ VPN: Work: OpenVPN. Personal: Private Internet Access.


Special mentions:

  • Raycast – macOS utility (clipboard manager, search, quick commands for tons of apps, automations)
  • iTerm2 – Terminal replacement
  • Transmit for file transfer
  • TablePlus for local databases
  • Carrot Weather for weather on both macOS and iOS. Can pull in data from my own weather station.
  • Dark Noise – different kinds of white noise
  • CleanShot X – number one screenshot app on macOS by far


Comments

3 responses to “Default Apps 2023”

  1. Make sure to check out uses.tech for a list of everyoneโ€™s /uses pages! Also check out usesthis.com for curated interviews.

    My relevant Uses posts:

    November 2023

    April 2017

    Like this:

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  2. […] came across a group of bloggers posting detailed lists of apps they use. There’s been quite a turnout. Lots of useful info in […]

  3. […] list is inspired by many… Chuck Grimmett, Tracy Darnell and Jasper Tandy were the nudges through RSS I needed, but there are over 200 other […]

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