Over time, I’ve tried to make sure that the programs I frequently work with are the ones I enjoy interacting with. Even if only a few of them are truly perfect (I’ve highlighted those with a RECOMMENDED tag), everything on this list had to pass the bar of “daily driver”. Social media excluded.

Screenshots provided for the more niche apps. For a general list of “good apps”, see mac.joodaloop.com.

Casual

Arc

There’s not much love lost between the Browser Company and me, but Arc continues to offer a combination of things I can’t find elsewhere (Ctrl + Tab for switching between most recent tabs, sidebar with favorites, and a Chromium core).

Bear RECOMMENDED

It’s surprisingly difficult to make a good markdown editor. Bear does it by focusing only on the Apple ecosystem, and it does it very, very well. The paid version let’s me sync between devices, export notes as anything between an HTML file or JPEG, a bunch of themes, app icon variations, and OCR search for PDFs and images..

Notes aren’t “local” in the “on my filesystem” way, but it’s a small price to pay for excellent sync and version conflict handling (they never delete a conflicted version, you get to manage them manually), and you can always export them whenever you want.

Bitwarden RECOMMENDED

Free and open-source password manager.

Craft

For shared documents. Native apps for all devices, good ergonomics and aesthetics.

Garageband RECOMMENDED

Someday I will learn to use an proper DAW, until then I will tap and swipe tracks in place on my iPad.

NetNewsWire RECOMMENDED

RSS reader for MacOS/iOS. Probably the oldest bit of software on this list, it first launched over a decade and it’s been fully open-source since 2018. Customizable, dependable, solid design. The epitome of “it just works”.

I made some themes for it, because the default ones aren’t that great.

Nota RECOMMENDED

Really snappy app for editing actual Markdown files, as minimal as they come with a very capable command menu and instant search. Primarily the files that make up the website you’re reading right now.

Telegram RECOMMENDED

Easily the best-designed messaging app. I run a pretty cool micro-blogging platform on top of it, as well as most of my conversations with internet friends.

tldraw RECOMMENDED

The nicest canvas app on the web. By far. Also an SDK, if you want to use it in an app of your own.

Spotify

Shared playlists and infinite catalogues are great, but I still dream of going back to local music collections. Either I make an app for that someday or wait for Overtone to finally launch.

Utilities

Alfred

Spotlight replacement. It is fast, the first time I used it felt like a jumpscare. Files are searched at “speed of type”. And it has a single-purchase license for the Pro version.

Day Progress

Turns out I need this to take the passage of time seriously.

Google AI Studio

They’re giving away Gemini 2.5 Pro for free.

Iris

An LLM in a floating window. For quick code snippet rewrites or explainers.

Rectangle RECOMMENDED

People love complaining about the Mac’s lack of window management, but Rectangle literally exists. It’s free and does what I needed it to do. CTRL + ⌥ + key to snap windows wherever you want to, with near-complete customization.

Shottr RECOMMENDED

Excellent screenshot tool. Provides a color picker, quick copy, annotation, OCR, scrolling screenshots, etc.

Sitesucker

Mac app that downloads entire websites. I use it to create a local copy of text-heavy sites (like Shalizi’s notebooks) to browse through at my leisure, without the slow network request between page navigations. It even has a “URL Constraint” setting to download one section of a site, so I could download just the /notebooks section of the site.

Stats

Menu bar app for keeping an eye on system stats, is an open-source alternative to iStats.

Work

Figma

About half my “work” is done through mockups.

Google Meet

The Alphabet Inc. consumer surplus knows no bounds. Zoom delenda est.

Mail

Yeah, the Apple one. I only write a handful of emails a week and like having a dedicated native app and notifications.

Sublime Text

For writing HTML like it’s the good old days.

Wise RECOMMENDED

Cross-border payments. They even give you an American bank account for ACH and wires.

Dev tools

fish shell

I use fish for two reasons — the first is because it’s called “fish”, the second is for out-of-the-box autocomplete for filesystem routes and previous commands.

Ghostty RECOMMENDED

Native terminal that respects the platform’s conventions.

TablePlus

Database interface, for popping the hood open on the occasional SQLite file (I recommend making copies of your browser history file btw!) or connecting to remote Postgres instance.

Zed

Default IDE. The startup times are instant, the Typescript LSP is decent, and it makes most things ergonomic enough that I can excuse the small papercuts and lack of extensions. If the project dies I’m happy to return to VSCode, but I will enjoy the lower memory usage and until then.

Misc. CLI tools

• zoxide – remembers which directories you use most frequently, so you can “jump” to them in just a few keystrokes.
• bun – Javascript package manager and runtime

I use Monokai Pro as my theme everywhere I can, and the classic variation if not.