14 December 2025

Last time I wrote this out was…2023? I thought things had changed, but it looks like my days of frantic switching have subsided somewhat and this list has largely stayed the same. I’m still using Apple’s horrendous excuses for software despite everything, and in some cases (podcasts, passwords, books), I’ve gone further in. Notably, I switched from Sublime Text to Zed, Terminal.app to Ghostty, and Arc to Vivaldi. Obsidian on iOS is now good enough that—after four years—I stopped using iA Writer for managing my vault. NetNewsWire has remained a constant for reading RSS feeds, and offloading my hundreds of feeds to a Miniflux instance has improved the experience immensely.

Inspired by Rubenerd and Robb Knight’s App Defaults project.

• Mail client: Apple Mail
• Mail server: iCloud
• Notes: Obsidian
• Todo: Apple Reminders, Obsidian
• iPhone camera app: the default one and Halide
• Photo management: Apple Photos
• Calendar: Apple Calendar
• Contacts: Apple Contacts
• Weather: Apple Weather
• File sharing: iCloud Drive (least annoying one surprisingly)
• RSS: NetNewsWire and Miniflux
• Browser: Safari (seriously); Vivaldi when needed. All browsers are terrible
• Chat: iMessage 😐, Telegram 🫠, Whatsapp 🤮, Discord 🥱
• Bookmarks: Safari and Obsidian
• Read later/link graveyard: Safari Reading List
• Shopping list: Apple Reminders shared with Lauren
• News: NetNewsWire
• Music: Apple Music
• Podcasts: Apple Podcasts, though it’s rare that I listen to podcasts now
• Password management: Apple Passwords
• Maps: Apple Maps
• Text editor: Zed, Helix, VS Code
• Terminal: Ghostty
• Shell: fish
• Git client: Sublime Merge
• Package manager: Homebrew
• Writing: iA Writer
• Reading: Apple Books
• Spreadsheets: Apple Numbers
• Personal finance: YNAB (good enough)
• Search: DuckDuckGo with uBlacklist to block domains
• Backups: macOS Time Machine, Synology DS215+, Synology C2
• Graphics/vector design: Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer
• Docs: Dash
• VPN: Tailscale