Time for another rundown post. Here are a bunch of macOS apps I use. You’ll see some entries from my previous iOS apps post mentioned.

Productivity

DayOne - Where I journal.

NotePlan - My knowledge base for work. It uses plain Markdown files and has calendar-based notes which suit my workflow. I’ve used it for task management too, but don’t anymore. It’s just a searchable knowledge base of work notes and references for me.

Alfred - My quick launcher for apps and custom workflows I’ve collected and written. My workflow collection warrants a separate post.

Things - Where I track everything I want to do at work and at home. Syncs to my phone which is essential.

Bear - My note taking and personal knowledge base. I keep work specific notes in NotePlan rather than here.

MindNode - A clean mind mapping tool. Sometimes I find the spacial nature of mindmapping helps me structure my thoughts.

Fantastical - A calendar that shows my iCloud and Google calendars together. It’s getting a bit pricey for what I use it for so it may not make it past its next subscription cycle renewal.

MimeStream - A native GMail client. Goes good.

Bike - I swear the only reason I use this outliner is because of its delightful animations. I wish this UI was embedded in NotePlan.

Ulysses - Good for long form writing. I do less and less of this so am struggling to justify the subscription cost.

Monodraw - I love ASCII art.

Web browsing and plug-ins

Safari and Chrome - I use Chrome for work as it enables a bunch of features in the Google Suite. I to keep my personal browsing separate so I use use Safari for that. I use Choosy on my work machine to route common sites accordingly. I don’t use Chrome at all on my personal laptop. I gave Arc a crack for a while instead of Safari, it was kinda cool but ultimately not worth the battery drain.

1Blocker - Ad blocker for Safari.

StopTheMadness - Deal with a bunch of annoying stuff on the web.

Kagi Search - Supporting the little guy.

Supercopy - Provides a hot key to copy links (I loved this on Arc).

Instapaper - My read later service of choice.

Music and video

Spotify - This cops a hiding.

Apple Music - I still have a bunch of my music in Apple Music (via iTunes Match) so I sometimes play music here. I use NepTunes to scrobble from Apple Music to Last.fm.

MusicBox - I save albums in here to listen to later.

VLC - O.G. video player.

Play - I save online videos in here to watch later. The Apple TV and iPad companion apps are killer.

DarkNoise - A white noise app. Goes great with over ear headphones.

Other internet reading

Unread - Viva la RSS.

Ivory - For trawling Mastodon.

Coding

iTerm - Still a solid terminal, though Warp looks like a fresh approach.

VSCode - I didn’t see a Chromium tool winning but here we are. I like the vibes of Zed but dev containers keep me on VSCode.

NeoVim - This old Vim guy still throws up some motions in a terminal from time to time.

OrbStack - A nice way to run Docker containers.

Postico - A solid Postgres client.

Fork - I mostly use this Git client to stage partial lines and, increasingly, to rebase commits.

Photography

Lightroom Classic - This is where I manage and process the majority of my photos.

Photoshop - For those times you need finer grained processing.

Topaz Photo AI - Mostly used for upscaling old photos and noise reduction. With that said, the noise reduction that’s been added to Lightroom is pretty good so I might retire this sucker.

Utilities

1Password - My password and secrets manager.

Moom - Adds a bit of window management for when I’m using an external monitor.

Karabiner Elements - Lets me customise my keyboard and mouse.

Apple Shortcuts - Handy for automation and gluing things together. Pairs well with Alfred.

ExpressVPN - 🕵️‍♂️

Soulver - Notes and calculations in one spot.

CleanShot X - Slick screenshots.