Default Apps at the End of 2023

There’s been a trend floating around the blogosphere this month looking at the default apps people are using… I like that. This is my list:

📨 Mail Client

I’ve got far too many email addresses… and I’m checking each of them via webmail on the desktop. Mostly Google Workspace / Gmail. I don’t like this solution. I really should get back into a proper mail client in 2024!

📮 Mail Server

For my personal account it’s Google Workspace behind the scenes. I want set and forget. This does that for me.

📝 Notes

I had a time with Notion over the last few years, however I’ve mostly reverted back to markdown files for serious notes, or a one-liner in a WhatsApp chat with myself!

✅ To-Do

At work… Asana. Out of work it’s the wild-west of what I remember next!

📆 Calendar

Cron has been a game changer this year.

📁 Cloud File Storage

I’ve been with Dropbox for forever. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

📖 RSS

Reeder has been in my life for a long time. I recently cleared out all the subscriptions and started again with it.

🌐 Browser

This year I’ve been experimenting with Arc. I can’t get it to stick for web dev work (which I’m still using Chrome for), but for every-day browsing, Arc is working well for me.

💬 Chat

I switching into Beeper half way through the year… having WhatsApp, SMS, Signal, and Telegram all in one makes me very happy.

📑 Read It Later

On a good day Pocket is the tool for the job. My experience with this is that I go in waves with it– I add a lot of things into it, and then forget to go and read the articles, and then looking at the list is overwhelming… So I forget about it and come back to it, wipe it, start again, and then have the same issue all over again.

📜 Word Processing

Google Docs and iA Writer.

📈 Spreadsheets

Rarely. Almost never.

📊 Presentations

Keynote. It’s solid and reliable. I experimented with Presenter from iA last year. I loved it, but I put presentations together so infrequently that I couldn’t justify the sticker price.

🎵 Music

Spotify. Not sure if I should feel bad about this one at the moment.

🦣 Mastodon

Elk as a PWA, across all devices.

🎤 Podcasts

Pocket Casts has been solid for years. It also has a simple Amazon Alexa skill which works well.

🔐 Password Management

I’ve been running off KeePass for years, running MacPass on MacOS, and Keepass2Android on my phone.