Friday, December 29, 2023

Default apps for 2023

Lately, I've seen a lot of the "what apps am I using" type posts, apparently prompted by a podcast episode.  You can see a collection of what a number of people are using here.  I find these interesting as they're a good way to discover new apps which I hadn't been aware of previously.  These are the apps I use for my iPhone, Mac, and Raspberry Pi at home as well as the Linux and Windows machines I use at work.


  • Mail Client: Apple Mail, Outlook at work (barely tolerable but dictated by the IT team)
  • Notes: Apple Notes for shared notes, Editorial for notes I don't want on the cloud (such as those containing sensitive information such as birthdays)
  • Chat: iMessage
  • Camera: Apple Camera, Night Capture for evening sky photos
  • Photo Management: manual sync into directories on my Mac
  • Photo Editing: Preview on Mac, IrfanView on Windows
  • Calendar: Google Calendar - I like it for its ability to do custom repeats and for ease of having more than 2 notification reminders
  • Browser: On Macs I use Safari for lightweight browsing for its ease of sharing bookmarks with mobile devices, Firefox for general browsing because it has a richer collection of security plugins.  At work I use Chrome (barely tolerable but dictated by IT).
  • Backup: ChronoSync
  • Read It Later: Instapaper
  • RSS: Inoreader (web and app)
  • News: RSS feeds from news sites which lets me keep up with events without being distracted by things I'm not interested in such as sports
  • Podcasts: Overcast (great performance and the best UI of any app on my phone, bar none)
  • Books: Kindle, Audible, Libby, Hoopla
  • Database: Tap Forms (good sync between mobile and Mac)
  • Personal Finance: GNUcash
  • Password Management: 1Password - with 600+ non-trivial passwords to remember, this is a must
  • Music - Apple Music, Remote app to control desktop from my phone
  • Editing (code and general) - MacVim on Mac, GVim on work machines (Windows and Linux)
  • X Servers - XQuartz on Mac, VcXsrv on Windows
  • SCP client - WinSCP on Windows, scp from the shell on Linux/Mac machines
  • Terminal emulation - putty on Windows and Linux machines

No comments: