2022 Mac software
With my move primarily back to the Mac from the iPad thanks to the speed and
battery life increases of M1 & M2 Macs, I’ve decided to revisit my previous
post on setting up a Mac to update it
with what I use lately.
Not a lot has changed, but I seem to be simplifying many of my previous choices.
The apps
Raycast
A fantastic app and shortcut launcher with quick web and file search. This
is the app I always wanted Alfred or Spotlight to be. It’s easy to develop
extensions for this app, and tons exist in the extension library.
1Pass
One password to rule them all, and in darkness, to bind them. This app saved
me from years spent trying to remember various bizarre passwords, or
repeatedly opening the Keychain app. If you know anyone who uses a
computer or a phone, this is the app they should install first.
Things
I wrote a lot about how I do
todos,
and I love this app for its speed and ease of use more than anything on my
computer or phone. A delight every time.
Arc
I’m testing this new browser from The Browser Company, and have been for a
while now, but I mostly use it when I would normally be forced to spin-up
Chrome. I love having the same browser for all my devices, so until and
unless Arc exists on iPad and iPhone there’s no chance it’s taking the place
of Safari for me—especially with Chromium’s poor memory and resource usage.
Fantastical
My personal calendar app is somewhat useless now that I can’t load my work calendar onto my phone. I may revert back to iOS Calendar due to this.
iA Writer
An indispensable app for writing and
creating, and where I’m writing this very post! I love how simple and elegant iA
Writer is; providing minimal configuration to help me focus on the words
themselves. It also helps that black and blue are two of my favorite
colors—if only I could customize the cursor to be a theme-matching purple.
Proton VPN
A VPN is pretty important if you enjoy watching bike races, or other media
from round the world, and also if you ever use public wifi. I get this by
paying for Proton mail and it does the little I need a VPN for.
Parcel
With Deliveries dying a sad death by losing its ability to track UPS and
Fedex packages, I moved to its competitor.
Reeder
This is my main news and entertainment
app, and I
read everything from blogs, to newsletters, to Twitter on it. It’s fast,
cleanly designed, and integrates well with the RSS backend I use: Feedbin.
If you want to support a different app, I recommend the excellent
NetNewsWire, which is neat because it’s FOSS.
Slack
This is literally my job, and the main way I talk to my friends.
Discord
I’m part of a few small communities on Discord predominantly because of
newsletters I
read. These groups are pretty fun, and have
mostly taken the place of “meeting interesting people” that Twitter once
served.
ImageOptim
Do you write on the internet and need to upload smaller, optimized images?
This is for that.
CLI Utilities
These apps are are a backing service for installing and managing packages, my
terminal of choice, and a good Zsh customization now that Zsh is the standard on
a Mac.
Anything else?
I might download and use other apps sometimes, but this is my core few. If I’m
missing something you absolutely love, write in and tell me about
it.