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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
With Deliveries dying a sad death by losing its ability to track UPS and Fedex packages, I moved to its competitor.
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.
This is literally my job, and the main way I talk to my friends.
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.
Do you write on the internet and need to upload smaller, optimized images? This is for that.
CLI Utilities
Brew
Hyper
OhMyZsh
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.