Defaults 2023

App Defaults by Robb Knight is a fun collection of posts detailing what applications or tools people use for various tasks.

I’ve enjoyed reading them and picked up a few good ideas here and there, but didn’t initially think about doing one. Eventually it occurred to me that it might be fun or useful to track them year over year.

Here are mine as of December 2023. I’m on MacOS and iOS, ** indicate more detailed notes and thoughts below the list. Multiple items are listed in order of most used.

• Mail server: Dreamhost
• Mail client: Thunderbird, Mail.app on iOS
• Calendar: Calender.app but interested in trying BusyCal
• Cloud file storage: Mostly Dropbox, some iCloud, testing out Proton Drive **
• Contact management: Contacts.app
• Browser: Firefox on desktop, Safari on iOS (not like there’s a choice!)
• Chat: Messages.app, Signal
• RSS: Feedly, would like to move away but have a lot of workflows built in **
• Bookmarks: All over the place, slowly migrating to Omnivore and liking it **
• Notes: Obsidian and Standard Notes **
• To-do: Obsidian, Standard Notes, Reminders.app **
• Photography: Camera.app and currently iPhone 15 Pro, would love to get back to using standalone cameras **
• Photo management: Photos.app
• Photo editing: Acorn
• Image compression: Squoosh
• Word processing: Libre Office, Google Docs
• Spreadsheets: Google Sheets, Libre Office
• Presentations: I don’t do these often, but the only one I did in 2023 was with Miro
• Visual thinking / wireframing: Miro, Freeform.app
• Color picker: Pika
• Shopping lists: Not really, but sometimes I’ll note something out of the regular rotation I want to remember in Standard Notes or Obsidian
• Meal planning: Nope
• Budgeting and finance: Nope
• News: RSS feeds
• Music: Apple Music
• Podcasts: Nope
• Password management: Hodgepodge of memory and saving in browsers
• Code editor: VS Code **
• Text editor: BBedit **
• Mastodon: Web on Desktop with occasional posting using Semaphore (really dislike the tiny little sidebar compose box of the web client), PWA of web app on mobile
• Weather: Combo platter of Hello Weather, Merry Sky and Weather Underground **
• Backups: Weekly Time Machine back-ups to a G-Technology 4TB drive
• FTP: Transmit, yes I still use FTP for a few things and Transmit is awesome
• Batch image processing: Retrobatch
• Screenshots: Mostly built in OS screenshots with some CleanShot X when I need to annotate, use backgrounds, etc.
• Search: DuckDuckGo, with occasional follow-up Google for code questions, want to try Kagi (not any more).

I’ve been back and forth between Dropbox and iCloud multiple times, and ultimately find Dropbox a bit less annoying than iCloud. Oddly the files in Dropbox feel more integrated into my system than iCloud. I currently use iCloud to share OS-y generated things between devices, like photos and messages. For everything else I use Dropbox.

The biggest Dropbox ugh to me is their mobile app…

If I use your product for free then OK, I get it, you may want some of my data in exchange. I don’t like it, and I’ll think long and hard about agreeing to use your service, but it at least it has the veneer of fairness. Dropbox ain’t cheap! I don’t mind paying for it, but I do mind also giving them this much data (and the third party AI thing, which I immediately disabled thanks to thoughtful people at Mastodon letting everyone know).

For now I don’t have Dropbox on my new phone. This isn’t terrible, but it means I need to plan ahead if there are things I want access to when I’m out and about. Enter Proton Drive.

I have a Proton account that includes Proton Drive. I’ve been waiting for a desktop app to give it a try, and last month it became available. So far so good. It’s easy to share and files are available offline and when signed out of your account. Perhaps this time next year Proton Drive will be my main cloud storage.

I’ve used Feedly for many years, and have plenty of useful workflows built into it. I like the ability to create boards, the title-only layout and that read articles don’t disappear into the void.

I don’t use any of the AI they’ve been pushing and hadn’t paid much attention to it. Then in the spring of this year they started advertising “How to track protests posing a risk to your company’s assets with Feedly AI”. Ugh.

They immediately stated that they flubbed the communication, and didn’t intend for it be used for things like strikebreaking as a service. Even if that’s true, it was a wake up call to try to find another option not heavily invested in “whoopsie we made strikebreaking AI, sorry!” product lines.

I did some initial research trying Inoreader and NetNewsWire, but at the time neither of them had enough of what I wanted to spend the time reworking all the stuff I used Feedly for. I think Feedbin also seemed like a contender, but didn’t get around to giving them a shot.

After writing the above paragraph I went back and signed in to my Inoreader and NetNewsWire accounts. Happy to report Inoreader seems much more like a contender than my first review, and they’re having a nice holiday special. I’ll probably grab the holiday deal and slowly migrate/test it out.

This is my must-have feature list…

• Be able easily find articles once they are read
• Be able to either tag articles or add to a board, bonus if the tag or board has its own RSS feed or can be easily shared
• Be able to easily set up automations using Zapier or IFTTT
• Be able to view as a title only list view layout for maximum scanning and minimal visual noise

We’ll see if Inoreader has replaced Feedly by this time next year.

This is really more find-it-later than read-it-later for me. I have saved links all over the place and even started a bookmarking site, Pile of hrefs, during the early lockdown stage of the pandemic. I have saved links in Pocket, Feedly, an ancient Pinboard account and probably strewn about in a few other places.

A few weeks ago I discovered Omnivore, an open source read-it-later app. So far I’m really loving it. It’s easy to add and label links in a variety of ways. It can even consume RSS feed, so theoretically it could be used as an RSS reader as well. It’s relatively new and doesn’t have many of my RSS must-haves, but if you’re looking for a nice lightweight RSS reader, Omnivore could be right for you.

On my list of potential articles (in Obsidian), I have an item for “Note taking approach (Standard Notes / Obsidian)”. I used to use a combination of Apple Notes and Notion, and prior to that a combination of sticky notes (physical and digital) and TextEdit.app.

My note taking needs range from quick little things I don’t want to forget to post drafts and longer thoughts. For many years I handled the first type with physical Post It notes. I still have some handy for notes on the fridge and the like. I also used to make good use Apple Stickies before I moved away from using my desktop as de facto junk drawer.

Eventually Apple Notes took up the job of stickies, and it was mostly fine as a user experience. Eventually I wanted notes to be actual files that could be used with any other application. I was also increasingly interested in privacy/security.

For the stickies category I settled on the privacy focused Standard Notes. It’s perfect for tossing together lists of all kinds and random things I don’t want to forget. I’ve use it for research notes, recipes, my very long series watch list, tracking deliveries and a bunch of other things.

After becoming a markdown devotee in recent years I wanted to find a tool that allowed me to author in markdown for the longer notes and writing category. At first I tried iA Writer, and mostly liked it. The deal breaker for me was the lack paired brackets via keystrokes. Then I discovered Obsidian and have not looked back.

Much like my brain, I only use a small fraction of Obsidian’s capabilities. I’ll never be a personal knowledge management overachiever or a digital garden tender, but Obsidian knocks it out of the park for my meager and disorganized note taking!

I do use Reminder.app for a few reoccurring things like the dog’s monthly preventatives and my weekly back-ups. I also keep a weekly to-to list running in Obsidian.

For Default post purposes the category is meant for apps, but I’m more interested in hardware for this one. My current camera is an iPhone 15 Pro, which I’m very happy with so far. I haven’t tried out the high res mode yet but it’s nice to have it as an option. A friend needed a headshot for print over the summer and I dusted off an old Nikon D70, which got the job done. And it made me miss standalone cameras. I can see getting back into it more seriously if I had more time on my hands, but unless some unforeseen windfall happens that won’t be anytime in the near future.

I use Acorn for image processing. It’s straightforward and powerful. I don’t do too much, especially with images from iPhone 15 Pro. The D70 images were another issue! But if you’re looking for an affordable image processing app, check out Acorn. Flat fee, no subscription.

For photo management I’ve been using Photos.app for several years. I used my own filing system prior to that and have a pretty large, somewhat organized filing system. I still routinely back-up my photos from Photos.app into actual files that live in my filing structure. It’s not as organized as I’d like, but the photos are also not solely locked in Photos.app.

One of the things I’m hoping to do in 2024 is to tack a photos subdomain on here and make a full on photo site. I’ve been posting regularly all year at my Pixelfed account and think I’m ready to step it up.

VS Code is like twenty pounds of shit in a five pound bag, at least for my purposes. I loved Atom, but since it’s no longer being maintained I thought it was best to move to another tool.

I tried Nova when it first came out and have to admit I was completely turned off that it made itself the default application for every code related file type. It also didn’t have many features at the time. Enough time has passed and many people I follow seem to like it as a VS Code alternative, so I’ve added it to my to list to try again.

For text-munging and wrangling I still love BBEdit. Want to easily strip out all markup or comments? Need powerful search and replace? Easy case changes? BBEdit has your back, since 1992. Whenever I have an unwieldy file, BBEdit is my go to.

The demise of Dark Sky has left a gaping hole in my formerly solid weather knowing situation. In this household we like to joke that it takes three apps to not be able to figure out when it’s actually going to rain.

I use a combination of Hello Weather, Merry Sky and Weather Underground, and for the most part they’re fine. I don’t love any of them. And yes, I’ve tried all the other ones, or rather the other ones that don’t feel the need to track my purchaes, etc.

The most annoying thing is that I would use the Apple weather app if I could read it during the day.

It looks easier to read in the above screenshots, but I find it impossible to read on a screen. If they would just provide an option for a non-dynamic background with sufficient contrast I would happily use it.

We’ll see what, if anything, has changed in my application situation for 2024. Hoping for a few improvements here and there.