Work Tools (Apps)

I write a lot, all the time, and I do so in a lot of different apps. I work on a MacBook laptop, an iPhone, and an iPad of late. Not so many years ago, I was evenly split between a Windows laptop, an Android phone, and an Apple iPad. Back then I used to joke that Dropbox was my operating system. I was on Nokia phones before the Android G1, and then on various other Android phones until the iPhone 13 came out. Due to a confluence of reasons, after that I ended up, for the first time, with all my major devices in the same single corporate realm (née “ecosystem,” which is a snazzy word for variably regulated shopping mall). I also have a cheap, used Samsung tablet as a second screen (or third, given the iPad). Below are the main pieces of software I use. I use a bunch of others, too, and I may add some to this list as time goes on.

Notes / Writing

I primarily use Obsidian (obsidian.md) for the majority of my organized notes, which are broken down by date and project. Obsidian is a recent move for me, from IA Writer, and before that a variety of other Markdown tools, including Atom and Sublime. I sync Obsidian with my iPhone and iPad thanks to iCloud, which works fine. I use the tabbed and multi-window options in Obsidian a lot.I take quick notes in Apple Notes, which syncs fairly well, though there are odd hiccups.I do most of my longer-form writing (anything over 1,000 words) in Scrivener (literatureandlatte.com) for a simple reason: a specific feature that, to my knowledge, only Scrivener and another writing tool, called Ulysses, provide. This is the ability to split a single document into multiple sections, and to be able to view and edit any consecutive subset of them. It’s fantastic.Anything simple that requires collaborative editing I do in Google Drive.

To Do

I have several sheets in Google Sheets that are formatted as virtual whiteboards, one of which is always displayed on my side screen (a cheap, used Samsung tablet). This has two benefits: (1) I can turn off my whiteboard at the end of the day; (2) I can see my whiteboard even when I’m not home.Apple Reminders — I’ve tried ’em all (Any.do, Trello, etc.), and none of them have really worked for me, but to the extent I use any to-do app, it’s currently Reminders. Before this, Todoist was the one that worked best for me.

Other

Pinboard.in for bookmarks, with an app that syncs on my phone. It’s incredibly bare bones, which is to say: it does what it’s supposed to. I tag everything by project, and I have a few lists of things (like newspapers and other resources) that I check every morning over coffee.Duet (duetdisplay.com) lets me use my Samsung tablet as a second screen from my laptop.Horo (matthewpalmer.net) is a laptop timer. It’s somewhat finicky, but it’s simple and sits in the menu bar.Blurred (via github.com) is set up in the laptop menu bar. Whichever window is currently “active” appears slightly brighter than all the others, of which there are generally many.Chill (see the dev’s website) is a white-noise app that sits in the laptop menu bar. I like the Airplane mode.MacWhisper (goodsnooze.gumroad.com) is a fantastic laptop speech-to-text tool. I use it a lot.Keysmith (keysmith.app) is an easy way on your laptop to save text phrases to be called up with keyboard commands. I pretty much use it for just one thing consistently, which is the day’s date, which I format as “YEAR.MM.DD / Weekday” (e.g., 2023.09.12 / Tuesday).TextSniper (textsniper.app) is an incredible tool to copy any text from your laptop screen. If I’m watching a movie and the end credits roll and I want to simply copy the names of everyone involved in sound, I select that portion of the screen, and TextSniper turns that into actual words I can then paste into a document.AirBuddy (airbuddy.app), which hangs out in the laptop menu bar, for whatever reason connects my AirPods to my laptop better than the default Apple settings.MonitorControl (via github.com) lets you control the brightness of external monitors the way you do your laptop monitor.Goodnotes (goodnotes.com) is the primary tool I use for (1) reading and making notes on PDFs, and (2) taking handwritten notes on specialized “virtual” paper (e.g., sheet music). I’m hopeful that the eventual reMarkable 3 tablet will be backlit. If that happens, I’ll give it a try.Kindle: I have a Kindle (the current one, the first with USB-C) and it’s the main thing I read books on (other than comic books), though I sometimes read on my laptop and iPad, too.