Current Essential Apps

I’ve been talking about useful apps of late with friends, and I figured I’d have a page I can direct them to. These are some essential (to me) MacOS and iOS (and in some cases OS-agnostic) apps. I’m probably forgetting some, but I half think I could do 90% of my work with just these. Not included in the list are the more default options, like iOS apps Reminders (from Apple) and Gmail (from Google).

Obsidian, note-taking and writingVivaldi, browser that sucks lessBebop, instant mobile note-takingTextSniper, copying text from screen images, etc.Plex, home audio media serverImageOptim, photo resizerPermute, file-type converterMimestream, emailFigma, graphics editor (and more?)Whisper, voice-to-textXCode, IDELibby/Hoopla/Kindle, reading

I pretty much live in Obsidian and Vivaldi. I do some work in Chrome, if it’s Google-specific. Bebop is on my phone to sync with my laptop, one of the few shortcuts on my lock screen. Whisper is on my phone, and since it doesn’t sync, I access via iPhone Mirroring from my laptop (also a shortcut on my lock screen). Plex is mostly a video thing these days, but I only use it for audio. ImageOptim and Permute probably have stronger competition, but they do the job for me. (This list doesn’t include music-making software, which is a distant corner of the universe.)