Uses
This is a uses page, last updated September 21, 2024.
Laptop
- Operating system — macOS. I’ve generally stopped upgrading to new major versions, though, because upgrading inevitably makes my computer run slower. I used to run Linux, and before that, Windows 3.1, and before that, MS-DOS.
- Launcher — Spotlight. I used to use Alfred but realized that Spotlight basically does everything I need. Boring, I know. (I’ve tried Raycast, wasn’t my thing.)
- Editor — Neovim. I’ve been using Vim for almost thirty years now and don’t see myself moving off it anytime soon. (I used Emacs before that, but I had RSI in my wrists from it. I’ve also tried VS Code and Kakoune and Helix and Spacemacs and a handful of other editors, but Vim/Neovim works really well for me.) I use a whole bunch of plugins. Someday I need to pare it down.
- Shell — zsh, with a fairly minimal configuration (most of which goes toward my prompt). And tmux. (Though I’m thinking about trying Zellij.)
- Browser — Firefox. It’s admittedly not perfect, but it works well enough for me. I like that I can configure the browser chrome with CSS. I don’t use many extensions.
- Terminal — Kitty. I’ve also used Terminal.app, iTerm 2, and Alacritty. My terminal font for the last several years has been Go Mono.
- Window management — Hammerspoon. I use this to toggle my terminal (like Visor), and I generally keep my terminal fullscreen. (I don’t ever use an external monitor.)
- RSS reader — Feedly in the browser.
- Email — Gmail in the browser. I don’t love it, except for the keyboard shortcuts.
- Art — Figma (in the browser), Inkscape, Affinity Photo, occasionally Blender.
- Music typesetting — MuseScore. I hardly ever do this, though.
Phone
- Operating system — iOS. It’s okayish, but I feel like the past few years have been a slow slide into mediocrity and flaky bugginess.
- Browser — Safari. No real complaints.
- Ebook reader — Marvin. Which is discontinued, sadly. Woe is me. I also occasionally read books on Libby or (with scanned PDFs) in Documents.
- RSS reader — Feedly.
- Reddit reader — Narwhal 2.
- Email — Mail (built-in).
- Calendar — Google Calendar.
- Calculator — PCalc.
- Art — Paper and Procreate Pocket. I have Vectornator installed but basically never use it.
Homemade personal productivity apps
I use almost all of these every day.
- To do list — Liszt (though it no longer looks like that screenshot).
- Reading tracker — Bookshelf (ditto, and that’ll be true for the rest as well).
- Goal tracker — Momentum.
- Quick text entry — Gate on my phone and Quill on my laptop. (These let me enter text and then send it to Liszt or Leaf, primarily. Same idea as Drafts.)
- Launcher — Saturn.
- Notes — Codex, which replaced Arc.
- Journal/log — Leaf, which replaced Vinci.
- Fiction writing — Storybook.
- Blogging — Slash.