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UPDATES
• December 21, 2025 →

I stumbled upon a list by Scott Willsey and learned that there's a "App Defaults movement" 😉 Not too long ago, I posted my Uses page and I'm trying to keep it up to date. However, the categories here are well defined, and I thought, why not? Maybe I'll be able to spot some trends if this becomes a yearly thing.

📨 Mail Client

📮 Mail Server

📝 Notes

    • Workflowy — for almost everything
    • Apply Notes — for sharing notes with the family
    • Notion — work only

✅ To-Do

    • Reminders App

📷 iPhone Photo Shooting

    • iOS Camera

🟦 Photo Management

    • Photos App

📆 Calendar

📁 Cloud File Storage

📖 RSS

🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts

    • Contacts App

🌐 Browser

💬 Chat

    • Beeper — all in one app (WhatsApp & Signal mainly)
    • Messages App
    • Halloy — IRC client
    • Slack — work only
    • Telegram — work only

🔖 Bookmarks

    • No dedicated app, (ab)using Workflowy for that task

📑 Read It Later

    • No dedicated app, (ab)using Workflowy for that task

📜 Word Processing

    • Workflowy
    • Pages

📈 Spreadsheets

    • Numbers

📊 Presentations

    • Keynote

🛒 Shopping Lists

    • Reminders App

🍴 Meal Planning

💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance

    • Numbers

📰 News

🎵 Music

🎤 Podcasts

🔐 Password Management

There are some things on that list I feel require some "tweaks":

  • I've got NAS at home and nowadays really strong and stable connection, which makes me think more and more of using it as my main cloud storage solution (maybe via Synching?)
  • I used to use Fastmail and I'm considering switching to something else than Gmail—maybe it's time to give Tuta or Proton a try, though I'm not a fan of them requiring their own apps instead of operating with standard e-mail protocols
  • I've got Vaultwarden up and running, but I've never got into using it properly—with all the enshittification 1Password is going through lately it feels inevitable to do the switch somewhere down the road
  • I'm also keeping back of my head the possibility of introducing something like Immich or Ente, though it would be a tough sell at this point given how we are using Apple Photos shared library at home...

UPDATE (December 21, 2025)

One good outcome of writing down the above list was the realization where I have some blank spots left. I started experimenting with Proton Mail and so far so good. It's a good service and I think I might actually stick with it for the long run. While I'm still not a fan of Proton requiring their own apps, they do provide proton/proton-bridge so at least I can use something else on my Mac.

Syncthing is also growing on me, especially since I discovered pixelpark/sushitrain which appears to solve my biggest gripe with it—syncing with my iPhone.

I feel the urge to develop a different backup strategy for my pictures. This has been amplified when I read the horror story by Buttfield-Addison. I can't imagine being locked out from all the photos I store in my Apple account, especially as I'm not that sure I'd be able to access my local libraries (I store them on two separate devices, offline and via BackBlaze, but still...)