I've been meaning to add this list for a long time, but it always felt like a never-ending task. I tend to stick to some of my hardware and software choices for a long time, but there are certain aspects that change a lot. I focused on mentioning things I use most often and/or which are somewhat important to me.

Hardware

Here I skipped a bunch of things that will either be covered in a future deep-dive post (like my NAS, for example) or are not worth mentioning as I seldom use them (like my desktop/gaming Windows PC).

Work Desk

  • MacBook Pro 2023 14" (M2 Pro, 16 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, silver) — absolutely flawless in every aspect. It's fast, battery life is second to none, screen is gorgeous, connectivity is back to the proper "Pro" level.
  • Samsung 28" U28E590 (4k@60Hz) — bought during the pandemic for my home/office setup — I always considered it a temporary solution that ended up serving me over 4 years (and counting). Decent quality for the price. Still, I'm definitely going to move to some Apple monitor in the near future. (Given the pricing, Studio Display is the most likely one).
  • Apple Magic Keyboard with TouchID (without the numeric keypad, US layout, silver) — at some point, I just got used to these keyboards, and the addition of TouchID is just chef's kiss.
  • Logitech MX Master 3S (pale gray) — my favorite mouse and primary pointing device.
  • Apple Magic Trackpad (silver) — mainly used for gestures and my secondary pointing device when I'm eating with my right hand.
  • Sony WH-1000XM4 (silver) — used mainly during the video calls at work or when I need to immerse and cut off my brain completely to focus on a task (ANC is fantastic here).
  • HomePod Mini (space gray) — got a pair of these which serve me as AirPlay speakers.
  • HUANUO Monitor Mount with Laptop Arm — sturdy and well-made, pretty happy with it, though my Samsung monitor has a vesa mount in a very odd place which prevents me from putting it a bit higher than I'd like. Good enough™, though.
  • BenQ ScreenBar Plus — especially important in the Fall and Winter as it serves as my main source of light while working.
  • Twelve South Forte Magsafe Adjustable Stand for iPhone — nothing special for the price. I'll most likely replace it at some point with something that can also handle the charging of Apple Watch and/or AirPods Pro.
  • Samsung T7 SSD (2 TB) — used for TimeMachine backups.

Home Desk

  • MacBook Air 2020 (M1, 16 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, silver) — this was my very first MacBook with an M-series chip, and so I decided to future-proof it by maxing out RAM and SSD. In hindsight — good call. These days I use it in the living room in clamshell mode as my desktop, but it was equally capable when I used it at work.
  • BenQ 27" EW2275ZH (1080p) — this will need to go, eventually — I'll most likely replace it with my Samsung monitor I mentioned above once I get my hands on a 5k screen I can afford and justify spending money on.
  • Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad (US layout, black keys) — I was using SATECHI Slim X1, but at some point lack of Touch ID was just too much of a hassle. Eventually I gave in and grabbed this one and couldn’t be happier.
  • Logitech MX Master 3 (mid-grey) — my old work mouse that I demoted to my desktop setup.

Other

  • iPhone 16 (512 GB, black) — I switched from 14 Pro as it was too heavy and it was the right call. It's still not as small and light as my beloved iPhone 13 Mini, but an improvement nonetheless.
  • Apple Watch Series 7 (no cellular, starlight) — good with decent battery life, and no new features so far warrant a switch to a newer model.
  • AirPods Pro 2. Generation — ANC on the go. It's truly uncanny how good they are.
  • iPad Mini 6. Generation (Wi-Fi, 256 GB, starlight) — exclusively used for content consumption — watching movies/videos, listening to music, reading books, and comics.
  • Apple Pencil 2. Generation — bought for the iPad, seldom used. My wife uses hers with her iPad Pro, but as I'm not an artist, my use-cases here are very limited.
  • HomePod OG — demoted from my work setup, mostly used by my wife and me to set timers while cooking and listen to some beats. It still sounds great for its size.
  • Apple TV 4K 2. Generation (32 GB) — an absolute must due to software degradation on Samsung TVs. I'm preparing to eventually replace it with a newer model and, most likely, two big HomePods for the sound.
  • Nintendo Switch (OLED) — Nintendo is my favorite console producer, and their game catalog for the Switch is impressive. It's hard to grasp how much they were able to juice out of that underpowered device.
  • New Nintendo 3DS — we own three of these (one of them in XL size), and use them mainly when traveling. Still one of my most beloved consoles to-go.
  • HUNSN Micro Firewall Appliance — my OPNsense firewall, these days serving as my main gateway with help of DrayTek Vigor160 modem.
  • NUC7i3BNK (i3 Skylake, 16 GB RAM, 1T Samsung 970 Evo M.2 NVME) — serves as my single-node K8S setup. I'm running bunch of public things off of it and also AdGuard Home for my internal DNS, these days forwarding using DNS-over-TLS to NextDNS.

Software

This was tough to strike the proper balance with. I skimmed through the most important part, which is the Terminal setup — but here again, I hope to cover it in more detail in a future blog post.

macOS & iOS

  • 1Password — my favourite password manager. If I was to choose any alternative these days, I'd most likely go with bitwarden with self-hosting server component (which I already do for my family).
  • AdGuard — I used to use Ublock Origin exclusively, but these days I've got oisd.nl list on my AdGuard Home and NextDNS, so this Safari extension is there "just in case" really.
  • Apple Mail — used mainly for low volume, low priority e-mails. My main mail is, sadly, still handled by Google.
  • Apple Notes — while I run my entire digital life off of Obsidian, I still maintain few notes I share with my spouse, mum and brother.
  • Apple Photos — finally with iCloud Shared Photo Library I was able to get rid of my previous workflow that involved dumping photos from my and my wife's phone via Dropbox 🙌🏻
  • Apple Reminders — I used to depend heavily on Things 3, but Apple Reminders became eventually so good I no longer need any replacement. Additionally, I have bunch of lists I shared with my spouse.
  • Bear — syncing Obsidian through iCloud got really bad and there were a few more paper cuts I couldn’t easily overlook. I decided to entertain the idea of using Bear as my "PKM" and never looked back. Still going strong thus far 🤞🏻
  • Beeper — while I'm not a fan of Electron apps, I gave in for this one as it simply allows me to combine multiple communicators in a single place. In addition, I'm self-hosting IRC bridge so I use it for this line of communication as well.
  • Cinny — I couldn't find proper native apps that I would stick with, so this one has to do.
  • DaisyDisk — I don't need to check disk usage too often, but when I do, this one does the job in style.
  • Doppler / Plexamp / Apple Music — I still own quite a bit of music I collected over the years. I used to depend on Apple Music quite heavily, but at some point I moved my collection to my NAS and attached it to Plex. As I have big drives on both my Macs, I tend to use Doppler the most there, while Plexamp mostly on iPhone and iPad.
  • Fantastical — the best calendar app on Apple platform hands down. I tried switching to Apple Calendar, but it just didn't cut it. It's one of the subscriptions I'm happy to pay for, as the value (and joy) I get from this app is huge.
  • Ivory — my favourite Mastodon client from my favourite Tapbots team.
  • NetNewsWire — I eagerly switched to NNW once it started offering iCloud sync. Not having to maintain yet another server or pay for some subscription is a simple calculation in my book.
  • Parcel — integration with Prime alone makes it worth it.
  • Pixelmator Pro — doesn't happen often, but when I need to do anything that requires some graphics manipulation, this is my go to app.
  • Safari — it tends to get a lot of shit these days, especially from web developers, but to me it's the best web browser out there, period. It syncs flawlessly between my devices, and now enhanced with profiles it allows me to easily separate work and private life.

macOS

  • AirBuddy — overview of the devices connected and their battery level is excellent. The way it integrates with AirPods Pro is so good it's hard to belive it required third-party app to make it right.
  • Amphetamine — whenever I'm actively working on any of my Macs, this app is indispensable.
  • Bike — I started using it more often recently and decided to buy the license. So far the best outliner I ever used on a Mac!
  • Boop — small but mighty. It provides plenty of built-in actions (all of them can be listed via *) and can be further extended via scripts.
  • CleanShot X — provides finer control over screenshots.
  • iTerm2 — the most used app on my macOS, no doubts. This is where I spend majority of my time when I'm working or otherwise.
  • Karabiner-Elements — I don't really use it much, but for the two things I do, it's perfect. I remapped right option and right command, essentially switching them in their places — this is due to polish diacritics I'm still writing every single day and muscle memory of which key I need to press to write them. Second modification is caps lock to command+control+options+shift.
  • Mimestream — the best Gmail client on macOS.
  • Moom — I know there are plenty of alternatives in this market, but to me nothing comes close to window management offered by Moom. It's so well integrated and I'm so used to it that when I sit on a Mac that doesn't have it, it feels broken.
  • PopClip — another integration without which macOS feels like it's broken. There's plethora of integrations, but consistent behaviour between iOS and macOS alone makes it worth the investment.
  • Proxyman — proper Mac-assed Mac app alternative to Postman.
  • RapidAPI — another amazing Mac-assed Mac app for developing and/or documenting APIs.
  • Raycast — I used to be a heavy user of Alfred, but at some point I got curious, switched, and... Never looked back. The amount of integrations is tremendous and it's being very actively developed, which is also great as there are new features and overall improvements coming in often.
  • Sleeve — tiny app to display album cover on the desktop. It supports Doppler and Apple Music; it can also scrobble to Last.fm.
  • Textual / Halloy — IRC client I'm using in conjunction with self-hosted Soju bouncer. At the moment I'm partial to Textual, but Halloy is getting there with each release.

iOS (ye, iPad & Watch too)

  • AdGuard Home — allows me to control AdGuard setup and view statistics etc.
  • Gmail — still my main e-mail.
  • Igloo — the best IRC client for iOS.
  • Overcast — the best podcast client for iOS.
  • Pushover — used for all sorts of notifications (duh!).
  • Secure ShellFish — SSH on the go with sleek integration with Files. I used bunch of others, but always went back to this one.
  • WaterMinder — honestly I think I use this one on my watch the most. Helps me with tracking my water levels.
  • Wroking Copy — the best Git client for iOS.

Services

Not an exhaustive list. NextDNS is a very new addition, but I really dig it for my setup. I foresee future in which I drop my AdGuard Home setup and use it instead.

  • Apple One — we have a Family plan and love it. Great TV shows, music streaming, games via Apple Arcade and additional storage space for backups.
  • Backblaze — used for backups, obviously. Reliable, fast, and non-interfering.
  • iCloud Drive — where I store most of my temporary files and data.
  • Last.fm — I've been a member since 2005 🤯
  • NextDNS — a great solution for additional security on the DNS level. For now, it's paired with my AdGuard Home, but I may use it directly on my OPNsense appliance.

Updates

  • 2024-05-14: Initial release
  • 2024-09-07: Replaced SATECHI Slim X1 with Magic Keyboard for my Home setup; Replaced Obsidian with Bear; Added IRC clients on macOS and iOS; Added Matrix client on iOS
  • 2024-11-22: Replaced iPhone 14 Pro with iPhone 16; Added note about DrayTek Vigor160 and OPNsense next to the firewall; Switched Matrix client on all platforms to Cinny; Added Bike outliner on macOS