My three home screens. Kind of messy. I’m always on the hunt for a better way to organize this stuff.
My three home screens. Kind of messy. I’m always on the hunt for a better way to organize this stuff.

There’s nothing more fun than joining the latest blogging trend. Once every year or two, we bloggers are allowed to be part of a group. And I’m not missing my chance to wear the jacket.

Before getting into the list though — I do find myself in the middle of my annual app audit. In that this is the only time of year where I’m allowed to experiment with new apps and I question any and every app on my devices. Generally, I end up in the exact same spot as where I started. But I do usually find a few new intriguing apps.

Case in point, weather apps: I’ve long loved CARROT Weather, opting for the highest end subscription option because of the beautiful radar widgets you can put on your Home Screen. After discovering RadarScope though, I may well end up going with a combination of the built-in Weather app on iPhone and using Radarscope to track weather patterns in the region. This one is up in the air at the time of writing.

Same goes for calendar apps. I’m 98% certain I’ll stick things out with Fantastical, but I recently discovered Morgen. Morgen is a beautiful time-blocking app with a gorgeous task view and an even better calendar view. It also has one of the most generous free tiers on the internet I think, basically providing 99% of the features anyone would need to get into a time-blocking habit for free.

Oh, and note-taking apps! I’ve been banging Apple Notes’ drum the last few months, but I’m back to being bored. Instead, I’m revisiting Bear 2. The app is so pretty and feels rock solid these days. I’m not 98% certain I’ll be sticking things out with Apple Notes.

Sorry for getting sidetracked. My list:

  • Mail service: Microsoft Exchange
  • Mail client(s): Spark
  • Tasks: Things 3
  • Office CRM: Notion
  • Work: Parallels and Windows 11
  • Messaging: Messages, Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, LinkedIn, and Loom
  • RSS service: Feedly
  • RSS client: Reeder
  • Launcher: Alfred 5
  • Cloud storage: iCloud (personal), OneDrive and Google Drive (work)
  • Photo library: iCloud (iPhone), Adobe Lightroom CC (Leica/Canon photos)
  • Photo editing: Adobe Lightroom CC
  • Web browser: Arc on Mac, Safari on iPhone and iPad
  • Calendar: Fantastical
  • Reading: Matter
  • Writing: Ulysses
  • Journaling: Day One
  • News: News or Google News
  • PDF Reader: PDF Expert
  • Weather: Carrot Weather
  • Current experiment: RadarScope for radar tracking and the built-in Weather app for general forecast tracking
  • Music: Apple Music
  • Clipboard manager: Pastebot
  • Passwords: 1Password
  • Budgeting: Banktivity
  • Calculator: Microsoft Excel on Mac, Calcbot on iPhone and iPad
  • Mastodon: Ivory
  • Social Networking
  • Technology circles: Mastodon
  • Photography circles: Threads and Instagram
  • News: X and Artifact
  • Personal finance, sports, and other general topics: X
  • Finding cool setups, amazing keyboards, and Leica photos: Reddit
  • Professional: LinkedIn
  • Screenshots: CleanShot X
  • Notes: Apple Notes (general)
  • Experiments: AnyType (post-designation school notes), Bear (general)

Clearly I’m not here trying to skim down my app list. I’ve not had any luck with trying to combine specific uses into an app. I tried this with Texts and almost immediately bounced off the idea of having all my messaging apps in one place. Same goes for Notion — we use the heck out of Notion as a CRM-type app in the office, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t use it for personal notes.