Default Apps 2025

“Apps I’ve been using regularly this year.” Heavily inspired by Jeff Triplett. Catalogued by Robb Knight’s App Defaults

• Mail Client: Edison Mail and gmail in browser
• Notes: Obsidian, SimpleNotes
• To-Do: Bullet Journel
• Photo Shooting: iPhone, Canon 6D
• Photo Editing: PhotoShop, Gimp
• Calendar: Notion Calendar
• Cloud File Storage: iCloud + Google Drive
• RSS: NetNewsWire
• Contacts: Apple Contacts & Google Contacts
• Browser: Arc, Zen Browser and Safari
• Chat: Apple Messages, Discord, Slack
• Bookmarks: RainDrop.io
• Read It Later: Safari Reading List
• Word Processing: Apple Pages
• Spreadsheets: Google Sheets
• Presentations: Figma
• Shopping Lists: Amazon
• Budgeting and Personal Finance: paisa
• News: Perplexity.ai, NetNewsWire
• Music: Youtube Music
• Password Management: 1Password and Apple Passwords
• Code Editor: Zed & Cursor
• VPN: AdGuard, Zscalar

Bonus Items

Important enough to include here, ordered roughly by how often I rely on each.

• Launcher: Raycast
• Ad Blocking: AdGuard
• Terminal: iTerm 2 with ZSH
• Search Engine: DuckDuckGo and Google
• Version Control: lazygit
• Screenshots: CleanShot X (also trying out Xnapper)
• Mastodon Client: Mastonaut
• Code Repositories: GitHub
• Reading: Kindle
• Writing: Obsidian, Zed
• Design: Figma, Gimp
• App + Server Monitoring: Sentry
• Brainstorming: Obsidian
• Video Calls: Meet, Zoom
• Snippet Sharing: Github Gist
• Project Management: Linear, Jira