Saurabh Kumar
Writing

Default Apps 2026

Here are my Default Apps of 2026.

·3 min read

Apps I’ve been using regularly this year. This is my second year doing this. Here is last year’s list. Inspired by Jeff Triplett and catalogued by Robb Knight’s App Defaults.

What changed since 2025

  • AI took over a big chunk of my day. Pi is my core harness, I live in Pi Web, and I’m trying Pi Pocket on the side. Agents now do most of my version control too.
  • Arc → Zen for work. Close to Arc, well maintained, no feature bloat. Safari stays for personal browsing.
  • iTerm2 → Ghostty, a thin layer over herdr, a multiplexer built for AI agents. Setup in my dotfiles: Ghostty config, herdr config, and notes on how I use herdr.
  • Raycast → Tinycast, a tiny native launcher. Alfred is gone too.
  • Cursor is out. Mostly Zed now, with its AI turned off.
  • Edison Mail → Apple Mail, plus Gmail on the web when I need it.
  • Photoshop and Lightroom → darktable and GIMP.
  • Pages → Google Docs. I hardly open Pages anymore.
  • Perplexity → Hacker News and Newsboat, next to NetNewsWire.
  • Raindrop.io is gone. My TIL and personal wiki replaced bookmarks.
  • New: a tiling window manager (OmniWM), dictation (Wispr Flow), and Tailscale in place of Zscaler.
  • More small Mac utilities: Mole for cleanup, UsagePal for AI limits, Thaw, Amphetamine, and AlDente.
  • Todoist joined and jj joined lazygit. Bullet Journal use dropped a bit.

The list

  • Mail Client: Apple Mail, Gmail in browser
  • Notes: Obsidian, Simplenote
  • To-Do: Todoist, Bullet Journal
  • Photo Shooting: iPhone, Canon 6D
  • Photo Editing: darktable, GIMP
  • Calendar: Notion Calendar, Google Calendar on the web
  • Cloud File Storage: iCloud + Google Drive
  • RSS: NetNewsWire, Newsboat in the terminal
  • Contacts: Apple Contacts & Google Contacts
  • Browser: Zen for work, Safari for personal
  • Chat: Apple Messages, Slack, Discord, Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram
  • Bookmarks: none. My TIL and personal wiki replaced them
  • Read It Later: Safari Reading List
  • Word Processing: Google Docs
  • Spreadsheets: Google Sheets
  • Presentations: Figma
  • Shopping Lists: Amazon
  • Budgeting and Personal Finance: paisa, with ledger underneath
  • News: NetNewsWire, Newsboat, Hacker News
  • Music: YouTube Music on the web, not much
  • Audiobooks: Audible
  • Password Management: 1Password and Apple Passwords
  • Code Editor: Zed with AI disabled, plus T3 Code and others now and then
  • AI Harness: Pi, Pi Web, trying Pi Pocket
  • Dictation: Wispr Flow, Muesli for local transcription
  • VPN: AdGuard, Tailscale

Bonus Items

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

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