Defaults in 2025

26 Nov, 2025

I saw Chris McLeod's post fly by and got the itch. Here's mine!

• Operating system: macOS.
  • Also tried this year: Linux (Fedora) and ChromeOS.
• Notes: Obsidian.
  • Also tried: Logseq at work. Great ideas. The execution just wasn't quite there for me, and the longevity and flexibility of Obsidian's mostly-basic Markdown won out.
• Journal: Obsidian.
  • Also tried: Apple's Journal.app, Day One. See above re: Markdown.
• Text editor: VSCode Neovim. I also use Obsidian and a splash of iA Writer.
  • Also tried: Helix. Fun experiment, cool editor, led me back to Neovim. Also danced with my old fling, Sublime Text.
• Terminal emulator: iTerm2 Wezterm.
  • Also tried: Ghostty, Kitty, Alacritty, Terminal.app. Hot takes:
    • Terminal.app doesn't support true color, so Neovim looks godawful in it.
    • The Alacritty dev is somewhat hostile toward macOS and its users.
    • The Kitty dev behaves like a dickhead.
    • Wezterm has speed, a seemingly likable developer, basic built-in multiplexing, and Lua config like Neovim.
    • Ghostty also seems cool; I'll keep an eye on it.
• Color theme: Gruvbox dark, baby. 🕺
  • Still hunting for my go-to light theme. Digging PaperColor but sometimes want higher contrast. Gruvbox light is fine but sometimes just a little too groovy, y'know?
• RSS: Reeder Classic Miniflux (host and client) and NetNewsWire (client).
  • Also tried: Inoreader.
• Launcher: Alfred. I love Alfred. Yes, I've tried Raycast.
• Clipboard history: Alfred.
• Snippets / text expansion: Alfred for system-wide snippets, LuaSnip in Neovim.
• Cheatsheets: Navi.
• Browser: Safari at home, Chrome at work (mandatory).
• Bookmarks: Chrome at work (see above). At home, I'm dabbling heavily:
  • I've been using Buku wired up to Alfred, which has mostly been great, but I don't like syncing its sqlite database over git because the changes are inscrutable. God forbid I get a merge conflict. Just this week I wrote my own alternative that stores everything in JSON. We'll see.
  • I also tried Raindrop.io and haven't decided where that's landing.
• Passwords: 1Password Apple Passwords.
• Blogging: Bear Blog.
• Email: iCloud Fastmail for my custom domain, Gmail for everything else.
  • I found iCloud's configuration confusing, especially when dealing with several Apple devices. Fastmail feels less squishy.
• Tasks: Things 3, dabbling in Taskwarrior.
  • Also tried: Todoist for cross-platform support. Returned to Things after going back to the Mac.
• Music: Spotify.
  • I'd like to move elsewhere, but we have the family plan and wife will hate it if I mess with it.
• Personal finance: YNAB.
  • Also tried: Several others. I can't remember them all. I came back to YNAB. It satisfies my inner control freak the best.
• Shopping lists: Apple Reminders for easy sharing with my wife.
• News: I've been noping out of news for a while, but I'm feeling very clueless, so I signed back up for the New York Times daily email.
• Photos: Google Photos.
• Calendar: Google Calendar and some Apple Calendar.
• Chat: Apple Messages (most of my friends are normies, not nerds), Signal (with my one nerd buddy), Google Chat at work.
• Social media: Nope. I'm not on a soapbox. I just strongly dislike it.
• Coffee: Kalita Wave pourover drippers (the metal ones so I don't break them) for the wife and me, plus a standard-issue drip machine for when we're serving a number of guests.

For lots more of these, see Hemispheric Views.

Click here for my January 2025 edition.

#apps