Default Apps 2023

I cover some of this on /uses, which is the traditional place for this kind of stuff, but this is going around the internet right now and the lists I’ve seen (here, here, here, and here) are a little more thorough and focused on a different set of software, specifically.


Mail clients/servers: Gmail web with some custom styles applied via Stylus, Proton Mail (also web). I’ve been trying to transition to the latter for a long time now.

Notes: Logseq

Todos: Notion and Your Daily Page

Calendar: Google

Cloud storage: Google Drive, Proton Drive

RSS and Read Later: Readwise Reader

Contacts: Google

Browser: Desktop: Brave or Firefox. I was all-in with Firefox and happy except for Notion, which did not perform well in Firefox, so I’ve switched for the moment to Brave. Phone: Firefox.

Chat: SMS: Google Messages. Other: Discord, Signal, some Slack, some GroupMe.

Bookmarks: Notion

Presentations: Haven’t had to in a while

Documents: Notion, VS Code, or Google Docs

Spreadsheets: Google Sheets

Shopping Lists: Simplenote

Personal Finance: N/A but I have a Notion todo with a lot of links 😬

News: Mastodon, or on rare occasions Google News

Photo Management: Google Photos

Photo Editing: Krita, Google Photos

Music: Spotify

Podcasts: Pocket Casts

Passwords: 1Password

Code Editing: VS Code

Terminal: GNOME terminal


Still a lot of Google in there. 😕


Turns out, I did a list like this in 2017, it is interesting in that the list has changed significantly.

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