Default Apps

People are writing about their default apps in the small community that is the indie web. Here are mine.

📫 Mail Server/Service and Client

  • Fastmail on iOS and iPadOS
  • FMail2, free and open source Fastmail client for macOS


    📝 Notes
  • Notes app
  • Obsidian


    ✅ To-do
  • Things
  • Taskpaper


    📸 iPhone Photography
  • Moment Pro Photo app


    📹 iPhone videography
  • Moment Pro Photo app
  • Filmic Pro Legacy


    🟦 Photo Management
  • RAW Photos
  • Photos.app
  • PowerPhotos (macOS only)


    📆 Calendar
  • Calendars 366
  • Structured Calendar (Lifetime purchase)


    📆 Calendar Backend
  • Fastmail
  • iCloud


    📂 Cloud File Storage
  • iCloud
  • Nextcloud[1]
  • Synology Drive


    📰 RSS
  • NetNewsWire & Readwise Reader
  • RSS Backend iCloud[2]


    🔍 Browser
  • Arc
  • Safari


    💬 Chat
  • iMessage
  • Signal
  • IRC


    🔖 Bookmarks
  • Notes.app
  • Goodlinks


    📜 Word Processing
  • VS Code


    🤑 Budgeting
  • Google Sheets
  • My bank app


    🎶 Music
  • Downloaded tracks with yt-dlp
  • IINA on macOS
  • Still need to pony up for iTunes Match
  • YouTube Music


    🎙️ Podcasts
  • Overcast, though I am really finding I am done with the majority of Apple and tech focused podcasts. Been listening to this stuff for over 10 years now. Need a breather.


    🔐 Password Management
  • 1Password[3]
  • Vaultwarden[4]


    📸 Photo Editing
  • RAW Photos
  • Darkroom
  • Photomator
  • Pixelmator Pro
  • Pixelmator Photo


    What are yours?

  1. I am unfortunately still out of work and I’ve had to find creative ways to cut back on expenses. I self host a lot of services where I am staying, my friend’s mom letting me setup my home lab in my room. I can host these services for free. It is not for the faint of heart; if you hate tinkering, if you hate doing research on bug fixing and troubleshooting, if you hate learning how to secure a network and fight the bots that will inevitably pummel your network with junk packets, if you hate YAML, it isn’t for you. ↩︎

  2. I am looking at moving away from as many proprietary services as I can so FreshRSS, another self-hosted alternative to RSS backends will be my move. NetNewsWire has the option to grab your feeds from your own self-hosted RSS service. ↩︎

  3. I love 1Password. I have everything in it. The problem for me right now is affordability. I don’t think it is possible for me to switch as it’s just too important to my workflow; ssh keys, GitHub tokens, all of this built right into the client. It’s just too good. ↩︎

  4. I am testing out Vaultwarden as a 1Password alternative. It is an open source client you can, surprise surprise, self-host. It is severely lacking in features so it looks like 1Password is still my go to for the foreseeable future. ↩︎

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