Zack Apiratitham

2023 Default Apps


Inspired by Rebecca Owen's post and over 130 others from the community as of this writing, I am also joining the trend of sharing my current default apps list. I've done something similar back in 2017 with my checklist of apps and configurations when starting fresh on a new Mac, and my Uses page also contains a smaller list of software. But this will be a more complete and up-to-date list at the time of this publication.

As far as I understand, the initial intent of this from the Hemispheric Views podcast episode (which admittedly I haven't listened to) was to look at how many of these categories are the built-in default apps that come with the OS such as Apple Mail, Notes, Reminders, etc. But it seems like this has evolved quite a bit and people have thrown in their own categories that may not have platform default counterparts. So I'm separating them into main categories and a list of additional ones of my own.

Main categories:

  • Mail Client: Spark
  • Mail Server: Fastmail (referral link)
  • Notes: Notion and occasionally Apple Notes
  • To-Do: Apple Reminders
  • iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera app for most things, Halide if I want to get serious
  • Photo Management: Apple Photos
  • Calendar: Fantastical
  • Cloud File Storage: iCloud Drive
  • RSS Reader: NetNewsWire
  • Contacts: Apple Contacts
  • Browser: Safari
  • Chat: iMessage, WhatsApp, LINE, Telegram, and Discord
  • Bookmarks and Read It Later: Matter (but I'm bad at actually going back to read them)
  • Word Processing: Pages
  • Spreadsheets: Numbers
  • Presentations: Keynote
  • Shopping Lists: Apple Reminders and Grocery for groceries
  • Meal Planning Recipe Manager: Mela
  • Budgeting and Personal Finance: Copilot
  • News: Not any one place, but I guess Mastodon, RSS, and very rarely Apple News (used to mostly be Reddit, but RIP)
  • Music: Apple Music
  • Podcasts: Overcast
  • Password Manager: 1Password

Additional categories:


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Hey, I’m Zack. Thanks for reading!

I'm a software developer originally from Krabi, Thailand currently living and working in the suburbs of Boulder, Colorado, USA. This blog is a place for me write about my interests and things I find worth sharing.

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