Tools for Daily Use

Every now and then people ask me what I usually use on my computer day to day, so I decided to write this post, recording what I use right now so I can compare it with what I’ll be using in the future.

I’m a person of simple habits, so unlike a lot of people who write posts like this, I don’t have ants in my pants and go around using everything I come across. So here’s the list.

General purpose utilities

iCloud - I’m using iCloud Drive to store documents, photos, etc.

Since everyone here at home uses Apple products at some level, I have a family iCloud account shared with my wife and my kids, so we keep photos, documents, etc. in a single place.

I also keep my email accounts on iCloud. iCloud lets you use custom email domains, so my emails under the adlermedrado.com.br domain run on iCloud’s infrastructure.

Apple Mail - On the Mac as well as on the iPad and iPhone, I use Apple Mail, including for Gmail, which I still use for a few things.

PGP/GnuPG - Since we’re talking about email, I use PGP/GPG to encrypt emails I consider sensitive (actually, not just emails). I use the open source version of GPG Tools on the Mac, but unfortunately after updating to macOS Sonoma its integration with Apple Mail was broken by changes Apple made to the Apple Mail API, so for now encrypt and decrypt happen only via the command line.

I use GPG to sign every page of this site. Just import my public key and run the command at the footer of this page to validate its authenticity.

Apple Notes - For daily notes I just use Apple Notes, so it already integrates with all my devices via iCloud.

Apple Shortcuts - This is an automation tool present in Apple’s OSes. With it you can automate repetitive tasks. Being the good lazy person I am, I try to automate everything I can, some things with Shortcuts, others with bash scripts. For example, I have playlists in Apple Music I usually listen to when I go work out, so with Shortcuts a single click opens the playlist and starts playing it in Apple Music. With Shortcuts you can even start the playlist as soon as the iPhone’s GPS detects I’ve arrived at the gym. Very handy.

Apple Music - I use it to listen to music 😬. Apple Music comes included in the family plan I pay for on iCloud.

I also have YouTube Music, which comes bundled with YouTube Premium, and Spotify. I’d really rather not pay for Spotify, but my kids use it and so I pay for the family plan. Occasionally I use it to listen to some podcasts and also some music like the old Álibi and Câmbio Negro albums, which are only there.

Safari and Brave - Day to day, I use Safari to browse the web, except when I’m doing anything related to Nostr, in which case I use Brave because of its integration with Alby, which manages my Nostr keys and some things related to my Bitcoin Lightning Network wallet (Bitcoin).

While we’re at it: if you don’t know Nostr and don’t know Bitcoin, go read up on them. Just a tip.

Alfred App - I use it to replace macOS’s Spotlight. It has some interesting features, especially if you pay for the PowerPack, like the workflows that automate a lot of our day-to-day. There are alternatives to it, like Raycast, but I don’t see a reason to switch.

Awake - A tool similar to caffeine or amphetamine, used to prevent the monitor from turning off or going into screensaver mode.

Office suite

Apple Pages - For text editing

Apple Numbers - For spreadsheets

Apple Keynote - For presentations

But after seeing the college work my daughter produces using Canva, I’m seriously considering using it too for a few things.

Audio and video editing

Apple iMovie - The videos I publish on YouTube are edited with it. For now it meets my needs.

Apple Garage Band - When I need to do audio editing. Anyone who has heard my famous song suco de cajú knows what I’m talking about.

Terminal / Shell

Wezterm - After many years using iTerm2, I decided to try other options.

I tried Alacritty but didn’t like it much, despite it being very fast.

I tested Warp and, despite it having a pretty different proposition, it didn’t make much sense to me to have to create a username/password on Warp’s site and have to authenticate to use the terminal. I don’t know if that’s still required, but I gave up at the time because of it. Besides, it seemed very bloated, full of things I probably wouldn’t use.

Wezterm, on the other hand, delivered everything I need: a simple interface, extensible via lua scripts, fast because it runs on the GPU, and cross-platform, unlike iTerm2. Another interesting point is that its developer was a PHP core developer back when I used that language a lot, and I always admired their work, which gives me confidence in using the terminal emulator they develop. I’m even considering supporting the project financially.

iTerm2 isn’t bad, quite the opposite, but it’s like using a cannon to kill a fly. That’s all.

Starship - Makes the terminal pretty, full of bells and whistles and without overhead.

Bash - I’m used to it. I tried using ZSH for a while, back when it had features bash didn’t have, but today modern bash already covers everything I need, not to mention that bash is everywhere: any script you find on the internet is written in bash. Another tip: Shellcheck saves lives.

tmux - There are some alternatives to tmux, but I use it day to day simply because it’s what I’m most used to.

The Silver Searcher - A faster alternative to the classic ack. The only problem is that it isn’t available by default on every server.

Sec

1Password - I’ve used Lastpass and found it bad. I used Bitwarden for a long time, which is excellent too, even paying annually to support the project, but no tool in this category compares to 1Password.

The integration 1Password has with macOS and iPhone is the best I’ve seen among this kind of tool. Worth the price.

With it I store my passwords, secret notes I don’t trust leaving in Apple Notes, OTP/2FA, and management of my SSH keys, so I don’t need to leave them in .ssh because I use 1Password’s ssh-agent, which asks for my password or biometrics whenever I need to use the key and also protects my private key in case of improper access to my computer.

Kaspersky - This is the most controversial point, since many say you don’t need this kind of tool on a Mac, but it’s more than just an antivirus, offering some extra security against phishing, etc.

And before someone shows up saying: Yeah, but it’s Russian, they’re going to spy on you. 🤒 You trust Facebook/Meta, Google, Microsoft, etc. Give it a rest.

Proton - I use their services, but once my annual subscription expires I’m going to stop using them. Right now the only tool of theirs I’m still using is the VPN. Next year I’ll sign up for another one, but I haven’t decided which yet.

Development

On this point I won’t go into detail about the technologies I use, like language, RDBMS, message brokers, etc., because that changes almost every day.

I’ll focus only on the tools:

Intellij Idea - It’s the best IDE on the face of the earth. Worth every cent I pay annually.

It has support for every language I currently use, which lets me use the same tool for everything and therefore not have trouble with keyboard shortcuts, etc., which I would have if I used a different tool for each technology I use.

It also offers support for a bunch of things, like Redis, RDBMS, Kubernetes, Docker, etc.

I use IdeaVim to map the keyboard shortcuts and commands.

Neovim - Recently I moved from Vim to NeoVim. I noticed that some of the vim plugins I used were no longer under active development like before, while the neovim plugins keep going at full speed.

I had to change my entire configuration but I’m liking the result. I normally use this editor for scripts or for writing texts like this one.

Github - I still use Github as the main Git platform for my repositories, although I have some things on Gitlab too. That said, I’m studying the possibility of migrating everything to my own instance of Gitlab or Gitea. I’m leaning more toward using Gitea.

That’s it

Important: This list describes what I use on my personal computers. Although I use some of these tools on my employer’s computer, the setup isn’t always the same, for various reasons.

One more thing: I’d like to know your opinion, which tools you use, whether you agree or disagree with something I said here, but unfortunately here on this site you won’t be able to tell me. I’m going to write a post about this, but I rebuilt this site a while ago and removed anything that could invade the privacy of whoever visits it, so here you won’t find Javascript, cookie handling, session variables, Big Tech trackers, nothing.

So, if you want to give me your opinion or make a comment, I recommend finding me on Twitter (or rather, on X) or on Nostr.

See you around.