List of applications and tools that make my iOS experience even more amazing
- Philosophy
- Applications
- Widgets
- Control Center
- Screen Time
- My wonderful world of macOS
- Related
- Contributing
For me, an iPhone is essentially a consumption and communication device. I can do everything I can do on the phone, faster and better on the laptop. Thus I find it is very valuable to give each of these devices a well defined purpose and use them in this way.
With all the freedom and power that a smartphone brings, it also brings a lot of distraction. There is Twitter, Reddit, Instagram with their endless feeds of streaming live updating content. Reddit, Hacker News, Medium or any other news outlet you prefer to stay on top of news. Staying on top of everything at all times is exhausting and addictive.
I use my phone when I am not using my computer. I use it to read books, update my budget, make photographs, quickly edit them, check tasks I have set out to do, listen to podcasts, music, audio books, read Wikipedia, answer messages on slack, telegram, write quick notes and memos, search the internet and read my mail. I of course do other things too, but these are the main ones. With that said, I try to use the best tools that I can to get these tasks completed.
Here is a list of apps that I use the most in my day to day life, sorted by category and their importance.
Telegram - Messenger
- This is my favourite messenger and I prefer it over others due its speed, its ability to sync with a native macOS client and the many free and awesome stickers you can use.
- I also use the app to quickly send media/messages between my mac and the phone.
Tweetbot - Twitter client
- My favorite Twitter client. I prefer it over others for its ability to sync timelines with the macOS app and the night theme.
Apollo - Reddit client
- My preferred client for browsing Reddit. I love how you can operate the app seamlessly with gestures. I also customized the app to work with my own gestures.
Spark - Mail client
- My favorite email client that I love due its simplicity of UI and UX.
Slack - Team communication
- I only keep essential teams I am signed up on there.
2Do - Flexible task manager
- My task manager of choice. I mostly use it to view the tasks I have made on the mac that I need to complete for today.
- I can separate the tasks by tags and filter through everything nicely. I wrote more on how I use the app here.
Day One - Digital journal
- I often use it to check on events that happened to me
On this day. - I wrote about all the different journals I use and how here.
Streaks - Habit tracker
- Do something often enough and it becomes a habit. I try to cultivate and grow new healthy habits with time.
- I use the app to list the habits I hope to integrate in my life. If I get 30 ongoing repetitions, I remove the habit and add new ones.
Strong - Workout tracker
- I use it to track my workouts. I have a few custom workouts that I made that I can then start and simply follow the exercises and the number of sets for the exercise as my workout progresses.
Paprika - Recipe manager
- I use the app mainly as my meal planner for recipes I want to make during the day. Often I make the meal plans on my mac and then just view the things I plan to eat from my phone and cook it. I try to always cook my own food.
- I also use it as my shopping list.
PDF Expert - PDF reader/editor
- Use it to read PDF books and documents. I use and love its
Text Reflowfeature that allows me to focus on the text and see only that. I try to not waste time on my phone and always do something proactive and useful. I also have a huge list of books I want to read.
MindNode - Interactive Mind Mapping
- Use it quickly review various mind maps I made. I like the mind mapping format and I wrote about it in more detail here.
Photos - Photo library
- Right now my photos are a mess and I can't find a good way to organize them well like I can with Pixave.
- But nevertheless this is the only place right now where I can store my personal images.
VSCO - Image editor and photo sharing
- Use it to quickly edit photographs I made as I much prefer its filters and editing options than other photo editors.
- I then post the edited photos I like to Instagram.
Instagram - Photo sharing
- Like it as a way to share my life through photographs, videos and stories.
- I block camera and microphone access and only cross post edited photographs from VSCO.
- Aside from PDFs that I read in PDF Expert, I also read
.epubbooks which this app handles well. It also syncs my notes and highlights as I read the book.
V for Wiki - Wiki reader
- Amazing and beautiful Wikipedia reader. The typography of it and the design makes you explore and easily get lost in reading the wiki.
Medium - Online publishing platform
- Use the app to read articles on Medium.
Trello - Project management tool
- All of my ideas and plans live on Trello. The app makes accessing any Trello board I need quickly.
1Password - Password manager
- Can't live without the app. It holds all my passwords and anything private so that I only need to remember one thing. My master password.
Overcast - Podcasts
- Let's me listen to the plethora of podcasts I love.
- I love its smart speed feature to cut out on silent pauses.
AdGuard - Safari ad blocker
- Use the app to block annoying ads and tracking in Safari.
Dropbox - File hosting
- Use it to sync files between my devices. I also use it to sync some applications like YNAB.
ScanBot - PDF Scanner
- My life is fully digital. This means I scan every paper I write on.
- When I do that, the image gets dropped to my Dropbox folder and from there gets picked up by Pixave and sorted accordingly. From there I can search for anything that I want quickly
- I love that Apple finally added night mode to the app. I use it to set my alarms, timers (often created by Siri).
Ulysses - Writing
- Ulysses is my go-to place for anything I want to write.
- I mostly use the app to sometimes make edits to my wiki. Since the wiki is a bunch of markdown files in a folder that I keep on Dropbox, I can add that folder to Ulysses as external folder and make edits to it.
Spotify - Music streaming
- Prefer using Spotify over Apple Music due to superior music discovery and ability to create and share playlists easily.
Here are the widgets I use:
I use Fantastical to see the events that are coming soon on my schedule. I use Streaks to mark of habits I have completed throughout the day. I use Trello to quickly add any ideas or things to Trello. I use Swarm to quickly mark off certain locations I have been too. I use Paprika to see the recipes I have planned to eat/cook for the day. ScanBot to quickly make a scan, Favorites to quickly make calls and Overcast to see the current & upcoming podcast episodes.
Here is how my control center looks:
I loved how iOS 12 added the Screen Time feature where now you could set limits to apps & websites as well as set a Downtime time in which only apps you want to use are activated and the rest are disabled. I have turned on Downtime to activate from 10 PM to 8 AM:
Here are the limits I currently have set for apps/websites:
And here are the apps that I allow during Downtime:
The other awesome utility from Screen Time is how I can analyze how I spend the time on my phone and which apps I use the most alongside what notifications get sent to me the most often. I try to cut out any notifications that bring no value to me and the only notifications that can reach me are from my task manager, calendar and Telegram.
If you found this interesting, I also have a similar repository going over what applications I use on macOS.
Suggestions and pull requests are highly encouraged!
I love finding new awesome tools and apps. If you have a favorite tool or app that you think I missed, please say it.
You can support me on Patreon or look into other projects I shared.
MIT © Nikita Voloboev