It’s been a couple of years since I’ve done one of these (you can check out my selections from 2023 for comparison).
The idea came from Hemispheric Views, where you can peruse around 500 other people’s app defaults as well as contribute your own to the list.
I’ve added an additional category of my own at the end.
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📮 Mail Server
- Proton Mail. I’ve been weaning myself off Gmail over the past six months in favour of a service which actually respects my right to privacy.
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📨 Mail Client
- Proton Mail. I’m not a huge fan of their iOS app, but because it’s secure service, it’s not possible to allow integration with other mail apps. On the Mac, they supply an app to bridge Proton Mail with any email client of your choice, whilst maintaining security. I doubt iOS will ever be opened up in a way which will allow this.
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📝 Notes
- Tot. It’s a delightful app from iconfactory and it limits you to just 7 notes, which helps keep things simple and stops my notes bloating into knowledge management. I use its powerful Shortcuts integration heavily.
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✅ To-Do
- Things 3. For me, it’s the perennial standard in task management.
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📷 iPhone Photo Shooting
- The default camera app.
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🟦 Photos Management
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📆 Calendar
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📅 Calendar Backend
- iCloud. I would prefer to use Proton’s calendar, but then I lose the ability to have Shortcuts integration and continue using Fantastical, which is a deal-breaker for me.
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📁 Cloud File Storage
- Mainly iCloud, but I also use Dropbox to share items with non-Apple devices and people who aren’t within the Apple ecosystem, as well as Proton Drive for anything which I want to have an extra layer of security.
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📖 RSS
- NetNewsWire, powered by Feedbin.
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🙍🏻♂️ Contacts Management
- The default Contacts app.
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🔎 Browser
- Safari.
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💬 Chat
- Signal / iMessage.
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🔖 Bookmarks
- No specific app, just an array of shortcuts to send links to various apps and buckets.
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📑 Read-it-Later
- GoodLinks. Unlike other read it later services, GoodLinks doesn’t lock me into a cloud subscription and syncs with iCloud.
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📜 Word Processing
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🛒 Shopping List
- The built-in Reminders app. Since iOS 17 it’s able to sort groceries into sections automatically.
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💰 Budgeting and finance
- Just my bank’s iOS app.
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📰 News
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🎵 Music
- Tidal for streaming, but the built-in Music app for my own collection. I left Spotify for good, and whist Tidal has taken a while to catch up with Spotify in terms of basic features, I’m really happy with it.
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🎤 Podcast
- Castro. I’d left for a while, but new developers have recently brought this app back from the dead and it’s pretty much the perfect podcast app for me.
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🔐 Password Management
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🧠 Knowledge Management
- Obsidian + Tot.
Bonus: Roast My Homescreen
There’s more going on with the homescreen than we’ve got time to go into here, but in short the two widgets you can see are in reality widget stacks, and the bottom two rows of apps change dynamically thanks to the App Suggestions widget.
The look of the homescreen changes throughout the day depending on whether it’s before or after sunset, or the phone is in sleep mode. Even more crazy, I’ve also set things up so the background changes throughout the day based on the current weather conditions.
All of the wallpapers I use for the homescreen are from Basic Apple Guy’s majestic Stripes collection.
