App Defaults - 2025 Edition

I’ve been seeing quite a lot of /defaults posts where people post their defaults. The first post I found was from Neil Macy’s blog. Most of the blog posts reference the podcast episode Hemispheric Views 097 - Duel of the Defaults!, so I listened to the episode. Now, I have my own app defaults list and this one’s what I was using in 2025.

(You can find other people’s defaults here.)

📬 Mail Client: web on desktop, ProtonMail on Android
📮 Mail Server: Protonmail
🗒️ Notes: Emacs
✅ To-Do: Todoist
📷 Phone Photo Shooting: Default Camera app on Pixel
🌅 Photo Management: Immich
📆 Calendar: Google Calendar
📦 Cloud File Storage: Synology NAS DS224+ in my basement
📖 RSS: Read You
👥 Contacts: Google Contacts
🌐 Browser: Zen Browser (macOS) / Firefox (Android)
🕵🏻 Search: Kagi
💬 Chat: WhatsApp, Signal, Android Messages
🔖 Bookmarks: Raindrop
📑 Read Later: Signal Note to Self
📝 Word Processing: n/a
📈 Spreadsheets: n/a
📊 Presentations: n/a
🛒 Shopping Lists: Todoist
🥘 Meal Planning: n/a
💸 Budgeting & Personal Finance: n/a
🗞️ News: Mastodon, Tildes, Lobsters, HackerNews, Kagi News
🎹 Music: Spotify for songs and albums, Soundcloud for DJ mixes
🎙️ Podcasts: Pocket Casts
🔑 Password Management: Bitwarden
🔐 VPN: ProtonVPN
🎨 Photo Editing: Lightroom
🏡 Blog Hosting: Github Pages