98
votes
Single most useful program you daily use?
What's the most useful program you use on a daily basis?
For me it's Espanso, it's a text expansion tool but you can do so much more with it like custom scripts or shell commands.
Not a program, per se, but as everybody else has already outlined the ones that I feel are important (terminal, firefox / fennec, various app-launchers and editors), I'm going to go for uBlock Origin. I would not be able to use the internet without it- it would drive me mad.
I always forget I have it installed until I see someone elses browser...
I seriously don't understand how people can deal with them. Even the US government (I forget which department) recommends it, since the ads are a security issue.
Was it CIA? NSA?
Looks like both of them and FBI.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tech/fbi-recommends-ad-blocker-online-scams-b1048998.html
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-nsa-and-cia-use-ad-blockers-because-online-advertising-is-so-dangerous/
This is why I could never use an Apple device. Thanks to Android, I can sideload apps like Revanced and YouTube apks to patch them and enjoy premium features for free. I could not imagine watching YouTube without YouTube Revanced or uBlock Origin.
I forget how crazy just youtube is without an an adblocker...how do people watch that?
In short, I don't
I pay for premium, if only to not have do deal with ads on mobile/Chromecast etc
I've been using uBlock Origin Lite and while it blocks the ads on YouTube, it sucks to sit and wait for the Skip button which takes longer than five seconds. Do you have a better recommendation?
It's because Google purposely sabotaged ad-blockers. Read this for more info: https://ublockorigin.com
It works great on Firefox.
I turn it off every so often just to see what I'm missing. Every time, I'm just floored that people actually accept them. Websites that have so many ads it's hard to pick out the articles. Some will slow your computer and internet to a crawl. Ads still getting through with scams, phishing attempts and viruses. š¤¢
I've recently been leaning on a wiki while playing a game, and trying to use the Steam overlay browser is a nightmare with all the ads.
If anyone has a suggestion for how to block those, I'm all ears. I'd prefer to not use network-wide ad blocking (piHole, etc.) or a standalone application (Adguard Home).
Fandom? The devs of the game I've been playing recently moved away from there, but I still have my ublock origin rules that made that virus of a site tolerable if you'd like me to paste them here. edit: here they are for others, paste into the "My Filters" section:
Fandom Filters
! fix the entire layout, remove sidebar, ads, spam, etc
fandom.com##.global-navigation
fandom.com##.anon.global-navigation
fandom.com##.a-list-feed
fandom.com##.search-box-bottom-wrapper
fandom.com##div.wds-global-footer__column:nth-of-type(4)
fandom.com##.wds-is-follow-us.wds-global-footer__section
fandom.com##.entry-content.article-content > div
fandom.com##.article-share
fandom.com##.in-area-right.hot-block
fandom.com##.right-rail-buttons.feed-layout__right-rail
fandom.com##.feed-layout
fandom.com##.article-layout__rail
fandom.com###WikiaBar
fandom.com##.WikiaRail.right-rail-wrapper
fandom.com##.page__right-rail
fandom.com##.fandom-community-header__top-container > .wds-button-group.wiki-tools > a.wds-is-secondary.wds-button:nth-of-type(2)
fandom.com##.is-visible.fandom-sticky-header > .wds-button-group.wiki-tools > a.wds-is-secondary.wds-button:nth-of-type(2)
fandom.com###mw-data-after-content
fandom.com##.mcf-wrapper
fandom.com##.global-footer__content > div:nth-of-type(4)
fandom.com##.global-footer__section-social-links.global-footer__section
fandom.com##.global-footer__section-advertise.global-footer__section
fandom.com##.global-footer__section-fandom-overview.global-footer__section
fandom.com##.global-footer__bottom > div:nth-of-type(1)
fandom.com##a.page-header__action-button.wds-is-text.wds-button:nth-of-type(1)
fandom.com##div#mpmodule:nth-of-type(4)
fandom.com##.nkch-rdp
fandom.com##.wiki-top-articles
fandom.com##.wiki-recent-changes
fandom.com##.categories-module
fandom.com##.home-page-desktop__left
fandom.com##.desktop-entry-point__body
fandom.com##a.is-hidden-on-smaller-breakpoints.wds-is-secondary.wds-button:nth-of-type(3)
fandom.com##.wds-is-advertise.wds-global-footer__section
fandom.com##.wds-is-fandom-overview.wds-global-footer__section
! search
fandom.com##.top-results
fandom.com##.unified-search__layout__right-rail
fandom.com##li.unified-search__profiles__profile:nth-of-type(4) > div > [href^="https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search"]
fandom.com##li.unified-search__profiles__profile:nth-of-type(2) > div > [href^="https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search"]
fandom.com##li.unified-search__profiles__profile:nth-of-type(6) > div > [href^="https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search"]
! community specific fixes
youtube.fandom.com##.DiscordWidget
personally, I actually comment out that first one for a little easier navigation.
Well, the issue is using the browser in the Steam overlay. I have no problem with ad blocking in my primary browser (with uBlock Origin on Firefox).
I found an old GitHub project to modify that browser, but it's definitely abandoned.
If you are using a fandom wiki, there are ad-free mirror sites that make for a much calmer user experience. The pages also load much faster without the fandom bloat.
There's a list of mirrors linked here: https://breezewiki.com/
I tend to use antifandom.com because it's easy to remember when editing the URL.
My main game is OSRS, which may have the best video game wiki in existence. I've been playing some cookie clicker to kill time, and every time I want to look something up, its a painful experience...even with ads blocked, the site itself is pure enshitification. I've already tried those filters out, and its already quite an improvement. Thank you!
Is there a particular reason you don't want to just alt-tab to your proper browser? Running games on borderless full-screen makes it work well. That's what I have always done to avoid using the native Steam browser.
You're not wrong. But I really like being able to pin notes so they're visible with transparency after exiting the Steam overlay. So combining that with the overlay browser is a matter of convenience. Though having ads blaring at me is most definitely not convenient. So perhaps I'll give up on this one.
You can always edit your computer's hosts file to block domains similar to pi-hole. It's still a network block, but only local to your PC.
Maybe try using a DNS server that blocks ads, for example Mullvad's
adblock.dns.mullvad.net.Love uBlock Origin. Some websites are completely unbearable without it. Recently, I've started using the Element Picker to set up additional filters. I have a bunch of filters for websites like YouTube so that I don't get sucked into wasting too much time on the website. I've got a filter for the Home page so I don't see a wall of recommendations as soon as I open the website. I've also got some filters to block the Shorts and Game shelves. I love that uBlock Origin can give me the tools to easily customize websites in a way where I can make them not as hostile towards myself.
I want to add a shout-out to uBlacklist as well as Bypass Paywall Clean. Both extensions are a god-send.
Canāt believe no one has mentioned their password manager yet!
I use 1Password dozens of times each day. Itās usually one 10-15 seconds at a time but itās probably saved me more time than any other program Iāve used.
KeePassXC gang represent š
Bitwarden user here. Yep, it's extremely useful. I pair it with Ente Auth for cross-platform TOTP codes.
I personally stayed away from giving mine as an answer because the one I'm currently using is Proton Pass, and given recent events Note: link to US politics-adjacent thread I am no longer comfortable recommending Proton services, and the one I aim to replace it with down the line (which would also be off-topic as I'm not actually currently using it), Vaultwarden, is actually a web application that I'm self-hosting which I would consider meaningfully different from "regular" software that this thread is about. But yeah, password managers in general are extremely useful, there's a reason every web browser has some implementation of one nowadays.
Yeah, password manager is a killer program, finally can manage my passwords and have to remember only one password, of the file with all the passwords. Keepass user here.
For me, it's my favourite text editor, Helix. It's a modal text editor, similar to Vim, but it's superfast and has incredible defaults. I've found very little I've wanted to configure as it's amazing out of the box, and it makes typing (writing, programming, whatever) an absolute joy for me.
Helix and kakoune always looked really interesting to me but I could never really get used to either, being an emacs person
For me itās the same as bugsmith and kari, plus running Helix inside kitty brings joy!*
Itās probably helped that Helix was my first modal editor, so while it did take me quite some time to really get the different commands and keysā functionalities internalized, I didnāt have to ārelearnā anything.
*For example, after binding
one can just
edit-in-kitty <file>to use the local editor with all its bells and whistles āon a serverā!You donāt need Helix! I get the same benefits as Helix from meow editāin addition to customization.
very interesting! how does it compare to evil mode?
Itās much more intuitive, it follows the selection ā action pattern that kakoune pioneered and helix follows (see why kakoune). It also has a concept of a ākeypadā which greatly simplifies accessing your C-c / C-x / C-g key-chords.
I think Helix has ruined me cause I donāt want to use anything that requires lots of configuration anymore. My whole Helix config is like 11 lines compared to my couple hundred lines of Lua when I used Neovim
Yes, that's exactly how I feel. I search more and more tools that are great out of the box. And I've gotten into the mindset of configuring myself rather than configuring the tool, so to speak.
I spent some time fiddling with it today because of this, haha. The motions are familiar, but weird... in a good way, because the whole "motion first" thing is logically more intuitive to me, but 6 years of vim muscle memory makes me have to think a lot. Actually, the mnemonics and modes are all more intuitive than vim IMO. One problem I have is that so many default bindings want Alt, which is "special" in macOS for sending composed characters and emojis and stuff. I actually use that feature a lot, so I'll have to rebind a lot of the defaults I guess.
Anyway, the native IDE-ish features it has so far (mostly pretty good LSP support and config) are basically enough for me to want to switch. Neovim's LSP support is good, but a bit much config-wise. I can pretty much do what I normally do for all my projects without any plugins, which is nice.
helix --healthfor default LSP health check is really helpful too.I'll probably drive this on my personal machine for a bit before I decide to fully switch. Thanks for the shout!
Wow, looks like a fresh take on CLI text editors. Thanks for the tip!
There we go...
nix-shell -p helix. Let's see if my muscle memory can still learn new tricks...Thanks for sharing this. I've never learned vim but as I've gotten more and more used to using the terminal I really have wanted to get better at something like it, and this seems to be scratching that itch without throwing me in the deepend.
QBittorrent - https://www.qbittorrent.org/
tinyMediaManager - https://www.tinymediamanager.org/
Everything (locate files/folders by name instantly) - https://www.voidtools.com/ get the v1.5 alpha if you prefer a dark theme - https://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9787
Shoutout for Everything. Why MSFT doesn't include this capability by default in Windows is a complete mystery. I work with a large, old, labyrinthine shared drive and my colleagues, who understandably can't find anything on it, treat the ability to instantaneously invoke some Word document written by a long-departed former employee some time in the Triassic Age as though I were using a Dark Magick, dangerous and possibly malicious in nature.
Yes, I love Everything!
I work with a lot of shared network drives and the search function in Windows Explorer is sooo slow.
Everything along with flow launcher have been my most used programs since discovery, I can't use a windows machine without them now.
Wow, thank you for this. I just installed it and can already tell I'll be using it daily - the Windows default search is so bad! It doesn't work a lot of the time, and when it does work, it's painfully slow.
Noise Comment
oh my god ive been using the standard version for years, thank you so much for the dark theme tip!
If I'm sitting at my computer, odds are I've used
grep. It's like the Phillips screwdriver on my desk: It's not flashy, but gets used almost daily for one thing or another.A close second is rclone. Mounts all my cloud providers as a filesystem on all my computers. Works on my phone via RSAF. Makes E2E encryption trivial, thus I no longer worry about trusting my cloud provider to not leak my data (or pay a premium for their 'secure' features).
I used to be similar on
grep, but I haven't used it in a long time now since installingripgrepon all my machines. It's similar, but equivalent commands in ripgrep tend to be less verbose than grep for my most common use cases.Also,
rgās faster on long files/expensive queries, as far as I understood it.Rclone might be something I'll need to look into as I have a general distaste for all file managers from cloud services.
For example, my Nextcloud instance has some poor syncing habits.
On the other hand I only use Nextcloud so rclone might be a bit of an overkill.
Rclone is pretty good! Iām actually really impressed with it because itās really flexible and it moves files very quickly.
easily
nvim. I have it setup exactly how I want it, the git history for my dotfiles is mostly nvim tweaks. It took a bit of fiddling to get it where I wanted it, and every once in a while I still change it a bit, but now that its more or less where I want it, its an amazing piece of software.I always was a Windows guy so CLI text editors have always been difficult to grasp. I use them too little to remember the commands.
Especially with fzf-lua.
Neovim is my text editor of choice as well, though with the caveat that I'm specifically using the AstroNvim distribution (with my longer term plan being to set up a fully custom configuration)
I agree though people may argue with me but I find that Linux Mint checks all the boxes that I need an OS to be.
Did someone say argue?
Jokes aside, Linux Mint is absolutely a great choice and is my default recommendation to anyone interested in Linux but unfamiliar with it. It's based on the most popular distribution, Ubuntu, while avoiding the dubious decisions its parent company saddled it with while still ultimately being a very sensible base with a lot of help resources in case issues do arise. The distribution generally aims for "sane defaults" that the average user would reasonably expect without needing to specifically ask for it (while I wholeheartedly support Debian's commitment to truly free software, when you end up with a critical component of the computer not working because a very common piece of hardware doesn't have available drivers without going out of your way to look for a non-free one, something the layman wouldn't even be aware is a concern, it ends up being an obstacle to user adoption, although that's something they did eventually accept required a sensible compromise). Finally, the desktop environment developed alongside the distribution itself superficially resembles Windows' UI which is helpful to get new users acclimated. All of this combines into a very polished package that is user friendly and Just Worksā¢, exactly what the average user wants out of their OS.
I instead treat my computer more as a hobby which led me into the Arch Linux rabbit hole but I've since settled to using CachyOS which leverages the AUR (which I like a lot as it enables having very niche software having packages available in a way other distributions might not) while still providing sane defaults I don't need to tinker with endlessly
not that this stops me from doing so anyway. Also, they default to KDE, and I like KDE. This is obviously not a common usecase, so recommending Linux Mint in general is still the best bet IMO.I've seen Linux Mint gain quite the lead in terms of recommendations I've seen online - from my mastodon feeds from people who used to use Windows and now swear by Linux Mint to that YouTuber guy who did a video about moving away from Adobe tools.
I've personally used Pop!_OS, but I genuinely think it's awesome that I'm now seeing a bit of Linux resurgence!
Docker.
There was an XKCD comic a while back that made fun of the fact that you donāt really have to understand how to build deploy pipelines, just shove it in a docker container and be done with it.
Is it this one?
Haha yea
Similar boat, though I have abandoned docker in favor of podman. I do use podman nearly daily though. Outside deployments I use it for dev containers and I do almost all of my development in containers. If any piece of dev software would like to be globally installed I just containerize because I hate having to deal with conflicting versions between projects.
Can you say more about the move from docker to podman? It seems like it is mainly more secure?
The motivation for my switch was running rootless. To be entirely honest, I wasn't really running untrusted containers anyway, but just got sick of the warnings about rooted containers.
I just ended up putting a file in my bin named docker that just execs podman and to date I've never had any issues. I did it like this rather than a normal alias just because it was the easiest way to get other software that tries to run docker, such as vscode plugins, to consistently work. I do generally stick to the common stuff though, so maybe there are some issues in edge cases that I've never encountered.
Not having it running as a daemon is just also kind of nice. For whatever reason I had made the decision that I didn't want docker to boot itself on startup, but this meant starting the daemon whenever I wanted to use it. Not a huge thing, but it's kind of nice to just remove that from needing to be thought about at all.
Additionally I'm surprised that podman isn't pushed more in professional settings. Big businesses are cheap and don't like to pay for licenses, but they also like Macs. As an example, I know Amazon built Finch when Docker changed their licensing (I know they only changed Docker Desktop, but installing Docker on a Mac without Docker Desktop is a nightmare) and encourage using it internally even though Finch sucks and podman would probably "just work". The reason Finch sucks is that, unlike podman, it isn't API compatible with the docker CLI so there's no way to alias it to port legacy scripts or share scripts with platforms that don't support Finch.
Yeah, docker is so prevalent that it has become important to me that other tools work with docker conventions out of the box. For example, I'm still going to write Dockerfiles. And then when I want to get them going elsewhere, especially managed cloud platforms where I don't need to deal with stuff like the daemon or root, it all works the same as I'm used to. I'm so far down that rabbit hole that even when writing scripts for myself I just exec docker even though I know it is aliased to podman, but down the road I'll appreciate that I didn't need to do extra work to make those scripts work in other environments where docker is preconfigured.
All of that loops back to why I hated Finch. Even if I was using Finch on my laptop our CI/CD was still inevitably going to be Docker and then we have 2 unique things to maintain.
I haven't needed compose recently, but I don't recall having much trouble with it. At the time I think I just forced the docker host to be podman and ran docker compose. Maybe it's better to use podman compose, but I've heard it may parse the yaml slightly differently and at the time I didn't want to deal with the potential for my compose file to only work with podman.
I'm excited to try this on my Windows machine because I doa lot of docker/WSL there. I thought WSL itself is a docker image (?), e.g. I need Docker Desktop installed to make WSL work, but maybe this is not the case? Do you replace docker desktop with podman or just run podman inside the wsl environment?
Thanks for your response! I have some dedockering to do at some point :)
Thank you especially for this, I often use Xming with WSL2, so I will have to try without it!
When you don't want to bother with deployment Docker is a great solution. Really fixes a lot of variables.
If an add-on counts, I'd say Tree Style Tabs for Firefox. The nesting makes it way more useful than other vertical tab things and has totally changed the way I organize my web browsing, especially for more researchy/reference-y things.
Since this thing has made my browsing so much better and I have a browser open basically 100% of the time, I don't think it's a stretch to say that add-on changed my computing life more than anything else.
I used that years ago, but tend to keep only a few tabs open at a time these days so it's actually wasting screen space to use it. Have you tried Sidebery? I've heard some people have less issues with it.
Sidebery is incredible. Very easy to organize tons of tabs and unload them. Can separate the tabs into different groups/panels. Can set up rules to open specific websites in container tabs, or make a container default for specific panels.
If I had to live without it (on my personal computer), my browsing would be very chaotic.
I've recently got into using Sidebery. I love it for the side bar alone, especially now I've adjusted the Firefox CSS to get rid of the top bar (and thus no tabs show at the top).
I'd be keen to hear how you go about organising your tabs.
So far, I've set up three panels:
And then I have a general tab that my random browsing holds. Although that stuff naturally splills into the other panels from clicking links too.
I'm not incredibly organized, but I've tried to keep things in the appropriate panel for a few areas of my life. I don't use separate containers for much, so I'll only mention when I do.
General: Almost everything, but I try to move tabs to the other panels later if I can. I at least try to make use of parent tabs or groups to contain things a bit. I pin my (multiple) email webmail, calendar, tildes, and mastodon.
School: Everything related to my courses. By default these tabs open in a school container that keeps accounts (like Gmail) separate. I will sometimes open non-container tabs for searches related to school but not something I'd want linked back to my school google account. I pin the main portal for my courses and my school gmail webmail tabs.
Homelab: Everything related to my home server/network/etc. setup. This one gets pretty messy, so I try to heavily use groups and parent-child tab relationships where it makes sense. I also use one of those homepage self-hosted applications (and pin it) to provide quick access to the different applications I host.
Gaming: A place to look up walkthroughs/guides, game-specific wikis, mods, etc. I try to create groups for each game to keep it tidy.
Job Search / Professional: Pretty self-explanatory. I don't currently use a separate container here, but I probably should. I do force LinkedIn to open in its own container that gets moved to this panel, because LinkedIn is perhaps the most creepy and invasive service I know of.
Home Improvement / DIY: Mostly just home projects in the research or in-progress stage.
Dev/Programming: Software development stuff that's sometimes connected to my homelab, but falls into the category of being more programming specific.
Travel: Separate groups for each destination or trip. Sometimes even just for "maybe one day" type trips. I don't use this one incredibly often since I try to keep this info shared with my partner so we can plan things together.
So I don't use any of the "force URLs into a certain panel or container" rules besides LinkedIn. But maybe I'll change that for the job search one like I mentioned.
I haven't tried it ā I guess haven't had enough issues with TST to look for an alternative. Really the only thing that bugs me is that the sidebar isn't open by default when you open a new private browser window, though I think that's just an issue with how firefox handles sidebars in general.
Looks nice though, might be cool to check out.
Ever looked at TidyBee? (I built it)
That's really slick ā the searching and filtering looks awesome and I love the idea of blurring the line between open tabs and bookmarks. Personally, I prefer sticking to open source stuff when I can, but this looks really well done.
Hey, thanks for the kind words!
What does your workflow look like? Do you use default settings?
I use TST on Firefox but I had issues adapting to the, what seemed to me, arbitrary nesting of tabs. I ended up turning it off. So now I use it mostly because I prefer vertical tabs (my monitor is huge).
My current workflow isn't great either so I'm always looking for ways to improve, and I'd love to understand how to use those features better.
Pretty close to the default settings. I do prefer the "Promote all children to the parent level" option when a tab with children is closed, and I like the option to always add new independent tabs at the end.
If I'm researching pages for specific topics I'll copy the URL to whatever I'm managing the project in.
For example I might copy the URL in a temporary comment in code or I'll copy it to my Joplin note.
TST is the best thing to happen to the browser since tabs. I canāt stand most other browsers these days because vertical hierarchical tabs are so much better to use.
But one thing I have noticed lately is that a lot more websites in the past ~5 years have really bad layout breakpoints. A lot of websites will refuse to display things correctly if you donāt have 1000 horizontal pixels.
Honestly, right now itās Visual Studio Code.
To be honest, I mostly hate it. Configuring a text editor with text files is actually a bummer when the text editor is basically an IDE, and the shortcuts have almost zero consideration for MacOS by default All of the run and debug shortcuts are function keys, which are defaulted to media controls so you have to also hold down the fn key. Also the reset debugging button is F11, which the OS already has assigned to exposĆØ. A lot of functionality is hidden behind their command pallet idea, which sounds nice but I need to use them so infrequently I can never remember how to fucking summon it. Itās the only piece of software that continually makes you feel like you donāt know how to use it - its actually worse than vim in that respect.
But rather critically itās the only editor that has decent built-in debugging for the framework Iām working on right now, and itās also free and what my students will be expecting to use. If I had a choice I would rather use nova. I havenāt paid for the latest updates but itās got a lightning fast text rendering engine, a layout and UI that is incredibly simple without being incapable or inflexible, and perhaps most importantly, has actually never crashed on me. Though to be fair, Code has an absurd number of extensions added that are not helping that situation.
Visual Studio
Codeis great if you need an IDE on Windows but on MacOS it's garbage.There's also something to be said for not using an IDE when you start out to ensure you know what's happening in the background, off course depending on the framework.
Edit: accidentally added code to Visual Studio and the conversation derailed.
Right now Iām trying to teach python to kids who arenāt even good at typing yet and so the autocompletion features are actually more of a hindrance than a help. But itās the curriculum to use it, so it is what it is.
I wouldn't consider VSCode an IDE, it's an extensible text editor. It can be turned into an IDE with extensions. Stock VSCode with a terminal panel and basic syntax highlighting is a great way to start learning, IMO.
Also, what makes it so bad on macOS?
Honestly some of the comments from OP seem off.
Some portray themselves sometimes as a MacOS primary user, and sometimes as a windows exclusive user. They actively use Everything on windows, which makes sense for a windows power user. But in this comment they make it seem like they are familiar enough with MacOS design language to realize that VScode doesnāt really fit in with macOS stylistically. But in another comment they have never heard of raycast. I donāt know how you follow macOS as a power user at all and not hear of raycast. Maybe they are a windows power user that has used Mac in the past, but not as a power user? But then it would be weird to say VScode direct work well since itās almost identical to the windows version.Edit: OP clarified in a lower comment.Maybe itās just confusion between VScode and Visual Studio? I canāt remember if Visual Studio has a version for macOS, but VScode is an entirely different product.
Hi, OP here to clear up some confusion.
In my comment I mistakenly added Code to Visual Studio, I meant Visual Studio the IDE instead of VScode.
As you guessed Iām primarily a Windows user but Iāve also tried using a Mac in the past. I could never get used to it.
I also have some machines running linux distros.
That makes sense. Sorry for casting shade your way. Itās a pretty common mistake to make. It is a little unfortunate that Microsoft used the visual studio name for code since they could not be less related.
This would make a lot of sense actually, until recently there was a Visual Studio for Mac, and it was indeed lacking compared to its Windows counterpart. Most .NET devs working on Mac use VSCode or Rider instead, so much so that Microsoft finally killed off Visual Studio for Mac last year.
I use it on macOS and donāt have any issues or complaints really, but maybe in comparison to Windows itās lacking? Now Iām curious too.
I've used it extensively on Windows, Mac, and Linux. A big part of the appeal of VSCode is that it's the same everywhere.
I think the biggest thing that undermines the point of the palette is the fact it's bound to
CTRL + SHIFT + Pby default which is needlessly complicated for a feature which is supposed to make other features easier to access. If anything I'd intuitively expect that to be a printing related shortcut.That is one thing that (n)vim does right: you want to type a command? Switch to normal mode if you're not already in it (which is going to be the Escape key) and press
:. That's it, you can type your command. And since saving a file is one of those commands, you will pretty much immediately learn and remember it for anything that is too niche to warrant a hotkey of its own and too specific for a vim motion.That being said, in your situation I suspect that even if a debugging plugin for your framework happens to exist for it, subjecting your students to nvim out of the blue wouldn't go well :) (and Azatoth help you if someone is on Windows)
I'm not in front of my computer right now, but doesn't F1 also work to bring up the palette?
After checking on a computer where VS Code was installed, apparently yes it does... which raises the question of why is CTRL+SHIFT+P the shortcut it shows for the palette in the menu over the much simpler F1?
The shortcut comes from Sublime Text, which created (and inadvertently standardized) the command palette as a feature. It's now accessed in Chrome and VS Code by the same hotkey.
I'm guessing VS Code added F1 as a shortcut later to make it more accessible, though they may wish to still be aligned with the "standard" hotkey.
I hated when I switched from VS Code to Obsidian for note taking and F1 suddenly brought ... help window :)
On Windows, I reconfigured it with Autohotkey; on Linux I found no solution.
You know you can rebind keys in Obsidian? Open the settings and go to Hotkeys
Thanks! I may have overlooked that. Or perhaps it is a relatively new feature?
It's been there for as long as I've been using it, so at least 3 years :)
Quite useful for 3rd party plugins that don't have default bindings
The debugging is entirely for a personal project. I suppose I could use a debugging library and just type in my breakpoints but I really donāt like that approach.
Ah, I mixed the two up and assumed the framework and what you're teaching were related. Point is, something tells me it would be a bad idea to spring nvim on students that presumably aren't already familiar with it.
Out of curiosity, what approach do you use for debugging that requires more than stepping through breakpoints?
Honestly this is the first meaningful project I have even needed breakpoints in, so I donāt know how much more there is for it. The debugger in VS Code is useful to me because it allows me to break apart the entire state of the program, including places I might not have really thought to look through otherwise. I find the ability to insert conditional breakpoints particularly useful because the project is a video game, which makes it essentially a Rube Goldberg level state machine.
Yesterday I was working on a fix/improvement for a library that I was working and realized shortly after I submitted the PR that there was a problem with the project I was testing it in. If I didnāt have that level of debugging I probably would have never figured out that the problem was actually in my project code.
For what it's worth, it looks like the debugger implementation in VS Code follows a standard which is also supported by other IDE/text editors, including Nova itself according to its documentation since version 9, although it seems more limited regarding which debuggers are supported. Other programs that support it include Eclipse, Emacs (because of course it does), Helix, and Neovim (through this plugin if you want to try it out) as well as being a WIP for Zed.
Take a look at vscodium which doesn't include all the MS telemetry they add on top of the open source base.
I would definitely wholeheartedly recommend VSCodium. While I subjectively don't like quite a few things regarding VSCode's UI, that's mostly down to me having weird preferences and it's undeniably a well designed piece of user friendly software as far as code-focused text editors are concerned. VSCodium fixes the worrying privacy implications of VSCode being subject to Microsoft's all-encompassing gaze on top of that. The existence of a painless drop-in replacement to a popular program that I can suggest is extremely helpful, especially given that few people consider this a concern critical enough to accept compromising on user experience for.
Have you tried Zed?
I don't use an IDE every day so it's not on my list for this particular conversation, but it's an excellent IDE for Mac/Linux that's soon to be available for Windows...
I used to hate it. Then I started using Talon Voice (control your computer using your voice) due to my RSI and I discovered Cursorless. Absolutely nothing about using it changed what I switched from Mac to Linux. Seriously, I canāt say enough good things about Cursorless, it just keeps getting better.
Hereās a talk on Cursorless at StrangeLoop by its creator. (~40 minute video)
This sounds really neat but I have little faith in computers understanding what Iām trying to say. The reason why I like Siri in spite of its limitations is that it is the only voice recognition that works anywhere approaching reliably even though it still doesnāt quite get there.
Even if it did having to learn another phonetic alphabet is a real turn off for me. I can barely remember the NATO phonetic alphabet as it is and Iām from a military family.
I might still check it out eventually though because the sheer novelty intrigues me.
Itās all about motivation. I started using Talon because I was in a lot of pain. I was already using a custom made keyboard, but typing kept making it worse and worse. Even taking a small part of the burden off my hands was welcome, which was exactly how I started.
The web browser (Safari, in my case). Besides things only it can perform, it could replace most of other software I use regularly ā although with a worse UX.
The browser is definitely the single most useful program I use as well. The majority of the things I use nowadays are all web-based: messaging through Discord/FB Messenger, YouTube, social media, and much more. I'm currently running a new Firefox-based browser in beta called Zen that draws a lot of inspiration from Arc, definitely recommend people try it out!
The issue I have with Safari is it's web engine (arguably not a browser issue but OS) and extension support. Firefox for me has better and more capable extensions.
I have the same issue with Safari. My other issue with it is that I have a lot of non-Apple devices which wouldn't be able to sync bookmarks and tabs if I were to use Safari.
I'm a windows admin, so it would probably be PowerShell. Managing accounts, mailboxes, permissions are all things I do daily and I like to use PowerShell rather than the gui.
The top hitters would be rsync, obsidian, sublime, matplotlib/pandas
Definitely KeePassXC. I know some people get really technical with their own syncing solutions but I find integrating it with OneDrive to be the smoothest experience.
I use nextcloud to sync and i never have a problem.
TickTick, it's a task management app a lot like todoist, but I jive better with the features. It's always open and I'm constantly sorting and managing my tasks. I particularly like the custom calendar views.
I've been fighting over which self-hosted todo manager I want to use and I haven't fully settled yet. But I don't want to use one of these third-party cloud services as a matter of preference (and financial investment).
Best one for me (so far) is Vikunja, but it's still a little clunky.
Thanks for posting! Just yesterday I was going through task management services and everything required an account and would sync. I just wanted something either offline or that I can self-host and Vikunja looks good!
I live by Todoist currently. What is it you prefer about TickTick's work flow?
I'm really fussy with my productivity apps and Todoist just feels right. I'm not actually entirely sure what it is I love about it compared to others. But there are some things I wish it had, such as the ability to differentiate between the date something is due by and the date I wish to do something.
TickTick has an incredibly fast entry for new items in calendar view, basically click a day, enter your stuff, click off the entry box, and you're done.
Everything else has 2-3 (or more) too many clicks just to put in a quick note/todo. The Android widget is pretty good, but sometimes doesn't sync right away.
On my Windows PC, I open up foobar2000 pretty much every day, mainly to listen to music, but I also (rather unconventionally) use it to manage my movie/TV and audiobook collection ā it works surprisingly well for that. I like that it's simple on the surface but complex underneath, and that it can be extended with external components. I've spent a lot of time customizing the whole interface and functionality to my liking so it looks and works exactly the way I want it to. It's also really lightweight and quick to start up.
Also on Windows, I use Total Commander as my file manager. It's dual-pane so copying and moving files around is much easier and faster than opening multiple Explorer windows. Similar to foobar2000, there's a lot of hidden functionality in the program, but I feel like it's kind of necessary to visit the official forums for help to discover all that's possible with it.
What draws me to both tools is the fact that they're good examples of performant software with a simple UI that is light on system resources but very extensible so it can adapt to your needs. They also have multiple decades of (single-person) development with community feedback and participation behind them, so they're pretty stable and come from a place of dedication. Other programs in this vein that I use and can recommend are Notepad++ and IrfanView. Too bad that most of them are proprietary, but I can live with it.
Total Commander is my go to file manager but when I want or need command level control in addition to file management, my go to app is Far Manager.
Logseq - combo journal and todo list, and open source so I can easily install on my work laptop
Seems to be a crossover between obsidian and notion.
I'm currently using Joplin which I like.
I don't like to have my todo items in my journal/notes program but it does seem to be more polished than Joplin.
I used obsidian for a long time and decided I wanted to swap to Logseq because it forces a more streamlined workflow, which is a good thing for me because I tended to be messy and overcomplicate things in obsidian
I also used Joplin for a time, which I found more like onenote than obsidian or Logseq
Came here to post Logseq as well. I think I have tried every major PKM, todo app, and notes app. I always end up back with Logseq.
You donāt fall into the organizational paralysis of files and directory hierarchiesāyou just start writing. Itās one of the simplest to get started with while still being incredibly powerful. In fact I believe Logseq queries (datalog) are the most robust and flexible of any app I have tried (short of direct DB access).
Plus outlining just makes sense.
Another option in this category is Anytype. You can keep it local, use their sync service (encrypted), or self-host a sync node. Just be aware that the self-hosting option is... overly complex. By far the most annoying application I self/host, from a setup and maintenance (updating it) perspective. But once it's running, it's rock solid.
I went this route because I wanted one that supported multiple users as well as an iOS app. I use it as an index for the Johnny.Decimal organizational system.
I started donating $15/month when Logseq opened sync to early access. I quit after 8 months. If I had continued, I would have donated $495 by now and sync is still in beta also being rewritten.
Yeah I donāt use sync
I'm amused to see this thread pop up just a couple days after I was pondering making a "what misc software do you often use" thread myself.
Setting aside the more mundane "My OS/web browser/terminal/email client/text editor" answers, one program I've been using a lot lately is FreeTube. It's just an Electron wrapper for a Youtube frontend, but it offers a very clean interface, solves the gripes I have with the actual website (I want to watch my videos in 1080p60fps whenever available and whichever is the highest otherwise, not spin the wheel to find out whether "Auto" is going to be 720p or 4K every time I open another video), integrates sponsorblock on top of eliminating ads, and has nice features like grouping your subscriptions in custom profiles rather than just everything listed together under your account, hiding whatever you don't want to see (in my case shorts, the trending and popular pages) tracking the playback time when I stop watching videos to be right where I left off later on, a convenient "download video" button (and also an external player feature which can be hijacked to instead send it to yt-dlp if the integrated download feature isn't enough), and various other things.
If you're interested, do note that there is a significant caveat: FreeTube deliberately doesn't integrate any feature that requires a Google account to use, meaning for example no two-way syncing your subscriptions with your actual account (though you can export your existing subscriptions into FreeTube) and they won't be counted as such on the platform's side, no liking videos or leaving comments, and no watching members-only videos. And obviously, no managing your channel from FreeTube if you make content on YouTube yourself. I personally don't mind but that can definitely be a deal-breaker for many.
Great minds think a like!
I'm always hesitant to sink some time into setting things up like FreeTube as it's only a matter of time before youtube finds a way to block it.
They've been pretty quick on the uptake whenever breaking changes happen in the Youtube API. The latest example was some integrity checks which were being progressively rolled out over the last couple of weeks. By the time it affected me (which resulted in any attempt to watch a video yielding a 403 error), the update that fixed it had already been out for days, and the only reason I didn't update before that was because I had disabled the integrated update notifications, since my package manager is supposed to handle it... and forgot to update my system for an entire week.
I'd say there are two things I can't live without. First is a local terminal. I've been working with *nix for so long now that I am appreciably faster manipulating files with command-line tools such as sed, awk, grep, sort etc, and I've been using vi or derivatives for 20+ years. Still my go-to for text manipulation.
The other is Raycast - a shortcut tool for MacOS - but it's so much more than that.
I'm using
EverythingfromVoidtoolsa lot but Raycast seems to be that but so much more. Especially the AI answers could be very usefull.I've signed up for the Windows wait list... We'll see...
Edit: Fluent Search seems to be a promising alternative
A lot of the functionality in Fluent Search seems to be present in PowerToys Run. Just another option to consider (and one I like quite a bit).
Flow Launcher is also great, I like it a bit better than powertoys run, it also integrates with Everything search, though I tend to just use it to launch everything.
Interesting, I'm pretty sure all the features listed on their homepage are present in Run, and all the plugins as well. (Including integration with Everything search.)
Do you just prefer the UI? (That also looks pretty similar though.)
I did start with Run and was enjoying it, but then later saw some comments threads that flow launcher was snappier with some more features, but that was a few years back now, so the feature set/performance may have improved in Run. I ended up sticking with flow launcher because I liked the UI better, and it felt snappier and more responsive at the time. It may be that run is a lot better now though. Can't go wrong with trying them both out and seeing what you like!
I think I have a soft spot for Run because it's a fork of Wox, which I used a long time ago. But I'll give this one a try too - they're both open source!
Now playing around with PowerToys, even integrated
Everythingin it. Like it a lot.Yeah, there's some awesome tools in it! Other components of PowerToys I use often:
Awake: I actually use this one outside of the PowerToys config, with the standalone executable. I have a button on my stream deck that uses this tool to keep my computer (and screen) awake for 30min. Pressing it again will effectively reset the timer by killing the old process and creating a new one. Another button will just end the currently running process. This is useful for preserving the life of my OLED monitor.
FancyZones: I've gone back and forth between different window management tools - primarily this one and WindowGrid. I'm probably sticking with FancyZones as it effectively and reliably opens windows for specific applications on my secondary monitor, even if the application does not do this by default. But the ability to resize windows on the fly in a grid is also very neat. So I'd recommend comparing them to see what's best for you. (And you technically could use both.)
Text Extractor: Some of my online courses display text but do not allow it to be selected or copied. This is an OCR module in PowerToys that allows you to select a region of your screen and it will copy the text to your clipboard. They recommend that you use the Windows snipping tool for this instead, but I haven't been able to make that as streamlined as just pressing a key combo, selecting a region, and having it automatically in my clipboard.
Slightly less often but still very useful:
Color Picker: get various color codes for a pixel on your screen.
PowerRename: a nice GUI for performing multiple rename operations across files/folders in a directory. I prefer this to a powershell script because it shows a live preview of what the rename will do. (I also perform unique rename operations infrequently; I'd opt for a script if this was a regular occurrence.)
Thanks for the writeup
Emacsā¦ but that thing is almost its own operating system so its kind of a cheat to name it.
Any advice for new users to quickly onboard onto emacs without resorting to Doom/Spacemacs?
I learned it decades ago before Doom and Spacemacs existed. So my advice may be a bit dated, but if you're interested in vanilla Emacs, I'd suggest:
(This got long, so I'm putting this here so people don't have to scroll past it)
Ctrl-hthentto start it.C-x C-fmeans Ctrl-x followed by Ctrl-f.M-for "meta" maps to Alt, andS-is for Shift. Sequences of keys are space delimited (except when they're ordinary alphanumeric keys).RETis return,SPCis space bar, etc. You'll see this sort of notation everywhere in Emacs-land.C-h ibrings up a detailed manual; I definitely recommend giving it a glance.C-h bshows you keybindings.C-h ktells you what a key is bound to, andC-h w(where) tells you the opposite if you know a function name.C-h flets you look up information on internal functions, andC-h vdoes the same for variables.C-h f,C-h v,C-h b,C-h w, and all will reflect the current state.M-x customize RET. Exploring this is another good way of discovering what Emacs can do.I think this post from last year is helpful: https://tildes.net/~comp/1hkw/thinking_of_getting_into_emacs_any_advice#comment-d6id.
I also found SystemCrafters' Emacs from Scratch series quite helpful.
Then, instead of Doom/Evil, you could go with something like Crafted Emacs, which is basically a configuration you can drop into vanilla Emacs and have some useful packages and "saner" defaults right out of the gate.
Quick into emacs is a tall order. Its old and idiosyncratic and that sets up a steep learning curve.
I would recommend going into it with something in mind you want it use it for then youāll extend to use it for other things as you go along. I started with org-roam for notes, then discovered dired-mode for file management (its a great file management system), then to-do lists, ssh, terminal, etcā¦. The program can do everything and the kitchen sink but if you try to go full immersion i think it will be a frustrating experience.
TL;DR: use it for a specific function or task and expand as you learn the system.
i use doom emacs. Someday i hope to build up from scratch but doom has been good for me do its not a priority. Only reason i would build my own is doom emacs has so much built in that i find myself parring it down.
Not actually an Emacs user (not because I don't like it but more because I'm afraid of it taking over my OS, then my life, then my very soul) but my understanding is that going with Doom Emacs (or similar distribution) is itself not a bad option for onboarding. There's nothing preventing you from starting out with it, tinkering with it later on and either decide you want to keep using it or "going back" to vanilla Emacs so you can start
and never stopbuilding your own setup using what you liked from Doom Emacs and/or adjusting what you didn't like. At least, the same logic applies with nvim (which I do use) regarding astronvim/nvchad/whatever else.Do Android apps count? I tiptoe on the line between nerd and tech-illiterate, and Tasker is great for my demographic. There's a ton of simple, minor quality of life thingsāfor example, I have a profile to send a notification every 8 hours reminding me about medication. I have another profile reminding me to clock in when I get to work. Tasker handles my multitude of wallpapers. When certain contacts call me, Tasker sets my ringtone to max volume. There's a ton of little things that you can automate with Tasker to slightly improve the functionality of your phone.
Sometimes I learn a little bit about tech wizardry. For example, I have a profile that calls a weather API, finds the forecasted high and low temperatures and humidity, and notifies me every morning about whether I should leave my window open while I'm at work. I have the beginnings of an automatic Calicojack player in Stardew Valley using OCR to decide whether to hit or stay. It's more math than tech, but I also made a GPS for Subnautica which I am still very proud of.
Try it out, the worst thing that can happen is you'll spend $3.50 on an app that can turn your wi-fi on and off for you
Emacs. I pretty much live inside an Emacs window. I've hit triple-digit day Emacs uptimes at work before.
I could replace others like Firefox with Chromium (though I'd greatly miss NoScript), or maybe the Linux kernel and GNU userland with the BSD kernel and userland, or return from Zshell to Bash. And I swap back and forth between GCC and Clang for testing all the time. I definitely have some favorites among the various programs that I use.
But if I interpret "most useful" as the program that would hurt the most if it magically vanished off the face of the Earth, that's going to be Emacs, hands-down.
Obsidian for me, I do everything in it. Fast, simple, no faff or AI crammed in
Really liked Obsidian but it was too advanced for my simple notes so I stuck to Joplin
Same here. Obsidian has enabled me to stop using a number of other trinkets that I was constantly switching between before (and getting lost in the weeds). Additionally, to do and track stuff I wasn't even able to track before. And, I can make it visually as distraction-free as I want, which is awesome for my ADHD. I don't know how I even survived before!
(I found Obsidian because someone on here mentioned it. Thank you, someone!)
Just one? Probably Alfred in MacOS.
Have you also tried Raycast?
Not OP, but I'm constantly on a quest to find better Mac apps, and I personally can't stand Raycast. I've used it for two years before switching back to Alfred. I don't like that their extensions are anaemic, that they insist on having every single feature and not be particularly good at any of them (window management, clipboard history), and that an AI search - which should just be a slot where you pop your own API key, especially for power users - is gated behind a stupid subscription, and no, the ChatGPT extension is not a valid workaround.
Alfred does what I want and nothing more, their updates are mostly invisible to me and I can apply them if I want to. It also lets me pay for it once without a subscription.
Raycast tries to do everything and keeps adding stuff all the time.
Yes and I always come back to Alfred. Raycast is smooth but I don't trust in a VC backed company for doing what it does.
https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/ for me.
Have been using this for more years than I care to think of. Support is remarkably good and itās worth every penny. Have tried just about everything else and always end up back here. AI features are not important for my workflow but can see how it would be for many.
Standard Notes
My entire life is organized in this thing, and it cross-syncs between my phone and my computers. The āspecial sauceā is that the notes can be different types, so I can have spreadsheets, checklists, and even just notes I can write in Markdown.
I have persistent notes for the following:
And then on any given day Iāll make random other notes when I think of things I need to remember. Part of my weekly habit is clearing out and organizing all the scattered one-off notes every Sunday night ā acting on them or reincorporating them into my persistent notes or whatnot.
I also like that itās private, as thereās a lot of sensitive information in there. For example, nearly every exercise log or weight app wants to take my information and sell it. Having that info in a private spreadsheet I can update from the phone that lives in my pocket instead (making it effectively just like an app)? Way better.
EDIT: I just noticed (what Iām pretty sure is) AI art on the website. That cheapens what is otherwise a great product.
Nice feature to be able to combine different file types. I tend to use Joplin for notes, a todo app for my todo items and a folder structure for tracking files. All linked together with project names.
plocatehas been really useful lately. It can filter millions of filepaths in a few milliseconds. GNU Parallel and sshfs have also been quite useful and reliable.But single most useful... probably fish shell and Tampermonkey. I've been writing more and more tiny programs that change what content is visible in my browser. For example, hide_seen_rows.js to hide rows of data that I've loaded in a tab before.
How are people using user scripts? I've never tried them before, so they're sort of client side quality of life improvements in an increasingly hostile web world?
Brief search reveals use cases such as:
enabling right click paste where native form doesn't not allow;
space bar to pause a YouTube video, button to download MP4, resize playback window etc
highlight newest comments on a thread;
auto convert currencies or metric/imperial units
price comparisons (how this work?)
"Remove the box that says you must register or log in to view this page on Facebook."
forces site feed to display chronologically
Wow. What are your other must haves?
I mostly add functionality to simple HTML elements. Like a script that lets me turn all
olandilinto checkboxes. Or if a site does something annoying I'll just write a quick script and modify the annoying or incorrect behavior. Or double click to delete elements like a simple Katamari Damacy game until the page is reloaded. Some are more useful than others--but you are basically limited to your imagination.Wow, I had no idea tampermonkey was closed source. I'll replace it with Violentmonkey, good call.
In terms of "most useful, most often", probably Pano, a clipboard history manager as a GNOME shell extension. It's fairly configurable and I'm someone who needs to copy/paste a lot of different stuff (mostly between various work files), constantly throughout the day.
A runner up would be Apostrophe, a necessarily simple and distraction-free Markdown editor. It's funny, up until about a year ago I never really spent any time writing Markdown, now I find myself doing it almost daily--particularly because I can conveniently compose and format almost anything in Apostrophe and copy/paste (Pano!) the results not just from the editor into Markdown-supported apps, but from the preview pane into most other software such as Outlook, Slack, O365, etc. Or just export it as PDF, Word, HTML, etc. It's a bit of a Swiss army knife for composing anything that isn't plaintext for other programs, despite its simplicity.
If I broaden the definition of "program" though I'd have to include Perplexity. It's the only "AI" product I've found to be consistently useful, once I fully learned what it is and isn't good at.
Leveraging markdown formatting into emails and the like is pretty cool!
Silverbullet.md - For note taking and organization, its simple and unobtrusive interface made it more useful for me than Obsidian or Logseq or other standards
Reeder - RSS / YouTube / Bluesky / Mastodon in a chronological order with reader view, invaluable for avoiding doom scrolling
Qobuz - In my endless pursuit of making my life harder by ditching mainstream apps for competitorsā¦ Qobuz pays artists best as far as streaming apps go and the audio quality is there
Not daily but frequents - all the apps that my library card allowsā¦ Muskās incel gestapo probably has libraries on their list so who knows how much longer we will have these (they get federal funding Iām sure theyāre already having issues): Libby for books, Kanopy for movies, Freegal for music streaming and 3 downloads per week, also access to JSTOR and other academic and scientific research related things.
An RSS reader is incredibly valuable these days. For me, it is less about the doomscrolling. I enjoy:
I culled my YouTube subscriptions, being heavy-handed too, and I'm only down to 200. So the categories and tags help tremendously. Entertainment content can be put into a box, so too can important content have its own category at the top for me to look at (and be notified about) whenever the time-sensitive information appears.
I'm using InoReader Firefox extension (free version) as I'm dipping my toes into the space. So far it has worked well, but I might move because I avoid anything with a subscription-based model, even if I'm on the free tier.
It feels like a lifetime ago but honestly in the grand scheme was pretty recentā¦ I was a major user of Thunderbird for email and RSS, and also used Google Reader for a while. Feels like all we are doing is attempting to force a 10 year Internet reset, the Internet was just better and less damaging to my mental health back then.
Explored a lot of options, everyone will have a different preference for clientā¦ but I found ease of use and options best for me with a combination of both Reeder Classic and the new Reeder app depending on my mood. Some are better than others at getting around paywalls.
Iāll give it a look on the desktop when I have a chance but it was lack of iOS client that kept me from using it last time I tried. Looks like thatās still the caseā¦ Iām on Outlook on phone and desktop now, been a while though so maybe itās time for a switch.
Silverbullet looks really cool, just threw it up on my server and going to give it a whirl. I maybe grew up before notetaking apps were a thing so I never understood how people used them and they always felt incredibly overcomplicated to set up and use. I've always been fine with a text file somewhere and todo style. It's also pretty rare that I want to take elaborate notes on anything that I will need to keep in the long run so I'll forget how to use the note taking apps as well. Silverbullet seems to fit this perfect gap where you can just use it as a markdown editor and be fine with it but seems to support a good variety of scripting and linking of things as it grows and you get more familiar with it. Thank you for sharing, hopefully I can fit this into my day to day!
Hope it works out for you - usually Iām the same with my note taking habits. Iād tried everything when it occurred to me to try to get organized, from Obsidian to Logseq to VS Code extensionsā¦ but once it stopped being a project for me to set up the software I didnāt use it and would just open a text document for quick notes as needed.
I did a docker install and have it running on a raspberry pi and access via Tailscale. Have it on my phone and computers as a web app and sometimes also just a browser tabā¦
It being so easy to just have a blank page to write half thoughts into got it over the hump of not giving me more friction than my text editor or Apple Notes, and from there started linking things as needed because double brackets are easy and why notā¦ like I was doing some YouTube guitar lessons and made a page with all the videos in the series on one page and took notes under each. Started using the daily note feature to journal or just scratchpad. Then dug into the templating / scripting a tiny bit to make those journal entries available on the index page. Then I started a side gig and it became integral to how I keep track of information for that.
It grew from a text prompt exactly when and how I needed it to and now itās integral for daily personal and professional stuff.
Not that anybody asked for an essay about it ā itās just a rare piece of software that actually improved my life so I get excited. I can use 1000 apps that sell themselves as personal wikis and never actually use them, but give me a an empty text file with easy linking and eventually Iāll have a personal wiki.
I don't mind the essay! I feel the same way when I find the right piece of software that really scratches and itch I didn't even know. I've been using it a bit over the last few days and the 'without friction' part is exactly what sells it. Just a blank page you can type on, easy format access, and honestly I don't always recall all markdown so just /h pick header 1 and things like that really make it so smooth to edit.
I've been moving some stuff over and didn't realize how bad my scattering of .txt files on my computers really are. I also have lost a lot of information that would easily have gone into silverbullet, but would not typically want to put into a text file. I installed a program 'hoarder' to try out a bit ago and while it is a nice bookmarking program, just bookmarking things with tags doesn't help me with anything. Turns out when I am actually going to bookmark something it's typically having to do with researching or learning about a topic, and honestly it is much better to just create a silverbullet page and throw the links on there along with the information pulled off the link.
All in all it's a great program, and I'm also using tailscale to get to it everywhere right now as well. I haven't gone fully into it because I haven't set up proper backups yet on the server (something I bought just a few months ago to keep building onto) and don't want to put all the eggs in one basket, though my backups over my whole life has been basically multiple random hard drives and some important stuff in cloud, so really not much more risk if I think about it.
But yes, all in all great program and thank you so much for writing about it and sharing it!
Iāve played around with them but donāt like to do āworkā on my phone and thatās the only apple device I have.
Prefer to program something on a laptop/computer.
OneNote
Vivaldi
Sheets
ChatGPT
TickTick
SmartTube
Wireguard.
There are a lot of great apps in here, but the one I couldn't live without is Things 3. It's how I keep track of basically everything I need to do, from work to chores to calling friends on their birthdays. It all goes in there and it all gets done.
I've tried other todo apps with more features or more complexity, but nothing beats the absolute smoothness of the Things UI. It turns out that if it's an app you touch a lot, having it be nice to use goes a long way.
I keep seeing paid todo apps pop up and donāt see the added value for myself.
As long as I can add tasks and set a due date itās fine for me so I stuck to Microsoft Todo although a foss substitute would be good.
Different strokes for different folks I guess
Computer: Firefox + uBlock Origin (/w Bypass Paywalls 3rd-party list)
Phone: Orion (for tabs + blocking, and theoretically extensions too). Need to manual update filter lists which is easy to forget but it works week enough.
Most useful will be is TotalCmd.
Honorable mention:
Vivaldi, ClipDiary, Robocopy, Obsidian, TrueLaunchBar. Using them for years (except Obsidian, switched to it from Evernote year or two ago), and pretty happy with it.
For me, Firefox extension, NoScript. Been using it for years! It takes some discipline to use it properly but once you become comfortable with the bit of inconvenience it's the my go to security tool in my toolbox.
In my use case I have found NoScript to be better than uBlock. However, I have both installed but then again am a paranoid type of user.
Moneystats for iOS and Mac is my most used and favorite because it helps me model my financial stuff and fprecast everything so I can juggle everything and play out all my decisions rather than do dumb stuff and suffer later.
Very little stress if I keep on top of it and keep it up to date. I'd very likely be on the street if it wasnt for this app, not even joking. Left to my own devices I'd br screwed and an absolute chronic panic attack if I didnt have it
Great to read youāve got your budgeting in order. I used to use YNAB for this but it didnāt add anything to my spending habits. Intend to live frugally and splurge on individual bigger purchases which is easy to oversee even without all the budgeting.
Probably Newpipe.
A separate front end client for YouTube that adds a ton of features (like faster playback, skip silence, and video downloads).
A slight twist, the most useful program/app I would use daily - the Google Inbox app. Its been retired for a while now, and I've never quite found a good replacement, and my email and life organization is way worse because of it.
Gmail is still missing inbox features, and likely will never get them. There are plenty of other email apps that are fine, but lack the ability to use your inbox as a todo list. The few I've seen that do try for an inbox-style setup are missing key features, have major security concerns, or cost an absurd amount. I'm not opposed to a reasonable subscription for an app that actually meets my needs, but I have yet to find it =/
Sorry, it appears that I'm still a bit salty 6 years later. Anyways, if anyone knows of a good email client that does the following, let me know:
Bonus points for open source, privacy focused, and any "AI" features can be turned off...
If I have to pick one and one only favourite useful piece of software, I'd say Obsidian - used for my writing, bullet journal-esque notes, work notes, etc.
ChatGPT.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I can't type without it anymore (unless I want to spend hours or days in pain afterward). It's a miraculous, amazing piece of technology that frustrates and annoys me constantly.
I was naĆÆvely hopeful that after Microsoft bought Nuance, it might finally get some performance enhancements and better compatibility with Microsoft programs like Teams. Nope! I'm pretty sure Microsoft just bought it for the intellectual property so they could integrate some of its features into the (even slower and less accurate) Windows 11 voice recognition system. It's a real shame.
I like the idea of espanso, but it seems to use copy and paste and sometime itās just types āvā or pastes too slowly when Iām moving quickly.
Most used is a web browser for me, itās just very versatile and so much of what we do is a web app these days which still count as web browser.
Yes I've noticed in some programs it doesn't behave well. For example, adding email addresses in outlook web access fails miserably.
There's the option in Espanso to use clipboard to paste the entry or not:
More info here
Thank you for the heads-up about Espanso. Iāll still audition it, but Iāll also want to test how it interacts with my clipboard manager and native Mac text replacement.
OpenZFS for me. It's in use even when I'm not at my computer to store and scrub all my data.
For a couple of years I was just using it as a RAID implementation.
And then I learned about all of its other features; scrubbing, datasets, ZFS send, snapshots, etc. The list goes on to things like compression, L2ARC, hot spares, deduplication, and even more I'm sure.
I want to spread the ZFS gospel far and wide now. Proper knowledge and use of ZFS can save many businesses and homelabs so much grief from unexpected events like bit-flips which gets fixed by scrubbing, or ransomware which can be rolled back to a working snapshot. It will even aid in creating simple incremental routine backups off-site using zfs send. It's more than just a filesystem, it's a Swiss army knife for your important data.
ZoomIt utility on Windows. Perfect for work and home when you're conveying information through images.
For this I used to use Greentext but Iāve switched to ShareX
I am a Windows enthusiast, and I found Wintoys, and PowerToys to be really cool apps for Windows PC power users.
WizTree is a nice program for analyzing your disk usage for storage management. I also enjoy Wallpaper Engine and both my PC and Android devices. Finally, I recommend PeaZip if you want a nice program for managing zip files.
I use WinDirStat for visualizing my disk usage, and WizTree looks like a nice alternative. Have you tried both programs, or have you always been a WizTree user? I ask because they claim on the website that WizTree is 46x faster than WinDirStat and I'm curious if it's true.
WizTree reads the Master File Table (MFT) directly to find files and folders (like voidtools Everything does), which is why it's a lot faster than WinDirStat.
I have always been a WizTree user, so unfortunately, I cannot confirm whether their claim is true. I can say, however, that WizTree is pretty fast, even if I don't know how it compares to other programs. For example, when I open the program and I begin a scan, it only takes about 5 seconds for it to scan my main 500GB Windows SSD.
That is indeed very fast. I also have a 500GB SSD, and WinDirStat takes significantly longer (closer to a minute, or maybe more). Seems like it's time I switched. :)