Obsidian, Ulysses, OmniOutliner, Reminders, Apple Notes, Calendar
→ OmniFocus + Calendar. Everything goes in OF, even long notes. Synced across platforms. Recently wrote an article in it using it as an outliner.
OF is my single source of truth.
I disabled most of the fluff in OF, leaving only the Notes field visible, and Notifications when Inspecting it.
Bartender → Ice
Keyboard Maestro → KM + BTT (regular license). I disabled everything in BTT that I don’t use (snapping, Mac button row, etc., and other stuff)
Always trying to simplify,
Bartender → , after problems with Tahoe betas, I realized that I no longer needed it with Apple’s controls.
TextExpander → functionally taken by Alfred, for my use.
Everything Adobe → I just don’t need its power anymore.
I’m generally trying to use the built-in macOS apps as much as possible.
Relatable. I use Roam myself, and find great value in working/thinking in “focused blocks”. I read about this concept some time ago and it has worked well for me.
Not for quite a while, I think. My daily drivers and my ‘key’ apps for specific tasks have all, as far as I can think, remained the same.
Oh, there was a brief dalliance back to Lightroom for some photo editing, but PhotoLab 9 has put paid to that. Speaking of which. PhotoLab 9 has two new features which do a good enough job to cover for the paid features of Lightroom I have been using for specific tasks. Time to poke the bear again and run Lightroom for the Library module only and not pay Adobe a cent for it.
I’ve dropped a lot of tools with the new OSs, as I usually do to test Apple’s updates. However, this time it’s sticking much longer than most years!
I’m currently trialing Reminders instead of Omnifocus and managing tasks in combination with Calendar. One of the main reasons for this was the Watch, as Omnifocus would never sync and I often need to use it without cellular, and this became more and more frustrating in time as I couldn’t even use it for groceries (as there is no cell signal in my supermarket). Reminders syncs perfectly every time and all my tasks are there without needing to sync for a couple of minutes every time I open the app.
I also started using Notes again instead of markdown files as I need multimedia in my notes. I am really impressed by the scanning and handwriting features, and would never go back to markdown now.
I have moved my personal email to Apple servers and use Mail, but continue with Superhuman for work. The main reason was that I wanted to use a custom domain with all my family email accounts, and didn’t want to pay Google for 4x Workspace accounts. I am happy with Mail for personal use and like the improvements in the new OSs.
I have also gone from Notion to Craft for creation as I love the new version of Craft and qualify for the free educational license. I really like the native look and feel and prefer it on the Mac to Notion in particular.
I used to really like Bartender, but I have no idea why their development has become so sluggish or why they didn’t use the entire beta period to prepare for Tahoe.
Not fully switched but currently trialing 1Password > Passwords App. I had already done that in spring but abandoned The Passwords app for the lag of password history which got me into inconveniences a couple of times … with that feature being available in OS26 I’m giving it another try … but so far I’ve managed to navigate myself into a mess of passwords and/or OTP passwords in either app
I’m sad to report that the apps I’ve switched to are Microsoft apps: Outlook, Teams, Office. Not great, not terrible. But at this point I think I could very well be using a Windows machine for work.
Outlook to Apple Mail - Legacy Outlook is finally being retired, so no more Applescript with Outlook.
DevonThink to Finder + Markedit for Project support material, Meeting Notes & Reference material. Easier management of files and simpler Hookmark integration. Still use it for a general purpose filing cabinet, just less so than before. Probably won’t resub up when the license expires. Haven’t decided what to replace it with.
Forklift to Finder - Tahoe bug related, but I have so many apps and tweaks installed for MacOS that Finder is plenty capable at this point
Typinator to TextBlaze - not strictly speaking better, but its cross platform and collaborative, so my company uses it for AI prompts anyway, so I may as well stick with it for other text expansion stuff
, after problems with Tahoe betas, I realized that I no longer needed it with Apple’s controls.