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Schlagwort: Mail

  • State of the Apps – 2024 Edition

    In January of this year, for the first time I published an overview of crucial apps that my professional life couldn’t function without. Inspiration stemmed from the ‚State of the Apps‘ segments within the Cortex podcast, hosted by CGP Grey and Myke Hurley, a title I found fitting to take up. This year, I managed to get a head start. In the following, I will showcase to you the apps I use spanning various domains including browsing, mail, task management, writing/thinking/note-taking, research, file and literature management, reading, and more.

    Many of the apps presented here are also integrated with a Setapp subscription. I often only discovered these apps because I was browsing for new apps on Setapp. I have marked the apps with an *. I have been a Setapp customer for many years and find the model very convincing: For a monthly fee of currently 8.99 $ with annual payment, you get access to dozens of high-quality apps, including BetterTouchTool, CleanShot X, Ulysses, CleanMyMac X, or Spark Mail. If you want to try out Setapp, you can do so via this link and support me in my work, as I will then receive a small commission from Setapp without it becoming more expensive for you.

    Browsing

    In last year’s edition, Arc had freshly catapulted into the market and I gave it a chance. It was enticing: instead of tabs at the top of the screen, you get a sidebar. ‚Spaces‘ to segregate different aspects of life. And not least, the addition of Easels and Boosts to maximize browsing experience. A year on, I can vouch that Arc remains my go-to browser. Despite this endorsement, not all features have stuck. Let me explain.

    Take ‚Boost‘, the feature that allows you to customize websites to your preferences; it’s a feature that soon lost its lustre for me. I simply had no idea what to do with it. ‚Easels‘ have also seen seldom use on my part: essentially whiteboards where you can collect content from various websites. Ideally, you’d set up collections for individual projects to have all the information in one place, like vacation-planning. My issue? I have other tools for this purpose (such as Devonthink) that are more adept. The solitary ‚Easel‘ I operate is a reading list for the year with corresponding links to the books.

    So, why still Arc? In a nutshell, it’s simply a phenomenal browser. ‚Spaces‘ have become an irreplaceable part of my workflow. Moreover, the division in permanent and temporary tabs has become critical. Opening a browser filled with tabs from four days ago? A nightmare. Arc archives them after a preset duration (12 hours for me). And anything you need longer can be moved to the ‚Pinned Tabs‘ section. Thus, the default setting is not ‚keep‘ but ‚delete‘, greatly facilitating my work. How I would love this feature in Obsidian!

    Then, the Arc team recently added some extremely thoughtful AI features, which are quite intriguing. For instance, automatic naming of tabs that give an instantaneous idea about the content or having the option to ask the AI questions about a page’s content.

    In conclusion: Arc has firmly established itself. It might be that not all initial ideas have withstood the test of time, but overall, it’s a truly robust package.

    E-Mail

    I started the year on Apple Mail. My reason was straightforward: I don’t need fancy features when it comes to email. What I want is to work with my emails effectively, reliably, and most crucially, privacy-preserving. In this context, I have adopted a 100% no-nonsense approach. This made using Apple Mail quite logical due to its local storage and, in general, reliable functionality.

    However, Apple decided to throw a spanner in the works not too long ago: they stopped allowing Mail Extensions. These were small third-party add-ons that enhanced the functionality of Mail. Though they were limited earlier, with the arrival of macOS Sonoma, they were abolished altogether. This meant a sad goodbye to my favoured little tool named MsgFiler. It had a simple but powerful feature that allowed me to easily file emails into folders using the keyboard – a serious game-changer in my email management routine. The loss of such an essential feature, as you may imagine, was more than a minor inconvenience.

    It was at this juncture that I remembered MailMate. MailMate is an email application developed by an indie developer, crafted for power-users, and embodies the epitome of a ‚Mac-assed Mac app‚. The only reason I had stopped using it was to test the new features in Apple Mail two years ago, and somehow I ended up sticking around. Now it’s MailMate again, and returning feels like ‚coming home‘, much like it did with DevonThink or OmniFocus. Of course, it comes with a keyboard shortcut with which I can easily specify the folder an email should be moved to. Home, sweet home indeed!

    To Do Management

    Onto task management! With so many projects and tasks under my belt, I need an app that can keep pace. Between being a research associate, a PhD student in Migration Studies, managing this blog, and being a dad, it’s quite a juggle. Under this category, too, I’ve found myself gravitating back towards trusted solutions; in this case, OmniFocus.

    Back in April 2022, I penned a farewell article to OmniFocus as it left something to be desired. Recent times, however, heralded my return (On the value of flip-flopping). Mainly, I had issues with the design decisions in the beta version of OmniFocus 4. As we speak, that fresh version hasn’t landed yet, but I find myself happily working with OmniFocus 3 once again. What I appreciate most is its effortless ability to handle my considerable requirements and reaffirm the feeling that no task is forgotten. Of course, I accept the possibility of OmniFocus 4 perhaps not living up to the job. But at the very least, I know now that alternatives like Reminders et al. will not cut it either and come with their own shortcomings.

    For the time being, OmniFocus 3 forms the crux of my contentment – regardless of its somewhat outdated look. However, its performance outweighs the aesthetics, making it perfect for my needs.

    Writing, Thinking, and Note-Taking

    In this regard absolutely nothing has changed. Obsidian shines as the application I use most frequently for essentially anything related to writing. From jotting down quick notes to drafting my doctoral dissertation – it all takes place within the realm of Obsidian. Currently, I’m using the Minimal Theme, occasionally switching color tones, simply to keep things fresh. This steadfast cornerstone of my workflow remains predictably consistent and stable, just as any good tool should. In the realm of digital note-taking and writing, Obsidian is indeed my trusted companion.

    Research

    A new entrant since my last round-up, and I can’t imagine why it didn’t form part of it then: research. After all, it forms a substantial part of my day-to-day work-life, being a PhD candidate and a research associate in a project. Obsidian takes care of anything writing-related. However, quite a bit precedes the penning down phase!

    Firstly, MacWhisper: a discovery that made it to my ‚best of the year‘ list and ranks high as one of the finest AI applicabilities. Essentially a GUI for Open Whisper with a few additional features, MacWhisper has been a game-changer by automating the transcription of my interviews. Prior to this, much to my chagrin, I had to manage this task manually, considering outsourcing transcription services was financially off-table for me. For anyone who has attempted to transcribe a one-hour interview, they would know the progress we are talking about here!

    PDF Expert has remained my go-to PDF reader for years. I did try various other contenders, including PDF Viewer, PDF Pen, Highlights and several more – each with its own merits. Yet, time and again, I find myself returning to PDF Expert. Probably because it’s a robustly developed application that always works and steers clear of unnecessary trouble.

    Next comes a highly specialised instrument: MaxQDA. It’s an app designed specifically for qualitative text data analysis and is widely utilized within fields like Social Sciences, Sociology, and the Humanities. For me, this software is an incredibly important research tool. Having said that, I’d be thrilled to find a decent non-commercial solution for it. Any leads in this direction would be truly welcome!

    Another serendipitous find on SetApp is TypingMind*. Essentially, it is a Chat-GPT ‚GUI on steroids‘. It allows you to predetermine certain roles, along with the setting up of several other elements like output format or tone. Although I don’t use Chat-GPT extensively just yet, I’m actively trying to integrate it more into my daily workflow. So far, I find it the most suitable for writing up abstracts and similar summaries. The future of AI-assisted writing is intriguing, to say the least!

    TypingMind offers a lot of usability enhancements for dealing with Chat-GPT

    File Management

    No change from last year on this front: DevonThink continues to do what it does brilliantly well. A classic case of ‚If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it‘, it persists as a reliable tool in my digital toolbelt, handling my file and literature management tasks with precision and efficiency.

    Literature Management

    In the realm of literature management too, stability rules the roost and Zotero provides just that. Here again, I have zero interest in the experimentation game. Zotero’s open nature fosters a vibrant community providing solutions to every conceivable problem. Particularly noteworthy is an Alfred workflow by Chris Grieser. Working in tandem with Zotero, it extracts annotated areas from PDFs, transforming them into beautifully formatted literature notes complete with all the relevant data.

    The workflow is seamlessly rounded off by a couple of Obsidian plugins – Zotero Integration by MG Meyers and References. The former allows me to access sources from my Zotero database and directly insert them into a text in Obsidian. The latter displays a list of all the cited sources in a document which greatly aids in maintaining an overview. So here’s recognizing the power of a community-driven tool like Zotero and the plugins that make the usage experience an absolute breeze.

    Reading

    The realm of reading bifurcates into two parts for me: RSS and Read Later. For RSS reading, I’m armed with NetNewsWire for its sheer reliability and speed, not to mention its simplicity. It doesn’t get carried away with itself and focuses remarkably on its core skill set, a trait I find particularly appealing.

    Choosing the right ‚Read Later‘ app is a tad more challenging. Last year, I was all in for Matter, until the advent of the Readwise Reader that entered its public beta. I’ve discussed Readwise before and was excited by the idea of having a ‚Read Later‘ app from the same brand, uniting all functions in one place which felt like a winning endgame move.

    Long did I utilize Readwise Reader but also frequently found myself frustrated. Mainly because it tries to do too much, and in the bargain, sacrifices vital areas of clarity and speed. This led me, in the final months of the year, to Omnivore, a nod back to the NetNewsWire’s philosophy: executing the core function impeccably and nothing more.

    Omnivore is so good that it not only metaphorically blew my socks off but also made me question why I hadn’t discovered it much sooner. Its recent version’s synthetic voices for article readings is uncannily humanlike! Well, such are the ways of life. I plan to give Omnivore a comprehensive introduction in a dedicated article soon. Stay tuned!

    Everything else

    Raycast

    Indeed, there has been a changing of the guards when it comes to launchers. After years with Alfred, I’ve taken a leap and switched to the new ‚cool kid on the block,‘ Raycast. What persuaded me to make the change, you ask? It’s primarily the in-built store that tipped the scales in its favor, where Raycast extensions can be quite readily found and installed. This process was always somewhat more convoluted with Alfred. With its user-friendly interface and simplified process, Raycast has managed to firmly cement itself as my launcher of choice.

    Popclip*

    Up next is Popclip, an absolutely splendid little utility that populates a small pop-up either above or below the highlighted text, showcasing things you could do with that text. Some examples include the ability to copy, add to OmniFocus, or translate the text. These small but powerful functionalities of the tool can certainly help increase productivity while reading or writing, providing quick options to interact with the text in ways that would have previously taken more time or required additional steps. A small addition to my arsenal of tools, but an undoubtedly impactful one in improving my workflow.

    Transloader*

    Just an indispensable little tool with a single purpose: to open websites on my Mac when I’m looking at them on my iPhone on the move. Many times you want to read a page in more detail later or compare prices for a product. Transloader reminds me of this by opening the page I’ve just viewed on my Mac the next time I’m sitting in front of it. Indispensable!

    Hookmark*

    Another little helper that I use for a single purpose. Hookmark can create links for files, which you can then insert elsewhere as a click target. For example, I create links for emails that I then insert into a project note in Obsidian.

    Shimo*

    And another little tool, which I also found at SetApp. Shimo is simply a GUI for VPNs, but it saves me a bit of typing when I have to log into the VPN for my work.

    Timery

    Timery just continues to impress me. Of course, I could do my work without tracking it. However, it is a cornerstone of my approach to productivity. I try to balance the various projects in my life and also hit a certain hour mark every week in order to achieve a baseline of weekly work. And Timery helps me with that by getting out of my way. It’s just there and does its job – as it should be. With apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, I can toggle timers wherever I am. And then there is the addition of interactive widgets this year, which makes the app even more accessible. Nowadays, I interact with Timery via its widgets most of the time, be it the lock screen widget on my phone or the desktop widget on my Mac.

    Mela

    I love to cook and Mela is the perfect app to manage all my recipes. I just love everything about it: from the simple but beautiful design, to the integrated browser for importing dishes, to the ability to plan my meals in advance and write them in my calendar – Mela is just a joy!

    —
    I hope you found some inspiration here! If you would like to try Setapp now, I would be delighted if you would do so via this link. Thank you!

  • State of the Apps 2023

    Cortex by Myke Hurley and CGP Grey is one of my favorite podcasts and I eagerly look forward to each episode. Every year, in the penultimate episode of the year, they talk about the most important apps and services they currently use. And then, the always worth reading Mere Civilian also recently wrote an article under that theme. Last year, I actually wanted to do the same, but then didn’t for reasons I don’t remember. This year, however, the time has come. Which apps do I use every day? What has changed in the last year? And where do I see potential for new apps in my life? Let’s go!

    I see two trends in my app usage over the past year: on the one hand, I’ve returned to a few core apps that form the absolute backbone of my workflow. On the other hand, there was some real movement for the first time in a while. I discovered a few new apps that absolutely have the potential to be more than just brief love affairs. But one after the other.

    Note: I have been a very satisfied customer of Setapp for several years. Setapp is probably already a household name to many, but I’ll explain it briefly anyway. Setapp is basically an app subscription where you pay $9.99 a month and get access to a huge range of high quality apps. Examples are BetterTouchTool, Bartender, MarginNote, or Ulysses. I want to write another longer article on this as well. For now, it suffices to say that I mark apps I get through Setapp with a star in this post. If you feel like supporting me for my work and trying out Setapp, feel free to register via my link: Register for Setapp. I will then receive a small commission. Thank you very much!

    Browser

    For 11 1/2 months, the browser category was clearly in the first column: Apple’s default browser Safari was set. And why not? It’s a damn good browser. It’s integrated with the operating system, consumes few resources, is optimized for security and has recently added tab groups. So you can store certain websites in a group and preserve them for later. Especially when you work in different contexts, this is quite practical. Everything is fine, you might think.

    But then I got a mail from the Browser Company. This is the company behind Arc, a new browser based on Chrome. I had put myself on the waiting list for the beta a few weeks before, and now the time had come. And I have to say that I really like Arc. It’s definitely a browser for power users. Very keyboard oriented. Many good ideas. I particularily like that you can create so called Easels which basically are web canvasses to collect all kinds of website snippets in one place. Here you can see my Easel/collection for some of the books I’d like to read in 2023:

    It would lead too far, if I would explain all this here. For that I would simply refer to the page of Arc itself. Arc is certainly not for everyone, but if you like to try a new app, you should give Arc a chance. I have an invitation code here that works five times. So if you are fast enough, you can start right away: https://arc.net/gift/e560c538. All codes have already been used, sorry! There are five new codes, woohoo: https://arc.net/gift/cc0eb3fe.

    E-Mails

    Here I went the opposite way. I started the year with Mailmate, at least on the Mac. Mailmate is a damn good, very classic mail app that gets to the essentials, but does it very well. The problem is that it’s developed by a single indie developer, and the update pace isn’t terribly fast. Still, I was quite pleased. With the latest versions of macOS and iOS, however, Apple has done quite a bit for its own app Mail, including a much better search and a send-later feature. These innovations brought me back to Apple Mail, simply because it’s easier to use the same app on all platforms.

    Writing and Thinking

    Obsidian. I don’t need to say much more than that. My love for Obsidian should be known if you look around a bit on the blog here. I use Obsidian for all my work. I take notes, write texts, think in Obsidian. Both for my work as a research assistant, as a PhD student and also for the blog. I hope to write a post this year explaining my Obsidian configuration. The last update on this was quite a while ago and even though much has stayed the same, some things have changed. One important detail is that this year I moved to making Obsidian my task manager. I abandoned OmniFocus for it, as I wrote about in this article. My experiments with alternative task managers were very short-lived and eventually I ended up with Obsidian here as well. I’ll hopefully write an article about that soon as well.

    File Management

    Again, there is a simple answer and that is DevonThink. I have described the reasons in this post: My newfound love for DevonThink.

    Literature Management

    Nothing works without Zotero. Everything that is scientific literature ends up there. My library is organized in folders, so it’s very traditional. However, I have moved away from storing the PDFs in Zotero as well. They are now all in Devonthink. There, I copy the item link and add it to the respective entry in Zotero (right click on the entry > Add Attachment > Attach Link to URI) and I have a hyperlink to the file in Devonthink. I like this better because Devonthink is where my files are for me. Other applications like Zotero only use this resource by linking to it. Easy linkability is the key here.

    Reading

    I have to differentiate here. I use different apps depending on the use case. For a long time now, I no longer get my news via social media, but via RSS subscriptions. My app of choice for a long time was Reeder, but for about half a year now it’s been NetNewsWire. The reason is that I like NetNewsWire’s simple design very much and especially the RSS engine behind it is extremely good. I have subscribed to quite a few feeds and yet the updating is extremely fast.

    But that is only for receiving articles. I rarely actually read texts in NetNewsWire. Generally, I send articles I want to read to my read-later app. That was Matter for a long time. A few weeks ago, however, I finally got into the beta of Readwise Reader and here I feel I’ve arrived completely. I’ve been using Readwise (the web service) for a long time and I can’t imagine my workflow without it, because Readwise keeps everything together in the background, as you can read here: Readwise – My new Information Hub?. The Reader is a fantastic addition to my workflow, especially because it allows me to read and mark web articles. The highlights then go via Readwise directly into my Obsidian Vault. It couldn’t be easier. If you want to have a trial month, you can do so via my referral link. This will give you and me a free month.

    But then there is the not inconsiderable amount of literature that I am reading for my PhD or for work. If it’s just to get a quick impression of the usefulness of a text, I just do that with PDF Expert. I still have an old license and don’t pay any subscription fees. That’s also quite enough for me and I’ll use the app until it falls apart. But when it comes to really getting through text and making it usable for my own work, MarginNote is the app of choice. MarginNote allows me in a fairly unique way to read multiple documents, mark them up, and rearrange parts of them so that I build up a tapestry of knowledge that I can then use again for my own writing. This is something that classic PDF readers can’t do, but that I need for scientific work. This is another topic I hope to cover in the coming year. For a long time I used LiquidText for this purpose, but recently I was no longer in agreement with the direction of development and MarginNote simply fits better overall.

    For literature that I simply read for recreation, I use either the Kindle app or Apple’s own Books app. Depending on where I bought the book.

    Grab Bag

    Hookmark*

    First and foremost here is Hookmark, which until recently was just called Hook. Hookmark is a little helper, but it is very useful for me, because you can link any files with it. Most often I use it for mails. I open a mail, invoke Hookmark and copy a Markdown link to this mail. I then paste the link into a project note in Obsidian, for example, and can quickly and easily access that mail again. It’s the same principle as with the links in Zotero to files in DevonThink. I’m all about speed and simplicity. Of course, I could just search for the mail, but it’s much more convenient to click on a link in a note.

    Transloader*

    I couldn’t live without Transloader anymore. With Transloader I can open a link on my iPhone or iPad and send it to my Mac. There the link opens automatically the next time I log into my MacBook. I find that incredibly handy because I’m always thinking of things while I’m on the go or I’m searching for something on DuckDuckGo and want to take a closer look at it later. Of course, I could use DevonThink for that, or even a Readlater app. But somehow it’s all too cumbersome for me, and knowing that I’ll just see it again automatically when I sit down at my Mac is fantastic.

    Timery

    I’ve already written about Timery here and nothing has changed since then. The app is fantastic and has only gotten better with the latest update. Now there is also an app for the Apple Watch, which is very handy when you don’t have a device at hand, but a timer is still running.

    Mela

    Last but not least, an app that has nothing to do with productivity, but is all the more important for my well-being: Mela. Mela is a recipe app from Silvio Rizzi, the developer of Reeder. I love this app because it is simply a perfectly formed piece of software. You pay once and then you can import all sorts of recipes from various sources, categorize them and customize them with ease. Plus there is a special cooking mode that customizes the interface and many other conveniences. I love to cook and Mela is just the right companion for that.

    The tools fit

    I feel like I’m in a good place when it comes to apps. Over the years, I’ve been eliminating more and more construction sites in my workflow. Obsidian has certainly played the biggest part in that. In fact, the last major gap was the question of which read-later app I use. Here the answer seems to be found with Readwise Reader. I was only surprised to switch to Arc and thus a new browser. At least for now. We’ll see if this switch becomes permanent, or if I go back to Safari sooner or later. In any case, I’m looking forward to working with my tools again in 2023, because one thing is clear anyway: You have to do the work yourself, no matter how good the tools are.