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My Favourite Mac Apps · What's on my MacBook Pro?

2020-05-05 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali, Ali Abdaal (channel) · recording, 22:19 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: YouTube, writing online and creators) · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Sponsor segment present

Ali tours the Mac apps he uses in 2020 in five groups: Alfred and Moom to cut the time between thought and action, a toolbox of note-taking apps, four essentials (Things 3, Superhuman, Fantastical, Google Drive), chat apps used from the laptop, and his content-creation tools.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The five categories of apps and the intro

  • ★★★ Alfred, a replacement for the Mac's Spotlight search, is by far Ali's most important Mac app, the one he cannot live without. — 00:00:29 · Alfred, MacBook

00:00:35 — The lubricating jelly: Alfred and Moom

  • ★★★ Ali does not waste time moving the mouse and clicking, which he calls a total waste of time: he uses Alfred to find files, open apps and search Google. — 00:00:58 · Alfred, keyboard navigation
  • ★★ Since getting his MacBook on 21 August 2018, Ali has used Alfred 20,830 times, 33.5 times a day on average; on one busy day two weeks earlier, 201 times. — 00:02:01 · Alfred, MacBook
  • ★★★ A big part of productivity on a computer, Ali says, is minimising the time between thinking you want to do something and it being done. — 00:02:30 · Alfred, keyboard navigation

  • ★★ Ali calls Alfred the key "lubricating jelly" that makes using his Mac infinitely smoother; it is always the first thing he installs on a new computer. — 00:02:30 · Alfred

    “Alfred is like the key lubricating jelly”

  • ★★ Ali recommends Moom, which snaps windows to the sides of the screen by dragging or by keyboard shortcut. — 00:03:04 · Safari, Notion

00:03:55 — The note-taking toolbox: why so many apps, Notion and Roam Research

  • ★★★ Ali sees his note-taking apps as a toolbox: like a professional carpenter's many screwdrivers, each of his five active note-taking apps serves a slightly different purpose. — 00:04:03

    “these apps are all just a toolbox”

  • ★★ Notion, one of Ali's favourite apps of all time, is mainly his project-management tool: video schedules, online classes, his website, book reviews; he has made five YouTube videos about it. — 00:04:47 · Notion, Workflow series, Nebula, YouTube

  • ★★ Ali started using Roam Research about six weeks before this video, in late March 2020. — 00:05:23 · Roam Research
  • ★★★ Roam Research is the app Ali uses for thinking: he writes daily notes and links them with double square brackets into a graph, since Roam tries to replicate how the brain links knowledge. — 00:05:52 · Roam Research
  • ★★ For a detailed look at how he uses Roam Research, Ali points to about six videos in his Workflow series on Nebula. — 00:06:40 · Roam Research, Workflow series, Nebula
  • ★★ Ali's Workflow series on Nebula, where he takes viewers through how he uses his productivity apps, has about 15 videos. — 00:07:09 · Workflow series, Nebula
  • ★★ Ali puts his more detailed, niche app videos on Nebula, because on YouTube he likes to appeal to a wider audience. — 00:07:09 · Nebula, YouTube, Workflow series

00:07:20 — CuriosityStream sponsor read and Nebula

00:08:05 — Evernote, Drafts, Notability, Bear and Ulysses

  • ★★★ Ali still uses Evernote: no app handles everything you throw at it as well, and it is the long-term memory of his second brain. — 00:08:08 · Evernote, second brain
  • ★★ Ali drops documents, letters, receipts, images and bookmarks into an Evernote inbox and every couple of months sorts them into notebooks. — 00:08:33 · Evernote
  • ★★ Ali uses Drafts for notes in the moment because Notion is slow to load on iOS, Roam Research has no real iOS app yet and Evernote is slow and bloated. — 00:09:02 · Drafts, Notion, Roam Research, Evernote
  • ★★★ Drafts is Ali's quick-capture tool: he dictates notes into it from his Apple Watch, say while listening to a podcast in the car, and later moves them to Evernote, Notion or Roam Research. — 00:09:27 · Drafts, Apple Watch, Evernote, Notion, Roam Research
  • ★★ Ali calls Notability the best app for handwritten note-taking; he uses it mostly on the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. — 00:09:56 · Notability, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil
  • ★★ Ali says he will at some point compare Notability and GoodNotes, though he basically prefers Notability. — 00:09:56 · Notability, GoodNotes
  • ★★ Drafts has replaced Bear for Ali, and since starting Roam Research he has mostly stopped using Ulysses, which cannot easily link notes; he rarely uses either now. — 00:10:54 · Drafts, Roam Research
  • ★★★ Ali names four essentials everyone needs to get things done: a to-do list manager, an email client, a file system and a calendar. — 00:10:54

00:11:11 — The four essentials: Things 3, Superhuman, Fantastical and Google Drive

  • ★★★ After experimenting with many to-do apps over the years, Ali keeps going back to Things 3, one of the most beautifully designed apps he has ever used. — 00:11:23 · Things 3
  • ★★ Liberty Medics, which Ali is working on, is one of the projects in his Things 3 to-do app, next to a medical application guide. — 00:11:53 · Things 3
  • ★★★ Ali drops to-dos into his Things 3 inbox by hotkey without deciding where they go, and once a day, usually in the morning, sorts the inbox into projects. — 00:12:33 · Things 3
  • ★★ Each day Ali marks as Today only what he absolutely must get done; when that is finished he works from his Anytime list, since most of his tasks have no deadline. — 00:13:02 · Things 3
  • ★★ Ali says it does not really matter which to-do list app you use as long as you have one; he has tried Todoist, and thinks OmniFocus a bit too much. — 00:13:02
  • ★★ Superhuman, a Gmail client, costs $30 a month; Ali says it is worth it for him because he spends a lot of time on email and it is by far the fastest he has used. — 00:13:45
  • ★★ Any email client will do, Ali says: you can easily get by with Gmail in Safari or Chrome, Spark Mail or Outlook. — 00:13:45 · Safari
  • ★★ Ali has used the calendar app Fantastical for years for its natural language processing; it is a bit expensive, but he has no qualms paying for apps that improve his life. — 00:14:14
  • ★★ Ali's entire life is on Google Drive, about four terabytes of it, and he shares a Google Drive business account with his team. (hedged) — 00:15:05 · Google Drive
  • ★★ Everyone needs some cloud storage, Ali says, so that a broken or stolen computer does not take everything important with it; he has tried Dropbox and prefers Google Drive, but which service you use does not matter. — 00:15:34 · Google Drive
  • ★★ Replying to messages from his phone is not productive for Ali: he types at 150 words per minute on his laptop but about 50 on his phone. — 00:15:34 · MacBook, iPhone

00:15:42 — The productive socialising suite: WhatsApp Web, Messages, Slack and Discord

  • ★★★ Ali is amazed how many people do not know about WhatsApp Web: replying from the computer, he says, lets you quadruple the number of people you can answer in a given time. (overstated) — 00:16:03 · WhatsApp
  • ★★ Ali never replies to iMessages from his phone when at his desk; replying from the Mac is one of the main reasons he loves the Apple ecosystem. — 00:16:33 · Apple
  • ★★ Ali uses Slack to chat with his team members Angus, Christian and Liz and to keep track of their projects. — 00:16:54 · Slack, Angus, Christian
  • ★★ Ali recommends joining two public Slack groups: Forte Labs, run by Tiago Forte, whose Building a Second Brain course he calls very good, and Khe Hy's Rad Reads. (hedged) — 00:17:23 · Slack, Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain
  • ★ Ali's Slack groups also include Standard, his YouTube agency, Pretty Okay YouTubers, a group of other YouTubers, and the A Team, his squad. — 00:17:53 · Slack, YouTube
  • ★★ Ali's Discord server for his fans had far too many people to keep up with, and he never logged in, as he dislikes how the app works. — 00:17:53
  • ★★ Ali prefers Slack to Discord, which has no threaded replies: Discord feels like an app for kids, Slack like an app for grown-ups. — 00:17:53 · Slack
  • ★★ Ali has edited in Final Cut Pro for about three years and made a Skillshare class on it, but these days does little of his own editing. — 00:19:25 · Final Cut Pro, Skillshare classes

00:19:43 — The content creation machine: Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, ScreenFlow, Ecamm and Adobe Creative Cloud

  • ★★ Ali edits Not Overthinking, the weekly podcast with his brother, in Logic Pro, tweaking the sound and cutting out the silences. — 00:20:24 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal
  • ★ Ali is trying to get into music production and has started arranging covers of popular songs in Logic Pro. — 00:20:24
  • ★★ Ali calls ScreenFlow the best thing he has found on the Mac for screencasts, with nice zooming; he uses it for all his screencasts and tutorials. — 00:20:53 · MacBook
  • ★★ Ecamm is Ali's new favourite app for live streaming, used for his livestream with Noah Kagan; he thinks it costs $80 and is worth every penny. (hedged) — 00:20:53
  • ★ From Adobe Creative Cloud Ali mostly uses Audition, to extend soundtracks and edit audio, and dabbles with Photoshop and Illustrator. — 00:21:22

00:21:45 — Nebula plug and the video on his iPad apps

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Asked what Alfred offers over Spotlight, Ali says it is more customisable, has add-ons and, most importantly for him, lets you search Google. — creator comment · Alfred
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked why Ali prefers Evernote to Bear, the channel says Evernote handles everything you put into it better than Bear does. — creator comment · Evernote
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked how much Ali spends a month on software subscriptions, the channel answers around £100. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked why Ali prefers Things 3 to Todoist, the channel answers that it is prettier. — creator comment · Things 3

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Alfred · Drafts · Evernote · Google Drive · keyboard navigation · MacBook · Notion · Roam Research · Slack · Superhuman · Things 3

Also: People: Angus · Christian · Khe Hy · Noah Kagan · Taimur Abdaal · Thomas Frank · Tiago Forte

Projects: Not Overthinking · Skillshare classes · Workflow series

Works: Building a Second Brain

Organizations: Apple · Forte Labs · Liberty Medics · Nebula · Rad Reads · Standard · YouTube

Concepts: quick capture · second brain

Products: Adobe Audition · Adobe Creative Cloud · Adobe Illustrator · Adobe Photoshop · Android · Apple Pencil · Apple Watch · Bear · Discord · Dropbox · Ecamm · Fantastical · Final Cut Pro · Gmail · GoodNotes · Google Chrome · iMessage · iPad Pro · iPhone · Logic Pro · Microsoft Outlook · Moom · Notability · OmniFocus · Safari · ScreenFlow · Skype · Spark Mail · Spotlight · Todoist · Ulysses · WhatsApp · Zoom

Also centred on Superhuman: What's on my iPhone - Favourite iPhone Apps ft. @KharmaMedic

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