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My Favourite MacBook Apps of All Time

2023-02-22 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali · recording, 17:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Sponsor segment present

Ali tours the 32 Mac apps he installed on a fresh M2 Mac mini, in six groups: productivity (Alfred, Moom, Amphetamine, CleanShot, Rize), life organisation (Things, Fantastical, Superhuman, Dashlane, SigmaOS), personal life (Day One, Texts, Spotify), research and writing (Obsidian, Scrivener, Zotero, Kindle, Chrome, Surfshark), creative work and the apps his team runs the business on.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Intro: 32 apps used almost daily, on a freshly installed M2 Mac mini

  • ★★ Ali recently got the M2 Mac mini and installed it fresh; the only apps on it are the ones he genuinely needed in the week since. — 00:00:00 · Mac mini
  • ★★ Ali installs Alfred on every Mac he uses: it is essentially a replacement for the Mac's Spotlight search. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Ali calls opening apps by dragging the mouse to the dock a total waste of time: it wastes several seconds every time. — 00:00:29 · keyboard navigation
  • ★ Ali says people interact with their computer about 6,000 times a day, so using the mouse to click wastes a lot of time. (hedged) — 00:00:29

00:00:32 — Part one, five productivity apps: Alfred, Moom, Amphetamine, CleanShot, Rize

  • ★ The Alfred feature Ali uses most is searching Google straight from it, which the Mac's built-in Spotlight cannot do. — 00:01:31
  • ★★ Ali always installs Moom, which snaps windows to different sides of the screen with a keyboard shortcut; he often works in split screen. — 00:01:31
  • ★ Amphetamine, a Mac menu-bar app, keeps the Mac awake for as long as needed, which Ali finds helpful while rendering a file in Final Cut. — 00:02:14 · Final Cut Pro
  • ★★ Ali calls CleanShot a fantastic way of taking screenshots and screen recordings. — 00:02:44
  • ★★ Rize is an automatic time tracker of the apps and websites you use; Ali has used it since November 2021 to see how much time goes on video calls, writing, project management or YouTube. — 00:03:52
  • ★ During a Rize focus session, if Ali does something that does not look like focus, such as going on YouTube, the app notifies him that he seems distracted. — 00:04:21
  • ★★ Ali manages his to-do list in Things, which he calls amazing. — 00:04:53 · Things 3
  • ★ Ali says he will make a whole video on the to-do list app Things another time. — 00:04:53 · Things 3

00:05:10 — Part two, five apps to organise my life: Things, Fantastical, Superhuman, Dashlane, SigmaOS

  • ★★ Every morning Ali plans his day from the Anytime list in Things, which shows all his to-dos by project, and picks which ones to do today. — 00:05:22 · Things 3
  • ★★ Ali has used Fantastical for his calendar since about 2015; he likes its natural language processing for creating events. — 00:05:52
  • ★★ Superhuman has been Ali's email client since around 2019, connected to his personal and work Gmail; its shortcuts make email faster and more pleasant than the Gmail app or a browser. (hedged) — 00:06:14
  • ★ Ali has managed all his passwords in Dashlane for years. — 00:06:14
  • ★★ Ali often has dozens of tabs open; in the browser SigmaOS he sorts them into workspaces such as life design, health, relationships and his book. — 00:06:43
  • ★★ Ali goes back and forth between Chrome and SigmaOS as his default browser: SigmaOS gets constant cutting-edge updates but is still a little buggy, so he cannot yet drop Chrome. — 00:07:12
  • ★★ Ali spends a lot of time in Google Docs these days because his book is in the editing stage. — 00:07:12 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:07:52 — Sponsor read: JetBrains Academy

00:09:32 — Part three, three apps for my personal life: Day One, Texts, Spotify

  • ★★ Ali has journaled on and off since 2014 and calls Day One by far the best journaling app he has found; he has it on his Mac, iPhone and iPad. — 00:09:35 · Day One
  • ★★ When Ali journals on paper, he later photographs the pages on his iPhone and adds them to Day One, so he has both a digital and an analogue journal. — 00:09:35 · Day One
  • ★★ Ali's Day One entry of 2 February 2018 records a bloodbath day in crypto: Bitcoin crashed to around 6K and he sold five Bitcoin at 6,450. — 00:10:04 · Day One
  • ★★ On 2 February 2022 Ali, Angus and Gordon drove to Gymshark HQ to meet Steve Hewitt, Gymshark's executive chairman, who ran a business planning session for them. — 00:10:04 · Angus, Gymshark
  • ★★ Ali's messaging app Texts brings WhatsApp, iMessage and Twitter DMs together and works like Superhuman for messages: archiving, inbox zero and keyboard shortcuts. — 00:10:52 · WhatsApp
  • ★ Ali would love to subscribe to Apple Music, but finds Spotify a way better app all round. — 00:10:52 · Spotify
  • ★★ Ali uses Obsidian for personal note-taking and knowledge management, his personal second brain, and has used it a lot to research and write his book. — 00:11:21 · second brain, Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:11:27 — Part four, six apps for research and writing: Obsidian, Scrivener, Zotero, Kindle, Chrome, Surfshark VPN

  • ★★ Scrivener is designed for writing books; Ali wrote the first drafts of his book in it and likes that it tracks the manuscript's total and daily word counts for targets. — 00:11:58 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali uses Zotero for reference management of the scientific papers he reads. — 00:11:58
  • ★★ Ali highlights scientific papers in Zotero and its Obsidian extension exports the highlights straight into Obsidian, making it easier to build a book outline from the research. — 00:12:27
  • ★ In the Kindle app on his Mac Ali can screenshot or copy passages straight into Obsidian, Notion, ClickUp or Google Docs. — 00:12:57 · Kindle, Notion
  • ★ Ali mainly uses Surfshark VPN with Sci-Hub, which connects with Zotero so he can get papers' PDFs for free. — 00:13:18
  • ★ Surfshark VPN is the best VPN Ali has found; in Bali a few months earlier it unblocked websites his hotel had blocked. — 00:13:18

00:13:40 — Part five, seven apps for creative work: ScreenFlow, Final Cut, Adobe Creative Cloud, Streamlabs Desktop, Figma

  • ★★ Ali records his screen with ScreenFlow, including his live Part-Time YouTuber Academy sessions, so the edited recordings have high-quality screen video instead of the Zoom recording. — 00:13:47 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Zoom
  • ★★ Final Cut is Ali's video editing app of choice, though his team now does most of his video editing. — 00:13:47 · Final Cut Pro
  • ★★ Ali pirated Adobe software as a kid; his company now pays for Adobe Creative Cloud for basically the whole team, which he sees as paying back what he owes Adobe. — 00:14:44
  • ★ Ali's team makes many thumbnails in Canva and brings them into Photoshop when one needs something fancier. — 00:14:44
  • ★ Ali uses Lightroom Classic for going through loads of photos from an SD card, such as a cousin's wedding in Pakistan. — 00:14:44 · Pakistan, Adobe Lightroom
  • ★ For touching up a photo for Instagram or a thumbnail on his phone or iPad, Ali uses Lightroom, the mobile version, which syncs across devices. — 00:15:13 · Adobe Lightroom
  • ★ Ali has been dabbling with more streaming recently and streams with Streamlabs Desktop. — 00:15:43
  • ★ Ali's team designs in Figma, including landing pages and thumbnails for the Part-Time YouTuber Academy and thumbnail mood boards. — 00:15:43 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali's team uses Notion for almost everything in the business. — 00:15:43 · Notion

00:16:06 — Part six, seven apps that help me run my business: Notion, ClickUp, 1Password, Slack, Zoom, Loom, Miro

  • ★★ Ali's team recently started using ClickUp to track its video production pipeline: less flexible than Notion but better suited to project management. — 00:16:12 · Notion
  • ★ Ali's team uses 1Password as its password manager and Slack to communicate. — 00:16:41 · Slack
  • ★★ Ali's team often records a Loom instead of having a meeting: someone who needs his sign-off sends a Loom he can watch at double speed on his own time. — 00:16:41
  • ★ Ali's team brainstorms on Miro as an interactive whiteboard, for example on the problems people have with their YouTube channels for the Part-Time YouTuber Academy. — 00:17:10 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali corrects the video: SigmaOS is a WebKit-based browser compatible with Chrome extensions, not a Chromium browser. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Alfred · Day One · Obsidian · Things 3

Also: People: Angus · Gordon · Steve Hewitt

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Tech Club

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Handbook of Positive Emotions

Organizations: Gymshark · Sci-Hub

Concepts: keyboard navigation · personal knowledge management · second brain

Places: Bali · Pakistan

Products: 1Password · Adobe Creative Cloud · Adobe Lightroom · Adobe Lightroom Classic · Adobe Photoshop · Amphetamine · Apple Music · Bitcoin · Canva · CleanShot · ClickUp · Dashlane · Fantastical · Figma · Final Cut Pro · Gmail · Google Chrome · Google Docs · iMessage · Kindle · Loom · Mac mini · Miro · Moom · Notion · Rize · ScreenFlow · Scrivener · SigmaOS · Slack · Spotify · Spotlight · Streamlabs Desktop · Superhuman · Surfshark VPN · Texts · WhatsApp · Zoom · Zotero

Also centred on Alfred: Monthly Favourites #2 - Ali Abdaal · My Favourite Mac Apps - What's on my Macbook Pro · How I Manage my Time as a Doctor + YouTuber - 9 Time Management Tips · My Favourite Mac Apps · What's on my MacBook Pro? · How I Type REALLY Fast (156 Words per Minute) · My Complete Productivity System

Also centred on Obsidian: 6 MacBook apps you probably haven't heard of #shorts · My Productive Phone Setup

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