All The Apps I’ve Tried So Far In 2024 And The Ones I’m Sticking Too
Choosing apps has become a deeply personal matter. For me, an ideal app needs to have a clean, uncluttered User Interface (UI), fast loading time, ease of use, and most importantly, it should not have a steep learning curve while being something I want to open up every day and have it easily accessible on my desktop.
I can safely say I have done quite a lot of ‘app hopping’ in search of that ONE app to rule them all. Spoiler alert…there isn’t one. Yes, many apps claim to be the app to “replace them all!” I have tried to stick to one app and, as you might guess, you really can’t stick to just one.
We are so spoiled for choice these days, especially since everything is at our fingertips! Literally, just download that shiny new thing and away you go. Eventually, I realised that trying new apps had become my new procrastination habit. What snapped me out of it though, were the monthly subscription costs and being on a budget, I needed to curb my monthly spending.
Once I started sticking to one app, I began to discover so many things that I never knew existed. Being surprised almost daily has kept me interested in the app and I’ve been enjoying it a lot more. I’ll reveal what that app is very soon, but let’s begin with the ones I tried and left:
Taskade — is an AI-powered productivity platform to help users manage projects and tasks. I see them constantly updating it, their main focus seems to be on AI and the agents to assist you. I tried it for about a month before feeling a bit overwhelmed with wondering what kind of AI chatbots to add and what knowledge base to feed them. Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the interface (UI) and I am a sucker for a nice clean interface.
Notion — oh Notion, I have had an on-again and off-again relationship with Notion. Each time I go back to it, I think yes, this time I will customise it to perfectly help with everything I need to do. Only to customise it to the point where I just didn’t go back to it. I don’t know why Notion does this, why can’t I just be happy with it? So, I leave and jump over to ClickUp.
ClickUp — is an all-in-one platform that is supposed to be “the app to rule them all” or something rather like that. It was wonderful. Straightforward. And it was pretty easy to get set up with adding various workspaces, folders and so on. I even got excited for their 3.0 to be released only it ended up being a very long wait and by the time it arrived, I was already ready to move on. And so, I went back to Notion.
Once the on-again relationship ended with Notion, the next few apps were:
Anytype: a new generation of notes and knowledge management tool that enables users to organise their thoughts, ideas, and projects in a flexible and customisable way. It ended up being too confusing with the terminology they used and so onto a new app I went!
Capacities: is much like Anytype and Notion. At first, I wasn’t sure how to use Capacities because they also used different terms for how to set things up. After reading some posts and watching some YouTube videos, I got a grasp on it and next thing I know, I was actually using it and did enjoy it, but…I didn’t stay much longer because I couldn’t justify the monthly fee of AUD 18 per month.
Tana: yes, another note-taking app with AI to also help with your productivity, manage tasks, run your business and so on with things like super tags, their own AI. I got early access after I joined their waitlist, but the moment I received access, I was lost. It comes with a steep learning curve and so I didn’t stick around. However, I did try again after watching some tutorials and soon after they became open to the public but, again I didn’t want to end up with another subscription fee.
Next were a whirlwind of trying these apps: Super Notes, Albus.org, Craft and Superlist.
Only to return back to Obsidian.
Because it had been quite some time since I had used Obsidian, there have been many updates and it’s been absolutely great to use. It’s the app that keeps on giving, especially when I discover new plugins to try which seems to satisfy me from “app hopping” because I can try it and if I don’t like it, uninstall it and try another one. So far, it’s been working in building out the perfect app for me. It has everything I need and that’s what I have been searching for in these other apps.
What I love most about Obsidian is how I can have multiple windows open and that I can arrange them in such a way to help me get things done. For example, on the right, I have my tasks and below it my daily notes. I like to capture whatever comes to mind and record it. Then in the middle, I have two windows open, on the left my ‘Content Bank’ and on the right is where I am writing this very story.
Then more to the left is a calendar and the list of folders. I’m using a theme called Boarders. I will talk about the plugins I use another time otherwise this already too long post will end up being way too long.
Lastly, the other apps I’ve finally settled on for 2024 are:
Structured — to keep me nice and organised.
Raycast — I will write a separate post on, I’ve only just started using it and so far it’s been great.
And that’s it! Obsidian, Structured and Raycast are the only three apps I need to help manage my tasks and projects for the rest of 2024 to run my little studio.
What are your apps of choice?
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