My 2022 Productivity stack of Mac Apps (Part One)
Everyone around me who truly knows me knows that I’m a sucker for new and shiny apps. I’ve always tried the latest ones and have an opinionated take on them. I also am known to be pretty productivity-obsessed and a digital-control freak.
And so this post was inspired by numerous requests from friends and colleagues asking me to list the top apps I use and recommend. After finally starting my writing journey on Medium, it’s only fair to share my app stack with the world.
Below is every one of the top apps I use on my M1 Pro. The ones I’ve listed are the ones that have stayed in my Dock for a very long time. Note that your mileage might vary, but I think everyone reading this wants to improve their productivity, and chances are you also fall in the knowledge worker zone like me.
First off — here is my current dock:
The apps listed below have been sorted by the amount of time I spend with them daily:
- Craft.do
- Superhuman
- Things3
- Cron
- Day One
- 1password
- Evernote
- Drafts
- Ulysses
- Acapela
Craft.do
In summary:
Today I renewed my annual subscription to this app without any hesitation. Craft has completely changed the way I write and plan my day. What more can I say?
Cost: $60 per year / see here for more.
What works for me:
- It is gorgeous to use
- Completely native design for both macOS and iOS for a satisfying experience
- The sync between sessions and devices is impeccable (no data loss after a year of use) + it works offline smoothly, so there is zero lag in getting thoughts to paper
- Block-based writing and an outliner kind of format, so no lag to start using the app
- A mature document sharing implementation via secret links this is one of the best sharing features any writing app provides, period
- In-built daily notes feature for rapid bullet journaling
- The option to click into any line and add more notes makes it super quick and easy to organise thoughts
- The / menu implementation enables quickly adding time and dates for my interstitial journaling needs
- At the end of the workday, with one click, I send the day’s notes into my Day One journal
- An active developer and fan community engage on Slack with regular updates and a semi-public roadmap — also, the development pace is quite good and responsive to user feedback
What can improve:
- There is no single workspace to view all my tasks across pages (I know Craft is a writing app and not a Todo app, but I think through writing, so the notes app is the perfect place to generate and close off tasks — on a side note, I use Noteplan3 as a hack and frequently will export all Craft notes into standard Markdown and import into Noteplan3 allowing me to view all todos and tick them off from the relevant page in Craft)
- Pinned tabs (or notes) — If I ever close Craft, I lose my open pages, so I would love the ability to pin some critical pages I can immediately work on the next time I open the app
- Embedded mentions — I would love the ability to see where some blocks or tasks have been referenced in other notes (I think Roam Research’s implementation of this feature is the most valuable and well-done)
- Knowledge graph — this is low on my list of wants, but it will be good to stop having to export and open the notes in Obsidian to get a bird’s eye view of all my notes (Obsidian has the best implementation of the Knowledge Graph feature IMHO)
Superhuman
In summary:
Superhuman changed the way I thought about using email. It made me stop hating processing my email every day, and the best part about it is that it’s more valuable to me the lesser I use it.
Cost: $30 per month / get in touch if you need an invite or need help getting started.
What works for me:
- Modern and well-designed UX
- Workflow optimised for keyboard shortcuts which firm up in muscle memory pretty quickly
- Fastest email experience ever made
- Dramatically speeds up email triage with the keyboard shortcuts mentioned above
- Smooth email read-tracking without any complicated setup
- Emails are easy to snooze and show up at the right time
- Enables effortless follow-up to sent emails which never got replies on time — Following up is truly a superpower
- Did I mention shortcuts?
- Hitting Inbox Zero has never been more manageable — this is gamified too!!!
What can improve:
- It would be great if deep links to specific emails which I paste into Craft tasks would open the app instead of routing through the browser window each time — this is a bit annoying
- Contextual actions — I would love to export emails to Craft or Things3 without needing to go through the /Copy Link command palette workaround
- Notes — An ability to attach a note (For My Eyes Only) to an email which I can quickly reference to be brought up to speed on what was the context of the email would be brilliant
Things3
In summary:
The OG todo app on Mac platforms, Things3, was something I dreamed about a lot while being a loyal Todoist pro user for three years. When I finally switched to the Mac platform, I couldn’t stay away much longer and took the plunge. No regrets since that moment three years ago.
Cost: You pay once for each platform (I don’t use the iPad version).
What works for me:
- A thoughtful UX experience — this is the Todo app with the best looks
- Friction-free usage — the magic + button makes adding tasks to the correct sections a breeze
- Sync is super reliable
- No stressful colours if Today’s tasks roll over into Tomorrow (this was frequently a problem I had with Todoist)
- Matching Apple Watch complications makes it easy to tick tasks off and add to the list via Siri voice commands
- The ability to add enhanced notes for each task as a feature added in the past twelve months, and it has improved the usability as the notes support markdown
What can improve:
- Natural language parsing of tasks is something I still miss from Todoist, which did it best — it would be a killer addition to Things3 (or the rumoured Things4)
- Tasks added in the Things3 watch complication go straight to the inbox — it would be great if I could access my Inbox instead of only seeing the Today view (I currently need to star the task as soon as I add it to Today)
And there you have it — my top three recommended apps. In the next post, I’ll round up the top ten — read on for part two.
