Last updated June 2026

App Defaults

Inspired by Luke Harris and Robb Knight's App Defaults project, but admittedly more verbose!

📬 Communication

Mail Server: Purelymail. They're awesome.
Mail Client: Betterbird. A few months I switched from using Gmail as my inbox to using Purelymail as my inbox. It was a simple matter of swapping who forwards to whom, and I haven't looked back. It's so nice to have a "real" desktop email client, one that can show me a status bar indicator, and be more competent offline.
Text Chat: Well, I use Google Voice for MMS (and occasional voice calls). I'm also in a couple Slack workspaces. I've dabbled with running a Matrix server, but I didn't have a use for it so I took it down.
Contacts: Google contacts.

🌐 Web

Browser: Long story. I originally used Chrome, but then I switched to a Raspberry Pi as my main computer for a few months, and Firefox was the default. I would have installed Chrome (for familiarity, password sync, DevTools, etc.) but Google didn't seem to build Chrome for ARM64 (Chromium was available but, if I remember correctly, it didn't sync passwords at the time—and might have felt a little slower than Firefox on the RPi5). So I stuck with Firefox and used Firefox's sync feature across my devices for bookmarks, passwords, etc. Then, recently (November 2025?), I happened to be introduced to Zen Browser when reading through Alex White's "Software I Love" list. It works with Firefox sync but feels more polished and less clunky than Firefox, so I've been enjoying it. When I do need Chromium (mainly for the DevTools, especially that one CSS Flex attribute editor menu), I also have Ungoogled Chromium installed—not so much to avoid Google as that it was packaged in a way that made it the fastest and easiest to install on my system.
Bookmarks: Firefox bookmarks. Zen Browser lets you set a keyword you can type to call up a bookmark from the new tab pane, which is nice.
Password Management: Firefox passwords.
Read It Later: I fear that if I make it too easy to dump stuff somewhere, I'll never get around to actually reading it. I have a reading list in Obsidian, which adds just enough friction to make me decide whether to read something now, add it to the list, or drop it and do more important things.

🗃️ Organization

Notes: Obsidian. I'm not into the whole thing of having the perfect notes setup and all. One day, I installed it on a whim, hoping it would be better than a plain text editor at managing multiple files with easier navigation. It is, so I use it now.
Photo Management: Google photos and/or one of my Syncthing folders. I've also tried out PhotoPrism as a more specialized self-hosted app, but have not set up a more permanent installation (yet?).
Document Management: I've tried self-hosting Papra, but it's not very feature rich—the extra hoops aren't worth the tagging and search capabilities it does offer. Instead, I use a good ol' filesystem with a nice directory structure that I've settled on over the years.
To-Do: If I make a list digitally, my go-to is Home Assistant, mostly for convenience.
Calendar: Several different calendars on Google Calendar sorted roughly by event category. Then Home Assistant pulls the calendars and turns on appropriate status LEDs around the house (built with ESPHome) to remind me.
Cloud File Storage: Not in the cloud. I vehemently despise OneDrive despite it being shoved down my throat at every opportunity by Windows (which I rarely use). I sync most of my files with Syncthing, between my various home directories and an instance running as a Home Assistant add-on.

📎 Office Suite

Word Processing: LibreOffice. The only viable alternative I know of is Microsoft Word, which doesn't run on Linux ("Word on the Web" is unpleasant and impractical for other reasons I won't get into here). Recently, I've been experimenting with writing the bulk of my content in Obsidian, because it feels cleaner and easier. Then, if I really do need proper word-processor formatting, I reluctantly dump that text into LibreOffice, or (gag) MS Word on the Web.
Spreadsheets: I use LibreOffice or Google Sheets. Google Sheets is generally nicer because it's better about crunching large amounts of data without freezing up (lots of work going on server-side at Google to support my smooth experience). Also Google Sheets feels more well-rounded for the stuff I use it for, and is generally easier to use. Easy conditional formatting, loading rows from Google Forms, usually enough functions for what I need, and good integration with Apps Script if I need to squeeze a little more juice out of it (once I wrote a script to do some custom filtering of data so it was intuitive and easy for both the spreadsheet user and the one filling out the Google Form).
Presentations: I don't do them much, at least not with visuals. I've had to give a few speeches recently, which I draft and write in Obsidian. When I do need slides, I use LibreOffice Impress in lieu of PowerPoint (Linux). But I had a slip-up recently where I saved my slides in OpenDocument format (instead of Save As > .pptx) when sending my presentation to the presenter device (it wasn't an option to just plug in my own laptop). PowerPoint had a compatibility issue, causing it to strip my nice background colors, completely changing the mood of the slides—oops! That was not a fun presentation.

🗞️ Media

RSS: Self-hosted instance of CommaFeed. I used to use Newsflash to connect to CommaFeed, but now I usually just check the web UI.
News: Almost exclusively the Sunday paper. I'll look an event up if it sounds major and I'm interested, otherwise I let the world do its thing and hear about it at a more gradual pace.
Music: 70% of the music I listen to (mostly classical) is either ripped from CDs or downloaded from Wikimedia Commons / Internet Archive. I use Strawberry Music Player on my computer, and I also Syncthing the music folder to a Samba server on the LAN, from which Music Assistant (running as a Home Assistant add-on) pulls the audio. Perhaps more complicated than necessary. The other 30% (mostly Hamilton and random one-off songs that get sent to me) I stream with ads using Spotify.
Podcasts: I don't listen to podcasts.
Audiobooks: I've recently discovered that online services at many libraries are really cool and have tons of resources. So I can use BiblioCommons / Libby to borrow audiobooks from several local libraries on a short-term basis. I am around the library a lot, yet the ability to get library content remotely somehow makes it a lot more convenient.

❓ Misc

Operating System: Stretching the definition of an "app," but for context, I use plain out-of-the-box desktop Ubuntu. It's not great, but it works. Linux Mint would have been a better choice because in my experience it's more performant. However, next time I install a desktop OS, I'll probably spend the time setting up Arch Linux, because people keep recommending that I try it out.
OpenStreetMap Editor: I use iD by default because it's easier to make quick edits. JOSM is much more powerful in almost all areas though, when I need to use a "real" editor.
Document Scanning: gscan2pdf has lots of features that I always wanted, like being able to scan double-sided documents in a smart way without any hassle or manual rearranging of pages.

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