Amie* is a calendar, task and email app that has just officially launched after being in Beta for a while. It’s taken Twitter by storm, and was a victim of its own success as its servers were struggling for a few days. Despite this, support stayed high because people are clearly interested in the approach they’re taking.

Their marketing is all about joyful productivity, and it takes only a few moments with the app to see that they deliver on that promise. They really have built an app that is a delight to use.

My thoughts on Amie*

It’s not going to work for me as my calendar or task app right now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. I’ll write about that in a separate post to keep this one a more reasonable length!

But something specifically caught my eye with Amie… its integrations. Not the classic integrations with apps I’m not interested in/have never heard of (seriously, what is Linear?), but personal integrations such as Apple health kit and Spotify.

These integrations got me thinking.. what if I used Amie to help me understand how I actually spend my days, by using their integrations and some ones I can set up to populate on the calendar?

If there is interest in this, I’ll make a separate post in more detail, but the point of mentioning Amie now is that it’s been a lovely app to use and I’ve really enjoyed learning how to use it over the past 10 days, and learning about myself and my habits in the process.

It also got me thinking about other apps which are equally useful and joyful to use.

So I present a list of these today, in no particular order.

Reader

Readwise Reader caused a storm when it first launched and for good reason. It’s lovely and incredibly well thought out. It’s a read-it-later app to which you can send things to read, highlight and add notes.

If I’m reading online sources, be it an article, a newsletter or PDFs, I send/upload them to Reader and read in there because it’s such a nice experience.

It’s fast, has keyboard shortcuts galore and its integrations are flawless. Its mobile app is also delightful which makes reading on any device a nice experience. It’s really clean and crisp, and overall a joyful app to use. I’m reading more newsletters these days and it’s much nicer than reading in Apple mail!

Beehiiv

Beehiiv hosts my website and my newsletter.

I took a real leap investing in this for a business the size of mine, but even just from using the free newsletter function, I could tell it was very well built. I wanted my website to be built with Beehiiv, as it made me want to write, whereas Typedream (my previous website builder) did not.

My decision to move very quickly paid off and I’m loving it. The team is fun, fast, and developing a lot of useful features. It’s really easy to make a consistent, readable, nicely formatted content with it and that was something I felt I couldn’t achieve with Typedream.

Worth the investment for me!

Shottr

I honestly never imagined a screenshot app could bring me such joy! I’ve tried a few, and this is my favourite.

It’s the fastest one I’ve tried, it has blurring, labels, it’s just added backgrounds and I can do scrolling captures of a whole screen, which I find very useful.

I use this multiple times a day for my work and Capacities work and I would feel lost without it to be honest!

Sometimes for content I use Xnapper because of the custom background, but I much prefer Shottr from a user-perspective and it’s always my first choice.

Capacities

My feelings on Capacities are probably well known by now, after all, I work for them.

But before any of that happened, I had to start using it first.

The reality is, it only took a couple of hours to realise it was the best note-taking app for me, and that feeling only increases with each day I use it, even now.

There are lots of little things that just make sense and improve the everyday interaction with my notes and that brings me joy, because my notes bring me joy. For example, I love..

1. filterable backlinks that you can view in different ways

2. the fact you can browse your objects by type when linking (type @ then you’ll see all your object types listed and you can browse them there)

3. ‘turn into’ feature

4. different views for the links you create

5. created on this day section

The list really could go on, but I’ll link a couple of articles where I list some of my favourite features instead.

But essentially, there are so many features I’d hate to be without now because they’re so useful and I think it’s genuinely beautiful and easy to use.

I truly feel calmer when using it because it’s just set up to let me get on with note-taking and connecting and that’s what makes me happy.

PS. I’m not being paid to include it here, all my own opinions!

So they’re the apps that are currently bringing me the most joy in one way or another. I’m so grateful to have access to such amazing tools!

Which apps bring you the most joy? I’m never averse to trying new apps!

My links to Amie are affiliate links - they cost you no more to use but they support my free content 🙂 !