I’ve added some excellent apps to my line up this year, here are my favourites!

Any link marked with a * is an affiliate link. It helps support free content but I only affiliate with apps I genuinely love :)

Utility Apps

2023 is the year I discovered utility apps. I’ve learned that there are some genius tools out that there which help you do more with what you’ve got.

If you can streamline common workflows, you can move about your laptop faster and with more confidence, and that feels great.

Paste

via Setapp (one month free for us both here), which is also a fabulous find of 2023

This is the app that inspired this post so I’ll put it first.

I copy and paste countless times a day and having easy access to a clipboard manager is a must. There are many out there, but I find Paste the most joyous to use. You open it with Cmd Shift V, type to search for what you need from what you’ve previously copied, and just paste.

I also love the colours, the appearance and how it appears at the bottom of my screen not in the middle. Not sure why that’s such a plus for me, but it really is.

Raycast

Raycast also has a clipboard manager but that’s not why I use it.

It’s my app launcher of choice, it’s my calculator, it’s my currency converter, my time zone converter, my emoji clipboard and more.

It’s an all-round useful app and it’s free. I can’t see a downside to it!

Zapier

No-code automation as an idea is a favourite find of 2023 to be honest, but I like Zapier the most out of the no-code tools I’ve tried.

It’s taken me some time to get used to but I think it’s the easiest to use, the most aesthetically pleasing to use, and I don’t think it’s too expensive for what it is and the power that lives within those Zaps.

I’ll write a post about my favourite automations soon, but it’s mostly between Notion and Google Calendar and then some business tools and Notion.

Productivity apps

Routine*

This app brings me joy. It’s excellent.

Routine has showed me that natural language input and combining tasks and your calendar is the way to go for me, and that’s helped me unlock a level of getting things done that I hadn’t previously managed.

I’ve got some in-depth articles about Routine here:

Rize*

Here* is an affiliate link if you’re interested! You’ll get 25% discount off your first three months with code PKMBETH

Rize tracks what I’m doing on my laptop, categorises it and then shows me beautiful dashboards for me to review when I need. I find this very useful, I can check what I was up to, how my work/life balance is looking on a given day/week/month and just check in with myself and my computer habits.

Here’s what I’ve been up to (so far) this year. None of these stats surprise me!

I thought this was super expensive at first but honestly I would hate to be without it, so would repurchase again and again.

Sukha*

This has been an absolute game-changing app for my life and wellbeing, and I will be forever grateful for this.

If you struggle with motivation, focus and distractions and want a healthy, balanced solution to them from a well-designed, community-focused app, you absolutely should give Sukha a try. I was sold on it in 25 minutes, and I think you’ll know quite soon if it works for you too.

If you like the free trial enough to sign up, you’re welcome to use my discount code PKMBETH which will give you 20% off Pro tiers.

Full review here:

Note- Rize and Sukha share some features: distraction tracker, music, gentle reminders etc. I much prefer the community side of Sukha for this, and Rize does the time tracking/categorising, so I have a place in my life for both but you might not need both. Still worth giving their free trials a go though to work this out!

Other

Texts

A simple but genius idea. Why open all your communication apps when you can open one and reply to everyone from there? Perfect for my chaotic brain. The question of “who do I need to reply to” is answered by opening 1 app, not by opening 10 different ones.

Day One

This app, and Julian Lehr’s article, opened a mode of thinking and a worldview that has rocked my world in the most excellent of ways. I feel like I see things differently now.

At the base of it, Day One is a private journalling app. But it’s got a lot of native integrations and, most importantly IFTTT integrations, and the ability for multiple journals within your account… that is multiple layers.

This has allowed me to embrace the idea that journalling is a life practice, in the sense of both longevity, but in its complexity too. Viewing journalling through layers helps you narrow down certain types of entries and to direct your journalling practices, or you can view all these layers together to see the story of you and your life in a given time period.

I’ve written more about this here:

Curiosity

One month free for us both here.

Curiosity’s landing page tells us it finds everything anywhere. It’s so much more than that, in fact I think it’s the exact direction I want my laptop usage/system interaction to follow.

I will be publishing a post on this very soon so I will link back to it here once published but..

I’m watching the development closely so that one day I can hopefully connect all my apps and use Curiosity as this top-level layer of interaction for everything I do. Super excited about this.

All of these apps have bolstered workflows, expanded my mind and made me so grateful for the genius tech we have access to in today’s world. Grateful to all the developers for working so hard on such wonderful tools.