Lei Yu

Below are some of the softwares that I enjoyed using in 2024. Some I have been using for years, and some I have started using this year. ¹

Obsidian

I been using Obsidian for my notes for about 2 years. Really like the flexibility. It is essentially a markdown editor but extremely extendable. Started part time seminary this fall so really trying to use this and see if it is better than taking notes on just pens and paper. I wished I had used this back when I was taking engineering, I would have so much notes on maths and sciences.

I also use the Excalidraw plugin. It is very powerful and I don’t anywhere near the full capability of it. But it is great for some quick sketches and mind maps.

Todoist

Todoist is my task manager of choice. I used TickTick for a while but Todoist’s natural language processing is just way better. I also tried Google’s Todo app but I just find that it is missing too much features at this point for what I need. Though in the future if it gets better I might switch over.

Zotero

Zotero is a source management app. Bibliography and citation has always been a pain when I wrote papers back in school. I started using Zotero this Fall when I started part time seminary. And I found it to be very good. You can annotate, highlight, and even highlight images. The app on iPad is very powerful.

Quarto

Quarto is like RMarkDown but without needing R Studio. I have been looking for something like RMarkDown but without needing R Studio and this is it. It is simple to write a document like R Markdown but has the capability of LaTex if needed. Though the documentation is not the best, because you need to look between documentations of LaTex, PandDoc, and Quartos.

Hugo

Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. Very simple and easy to use. Once you set everything up the way you wanted, you can easily make changes or create new posts by writing in markdown. I been playing with Quartz last year, and I came back to Hugo for its simplicity.

Anki

Anki is probably the best flash card application around. Ankiweb makes it universally cross platform if you have network. There is also an app on every platform which gives you a better UI and offline access, just need network to sync. The IOS does require a big one time purchase. But it is probably the most flexible flash card app out there. I wish I have been using it consistently throughout the years since I first heard of the app. Currently using it to go through some Japanese vocabularies.

MyBible

MyBible is a bible app for power users. Only available on mobile, and the Android version is the most up to date. The initial reason I don’t use the You version app is because it is slow on my phone. But then all the customizability made me stay. You can put study Bibles on it and you can access the commentaries from study Bibles, there different modules you can download to get reading plans, dictionaries, translations, and languages. But some of the popular ones are hard to install because of copyright issue so unless you are fine with the different versions you have to be a power user to use it. You can also put different version side by side and it scroll together. What I wish it had is good audio Bibles. As I still use the You version app for the audio bible.

Immich

Ever since google photos stops being free. I been looking for something similar. I started looking into self hosting and found NextCloud and PhotoPrism. NextCloud was too big and complicated to run to just store my photos. PhotoPrism was working well, but it was missing a seemless sync feature on my mobile device. I found Immich and found it to be much simpler and easier to use. It even has a native mobile app, that automatically backs up that works just like Google Photos.

Syncthing

Syncthing is a peer to peer syncing solution that is dead simple. Once you set it up you don’t have to think about it. It is also p2p so you don’t have to worry about piracy issues. Though it is very limited on IOS. On all the other platforms however it works very well. If you are on Android make sure you get Syncthing-Fork instead of the Syncthing app. Syncthing-Fork is the most up to date version. On IOS you have to use Mobius Sync which has a one time purchase fee.

CasaOS

CasaOS is just a Docker Container manager. Having a spare laptop laying around I decided to dabble in some self hosting. I didn’t want to spend too much time dabbling in it so I decided to use CasaOS. And it has been working well. Big Bear Tech World has made setting up things very easy to follow. Highly recommend their channel if you also want to try it out. I know that if I learned to manage Docker Containers properly, I can probably do everything CasaOS does on my own with more control and less overhead. But maybe in the future when I have more time.

Raycast

Raycast is just a better Spotlight. Beside being a app launcher I also use it for windows management. I added some hot keys to the Window Management extension, and it lets be move windows to the left right, top, bottom, or full screen it with a keyboard shortcut. I also use it to control Spotify. But there is definitely more you can do with it but I am very happy with what it can do. I have seen this new app called AeroSpace that is like an i3 window manager on Mac that doesn’t not require you to disable security settings on the Mac. It looks very promising, but I’m studying for an exam right now, so don’t have much time to tinker with Window Managers and changing my work flow.

Pocketbase

Pocketbase is a backend serve that is hosted in one executable. Earlier this year I was developing a library site for my church. And I needed a backend. I wanted something simple. Lo and behold I found Pocketbase, probably the most simple backend solution you can find for your apps. Everything runs from one executable. The data is stored in a SQLite database. It has authentication, admin dashboard, and file storage all built in. Making backend super simple. If you are planning on building any small projects, I highly recommend giving pocket base a try.

Niagara Launcher

Niagara Launcher makes it really easy to use your phone on the go. The way it lets you browse your apps with one hand is the one feature that makes me stay with it. I’ve tried other launcher such as Nova Launcher, Kiss Launcher, and Launchair but I always go back to Niagara because of it’s app menu. It is only available on Android.