Default Apps December 2024

Once upon a time,¹ the Hemispheric Views podcast held the first ever Duel of the Defaults in which they decided who was the winner at using the most default apps for several categories. Then Robb Knight took it to 11 with his App Defaults page.

In the continued spirit of blogging about one’s default apps, here is my updated list for 2024.

Official Categories

📮 Mail Server
- Fastmail
- Gmail
- Outlook for business
📨 Mail Client
- Apple Mail
- Outlook for business
📝 Notes
- Notion
- Apple Notes for family note sharing
- Bear for all my writing and podcast show notes
- Raycast Floating Notes Window
✅ To-Do
- Reminders App
📷 iPhone Photo Shooting
- iOS Camera
🟦 Photo Management
- Photos App
📅 Calendar
- Apple Calendar
- CalendarBridge for work calendar sync and scheduling
📂 Cloud File Storage
- iCloud Drive
📖 RSS
- Reeder
- Reeder Classic
👩‍🦲 Contacts
- Apple Contacts App
🌐 Browser
- Safari, Chrome for web work
💬 Chat
- Messages, Signal, Discord, Slack
🔖 Bookmarks
- Anybox
📑 Read It Later
- Safari Read Later
📜 Word Processing
- Bear for all my writing and podcast show notes
- Pages
- Google Docs
- Microsoft Word
📈 Spreadsheets
- Excel (I’m sorry, but Numbers is the most useless excuse for a spreadsheet app I’ve ever seen)
📊 Presentations
- Keynote
🛒 Shopping List
- Reminders
🍴 Meal Planning & Recipes
- Mela
💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance
- Spreadsheet
📰 News
- RSS
- Mastodon
- BlueSky
🎵 Music
- Apple Music
🎤 Podcasts
- Overcast
🔐 Password Management
- 1Password
- Apple Passwords/Keychain