Default Apps November 2025
I guess it’s that time of year again.
This was all started when:
Hemispheric Views podcast had the Duel of the Defaults! episode, and then Robb Knight said, hold my Hemispheric Views - App Defaults beer.
Well, that was 2 years ago. Here’s my 2023 list that made Robb’s list, and here’s my 2024 list.
Without further ado, here’s my 2025 list, with additions bolded and things I don’t use anymore crossed out.
Official Categories
- 📮 Mail Server
- Fastmail
- Gmail
- Proton: Privacy by default | Proton
- Outlook for business
- 📨 Mail Client
- Apple Mail
- Outlook for business
- 📝 Notes
- Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking - for personal notes
- Notion - for work sharing with a colleague only
- Apple Notes for family note sharing
- BBEdit
Bear for all my writing and podcast show notesRaycast Floating Notes Window
- ✅ To-Do
- Reminders App
- 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting
- iOS Camera
- 🟦 Photo Management
- Photos App
- 📅 Calendar
- BusyCal - Professional Calendar App for Mac and iOS | Busy Apps by Beehive
- Dato — Sindre Sorhus
- CalendarBridge for work calendar sync and scheduling
- Apple Calendar
- 📂 Cloud File Storage
- iCloud Drive
- OneDrive – for business
- 📖 RSS
- 👩🦲 Contacts
- Apple Contacts App
- 🌐 Browser
- Safari
- Chrome – for web work and other business work
- 💬 Chat
- Messages
- Signal
- Discord
- Slack
- 🔖 Bookmarks
- 📑 Read It Later
- Safari Read Later
- 📜 Word Processing
- Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking
Bear for all my writing and podcast show notesPagesGoogle Docs- Microsoft Word
- 📈 Spreadsheets
- Excel
- Numbers
- 📊 Presentations
- Keynote
- 🛒 Shopping List
- Reminders
- 🍴 Meal Planning & Recipes
- 💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance
- Spreadsheet
- 📰 News
- RSS
- Mastodon
- BlueSky
- News from Stonking
- 🎵 Music
- Apple Music
- 🎤 Podcasts
- 🔐 Password Management
- 1Password
- Apple Passwords/Keychain
Additional Categories
- 💻 Mac Utilities
- Actions — Sindre Sorhus
- CleanShot X for Mac
- Dato — Sindre Sorhus
- FastScripts 3
- Folder Peek — Sindre Sorhus
- Front and Center
- Hand Mirror, for Mac
- Hyperspace
- Little Snitch — Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS
- One Thing — Sindre Sorhus
- Orchard - Bridge AI Assistants to Your Apple Ecosystem
- Paste – The Best Clipboard Manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad
- Rectangle Pro
- Scratchpad — Sindre Sorhus
- Shortcutie — Sindre Sorhus
- Supercharge — Sindre Sorhus
- SwitchGlass
- System Color Picker — Sindre Sorhus
- Tailscale · Best VPN Service for Secure Networks
- TripMode - Save data, browse faster
- 🧑💻 Programming & Text Manipulation
- 💻 Terminal
- 📸 Photo Editing
- 🔷 Vector Graphics
- 🧠 AI