My app-usage is as fluctuating as ever and I tend to experiment a lot to find just the right apps and setup for me. One thing that I avoid as much as possible is to have too many options for more or less the same thing. Sadly this can not always be avoided (see note-taking).

When it come to services and apps I generally try to be as cross-platform as possible for the sake of consistency and to make sure I have access to my stuff everywhere I work, or do stuff. Also this approach makes things a lot easier, since I don’t have to spent time thinking where I left off.

But start off, here’s now my current homescreen:

The first app would be the Microsoft Launcher. I once tried it out of curiosity and since then stuck with it. It has just the right mix between features and simplicity. As a bonus, the app works as a link between phone and my laptop, synching history and as of the latest version, Microsoft To-Do’s and Sticky Notes.

It’s a constant back and forth but at the moment I’m using Microsoft ToDo Todoist for my task management. I’m not sure if it will stick but in case not, I will go back to Todoist (which probably by the time I manage to press publish (edit: and did it, no surprise here… screenshot updated accordingly)). I have elaborated recently on this. I guess though this might be only a temporarily switch back to Todoist, since there was this moment in which getting this one email into ToDo turned out a bit cumbersome and I was annoyed. Outlook integration is coming soon to ToDo but I don’t have it yet. Also not making it easier: I very much enjoy Todoist’s yearly review, this is surely something that I would miss.

At this moment the only “social” media I use is either anything that comes in my RSS reader or Mastodon. I currently use Feedbin and in it I have not only my common dose of blogs, but also my Micro.Blog timeline and several Twitter feeds. It’s almost my one-stop shop for anything social which is quite a time saver. On my phone I use Readably to access my Feedbin. It doesn’t that have many features, but most of what I need (I wish I could use it to subscribe to feeds as well), has good typography options and is overall a very beautiful app.

For Mastodon (I’m here) I use Tusky. I like this app a lot and it does things the way I like them. Nice.

And another Microsoft product: At some point during the last year I switched over to Outlook, both the service and the app, and haven’t much looked back (I had one stint back with Gmail as my main app for a month or so). I much prefer it over Gmail (both app and service).

It might be a bit surprise, but I’m currently rather satisfied with Edge on Android. I has great gestures for navigation (back-/forwards), supports hyphenation, has a built-in ad-blocker and more. Been using it for a while and like it a lot.

Not visible in the top row, but I get my reading done in Kindle and especially Audible. I have joined Audible during the Spring of 2018 and have listened to many books, more than in any year before. I’m almost addicted to it. Talking about listening. Pocket Casts is still my go-to podcast app, and after it’s recent update it has gotten even better than before. I like to use it on the desktop as well, and the sync between the instances phone/desktop is very fast.

My note-taking is mostly a mix of Keep for some things, Sticky Notes for other and OneNote for yet another set of, but most things. It’s a bit of a mess, but so far it works just fine. Or at least… it works.

In another app-category I have been jumping back and forth in, ie. journaling, I have now settled with Journey. It as cross-platform as it can be (also on the desktop) and has a good design.

Messaging is mostly settled, but not necessarily for the best. Everyone and his neighbor is using WhatsApp here and it’s useless even trying something other than SMS. Would love to use something else, but that seems like a lost case at this moment.

There might be some more, like iReal Pro for chords and quick backing tracks, and Google Photos. The latter is the defacto photo solution and I feel this app would be a given at this time. At some point I will post my “desktop” software, which to be fair, is not going to be that much different.