Reading 📚📑

  • Your Local Library and Libby for borrowing ebooks and audiobooks
  • Bookshop for purchasing books and supporting your favorite bookstore
  • UpNext for read-it-later (note: I will likely move to Readwise Reader once I get through the waitlist)
  • Readwise.io to automatically manage & resurface highlights and notes from all of the above and more
  • Storygraph for tracking books
  • Inkl for lower-hassle news from a variety of sources

Further reading: 2021 Reading Recommendations

Listening 🎙🎶 and Watching 📺

  • Bandcamp for trying and buying music
  • MusicHarbor for finding out about new music releases for bands who have made the poor choice to not be on Bandcamp
  • iTunes match to make your music collection available across multiple devices
  • Marvis Pro for listening to that library on iOS
  • Plex for serving up your whole media library and Plexamp for an incredible listening experience wherever you’ve made that library available (note: I’m looking for Plex friends!)
  • Last.fm for tracking listening, including from Marvis and Plex (above) or from Web Scrobbler in the browser
  • JustWatch for seeing where a show or movie is currently available and tracking watchlists/watching without losing your place when a show moves to another provider
  • Overcast for podcasts

Further reading: 2021 Watching Recommendations, 2021 Listening Recommendations

Writing and Communication

  • Craft for fun notetaking, writing, shared documents, and impromptu websites
  • Fastmail for email, calendar, contacts
  • Micro.blog for blogging, microblogging, social media that’s not a dumpster fire, and (optionally, additionally) POSSE, a newsletter service, read-it-later service, bookshelf service, podcasting service, and video service
  • Mars Edit 4 for revising, tagging, managing, or deleting micro.blog posts or importing/adding a backdated post

Security and Privacy

  • NextDNS for blocking a lot of bad stuff (including trackers and ads)
  • Signal for direct messaging and calls
  • DuckDuckGo for search that respects you
  • A digital password vault
  • Multi-Factor Authentication for everywhere that supports it, especially for your main email provider that all your other accounts are tied to (note: avoid text messages as the 2nd factor whenever there are better options)
  • A couple hard drives and an alternate location (such as a family-member’s home or a safe deposit box) for periodic swapping of backups outside of your cloud storage

Other

  • Parcel for tracking packages and deliveries
  • CloudMounter for accessing cloud storage on your Mac
  • Magnet for turning OSX into a tiling window manager
  • Vivaldi for a full-feature independent browser that still works on most of the Internet

Luxuries That I Wish Weren’t

  • Levels for learning about how different foods, activities, and events affect your glucose and health
  • A periodic home cleaning service
  • A personal trainer to help with physical therapy and fitness

Note: This page contains affiliate links. I may receive a discount or commission for things your purchase. Nevertheless, these are real recommendations for products and services I have used.