What I Use

This page serves as a living document to catalog the things that I use in my tech life. I love trying out new tools and am always looking for ways to improve my workflow.

Last Updated August, 2025

OS and Enhancements

In 2025, I made the switch from Windows to macOS with my M4 MacBook Pro, and I detailed my experience in a post.

  • macOS 26 Tahoe
  • Raycast to replace Spotlite Search
  • Meccy as my clipboard manager
  • Homebrew as my package manager
  • FFmpeg for all of my video converting, VLC for all my media viewing
  • Mullvad for my VPN
  • Google Drive for cloud storage and collaboration
  • Windows app to Remote Desktop into my other machines
  • Windows 11 – I’ve used Windows all my life and run Dev Channel Insiders Builds
  • Windows PowerToys, especially the launcher (which replaced Wox), they have baked so many great tools into this solution. I love the color picker, which I use often.
  • AntRenamer – Easy file renaming
  • ARSClip – an incredible clipboard manager
  • Chocolatey manages most of my software installs and updates. I also use Winget, but prefer Chocolaty because of the upgrade all command
  • HoneyView for viewing images quickly
  • ScreenToGif is an awesome tool to make GIF’s. I use them to make my own memes, but also make GIF’s when I’m documenting processes at work
  • ShareX for all of my screenshots

Backup Strategy

  • I have a Desktop PC that runs throughout the day and contains all of our photos and videos
  • I do use DropBox to copy images from my phone into the Camera Uploads folder, then copy them down to the Desktop’s local drives
  • I use FreeFileSync to make nightly backups of photos and videos to external drives (using a Scheduled Task that invokes a mirror through the command line).
  • I run BackBlaze for off-site backup for the photos
  • I also run Google Photos and Amazon’s Photos for redundancy. paying for Google storage to accommodate my photos

Development, Design, and Creativity Tools

Productivity and Collaboration

  • I heavily use OneNote for my day-to-day note-taking, as it’s easy to group and organize my different meetings and projects.
  • We use Microsoft Teams at work and I’m a big fan of the tool. My band uses Discord for all of our planning.
  • Freeplane for mind mapping
  • I use Grammarly in all of my writing, using the browser and application plugins.
  • I use Trello to track band tasks
  • Vivaldi is my preferred browser, both on desktop and mobile.
  • I use KeePassXC for my work-related password management and BitWarden as my password manager for everything else.

Mobile & Tablet

I’ve been using iOS devices since 2015, I was using Android from 2008-2015. I use far too many apps to list them all, but some gems I’d like to highlight include: