Uses

List of apps & extensions I use on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

🎵 Media Playback & Editing

🌐 Web Browsers

  • ⭐ Arc Browser: Primary Work & Personal
  • Firefox: Specific university website access
  • Min: Clean UI development environment

💻 Code Editors, IDEs, Development Utilities

📕 PDF Reading & Note-Taking

  • Uxie: PDF reader webapp with AI features, annotations, collaboration, PS: I built this app. It's free and open-source, read more
  • Zotero: Pdf Annotations with export
  • Highlights: Pdf Annotations with export
  • PDF Expert: Pdf Editing, Annotations
  • PDF Search: Offline Semantic Search
  • Apple Notes: Quick Notes
  • Notion: Long-form Writing
  • ProNotes: Apple Notes Extension

🤖 AI & Productivity

🛠 System Utilities

  • ⭐ Raycast: Read More
  • ⭐ CleanShotX: Screenshots
  • ⭐ AltTab: Window Switching.
    I have this really nice workflow where I keep the apps I don't need atm but don't want to close as minimised (using `⌘` (cmd) + `m`). And within AltTab, there's an option to only show the non-minimized apps, and I set it to `⌘` + `tab`, and `⌥` (option) + `tab` for all apps.
  • ⭐ Lunar: Adjusting brightness
  • Ice: Menu Bar Manager
  • Command X: Cut/Paste Files in Finder
  • ⭐ Peek: Finder File Previews
  • ⭐ Pure Paste: Link Tracking Removal
  • KeyClu: Keyboard Shortcut Overview
  • Lookaway: Eye Strain Prevention
  • ⭐ Clop: Drag and Drop File Compression
  • ⭐ Klack: Keyboard Sounds
  • ⭐ Alcove: Dynamic Island-like UI
  • Cling: File fuzzy search
  • ⭐ Linear Mouse: Reverse scroll direction for mouse

🖼 Design & Editing

🔒 Security & Privacy

📦 Miscellaneous

📱 iPad/iOS Specific

  • ⭐ Videolite: Ad-free (with Adguard DNS) YouTube Client
  • Freenotes: Handwritten notes & PDF Markup

🌐 Browser Extensions

🛠 Package Management

Raycast

Cause it deserves a section of its own and I clearly love yapping about it :)

Raycast is one of those apps I didn’t like at first. I was already perfectly happy with Alfred. I mostly used it to search files or the occasional Google search. That was all I really expected from a Spotlight style app. It also annoyed me at first, the root search wouldn't search for files, so if i wanted to find a folder, it required multiple clicks which isn't the case w alfred. I’d uninstall it, would hear good things about it on Reddit, give it another shot, get annoyed again, & delete it. This cycle repeated a few times before it finally stuck.

What changed was spending time in the extension store.

Once I started exploring what the community had built, I realised Raycast is much more than just a launcher. Every time I noticed some small annoyance, there was either already an extension for it, or a clean way to build one myself.

You can tell a lot of care went into the details. For example, in the clipboard manager, pressing cmd+k shows extra actions like “Send to AI Chat” or “Save as snippet”. Small thing, but incredibly thoughtful.

Some things I use daily through Raycast:

  • open projects directly in Cursor

  • run bash scripts with keyboard shortcuts

  • AI text workflows with diff and instant insert (was looking for a simple app just for this, turns out Raycast already does it for free with BYOK)

  • caffeinate instead of amphetamine

  • adding tasks / calendar scheduling

  • color picker

  • search tabs across spaces in Arc

  • snippets

  • clipboard history

  • emoji picker that’s actually fast (w semantic search)

  • much better dictionary UX

  • confetti 🎊

  • notes that hide during screen sharing

  • window management

  • kill process

  • search files

One of my AI workflows with raycast

& most apps I already used had a Raycast extension, and for some it's so much easier to use them this way. Most of these aren't big features on their own. But together, they save a lot of time, & is very well designed. It took a while to grow on me. I bounced off it more than once. But once it clicked, it stuck.

Now it's just part of how I use my Mac, & easily the first app I install on a new machine.



⭐: can't live w.o

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