Stack

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Stack

My favorite tools and software.

1.1.1.1 icon

1.1.1.1

Add a little bit of extra privacy to your internet browsing.

1Password icon

1Password

Everyone should be using a password manager, and 1Password is the best option.

Alfred icon

Alfred

A simple but powerful Spotlight replacement for macOS.

Indie
Apollo icon

Apollo

The best 3rd party Reddit app on the App Store.

Indie
Audible icon

Audible

My preferred way to engage with fiction books – get a good narrator, and it’s unbeatable.

Better icon

Better

A lightweight Safari extension (for macOS and iOS) that blocks 3rd party trackers on the web.

Indie
Clay icon

Clay

A beautiful application to keep track of personal relationships over time.

Indie
CleanShot X icon

CleanShot X

The no-brainer replacement for macOS screenshot utilities.

Indie
Contrast icon

Contrast

A must-have color and accessibility tool for interface designers.

Indie
Copilot icon

Copilot

The most polished and functional budgeting app on the market.

Indie
Cypress icon

Cypress

Cypress makes it really easy to automate website testing.

Open Source
Darkroom icon

Darkroom

Halide gets you the most out of your camera. Darkroom gets you the most out of each photo.

Indie
Day One icon

Day One

A solid journaling app that gets the basics right, with a few cool bonus features like "On this day."

Indie
Dependabot icon

Dependabot

Dependabot keeps all of my project dependencies up to date every week, saving me time and frustration.

Descript icon

Descript

It’s not often that you find software that truly feels like magic. Descript is magic.

Fantastical icon

Fantastical

A no-brainer upgrade to the macOS system Calendar app.

Indie
Fathom icon

Fathom

My favorite analytics tool for my personal site and side projects. Fathom is fast, easy to use, and privacy-first.

Indie
Feather Icons icon

Feather Icons

A gorgeous open source icon set – easily grab SVGs, or integrate it directly into your React project.

IndieOpen Source
Figma icon

Figma

Figma is my design tool of choice. Features like Auto Layout v3 and Variants make it really fast to iterate and explore while designing interfaces.

Ghost icon

Ghost

A simple writing surface with API access to my content.

IndieOpen Source
Gifski icon

Gifski

Enter as a movie, leave as a gif.

IndieOpen Source
GitHub Mobile icon

GitHub Mobile

I work at GitHub, so I’m definitely not biased! I use GitHub Mobile every single day to keep up with my work and side projects.

Glyph Finder icon

Glyph Finder

Quit Googling for unicode characters!

Indie
Gumroad icon

Gumroad

If you are a creator and want to sell something online, Gumroad will have you up and earning in minutes.

Indie
Halide Mark II icon

Halide Mark II

The gold standard of camera applications.

Indie
Hand Mirror icon

Hand Mirror

In the Age of Zoom, always have a mirror handy.

Indie
iA Writer icon

iA Writer

When I’m writing notes, performance reviews, or show notes for Design Details, it happens in iA Writer.

Indie
iStat Menus icon

iStat Menus

The best way to know what’s happening inside my computer at all times.

Indie
Kap icon

Kap

For quick screen recordings and movie conversions.

IndieOpen Source
Keynote icon

Keynote

The true way to make great presentations.

Letterboxd icon

Letterboxd

The best place to find and organize your movie watchlist.

Loom icon

Loom

Who knew that screen recorders + a profile overlay could be so fun?

Magnet icon

Magnet

Learn the keyboard shortcuts and master your window organization on macOS.

Indie
Mailbrew icon

Mailbrew

This is my answer to Twitter FOMO: I set up a daily digest with the top links and best tweets from all the people I follow. Simple. Easiest $100/yr subscription to justify.

Indie
NetNewsWire icon

NetNewsWire

My go-to RSS reader for macOS and iOS.

IndieOpen Source
Next.js icon

Next.js

The best way to build modern React websites.

Open Source
Outlook for iOS icon

Outlook for iOS

The best mail and calendar combination app on the App Store.

PixelSnap 2 icon

PixelSnap 2

I never thought I needed this until I tried it. PixelSnap is a great utility in the designer’s toolbelt.

Indie
Pocket Casts icon

Pocket Casts

Pocket Casts is the best podcast client on the market. Automated lists and per-podcast playback controls are just what I need.

Postmark icon

Postmark

A simple, but powerful, tool for sending transactional emails.

Indie
Readng icon

Readng

A beautiful and simple app for tracking my reading list. It has light social features that help you discover new books to read, too.

Indie
SF Symbols icon

SF Symbols

An essential tool for designers and developers working in the Apple ecosystem.

Sonos icon

Sonos

The best way to set up multi-room, multi-player, multi-service music experiences at home. One you’ve fully committed to the ecosystem, it’s magic.

Spotify icon

Spotify

As far as I can tell, the best music discovery and recommendation service available. I basically live in Spotify’s personal playlists.

Tailwind CSS icon

Tailwind CSS

A compositional CSS framework that makes styling websites easy. It’s like writing CSS on steroids.

IndieOpen Source
Tempo icon

Tempo

This is my new default email client for macOS. I love the batches feature and minimal UI.

Indie
Things icon

Things

Things is my second brain. It’s the gold standard of software design: fast, fun, easy to use, beautiful, with a complete cross-device story.

Indie
Tweetbot for macOS icon

Tweetbot for macOS

A streamlined, beautiful, multi-account Twitter client for macOS.

Indie
Vercel icon

Vercel

Everything I make on the internet lives on Vercel. Vercel is the gold standard of developer tools.

VSCode icon

VSCode

My code editor of choice.

Open Source

About these links

I only recommend apps and tools that I use every day and think are excellent. Nobody is paying to be on this list.

However, some of the links above are affiliate links. If you don’t want to click them out of principle, I understand. Any affiliate income earned goes straight back into powering this website and my other side projects: servers, storage, domain names, and other operational costs do add up.

❤️ Brian

Recommendations

My stack is a curated list of tools and software that I use daily. In general, less is more. But I’m always interested in discovering great new apps and tools – let me know what I should check out.