ntnthien/my-ios

List of applications and tools that make my iOS experience even more amazing

My wonderful world of iOS

List of applications and tools that make my iOS experience even more amazing

Contents

• Philosophy
• Applications
  • Productivity
  • Social
  • Photos
  • Learn
  • Utilities
  • Write
  • Music
  • Travel
  • Health
  • Automation
    • Shortcuts
  • Safari Browser
• Widgets
• Control Center
• Games
• My wonderful world of macOS
• Related
• Contributing

Philosophy

For me, an iPhone is essentially a consumption and communication device. Everything I can do on the phone, I can do faster and better on my MacBook. Thus I find it is very valuable to give each of these devices a well defined purpose and use them appropriately.

With all the freedom and power that a smartphone brings, it also brings a lot of distraction. There is Twitter, Reddit, Instagram with their endless feeds of streaming live updating content. Reddit, Hacker News, Medium or any other news outlet you prefer to stay on top of news. Staying on top of everything at all times is exhausting and addictive.

I use my phone when I am not using my computer. I use it to read books, make photographs, quickly edit them, check tasks I have set out to do, listen to podcasts, music, audio books, read Wikipedia, answer messages on Slack, Telegram, write quick notes and memos, search the internet and read my mail. I of course do other things too, but these are the main ones. With that said, I try to use the best tools that I can to get these tasks completed.

Applications

Here is a list of apps that I use the most in my day to day life, sorted by category and their importance.

Productivity

2Do - Flexible task manager

• My task manager of choice. I use tags to organize my tasks and work on tasks based on priority.

Streaks - Habit tracker

• Do something often enough and it becomes a habit. I use it learn new healthy habits with time.
• If I get 30 ongoing repetitions, I've learned the habit, I remove it and add new ones.

Fantastical - Calendar

• Prefer it to stock calendar app due to a cleaner design and ability to add events quickly with natural language.

Strong - Workout tracker

• I use it to track my workouts. I have a few custom workouts that I made that I can then start and simply follow the exercises and the number of sets for the exercise as my workout progresses.

Day One - Digital journal

• I often use it to check on events that happened to me On this day. I wrote about all the different journals I use and how here.

Paprika - Recipe manager

• I use the app mainly as my meal planner for recipes I want to make during the day. I also use the app as a grocery list.

PDF Expert - PDF reader/editor

• Use it to read PDF books and documents. I love its Text Reflow feature that allows me to focus on the text and see only that. I try to not waste time on my phone and always do something proactive and useful. I also have a huge list of books I want to read.

Oak - Meditation

• Use the app for listening to background noise as I dislike listening to music when trying to focus. I also use it to practice focused meditation.

Social

Telegram - Messenger

• This is my favorite messenger and I prefer it over others due its speed, its ability to sync with a native macOS client and the many free and awesome stickers you can use.
• I also use the app to quickly send media/messages between my mac and the phone.

Tweetbot - Twitter client

• My favorite Twitter client. I prefer it over others for its ability to sync timelines with the macOS app and the night theme.

Apollo - Reddit client

• My preferred client for browsing Reddit. I love how you can operate the app seamlessly with gestures. I also customized the app to work with my own gestures.

Spark - Mail client

• My favorite email client that I love due its simplicity of UI and UX as well as separation of emails based on their type (Inbox, newsletters) and ability to snooze emails.

Slack - Team communication

• I only keep essential teams I am signed up on there.

Photos

Photos - Photo library

• The place for all my personal photos/videos synced with iCloud. I love its Memories features.

VSCO - Image editor and photo sharing

• Use it to quickly edit photographs I made as I much prefer its filters and editing options than other photo editors. I then post the edited photos I like to Instagram.

Instagram - Photo sharing

• Like it as a way to share my life through photographs, videos and stories.

Slidebox - Photo & Album Organizer

• Use the app to quickly delete bad photos and sort photos into albums quickly. I try have all the photos in my Photos library be placed in some library and this app lets me easily do that.

Learn

Books

• Aside from PDFs that I read in PDF Expert, I also read .epub books which this app handles well. It also syncs my notes and highlights as I read the book.

V for Wiki - Wiki reader

• Amazing and beautiful Wikipedia reader. The typography of it and the design makes you explore and easily get lost in reading the wiki.

Medium - Online publishing platform

• Use the app to read articles on Medium in Night Mode.

Trello - Project management tool

• All of my ideas and plans live on Trello. The app makes accessing any Trello board I need quickly.

Audible - Audiobooks

• I have very low attention span on reading books so listening to audibooks is perfect for me. I listen to either a podcast or an audiobook when I am commuting or going to sleep.

Overcast - Podcasts

• Lets me listen to the plethora of podcasts I love. I love its smart speed feature to cut out on silent pauses.

Reeder - RSS Reeder

• Use the app to read through my Inoreader feeds of blogs I follow.

Utilities

1Password - Password manager

• Can't live without the app. It holds all my passwords and anything private so that I only need to remember one thing. My master password. With iOS 12, the app seamlessly integrates with the OS so I can autofill my saved passwords in seconds.

Google Assistant

• Other than Siri shortcuts, Siri is still very limited in what it can do. Gooogle assistant is much better at understanding a broad range of commands.

Drive - Cloud Storage

• I store all my documents and files in iCloud, however I love using Google Docs/Sheets and I use IFTTT to log automatically various things like saving all my liked YouTube videos to a Google Sheet.

GitHawk - GitHub on the Go

• Use it respond to issues on GitHub as well as create issues to repositories.

Wipr - Safari ad blocker

• Use the app to block annoying ads and tracking in Safari.

ScanBot - PDF Scanner

• My life is fully digital. This means I scan every paper I write on.

Bobby

• Use the app to track my ongoing subscriptions. I review it at the start of every month and update my budget for the month accordingly.

Write

Ulysses - Writing

• Ulysses is my go-to place for anything I want to write. I mostly use the app to make edits to my wiki. Since the wiki is a bunch of markdown files in a folder that I keep on Dropbox, I can add that folder to Ulysses as external folder and make edits to it.

Music

Spotify - Music streaming

• Prefer using Spotify over Apple Music due to superior music discovery and ability to create and share playlists easily.

Travel

Foursquare - Restaurants and bars nearby

• Use the app to mark all the places I've been too and make many lists of places I've liked.

Google Maps - GPS, City Navigation & Traffic

• Prefer using it over Apple Maps.

Health

MyFitnessPal - Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker

• Use the app to track all the food I eat. I eat a whole food plant based diet.

Automation

Shortcuts

Here are all the Shortcuts I use. I activate all of them with Siri or widgets.

• Make a Scan - Opens camera app in Scanbot.
• DND 25 Minutes - Start Do Not Disturb mode for 25 minutes.
• DND For (x) Minutes - Turn on Do Not Disturb mode for X minutes.
• Open Ideas - Opens my Ideas Trello board quickly so I can quickly note down an idea I have. Have similar shortcuts for other Trello boards too.

Scriptable - Automation using JavaScript

• Awesome app that lets you write JavaScript code and combine it with Siri Shortcuts. Can even edit the code on the mac and instantly run the shortcuts on the phone. I plan to build a library that will let you create Alfred Workflows on iOS with Siri Shortcuts and either present results on screen or speak the results aloud.

Safari Browser

I plan to make more Shortcuts for automating my browser use.

One of the best features of Safari is fast access to bookmarks on opening of new tabs. Here are the ones I use most often on iOS:

Widgets

Here are the widgets I use:

Control Center

Here is how my control center looks:

Games

I don't play games often but the games I do like to play on iOS are usually puzzles. Here are some games I am playing now.

• Mind Cards - Strategy card game.
• DATA WING - A neon racing adventure.
• Shapeuku - Shape puzzle game.
• Human Resource Machine
• the Sequence - Build a sequence using special modules to transfer binary cell.
• the Sequence 2
• Lichess - Chess game with multiplayer and puzzles.

My wonderful world of macOS 💻

If you found this interesting, I also have a similar repository going over what applications I use on macOS.

Related

• Awesome iOS

Contributing

Suggestions and pull requests are highly encouraged!

I love finding new awesome tools and apps. If you have a favorite tool or app that you think I missed, please say it.

Thank you

You can support me on Patreon or look into other projects I shared.