2024 was a getting things done kinda year. But I made quite a few tool changes over the past 12 months. Mostly this was a result of newer tools addressing older tools shorcomings, or for example, the recent renaissance in CLI tools. Still, looking now, a bit suprised at what I added and what I kept (and why).

Much of toolchain turnover was in areas surrounding notetaking and task maangement, mostly through trying tto find ways to better centrally control and dispatch the general chaos of a corporate environment where tasks were coming from way too many different systems (slack, mail, project management, and design apps.).

Interestingly, despite the move off org-mode last year, I did feel I did better at striking a better balance between tactical execution and strategic planning. Much got done. But still feel there is substantial room for improvement in terms of overview and planning (particularly forward flagging of deadlines and starting work.).

This is what the more interesting parts of my toolchain looked like at the end of 2024.

Daily Drivers

Obsidian

People annually tuning in to read this list (esp emacs org-mode fans) have probably not failed to note that the most active changes in my stack seem to revolve around note taking and task management.

I was a big fan of emacs org-mode for a number of years, but it would break far too often and despite its stellar TODO management, org-mode’s markup feels like a step down and extra friction as well as its lonely island approach being an extra layer of friction between collaborating, sharing, and publishing despite its strengths.

Notion has an amazing UX for writing, but its insistence on adding AI features and extra apps I did not want or ask for made it feel like it lost its way in 2024. The lack of bidirectional linking and its slowness in addition to these issues could not compensate for its excellent writing experience.

Obsidian has much going for it: simple markdown, bidirectional linking, excellent LaTeX support in notes (ok, maybe only an issue if you do a lot of math or science), a solid mobile app, and a recently added very good web clipper. It even has an enhanced task support (that is not sophisticated enough for me, unfortunately) though I’d love to see someone “fix” obsidian to use org-mode style TODOs and log drawers to make it robust in the way my org-super-agenda and which it is not.

Obsidian just slowly became the place I’d naturally keep taking notes on serious stuff and my daily logs (as well as weekly planning) as a Notion replacement. Somehow it’s now where I’m writing most everything and then just shelling out todos to Superlist below.

Superlist

The key reason I use Superlist is because of its awesome integrations. While as a Todo list manager it is fine and I liked it better than Todoist, Superlist’s killer feature for me was about dealing with getting all of my many inbound requests from various disparate systems at work, getting things into one inbox, and then processing and executing from there. Superlist’s integrations (paid) allowed this with three key features:

1. Assigning me or tagging me in a Github issue results in a TODO being created in my Superlist inbox linked to the issue (it will also update you on comments and other PR information etc via its “messages” feature which is quite handy.)
2. Hitting Save for Later on a Slack message and then have that show up as an Inbox Todo (with the link back to the often dizzying and messy world that Slack is - this was a game changer tbh)
3. Starring a message in my Gmail would also give me a new linked Todo in my Inbox

The above allowed me to deal with a ridiculously high rate of task assignment and coordination, which for a small, fast moving team was essential to keep us from getting snowed under by the rest of the org.

Also, Superlist has this superhandy “Teams” feature which I would use as a form of tagging and hiding for the different groups I worked with. One default one for my personal stuff, another one for work, and another for the Uni team. I feel Superlist could make this list stronger/better, though it was good for focusing and removing noise from wanting to be in just a “work” or “uni” context rather than being whelmed by everything there was to do.

In fact, while I am not at all sure Superlist is going in the right direction product-wise, I now feel that integations which allow linked centralization this this is a feature every task management system needs. Superlist’s approach is wholly superior to everything else I’ve seen and I have to applaud them on such a well thought our ingtegrations feature (it also works with Linear and Figma though I think those were less useful for me due to us moving off Linear and Figma use being confined to Design.).

Alfred

Alfred has spent a lotta years on this list. Its combined launcher, snippet manager, and clipboard features accessible from my ⌘-space actually makes me twitchy when I’m on machines without Alfrewd (or a close alternative like rofi)

I dabbled with competitors like Raycast and Sol for about 15 minutes, but Alfred just works for the key things I need it for.

Great app. Worth the money.

Firefox

I’ve optimized for browser-baed workflows vs desktop software for non-dev work. I still find Firefox faster, more configurable, and more privacy respecting than the Chrome alternative, though have to admit Safari has been inching up on FF’s lead. Plus, Firefox is getting harder to stick with as devs continue to optimize for Chrome and Safari (I had a surprising number of sites this year not work properly or fail in silent ways in Firefox this year and needing me to switch over to Safari to complete a task.).

Plugins have not changed much at all since last year except the addition of Unhook and Obsidian’s new Web Clipper:

1. OneTab
2. Simplify Gmail (for a much cleaner mail experience - paid, but highly recommended)
3. Video Speed Controller (for watching Youtube at 1.X speeds)
4. Obsidian Web Clipper
5. AdNauseum (for ad blocking and obfuscation)
6. Privacy Badger (from the EFF)
7. Unhook (removes Youtube Recommended and Shorts from Youtube pages).

Dropped plugins: None.

Still, if you haven’t used it lately though, check it out. I’m always surprised people still use Chroma since Firefox always seems significantly better to me.

NeoVim

I doubled down on NeoVim this past year. Basically, any code I wrote was done in NeoVim and the only major change I made was moving off my vanilla, hand-rolled, oft-breaking neovim config to using the excellent and well thought-out LazyVim distribution with its sensible default plugins, easy customizability, and coherent key bindings. Big fan. Try it if you haven’t already.

NeoVim is super fast and responsive once you muscle-memory the keybindings, I find it much more of a pleasure to work with than VS Code which feels bloated and slow in comparison.

About my only complaint is an inherent issue in the fact neovim is terminal-based: I’d love to be able to do latex previews for the advanced math formulas I need to take notes on so as to use neovim intead of obsidian, but overall, very happy with Neovim as my main coding tool. Much like last year, excellent LSP support and linting, trouble flagging, and code actions has made me a better, faster, and more productive engineer.

Lua for plugins has been such a gamechanger for neovim. I wish emacs would innovate in the same fashion to make it more accessible, modern, and faster.

If you haven’t tried it out recently, I highly recommend taking LazyVim for a one month spin here in Jan 2025 and seeing how you like it.

Docker

2024 had a lot of engineering and dev work going on and I managed to convert almost everyone I worked with to the gospel of containerization for applications (it wasn’t always easy).

I’m a much happier engineer because of this. It also makes my laptop a much neater and organized place for coding, though definitely need to think about some memory and disk upgrades as my poor 2020 M1 Macbook Air is getting long in the tooth.

My message here is that this is a better way to develop and deploy. Docker also feels less fussy than podman and in a lot of respects, avoids having to use a much more complex Kubernetes approach. In fact, you can get quite a few of the same benefits using docker stack and your server in swarm mode without all the overhead and complexity of K8s.

So, if you haven’t already, please spend some time this first quarter of 2025 trying to dockerize an app you’re building and seeing about the advantages of making docker compose up -d your friend.

WezTerm

I am often surprised at people’s preference for Alacritty, foot, or Kitty over WezTerm and the fact you don’t hear of it as often.

Wezterm has simpler configuration, nicer font managemnt, and I’m convinced the themes are just a little sharper and nicer than on other terminals.

WezTerm and similar terminals offload rendering to the GPU on your machine resulting in a snappier, cleaner rendering and scrollig experience.

I am still using it with tmux for multi-terminal management (and so should you) and stuck with catppuccin as my theme through all of 2024. I did modify my tmux config somewhat based on some sensible defaults.

I still use tmux and fish shell (backed by tmuxp for saved tmux windows configs) to give myself a nice, aesthetic windowed layout for using multiple terminal apps.

Check out my dotfiles if you want to try the same setup.

I’ve been hearing good things about Ghostty, but my understanding is that the performance benchmarks are similar to WezTerm, so not in a rush to replace Wez.

Other Useful Tools

Arq

Back. Up. Your. Files.

I say this every year but always have some friend bemoan the fact they lost critical data from being slack on this simple to take care of fire-and-forget task.

Your data is valuable. Your machine is a commodity. Backups are cheap insurance against disaster. I would literally cry if I lost years of photos, journals, or writing not already saved in the cloud (plus backed up)

Arq has been super reliable and a no-nonsense backup to S3 AWS, BackBlaze, Dropbox (which I used in the past) and restores on the file and directory level are painless. It has saved my sorry butt more than once in a dramatic rescue when my laptop died in Tonga (no, I am not kidding: Tonga).

Flameshot

While there is screenshot capability in OSX and for the longest time I used skitch, flameshot from the linux world has a nice OSX version which I’ve been enjoying using. While it’s markup tools are not quite as robust as Skitch’s I still find it super nice and have been enjoying it more than its alternatives. Try it!

Clop

This is just a super handy little utilty that sits in your taskbar, but effectively it monitors your Downloads (and in my case Desktop) directories for fat files that can be compressed: pngs, jpgs, video files, pdfs… all of them clop happily grabs and compresses them down without apparent loss of crystal clarity but at a much smaller file size. It’s super handy for things like screen recordings and the like and I find it indispensible for making my desktop screengrabs smaller for the blog or sharing. Very handy.

mpv

mpv is the default video player on my system though the linux version is superior to OSX. While I occasionally have to defer to Quicktime for making sure something will stream for friends, this is the go-to video player for me on both OSX and Linux. It’s faster, less fussy, and has cleaner UX.

mpv is also command line triggerable which is nice for integration with newsboat (below) for youtube video feeds. Works great on linux on tiling window managers like sway (or i3).

My only real complaint on it is that it does not support Apple’s Airplay protocol (which hopefully will be forced open soon by anti-combines legislation.). It also weirdly launches a lot slower on OSX than Linux, but other than those minor quibbles, it’s great.

Jellyfin

I am a big fan of Jellyfin. I feel it’s made my watching of various series and movies much more deliberate than if I was using Netfix or one of the other streaming services.

One of the nice things about moving back into a house instead of nomading hotels this year was having a stable setup to just use Jellyfin from the TV and get my big screen experience back on. The WebUI works great remotely and much better than alternative media server softwares out there. A load of AppleTV clients have also recently emerged to make this an even better experience. I use Infuse myself (paid) on the AppleTV to control the interface.

I still keep most of my media on the laptop, though now that I’m a bit more settled, might move this over to a separate machine or even a cheap VPS with decent storage costs and make it accessible via the web interface to the internet so I can just use it on the road as well as expose it to friends.

The Clock

I spend a lot of time collaborating with people in other timezones. This very handy menubar app drops down a panel to give me a nice calendar and a list of timezones. It also has a nice “meeting planner” slider to easily help with meeting scheduling (though it could be better, tbh). Super useful for coordinating with people across the five to seven timezones I interact with regularly.

Services

Useful services enhance my workflow. Most of these either have a menu bar app or browser plugin which makes them relevant but keeps them out of the way of GTD except when needed.

NordVPN

NordVPN is still my choice for VPNs. Trouble-free, very fast in every country I’ve been in, does not log, gets past geofences, and has a numerous points of presence globally. Reasonably priced and uses the Wireguard protocol for speed and performance. Have looked at a few alternatives now and still find myself coming back to Nord.

Apple iCloud and Music

I use Apple’s iCloud for saving and syncing files though I think it’s a poorer and more expensive cousin to Dropbox and frankly would like an alternative to both of them that was de facto supported by developers to make mobile stuff work with my laptop and phone and sync reliably.

Also, not a big fan of the way Apple has taken features away from iCloud and forced you to purchase other services to compensate. My big beef here has been with the way they forced you to buy Apple Music to get the syncing you used to get by default with iCloud. Grrrr.

In that same vein, I pay for Apple Music but do prefer owning my own files. Apple has made it hard to not purchase the service and kinda waiting for some competition tribunal somewhere to note that this is probably tied selling (are you realy buying a laptop and phone or are you buying access to the Apple ecosystem?). Still have the same complaints about Apple (and Spotify) not having many of the songs I have on my hard drive as records from before the days of licensed music.

In general, for files, Photos, and Music would prefer a service not tied to same company that makes the hardware and operating system.

Github

While not a fan of Microsoft owning both Github and VS COde, I have a whack of pre-acquisition history and repos on the platform so somehwat invested. Plus, it’s reasonably priced for my pro-am engineering needs — though a big fan of Gitlab and its enlightened remote-first approach.

I really just use it for code sharing and CI code actions and not a fan of the AI features at all, but it lets me interact with other engineers on projects and collaborate effectively, which is the goal.

OpenAI and Claude

While I often give sideeye at the current VC stampede for AI features (particularly generative AI which I feel is largely dominated by automating work that should not be being done in the first place) and was a sceptic of chatGPT and friends at the start, I have to admit it’s become useful as a coder for jumpstarting complex, but well-speced protocols and, at least in my case, getting an initial test suite written when I’m not feeling TDD.

While the AI often gets things very wrong, it does usually provide a decent starting point to sorting out the solution.

I don’t think it’s going to replace good engineers anytime soon (oinly a small portion of good software is the actual code generation), but it can be quite handy once in a while. It should not be depended on at this point, but in the hands of a good developer, I think it can be a decent jumpseat.

I find quality of code recommendations differs wildly between the services and hallucinations are rife though, so… caveat emptor

Steam

I need to thank Steam since I’m not even sure I would have played any games in 2024 without it being on my machine, but it provides a great game delivery service across OSX, Linux, and (I assume) windows that makes games available easily.

Sadly, got nowhere near the amount of game-playing in I would have liked in 2024, but it was nice having it there when I did get some free time for this goal. Still trying to puzzle out the educaitonal mechanic for my own game, so hopefully this is something I can do a bit better in 2025.

CLI

I spend a lot of time on the terminal command line . It gives me minor superpowers compared to people who can only use GUIs. Many (though not all) things are better done on the command line. These are what I use:

Fish shell

Using fish probably saves me days every year. With smarter historical suggestion, completion, highlighting, and sensible scripting, it just makes the command line vastly better. I simply do not understand why more people don’t use it instead of bash, zsh, or other shells. Try it!

My dots for fish are available here .

homebrew on OSX (and linux)

brew is a package manager for OSX and also Linux. On OSX it installs a heap of packages you’d want as a developer as well as now providing a way to install apps (which I prefer to having them litter files across my system that require cleaning to uninstall.). On OSX, this ends up being things like Go, Python and Ruby and other necessaries for what I code.

Many CLI apps are installable with a brew install <package> (harsh etc) and a good chunk of the actual applications (mpv etc) via brew install --cask <package>. While it’s a small thing, you can find almost any font imaginable which makes trying out new looks easy.

It makes the OSX dev and package management experience a lot more linux-like.

harsh

harsh is a minimalist habit tracking app (I wrote) though it has ~150 Github stars at this point and has become surprisingly popular (at least, it;’s surprising to me). 42 releases to date.

On release 0.10.7 at time of writing, I like to think it provides an easy, simple, text-based log file to track and visualize the habits that are important to you. The log file format is designed to be easily parsable by other tools for more in-depth analysis. At the end of the day, it’s worked great for me, so a matter of scratching my own itch.

It’s targeted at geeks. I personally tried a lot of habit trackers and in the end, this is what stuck. Available for all architectures and cross platform on Linux, OSX, BSDs, and Windows and in most popular package managers.

Newsboat

Newsboat is a great app for ripping through newsfeeds. It radically reduces the time I spend keeping across sites, events, and youtube videos.

A fan. I find it makes me vastly more efficient in consuming and actioning ephemera. You can integrate it with mpv (above) for Youtube newsfeeds, and various bookmarking apps.

Sadly, it’s gotten a little less stable on OSX since Sequoia though the developer(s) are very responsive and working on the intermittent issues.

GoPass

Fast, easy to use, and bullet-proof as well as integrating git for version control, gopass keeps your sensitive passwords safe layered on top of the rock-solid gpg encryption app.

Also, available as iOS and Android apps that work with github repo-ed secrets, and a nice bridge to use it with your browser (though feel this is largely superceded with saved passwords in most browsers now.).

The other really nice thing about gopass is that you can use it in scripts effortlessly to hide secrets, so if you do things like publish dotfiles, it’s fantastic.

Ledger (+ Reckon gem)

One of the strange things moving around the globe is you realize how “national” things like finance programs are. They are generally built to handle one currency and one financial regime, and not really focused on people with more complex financial lives.

As such, I’ve become a big fan of plain-text, double-entry accounting being nomadic. So far, Ledger has been the only program to handle the international complexity of currencies, businesses, and securities I need as a digital nomad with feet in several countries. No commercial app has come close. Yes, you need to invest a bit of time in it, but your undertanding of both finance and accounting will pay dividends (figuratively).

I pair Ledger with the excellent Reckon ruby gem (gem install reckon to get it) which predicts which account my bank entries should go in and automatically enters them in the ledger file to make my bank reconciliations automatic (sadly, my broker is not at all as organized as this though need to recheck on that.).

There’s also a decent python app someone built a couple years back to do my corporate financial reporting. While this post needs an update, you can see how to set it up Ledger and Reckon yourself

Ledger former has wide support across open source (though wish there were better Go, Python, or TS libraries for stocks and muilticurrency) and the emacs ledger-mode package is excellent and neovim support is quite solid.

Visidata

If you’re like me, you’re kinda over Excel, but I end up having to provide and manipulate csv’s weekly as they’re (or tsv and similar formats) are pervasive in astronomy, database admin, and well… every sales and marketing team I’ve ever encountered.

Visidata is a swiss army knife of columned text formats and ridiculously useful while developing. The csv to json conversion (and back) is often super useful while developing.

I do think it could be a bit simpler for core functions, but handy to have in your back pocket when needed.

Other Miscellaneous CLI tools

We seem to be in the midst of a CLI tools renaissance and I have to admit I am very happy there are some super well-designed and super fast CLI tools pumping out which just make my life better as an engineer and have vastly better UX than the tools they wer designed to replace. In no particular order:

• fzf (fuzzy finder) - a narrowing and selection tool
• ripgrep (rg) - a very fast and more natural search tool
• eza and lla - both great ls replacements (I prefer eza)
• fd - a better find
• git-delta
• dust
• htop and btop
• yazi and superfile - both fantastic and super fast file managers (I prefer yazi)
• lazygit - with great neovim integration
• yt-dlp - download youtube videos for offline use (super handy for flights)
• scooter - an awesome search and replace tool (also integrates nicely with neovim)
• fastfetch

Check out the above mentions. I even alias some of these to the tool they replace to make it easy for my muscle memory to use them and get the benefits while still jeeping intent intact.

Other Useful Tools

Calca

Yet another year has gone by with (sadly) this program being mostly abandonware. I think I might have to try my hand at making this into a neovim plugin since I worry its usefulness may disappear if it goes much longer.

Calca is simply markdown for math. You write a symbolic math formula complete with assigned variables, and it delivers you the evaluated results. It is sophisticated enough to do “what if” scenarios as well (though this may be overkill.). But the best thing about it is you can save and version control your files as plain ol markdown.

I used it to replace so many things Excel was bad at (and caused hidden errors with) and still reach for it whenever puzzling out things like budgets or projections. I also find it cuts down massively on errors which plague spreadsheets in general.

Try it if it sounds even remotely useful to you. It’s great.

Transmission

Bittorrent client of choice. Simple, fast, secure, no-nonsense, lightweight, and with a clear interface for selecting options like encrypted peers, controlling bandwidth, seeding, and concurrency. Gets it done. O actually use this a shocking amount and it does what it neds to do and gets out of your way.

Apple Notes

Funnily enough, I have to admit to using Apple Notes a lot more in the last year. It’s not so much that it’s gotten better as an app (though it has) but that it is fast, accesible on my phone on the go, and syncs things to the desktop quite easily.

So, very good for short impermanent notes, or things liking pinning a note on my new house address or referring to where I am (or how I’m doing) on my workout in the gym. So, generally ephemera or things I need to refer to for a period of time in isolation. And before I put it into something I use for longer term storage or context like Obsidian.

I do see Apple keeping on adding features to Notes, and surprised they haven’t added in better bi-directional (rather than simple linking) ability and a more sophisticated approach to TODOs (after using org-mode’s sophisticated TODO and agenda system I often wonder how peopledeal with simple checklist systems now 8-/ ).

Google Office Suite

It’s way easier to use the GOffice suite than deal with MS files being mailed around, though I really wish there was a way to push and pull from markdown docs to have things like google docs updated. The fact they often exist in your corporate GDrive means they often disappear if you move on, unlike more owned file formats. I use the mobile mail and cal apps on my iPhone as well.

Dropped This Year

Notion

Strangely, since I dropped emacs org-mode last year in favour of Notion last year because my new role made focusing on sharing and collaborating much more important. While Notion is still nice for some things, and its writing experience is best-in-class, it’s added on loads of irksome AI tools and things like a calendar which just misses the point of a simple, focused tool, that does just a few things well.

But basically, Obsidian has improved enough that it is now actually better for note taking though, sadly, I’ve yet to find something I like as much as emacs org-mode which addresses the quirky markup it uses or the fact it’s task management is substantially superior.

I still like a few things about Notion. The databases are handy though ultimately if you can get something into a text based format with frontmatter, that seems better longer term.

I do like the dropdown toggles that Notion seems to have which seem to be absent from Obsidian.

Todoist

Todoist never really did it for me, but seemed like a worthwhile experiment. I replaced it with Superlist as soon as it came on the scene, mostly due to its integrations which solved the problem for me of how to collect up all the various threads of things that needed to get done and put them in a central place to process and execute on (and the fact the mobile experience on Superlist was also veey good).

Still, I miss the amazing dashboarding and control I had with org-mode todos and keep wishing Obsidian would improve beyond what it has in Tasks.

Emacs Org-mode

Except for some noodling around, I’ve moved off org-mode in favour of the friendlier lingua-franca of markdown though bemoan the excellent TODO task management of org-agenda and its friends. I still feel like my GTD workflow is suffering a bit not having org-mode todos and org-super-agenda. Obsidian works for a lot of things, but its task management, even with the Tasks plugin feels like it leaves a gap from org-mode TODOs.

Really, what I seem to want is the ability to use org-mode TODOs in markdown and a way to parse them, but may be a bit much to ask (or would cause an outright revolt amongst obsidian users but perhaps a plugin.).

Was kinda impressed at the person who put org-agenda and org-mode into neovim. Seemed to work not too bad though, again… tired to org-mode rather than markdown… which is what I’d prefer.

Fin

And that’s what the toolchain looks like sliding into 2025. There’s probably a post that needs to be written on dev-, astro-, physics-, and math- tools, but for the daily and weekly drivers, this would be the list (for example, really trying to find a tool that allows me to “handwrite” advanced mathematical formula on something like an iPad and have that convert automatically to LaTeX code for use in longer term notes whil ein lectures.).

As a general trend, I seem to be constantly having tension between self-hosted files and control and the services I need to link them across devices. As well as my lack of ability to find a task management system that is effective as org-mode but is more interoperable and collaborative with the world than emacs. I do see companies making alternatives, but few seem to be compelling enough to run as “fire and forget” services, cost-effectively on a VPS or , or to promote interoperability. So, would love to hear people’s experiences with what they may have tried.

If you’re interested in seeing how things have changed over time, you can see previous years’ posts for 2023 2022 2021 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , to 2017 .

I hope you found something interesting in the above lists or I convinced you to use some apps and they make you more happier and more productive. If you read the above and think there is something I should know about or try, please feel free to ping me. I’m always looking for low cost tools to make my life easier and better. And always curious to hear more about works for people and their own productivity systems.

If this post was useful to you, lemme know via mail or elephant below. Feel free to mention or ping me on @awws on mastodon or email me at hola@wakatara.com .