Tools

I enjoy learning how other people work, what hardware, software, tools, and gadgets they use. Here, I present my tools.

Home Office

Jarvis Bamboo Standing Desk by Fully

I bought the bamboo version of the desk in 140 cm with a black frame, a cable tray, and a programmable memory handset. The desk is sturdy and has a good height range. The bamboo is beautiful and feels good.

Capisco Chair by HÅG

The chair has black leather and a black frame. It’s a good chair for a standing desk because you can sit in many different positions. It’s comfortable and has a good height range.

Black Leather Desk Pad

I use a black leather desk pad in 75 cm. I didn’t care too much about the brand, for me the width was the most important issue.

MacBook Stand

My MacBook Pro 16” rests on a silver aluminum stand. I usually don’t type on the build-in keyboard, but on a mechanical keyboard. For me my MacBook is a second screen.

Bamboo Book Rest

I use a bamboo book rest to hold my iPad Pro or a book. It’s a good stand for reading or watching videos.

BenQ Screenbar Plus

The BenQ Screenbar Plus provides fantastic lighting. I use it every day in Winter and in the evening. It has a sensor to adjust the light automatically and can be dimmed. Additionally, you can change the color temperature.

Anker PowerConf C200

I’m in quite a few video calls, and don’t want to constantly look to the side on my MacBook. The Anker PowerConf C200 is a good webcam with a good picture quality and a good microphone. And I like that you can immediatly see if the camera is on or off. It’s a good privacy feature.

Tech

Mac mini M2 Pro

My best computer is a Mac mini M2 Pro with 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD. It’s the fastest computer I’ve ever had.

MacBook Pro 16”

For work I use a MacBook Pro 16”, and I have a few older MacBook Pro 15”. I still want to put Linux on the oldest of them.

Apple Magic Mouse

I use two Apple Magic Mouse, one in white and one in black. Don’t ask me why, but it has to do with Apple’s design which doesn’t allow me to load the mouse while using it. 😅

Keychron K1 Wireless Mechanical Keyboard

My keyboard is a Keychron K1 Wireless Mechanical Keyboard with brown Gateron Low Profile Mechanical Switches. I love this keyboard so much, I get annoyed when I have to use the build-in keyboard of my MacBook. I bought a wooden hand rest on Etsy.

LG 4K Monitor

The main display is an LG 4K monitor with 31.5”, the notebook display is my second screen.

Creative Pebble Loudspeakers

For sound, I two Creative Pebble loudspeakers, it’s impressive how good they sound for the price. I have a sound system for music.

Sonos Sound System

For music I use a Sonos sound system. I have a two Sonos Five, a Playbar, a Play:3 and Play:1 speakers in different rooms. I love the sound quality and the app, but Sonos software is not the best lately.😢

Apple AirPods Pro 2

When I’m moving, I use my Apple AirPods Pro 2. I love the noise canceling and the sound quality. I use them every day when I do a walk or when I do chores around the flat.

iPhone 13 Mini

I have an iPhone 13 Mini that I use mostly when I’m not at home. I love the size, but the battery life is now getting poor, so I have to replace it soon.

iPad Pro M2

I have an iPad Pro M2 with an Apple Pencil that I use on the Sofa for surfing, reading, or when I’m creating digital crafts or notes. I love the size and the speed of the device.

Apple Watch Series 10

I have two Apple Watches, a series 5 I wear at night for sleep tracking and a series 10 I wear during the day. I love the health features and the design. I bought the black titanium version with a black milanese loop.

Synology DiskStation DS220+

I use a Synology DiskStation DS220+ NAS with two 6 TB hard drives in a RAID system with Docker containers as a media server, cloud backup solution, and for network-wide ad blocking with Pi-hole.

Raspberry Pi 4

I use a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8 GB and Linux Ubuntu for redundancy for the DNS ad blocking.

Development

Neovim

I use Neovim with LazyVim as a plugin manager. I love the speed and the simplicity of the editor. I use it for nearly everything. I mostly stopped using Visual Studio Code, because it’s too slow. Occasionally, I use Zed.

Ghostty

I use the Ghostty terminal emulator. I have used many Terminals before: iTerm, Kitty, WezTerm, Alacritty, and many others. But I love the design and the speed of the Ghossty terminal. It supports ligatures, transparency, and blur and even allows to customize the dock icon with your own colors. 👻

Tmux

I use the Tmux terminal multiplexer. I have a few sessions open with different windows and panes. I love the speed and the flexibility of Tmux. I use LazyGit for Git.

Design

Affinity Suite

I use Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, and Affinity Publisher for all my creative work. I ditched Adobe a few years ago and never looked back. I love the apps and the price. Additionally, I use Procreate on my iPad Pro for creative work.

Eagle

Eagle is my favorite tool to store design assets, like images, videos, fonts, and illustrations. It’s a tool with so many cool features; I use it every day and have over 40,000 assets saved. You can just drag and drop files into Eagle from any website, tag them, and search for them. You can batch save all images or create long screenshots of websites. It even supports OCR text recognition. It’s like DEVONthink but for design assets. You can search for colors, text, and many other things. There are many plugins available, some of which I use, including AI features to search on Pinterest, enhance images, or remove backgrounds.

Typeface

Typeface is my favorite font manager. I have over 1,000 fonts, and I love the simplicity and the speed of the app. I use it to activate and deactivate fonts, to search for fonts, and to organize them in collections.

Research & Writing

iA Writer

My favorite writing app is iA Writer, I write nearly everything with it, except my notes which I write in Obsidian.

Obsidian

Obsidian is my favorite note-taking app. I use it for all my 4,000+ notes. I love the graph view and the backlinks and use many plugins, build-in and third-party. Even though you can sync your notes with iCloud, I pay for the encrypted Sync service to have a backup and to support the developers.

DEVONthink

I use DEVONthink for years and store mostly documents and reference material, in it. I used to also store images in DEVONthink, but Eagle is much better suited for that. Everything is synchronized encrypted between all my devices.

Reeder

I consume all my content with the Reeder app, from RSS Feeds, Reddit threads, to YouTube videos. I use Feedbin as my RSS service. From there, I transfer everything I starred automatically (with self-hosted n8n) to Raindrop.io.

Raindrop.io

Raindrop.io is my favorite app to save any bookmark and to find anything again in seconds. I have more than 30,000 bookmarks.

Readwise Reader

I use Readwise Reader to read articles, ebooks, 𝕏 posts, watch YouTube videos with AI enhanced transcription, or use the AI voice feature to listen to articles. When I highlight something, it’s automatically saved to Readwise.

Readwise

I use Readwise to review all my highlights from books, articles, and notes. I love the daily review and the flashcards.

Other

I use many extra tools, too many to name them all. You can read a longer article about all the apps, tools & services I use.

Things

I’ve been using Things as my to-do app for years; I appreciate its simplicity and design.

Raycast

Raycast Pro is my most-used app, with its AI feature. I love the app and use it every day. I pay for the Pro version to get access to a lot of different AI models, like ChatGPT, Claude, Llama, and many others. I wrote a long article about how I use Raycast.