A continuously updated list of devices, tools, and services I use to get digital work & play done. Inspired by [uses.tech](https://uses.tech), check there for a list of everyone's /uses pages.
## Hardware
My office is where my MacBook is, all these devices go wherever I travel to:
My main workhorse powering my daily work & play. Everything is pretty much amazing and it handles everything I throw at it. Love the screen, keyboard, and speakers. Still miss the SD card slot which Apple deemed not Pro enough.
My main camera and used for everything when I'm not on my Mac. I try to keep it only for personal communication and reading. I'm never quite sure what to do with all its unbelievable power, but the screen is the best display I ever looked at. Because of that, replaces a lot the iPad for reading.
Rocked the original AirPods since their introduction, one of the best products Apple has ever made. By now using the Pro variant pretty much all the time when talking into my devices and participating in online meetings, or listening to music on the go.
- **[iPad Pro (12.9-inch) 2021](https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/)**
_Space Gray, 512GB, WiFi + Cellular_
My 4th iPad after the original iPad. Since that time used it as a paper document replacement for reading and research and it became my favorite device to browse and edit photos on. Until I can run a local web development environment on iPadOS it is rarely useful for me to get coding work done but still intrigued by the possibilities and cleanliness of iPadOS compared to macOS.
Still a fan of the simplicity and gestures of the Magic Mouse 2, but it's just no fit for working precisely, or for gaming. Logitech's MX Master 3 provides both, and has great macOS support, unlike the people over at Razer.
Great compact keyboard with black keys which have a great key travel. Packed with other welcome features over Apple's keyboards like backlit keys and easy switching between 3 paired devices.
- **[Apple Watch Series 5](https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-series-5/)**
_40mm Space Gray Aluminum Case, Black Solo Loop_
Mainly used for its health & fitness features so I can go on a run without my iPhone, and track the shit out of me. I like to keep it unobtrusive, all notifications are turned off, except for calendar event & Activity.app notifications.
The little Linux and local server playground performing some serious tasks for all devices within any network I arrive at: [Pi-Hole](https://pi-hole.net) keeps all browsing adventures clean, and every network device's DNS traffic is routed through the Raspberry Pi. [Plex](https://www.plex.tv) is delivering a video library, capable of playing 4K content. It runs a [Tor](https://www.torproject.org) non-exit relay. Has a 4 TB hard drive attached for [storage for all network devices](/raspberry-pi-file-and-screen-sharing-macos-ios).
It's [macOS](https://www.apple.com/macos/) & [iOS](https://www.apple.com/ios/) & [iPadOS](https://www.apple.com/ipados/) & [watchOS](https://www.apple.com/watchos/) all around. The majority of my work is done on macOS. My main web and development server is a droplet on [DigitalOcean](https://m.do.co/c/9882a054acf6) running [Ubuntu](https://ubuntu.com), allowing me to work from the iPad, among other things.
I keep it simple and use most of the default Apple apps across devices for all basic computing needs: **Mail**, **Calendar**, **Notes**, **Reminders**, **Contacts**, **Messages**, **Photos**, **Music**. Most of the additional apps I use have versions for macOS & iOS.
Living a cloud-first life where all my files are stored in some cloud service and are selectively synced to any device. Mail, Calendar, and Contacts are hooked up to personal and work **[Google G Suite](https://gsuite.google.com)** accounts.
So simple, yet powerful. I use Finder & the iOS Files app to access all my files from multiple sources: iCloud, Tresorit, SSH servers through [Secure ShellFish](https://secureshellfish.app), local [network drives attached to my Raspberry Pi](/raspberry-pi-file-and-screen-sharing-macos-ios).
I have used Dropbox Pro for many years but it became too clunky and Apple's version turned into what I wanted Dropbox to be. Most of my non-code related files live there and are happily synced.
Holds all the personal and sensitive documents. Works like Dropbox or iCloud Drive but with end-to-end encryption with my own private keys, and some nicely paranoid sharing features.
Listed here because this app on my iPhone makes every piece of paper coming across my desk into a digital file helping me maintain a **paperless office**. Works like a charm with any document in multiple languages making them searchable with OCR. Every scan I do with it produces a high quality black & white PDF file, ready for digital filing. This gives me quick access to every official document I might need to give to someone no matter where I am in the world. Scanned paper documents are then destroyed and put into recycling.
My main browser on every device. I stay for best typography rendering of any browser, the feature & UI minimalism, and the privacy and content blocking features. No extensions at all except for 1Blocker.
My content blocker of choice for Safari so I rarely see any ad tech bullshit even outside of my network without Pi-Hole. Fast, effective, and completely unobtrusive on every device.
- [MetaMask](https://metamask.io): my browser wallet for all Web3 and Dapp testing.
- [Privacy Badger](https://privacybadger.org/): I wish Safari content blockers could also be used in Firefox but Privacy Badger from EFF does a good job too.
From Notepad, to Dreamweaver, to CSS Edit, to Coda, to Espresso, to TextMate, to Atom, and now I arrived at VS Code. Its feature set, coding experience, and ecosystem far outweigh the Electron drawbacks, and at least it is the most performant Electron app I know. I still miss [Espresso](https://www.espressoapp.com) as my personal gold standard for how a code editor UI on macOS should look and behave. Using only a small set of extensions mostly for automatic code formatting based on various tools:
- [Nord](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=arcticicestudio.nord-visual-studio-code): patiently awaiting a light version of it, until then [Polar](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=merithayan.polar) does the job.
Most of my projects are under version control and are synced as Git repositories. Using Git in Terminal.app, within VS Code, and occasionally with [GitHub Desktop](https://desktop.github.com). Almost everything I do for work is embedded in a Git-based workflow. Every commit I create on any device is signed with one of my GPG keys.
Lots of work projects are Dockerized so there's always a bunch of Docker containers running on my machine. Still prefer to directly use my local development environment for everything JavaScript/Node.js based.
Use it since like forever on macOS. Gives me file access to pretty much everything within my network and remote resources, including S3 & Wasabi on both, macOS & iOS.
Just like Transmit gives me file access to network and remote resources over SSH & SFTP. But truly unique in its iOS integration where all resources simply show up in Files.app and can be used there on a daily basis. Also has a great terminal on top, which can even be started from Files.app.
One of the most powerful development tools on iOS making version-controlled, on-device development actually possible. In my workflow it is the basis for doing quick code or copy edits. Because it is a document provider on iOS, I can directly access my cloned Git repositories from any other app.
I mostly design in the browser but when required, all my UI wireframing, prototyping, and design needs are met with either Sketch or Figma. Prefer Sketch for the perfectly native UI, but Figma for drawing performance and its collaboration features.
All my master photos live in iCloud, and are selectively synced to devices in Photos.app. I make sure every photo ending up in here has the correct location and capturing date in its metadata, like for a lot of scanned analog photos from the last century.
Using it on all devices, most edits happen on my iPhone with it. Metadata editing often happens in the [macOS version](https://www.apple.com/macos/photos/). Has everything I need since iOS 13. Originally, my library moved from folders, to iPhoto, to Aperture, to Lightroom, and from there back to Photos.
Excellent metadata editing on iOS for single photos, or bulk editing. Directly accesses and modifies the originals from Photos.app and writes modified location & date back to them.
Used iTunes to manage my music library since I use a Mac. Digitalized my CD library in Apple Lossless into it in the 2000s, first synced to mobile devices (iPod, then iPhone) via cable, then "synced" with iTunes Match without any cables. Now this library is running with Music, in a mix with Apple Music. This library with the lossless files is living on a network drive in my home network and is accessed from there when sitting at a Mac.
Yup, still using that. I try to buy music I like from the artist in a lossless format and store it in my Music library, and iTunes Match gives me access to its version from the Apple Music catalogue on all mobile devices.
Use it since I use email but its clunky and rarely anyone uses it. Interacting with it only in Terminal.app for decrypting and encrypting, and use it to sign Git commits. Yes, I'm aware of [GPG Suite](https://gpgtools.org) but the instability it introduces into the whole operating system is not worth the usage to me.
In an ideal world everybody would use this so all our private messaging is not controlled by some single, closed-source entity with varying degrees of ad tech evilness.
Never stopped using RSS for my news reading and Reeder has always been a joy to use. Have it on all my devices but prefer reading on the iPad with it. I use [Feedly](https://feedly.com) to manage and sync my subscriptions in the background.
I prefer buying ePub files directly from book authors which then end up in Books. Pretty much all my technical books live here and are synced via iCloud.
Everything I need from an app to track workouts, which only happens on watchOS these days. It is pretty much perfect and replaced [Runkeeper](https://runkeeper.com) for me.
My second line of defense, the snapshot backup tool used for all Macs I had in the last years. Encrypts everything locally before uploading. The same backups are sent every hour to a [Wasabi](https://wasabi.com) bucket, and in my local network to a hard drive connected to the Raspberry Pi via Samba. I have kept all my former Mac snapshots within the same bucket on Wasabi, so I can always jump back to any of their snapshots. Always super stable and happy with it.
- I host my **[blog](https://kremalicious.com)** (which also includes my photo stream) and **[portfolio](https://matthiaskretschmann.com)** on **[AWS S3](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/)**, with **[Cloudflare](https://www.cloudflare.com)** in front of it.
- I run my own **web and development server**, a droplet on **[DigitalOcean](https://m.do.co/c/9882a054acf6)**, running **[Nginx](https://nginx.org)**.
- I run my own **Git repository hosting** with **[Gitea](https://gitea.com)** for private projects, and for automatically mirroring every GitHub repository I touch into it. A VPS running within **[Amazon Lightsail](https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/)**.
- I run a public **[IPFS](https://ipfs.io)** node & gateway, powered by a VPS on **[Amazon Lightsail](https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/)**, and the frontend delivered via **[Vercel](https://vercel.com)**.
- I run multiple **[Tor](https://www.torproject.org)** exit relays, VPS distributed between **[Scaleway](https://www.scaleway.com)** &**[OVH](https://www.ovh.com)**.
