Essential Apps and Services I'm using in 2025
As an update to a start of 2023 blog on tech tools
Recent Discoveries and New Daily Drivers
Screen Studio
I’ve made a few instructional videos with this. I like how it tries to auto animate the zoom in but for code, the ‘AI’ detection is a bit too aggressive and nauseating. There are some missing features - like the ability to edit in overlays to correct facts on videos I don’t want to re-record. However, if I have a video I think I can record in a single pass, this app is a great time saver.
Github Copilot
Exposed through Visual Studio Code integration, I get access to this through work. I’m pretty certain I would not want to code without some kind of LLM integration. I am mostly making small tutorials and instructional scripts, so the gtp-4o model is more than capable of running along side everything I am doing.
When I want to have a longer conversation about starting a project or setting something up, I find I am going to big OpenAI o1 on the ChatGPT website.
Davinci Resolve
While I’m not as active in making videos, the ability to use the same software to edit on every work and personal laptop makes this a real winner. I recently recorded a long video in Screen Studio and found that I needed to visually patch the “January 2024” date for “2025”. As powerful and more stable than Adobe Premiere, this app is monetizing professionals and people who want time saving AI features. I hope they are wildly successful as it’s a great app.
Affinity Photo
I’ve swithced from Adobe Photoshop to a one time paid license for the Affinity visual suite. Editing thumbnails in a stable and well maintained Photoshop clone is a must for me, as my muscle memory is too strongly mapped to Photoshop, which I have been using since version 1.
N8N
A low code automation platform, happily runs in a container on my home linux machine performing a few simple automations and telemetry data collection routines. This is a crowded space, but the ability to run adhoc python scripts inside low-code nodes is a huge win. Being able to run self-managed is also a big plus in this time of SaaS slop.
ChatGPT Plus
I’ve come to rely on ChatGPT for productivity questions throughout my workday. o1 is remarkably good at getting me started using new code libraries and solving complex problems quickly. I have not regretted paying what is now my largest personal SaaS expense.
Dropbox Family Plan
Being able to set up my parent’s computer with cloud backup for essential documents is going to save me time down the road. I’ve done a bit of file sharing / archiving as a family for things like encodings of 8mm film reels from our grandparents, but so far this has been a better option than putting a NAS with a cloud object store secondary in my parent’s home.
Ghostty
I wasn’t feeling cool enough, so I installed a terminal wrapper. This one’s fine. Configuring it wasn’t hard and I now do not need to map my brain to tmux defaults (which I refuse to do)
Still Using
Obsidian
Daily driver. I’ve even created automations where I put summarizations of whisper transcriptions of my podcasts in a daily file so I can review what podcasts I might want to listen to, and only skim those likely to be the wrong vibe for my morning.
Reclaim.ai
My use has drawn down to just daily habits and “schedule me” links. The key advantge of this app is that it isn’t blocked by my company’s Google security setup as it is only requesting Masked access to my calendar and the calendars of those I’m working with to schedule.
I don’t have any direct reports in my current role, so my 1:1 meeting volume isn’t enough to need the smart scheduling feature of this app - which was its selling value. Hopefully, the software expands this year or I might drop it as too expensive for the value I get out of it.
Home Assistant
Visual Studio Code
Inoreader
Spotify Duo
Youtube Premium
I passively learn quite a bit on YouTube each week. Given that I’m not on Twitter, it’s how I learn about many new things in tech as well.
A Password Manager
Falling out of use
Strave, MyFitnessPal … uh oh. That’s a bad trend.