Updates on App Defaults

Every December, I review my list of apps and subscriptions. I didn't break the ritual this year either.

I have moved back to HEY email after a year. Fastmail served me well, and I have no problems with the service. It is a near-perfect email service, to be fair. But it does make email boring, so I'm okay with paying the premium. What about the terrible search of HEY that I complained about the last time? Is it any better now? Well, time to find out. Hope it has improved enough not to be a deal breaker.

The best decision I made when I moved to HEY the first time was to switch all my email to my domain. So email hopping is comparatively painless now. I, however, made the mistake of using the masked email addresses on the Fastmail domain. So there were a few accounts that needed to be moved to an email address on my domain. I guess the fact that I had to do that tells me I didn't use the masked email feature right.

I haven't deleted my Fastmail account yet, though I have cancelled the subscription.

I have stopped (didn't renew) the subscription for Ivory. I am back to Mona after a year. The polish of Ivory isn't prominent enough to justify the premium it asks for. Plus, it requires an annual subscription if I am to use it across devices (iOS and Mac). Mona does the job for me.

Since the last few months, I have started listening to podcasts again. I tried Overcast for a while, but it just doesn't work for me. Plus, its Apple Watch support is pathetic. So back on Pocket Casts. (I had unsubscribed to all the podcasts I was listening to earlier and restarted my subscription list. I intentionally avoid tech podcasts where two or three guys chat about topics. I don't want to listen in on "friends" chatting.)

There was a time when I followed my RSS feeds in Readwise Reader. But the workflow just doesn't fit well – the native reading experience matters to me, and Reader does not support that. So, I have moved all my feeds to Unread Cloud. The app's reading experience is perfect.

After years of managing my todos on TickTick, I have moved to Todoist, given its better cross-platform support. Plus, it has better integration with the iPhone.

I have updated the App Defaults page to reflect these changes.