Apps and digital tools I liked in 2025

So Robb Knight started this trend wherein people list apps they use or prefer for various purposes. Here are the apps and digital services I used and mostly liked in 2025, grouped by category for convenience and linked for curiosity & context. Hope you find something interesting or useful in here to improve your digital life.

People

• 📨 Mail, Calendar, and Contacts: iCloud
• 💬 Chat & Messaging: WhatsApp, Signal and Slack
• 🤡 Social media: Obviously none, just read my blogs

The Web

• 🌐 Browser & Passwords: Safari and Firefox
• 🔍 Search engine: Kagi
• 🧩 Extensions: AdGuard, Open Access Helper, StopTheMadness and Wayback Machine
• 🛜 VPN: Mullvad and Proton

Work

• 💻 Laptop: MacBook Air M1, the trusty
• 📁 Files & Media: iCloud
• 📄 PDFs & Images: Apple Preview
• 🤓 Productivity: macOS Spotlight, Supercharge and Maccy
• 📊 Spreadsheets, Slides, and Documents: Apple iWork and ONLYOFFICE

Reading

• 📖 Longform: Kindle Paperwhite
• 📰 The Web and News: Feedbin, the best (please use RSS too)
• 🔤 Dictionary: Apple (English, Thesaurus, Hindi-English, Chinese-English)
• 📑 Read articles later: Instapaper
• 📚 Bookshelf: Goodreads

Writing

• ✍🏼 Drafts: My blogs and Google Docs
• 📝 Notes and To-Dos: Bear
• ‣ Outliner: Workflowy (get more storage with my referral)
• ✨ To publish my poetry: A combination of IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, Pothi, Google Play Books and Internet Archive
• ⤵️ Notes importer: Klib

Blogging

• 🛰️ Space and Personal Blogs: Ghost, via MagicPages (referral link because I use it happily)
• 📈 Website stats: Umami (privacy respecting)
• 🕸️ Domain: BigRock
• 📇 DNS: Cloudflare

Etc.

• 🎶 Music: YouTube Music 
• 🎙️ Podcasts: None (here’s why)
• 🚈 Local life (pun intended for Mumbaikars): PhonePe, Rapido, Google Maps, Playo, DigiLocker, and Mumbai One
• 🛫 Travel: MakeMyTrip and Booking.com

So that was my digital lifeOS for 2025. Blog about yours! Did you particularly enjoy an app or web service this year or found something in this list useful? Let me know.