Favorite Pieces of Software 2024

Let’s get straight to it. Most of this tech isn’t “new” it’s just new to me and maybe new to many of you.

My Priorities

• Cross-platform support
  • I have an iPhone, a de-googled Android phone, a MacBook that I take everywhere, a Windows PC for gaming, and a Linux Desktop that I work on. Everything I use needs to
• Privacy
  • I really do care about my data privacy. If my data doesn’t have to be out there then it shouldn’t. So open-sourced and end-to-end encryption are the name of the game.

Massgrave

I don’t know why everyone doesn’t use this tool. It lets you activate your installation of Windows completely for free and change your Windows version at a whim (Pro, Home, etc). All with one command in the Command Prompt. I haven’t paid for a Windows key in years (I am definitely lying and I totally 1000% pay for Windows). It’s literally the best

Filen

Filen is an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage provider. What makes Filen special to me is its pricing options. Unlike other providers that require you to pay month to month, they offer lifetime, pay-once pricing. I paid $23 for 200 gigabytes for life. It’s been a great solution for backing up important files.

Cryptomator

Obviously you can never be too secure and I usually locally encrypt my files before uploading them to any cloud storage provider. Cryptomator has been the best solution for making encrypted vaults full of files. What I like most about them is their cross-platform support (iPhone, Mac, Android [including de-googled Androids using F-Droid], Windows, and Linux)

Standard Notes

Literally the only note-taking app I use. I journal every day and previously I used to fill up an entire notebook in 2-3 months before I switched to journaling digitally. If you can’t tell by now, I love to write. The thing I love about it the most is that, unlike the built-in notes app on iPhones, it’s completely end-to-end encrypted with free cloud storage and it’s open-sourced so anyone can validate their security and privacy claims. It’s honestly the only notes app I use. And it’s 100% cross-platform (it’s a React Native app). Beyond that, it’s just a genuinely good note-taking app. You can customize the color themes, categorize your notes into folders, and even use rich text editing with markdown syntax if that’s the kind of guy you are. I actually write almost all of these blog posts in Standard Notes and it’s wonderful.

1Password

By far the biggest change in my daily tech stack this year was switching password managers. For the past 4 years, I’ve been using a password manager called KeePassXC. An open-sourced password manager that stores everything in a local vault. I’d use an FTP server on my local network to host the vault file and a VPN server to access my home network on the go. The result was an incredibly secure and private password-managing experience. And also a constant nightmare of debugging, file saving conflicts/collisions, slow load times, and no support for autofilling passwords. So this year I made a switch. I exported all my passwords as a CSV and imported them to 1Password. Truth be told, it’s been amazing. The autofill functionality alone has been amazing. I love how it runs in the background with an incredible command pallet for searching for passwords. I love how it integrates with passkeys for one-click sign-in on so many websites. I love how I’m able to unlock it with biometrics on my phone and on my Mac.