State of the Apps ‘25
At the end of every year, one of my favorite podcasts, “Cortex,” publishes an episode showcasing the host’s apps. This has become one of my favorite episodes not only because I get to discover new awesome apps that I use almost every day now, but it also serves as a time capsule showing your future self your current interests, workflows, and priorities.
So here is my first State of the Apps. Hopefully, you will find some value in the apps I use in my day-to-day. And just like CGPGrey’s Original State of the App 2014, I can look back in a decade and compare how tech and I have evolved.
Categories:
Productivity
This calendar app is everything I’ve wanted from a calendar. It is gorgeous to look at and it has some powerful features I couldn’t live without, like adding events in natural language and scheduling.
From the same creators of Fantastical, Cardhop is an improvement on the native Contacts app. It has a better look and feel, and the quick actions are a nice way to interact with the people in your contacts.
This simple yet powerful reminders app is the backbone of my productivity system. It is the perfect example that sometimes less is more. I can see all my to-dos in the same place and decide what I need to focus my day on.
This Mac app is something I didn’t know I needed. Basically, it brings the quick action menu from iOS to the Mac, and with a vast extension library and the ability to create your own actions, it elevates one’s productivity to 11 in any text task.
A Safari extension that I use daily, I even changed how I use some websites like Amazon or Google Maps. It lets you trigger queries on websites using characters or words, so anytime I need to search directly on a website or complete an URL with info, this is my go-to.
I heard that everyone needed a clipboard manager and didn’t get the point. I was so wrong. Pastebot changed my relationship with the copy+paste action. It lets me return to a history of items I used instead of trying to find them again or go back and forward in a document.
Communications
I stopped using Spark a couple of years ago because of a major redesign, but after a big issue with another email client, I returned to it, which I would argue is the best tool for email zero. It has incredible third-party extensions that let me use my email in an actionable way instead of just consuming it.
I I don’t like companies having my personal email, and after Google’s domains sunset, I needed a way to have virtually unlimited but centralized email addresses to use ad-hoc in every service I sign up for. Fastmail was that response, and I love it. Best yet, it automatically creates a masked email with my password manager. No doubt I am even better now.
Writing and Research
I used to use Evernote as my second brain, but wasn’t happy with the latests updates, and the price increase was the push I needed to find a new note-taking app.
Shout out to noteapps.info that guided me to all the options. Why Bear? It was a native app that lets me add docs, web capture, and most importantly, search text in image content using OCR and inside documents. (You’d be surprised how few apps allow searching within doc content)
Readwise
(affiliate link)
The app I wished I had when I started reading. This simple but powerful app is at the center of automatically capturing and resurfacing everyday little golden nuggets of information I read in books and articles.
It also let’s me effortlessly create interesting visuals to share on LinkedIn.
The newest product from the same team, Reader, is an incredible read-later app with full integration with Readwise. It has powerful features too, like sharing highlighted articles with the world, text-to-speech, and RSS & Newsletters integration right in the app.
If I could only keep one writing app, it would be this one. This app is the first place where I can quickly capture any thought or text. After that, it has one of the most powerful set of extensions, and is second to none in including the latest technology in the Apple ecosystem.
This year, ChatGPT has been one of my main reference sources. The things I could create with my very own Google Sheets formula GPT, are things I never thought possible and helped me exceed expectations in my product manager role. It was a step up in my analytical skills.
Entertainment
This app is a beautiful way to see the cast and crew of anything you may be watching, or for all the times you have the question "From where do I know that person?"
Sure, you could be searching the info on IMDb, but Callsheet has a better user experience, looks better, and is an app that you actually want to have near when you turn on the TV.
What if you could have your own streaming service? Or an all-in-one solution for all your media needs? This app is what you are looking for.
I’ve had a Plex server on my computer for a while, but this year I got a NAS, and it has quickly turned into one of my favorite apps. I use it to track my content wishlist, and beautifully organize & consume my personal collection of movies, TV shows, and music.
This is an extension of Plex but required its own entry. This app allows you to stream your audiobook collection with tools like playback speed, remembers the last position, and download your content to listen on the go.
If you’d like to start may I suggest the [Free] Lord of the Rings versions narrated and mixed by Phil Dragash.
My favorite podcast player. I’ve used Overcast for years now, and even with its quirks in the new version, it is better than ever.
Impressively, the app is developed by an independent developer and has some killer features like smart speed, the ability to upload your own files, and (my favorite) limiting the number of episodes of each show.
No matter how much I like other options, Audible is king in the audiobook space.
This year I got back to the reading horse, and following the audiobook with the physical or digital version of the book helped me return to the habit. For that, I keep it as a must-have.
Talking about Amazon products… Kindle is the other one that you can’t say that it does a great job at what it does.
And its connection with Readwise is just the best way to capture highlights of everything you read.
I found this little app because I had a very specific problem: both Apple Books and Kindle won’t let you copy and paste large sections of a book, even if it’s your own file. Because I needed to import recipes from books into another food app (see Crouton below), I needed an app that could sync and help me reference my EPUB files. Yomu was that solution and a good alternative to both.
Maybe one of the most misunderstood streaming apps, but when you have incredibly confusing messes like “Symphony No. 3 in B-flat major, Op. 55, ‘Eroica’ movement 1, Allegro with brio, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan” I mean…
Classical is an extension of the Apple Music app, only for classical music, and the UX solves the complexity of this genre beautifully.
Even with a couple of Sonos speakers in my house, I used to AirPlay directly into them. How wrong I was.
This year, the Sonos app is one that I can hardly live without. Even if my wife says that “There is always something playing in the house,” I love the control and the centrality of all the streaming services I have.
More and more apps!
Everybody should have a password manager. Every time you sign up for a new service, you should be picking a new password and keeping it in a secure place.
Earlier this year, the Internet Archive was hacked. The hackers left a message saying “… see you 31 million of you in HIBP [Have I Been Pawned].” Sure enough, when I checked my email associated with the archive, and sure enough, I saw my information had been leaked. It could have been a major security risk, but because I use 1Password, I never reuse a password or an email.
If I convince you to use at least one app from this list, use a password manager! An alternative can also be the new Apple Passwords app, but please… Use a password manager.
I learned of this app because it won the 2024 Apple Design Award. Even though I already had a good and reliable recipe app for some time now, I checked it out.
I immediately felt in love with it. The UI was beautiful and had killer features like importing recipes from books using AI or the web, and following along with the recipe only with blinking. Yeah, just blinking.
Few apps I have a love/hate situation with, like JustTimers… It has some big issues with syncing between devices, and some timers stay in live activity until you manually dismiss them.
But this is one of the most important apps I use whenever I am cooking. It lets me super easily start a new timer and have multiple concurrent timers running for different needs.
So, even with its bugs, it is still a must-have in the kitchen for me.
Another paid app that could be replaced by the default, but this app lets you customize any aspect of the UI to your needs and preferences. It supports shortcuts and gives you timely information like the precipitation amount proactively so you take precautions.
This app is a delightful tool that frames your screenshots with the device they were taken on, or it allows you to take scrolling screenshots, capturing all the content in a single image.
Not an app per se, but a Safari extension. If you are annoyed by either social links, cookie pop-ups, or ads in a webpage, AdGuard has a solution for you.
I’ve had multiple content blockers over the years, but I would get a lesser experience or other annoyances. With AdGuard, these experiences are the exception, more than the rule.
This is very Mexico City-specific, but we get earthquakes, some small, some not so small. So this app is the only one I allow in all of my focus modes, and even if I had to run from bed a couple of times, I would rather have it than get a surprise.
Apart from the Shortcuts app, Hazel is probably my favorite app for automated tasks on the Mac.
In the simplest terms, you create rules depending on the metadata of your files, and then Hazel takes an action on those files for you.
Last, but certainly not least, Rocket is one of those Mac apps that once you use it, you’d wish to have it on every device you will ever use.
It lets you trigger an emoji menu by a shortcut, and then you can replace your word with the emoji that your heart desires. Simple? Yes, but in the best way possible.