This year I have seen much fewer Defaults Declarations than last year.
Nevertheless, I think it’s interesting to continue keeping track of my (limited) evolution in the software I use, so here’s my update.
A star marks the categories where there are changes compared to 2024.

An important step, I believe, from the privacy perspective, is that I decided to move everything that was more than three years old out of the cloud and to local backups. So now mails and photos that refer to an obsolete version of me are, at least in theory, offline.

There is a new category at the end, which I’m not proud of, but this is the world we live in, and, working in IT, I can’t afford to be unfamiliar with new technologies.

  • Mail Client : Mailmate on MacOS, Spark on iOS. Nothing has changed here, although I also use Apple Mail on iOS to keep an eye on emails from my previous job, where my account is still active and I have a couple of useful alerts still set up. Mailmate is still great, but now the revenue model has changed to a subscription one, which means that even though I bought the software, I have now been downgraded to a (very feature-generous) ‘Free mode’. This change - and the fact that it happened via a standard update - annoys me immensely, so I’m considering changing to a different software
  • Mail Provider: since opening the account, I’m still using Posteo for all new exchanges, although GMail still survives for old accounts that I can’t be bothered to update
  • Notes: Obsidian, Apple Notes
  • Todo: Due, Apple Reminders… like last year, periodically I try Things
  • iPhone camera app: the default app
  • Photo Storage: Apple Photos
  • Calendar: Fantastical
  • Contacts: Apple Contacts, Cardhop to have a nice widget for birthdays
  • Weather: IRM (the app of the Belgian Institut Royal Météorologique), Apple Weather (for Paris’ weather, and to keep an eye on a few additional locations)
  • Cloud storage: iCloud Drive; Dropbox is still there, but I keep synchronisation to a minimum
  • ⭐️ RSS: last year’s search for a feed reader that allows me to display posts in the original website CSS and style made me settle for Lire on MacOS. It’s not perfect, and it has the bad habit of crashing a little too often (especially on my MacBook), but it does what I wanted. On iOS I still use NetNewsWire. Both services are synched via Feedly
  • ⭐️ Browser: on MacOS, I’ve fully embraced LibreWolf, because Safari is very slow and malfunctions for a lot of websites. The only nuisance is the limited compatibility (for privacy reasons) with my Password Manager, which has to be opened manually every time I need to log in somewhere or save a new password. On iOS, I’m still using Safari but I’m getting fed up
  • Chat: WhatsApp. It’s the only Meta app I still use, but unless I am fine with being a hermit, I really have no choice
  • Bookmarks: bookmarks? Why have bookmarks when you can have a million open tabs
  • Read Later: same as for the bookmarks
  • Shopping List: Apple Reminders
  • Music: Apple Music
  • Podcasts: Overcast
  • Social Networks: no change here, except I’m checking them less and less. Except for Letterboxd (which I don’t really use as a social network), I’m on Mastodon (via Ice Cubes on iOS) and Bluesky
  • ⭐️ Maps: Having to deal with a new city, I can’t afford to get directions and public transit wrong, so unfortunately I’m back to using mostly Google Maps
  • Text Editor: BBEdit to refine posts and the odd CSV file, Obsidian for writing
  • ⭐️ Reading: my Kobo Libra 2 died all of a sudden and for no apparent reason, but despite the disappointment I bought a new Kobo Libra Colour (not that I care about having colour in my e-book reader, just there was no other reasonable option)
  • Launcher: Alfred
  • ⭐️ Search: DuckDuckGo has become worse and worse, so I’ve moved to Startpage. Since then, I think this search engine has also gotten worse. Is it my fault somehow?
  • Automation and shortcuts: Hazel, Keyboard Maestro, BetterTouchTool
  • Development: PyCharm
  • ⭐️ AI: here comes the very painful admission that I’m giving up resisting and I’ve started using some services. For text proofreading, I’ve moved from Grammarly to the so-called ‘Apple Intelligence’, which fixates on my use of commas and fixes the occasional typo. For the occasional chat, I’m using Mistral, on the basis that it is the only EU alternative. I have to admit I’ve found it useful, especially as a support for job interviews and to learn new Python tricks