/uses
This page documents my current setup and tooling. See uses.tech for more examples.
💻 Hardware
MacBook Air 13” (M1, 2020)
Odys XP32 Pro 32”
I’ve spent most of my life working exclusively on a 13” laptop screen but I’ve recently started to incorporate a larger second screen for some development tasks (including keeping an eye on longer-running processes in Claude Code).
iPhone 17 Pro
I use a privacy screen protector, a leather case and a sticker to attach a strap or chain (very cool and highly recommended). On my desk I have a magnetic phone stand with MagSafe charger integration. For traveling, I use this selfie stick, which doubles up as a portable phone stand.
Apple AirPods 4
I use my AirPods daily and I especially like this model because it’s comfortable and still has decent noise cancelling. I also have an an older model of the AirPods Pro, but I mostly use them for traveling when I need more powerful noise cancelling.
Røde NT-USB
While my AirPods are typically fine, I use this microphone whenever I need the best possible audio quality, like for podcast and video recordings.
Oura Ring 4
I love my Oura ring and have been wearing it 24/7 for several years now, especially for its sleep and activity tracking features. It’s very comfortable and stylish, and I usually forget that I’m even wearing it. (If you want to try it, you can use my referral link for a discount.)
👩💻 Code
Visual Studio Code
I try to keep my setup lightweight and mostly use extensions, formatters and linters for the languages and frameworks I commonly work in (Python, Cython, Jupyter, HTML, Markdown, MDX, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Vue, CSS, Sass, Tailwind, SVG), plus our custom extensions for spaCy and Prodigy.
Ghostty (with zsh and oh-my-zsh)
I use a minimal shell theme with the working directory and optional virtual environment, and like keeping my terminal sessions organised with multiple windows and custom named tabs. In the past, I also used iTerm2 and Hyper (which I still really like conceptually), and I sometimes also work in the terminal panel within VS Code.
Claude Code
My coding assistant of choice, and I use it via the terminal and sometimes via the Visual Studio Code integration. (I also experiment with various other tools for work, and to keep up to date with what’s available and possible, especially since we’ve started developing our own coding assistant integrations for our stack.)
GitHub Desktop
I’m a visual person who likes desktop apps if they’re done well – and I find GitHub Desktop much more pleasant than rawdogging Git. I also recommend it to everyone who is starting out because it does a good job of visualising concepts like commits, branches and merges.
Dracula Pro theme (Buffy variant)
My go-to theme that supports all my development apps, including code editor and terminal. I especially like the dark purple background and it always makes me happy to see colourful and nicely highlighted code.
JetBrains Mono font
One of the best font families for code in my opinion, and I use it locally and for many websites I’ve built (including for Explosion and spaCy). Plus, it’s open source!
🎨 Design
Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator
I started dabbling in design as a teen and have been using Adobe’s design suite ever since. See my slide design guide for some tips and most important features to learn if you’re a beginner.
Sketch
For illustrations like diagrams and simple vector graphics and SVG icons, I like using Sketch because it was easy to learn and feels more lightweight than Illustrator. I also use SVGOMG, a GUI web app version of svgo, to optimise my SVGs.
RightFont
I wrote about font managers in my slide design guide and they’re a great way to organise and browse my ever growing font collection. I have hundreds of fonts, neatly sorted into categories for different styles and use cases.
Eagle
I use Eagle to collect design assets and effects, as well as inspiration I come across all over the web and IRL. The app also comes with a handy browser extension to clip pages and take screenshots. For more info on asset managers and my Eagle setup, see part 4 of my slide design guide
Keynote
I use Apple’s Keynote app to assemble and design slides for my talks and I’ve written extensively about my process and tips. For more details on tools and services I use for slides, see part 7 of my guide on tools and resources.
ScreenKite
I recently started using ScreenKite for screen recordings and demo videos. It’s free, very fast, and makes it easy to create and edit recordings with a polished feel, window drop shadows and backgrounds, and a smooth zoom-in effect. See this video I made for an example. (For general video editing, I’m still experimenting with different tools. So far, I’ve used Premiere, iMovie and CapCut.)
🚀 Productivity
Arc
My main browser. I love the UI and UX, preview features, customisation and mobile app, Arc Search. See my productivity tools review for more details. I also sometimes use Chrome and Firefox Developer Editions as secondary browsers, e.g. to isolate video calls or for development.
Missive
Collaborative email client I use privately and for work, and a real game changer. See my productivity tools review for more details.
Fantastical
An upgrade to the native macOS calendar app with some nice added features like event templates and task list integration, plus a great mobile app with home screen widgets.
Bear
A simple but powerful Markdown editor, which I use for writing and all kinds of note-taking. It also comes with pretty themes and mobile app sync.
DayOne
I use DayOne as a planner, todo list, log and diary hybrid, and it’s been my daily companion for several years now. I have a sophisticated tagging system to log what I do and how I feel, and try to write at least a few bullet points every day. I’ve tried so many todo list and planning apps over the years and nothing ever stuck until I discovered DayOne and this workflow. See my productivity tools review for more details.
💡 Other
Raycast
Replacement for the ⌘+space spotlight search that gives you an input bar to do pretty much anything, from search and opening apps to window and clipboard management and various tool integrations. My most-used features and plugins include clipboard history (a lifesaver!), dictionary, thesaurus, OCR, color picker and Lorem Ipsum.
Little Snitch
A network monitor and application firewall that alerts whenever an app is trying to connect to the internet. It also supports setting up custom rules to automatically allow or deny incoming or outgoing connections and their scopes.
Rocket
Emoji integration across all apps via : shortcuts and options for customisation.
Vanilla
Simple menu bar icon manager for Mac.
Dato
I mostly use Dato’s menu bar integration to easily view, calculate and schedule things across time zones.
Quitter
Sets a timeout and automatically hides or closes apps, for instance after 10 minutes of inactivity. I love this app because it keeps things tidy and never gets in the way. I typically forget that it’s even there.
Timing
Automatic time tracker that runs in the background. I love stats and I mostly use it to see how my usage patterns and productivity change over time.
Fliqlo
My favourite screensaver – simple and stylish.
⛅️ Services
Calendly
A huge help for scheduling meetings and I couldn’t go without it. Calendly syncs with your calendar and gives you a sharable link that lets people book slots, and manages video call integration, time zones and everything else. (I even used it in my window-knocking machine analogy as an example of an effective solution that solves the scheduling problem at its root – as opposed to a chat bot that only mimics human interaction.)
Netlify
Easy out-of-the-box website deployment, which I use for most of my sites. Also integrates seamlessly with GitHub and generates deploy previews – all I need!