Forever Five

Inspired by Matt’s video, where he lists apps that he may never stop using and therefore are his forever apps.

In my mind, there is no competition or alternatives to my forever apps. In their respective markets, they are market leaders or hold a monopoly status.

Therefore, when thinking about my forever apps, I reflected on:

• what apps I have been using for years
• what apps I always install first
• the apps that I look forward to their next version and upgrade at launch

Forever Five apps:

1Password: bought in 2014 and since then, have not looked elsewhere. Now, the whole family is using 1Password.

Alfred: ⌘ + Space bar is assigned to Alfred since 2016. It’s what spotlight should have been. It's my clipboard manager, currency converter, app launcher, text expansion and so much more...

Day One: I discovered journalling very late in my adulthood but better late than never. Since 2013, I have over 1200 entries and currently on my 168-day streak.

Hazel: Iron Man had JARVIS and I have Hazel. Since 2015, this little buddy sits behind the scenes working day and night to run OCR, organise files, rename files base on content, empty’s the trash, app sweep and so on…

Things 3: there are thousands of task management apps and I really struggled in this category. I bought Things v2 in 2014. However, it was only 3-4 years ago that I have settled on using Things and called it my home. Things 3 strikes a delightful balance between simplicity and utility.

Other than 1Password, the other four apps are made by indie developers who are solely focused on the one app and are Apple platform exclusive. I hope Apple realises the value these developers are bringing to the Apple platform.