An avatar representing Cory Dransfeldt Cory Dransfeldt

Uses

Software and services that I use for work and my own enjoyment.

Computer setup

  • Midnight MacBook Air (2025 - M4)
  • 27" Dell Monitor
  • Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID + number pad
  • Apple Magic Trackpad
  • AirPods Max and, sometimes, a Homepod Mini for audio

Desk and chair

  • My desk is a custom-made corner desk I bought on Etsy years ago. It's sturdy, has tons of storage, and finally arrived with a chip on the surface to add some character after the first one got lost by the freight company on the journey from Michigan to Los Angeles. I probably wouldn't repeat the experience, but I do love the desk.
  • Herman Miller Aeron chair: it's pretty comfortable and makes swiveling around my corner desk easy.

macOS + iOS

  • Safari: everything on iOS is technically Safari, so this is a bit of concession to an operating system restriction. The experience of using Safari is quite nice — the privacy features, extension support and so forth. The developer experience still lags behind other browsers.
  • Obsidian: fast and configurable (or minimal) as you'd like, I use it for all of my notes and writing.
  • Cadence: my opinionated and intentionally minimal/boring Navidrome client for iOS and macOS.
  • Mastodon PWA + TangerineUI
  • NetNewsWire: I have it connected to a self-hosted instance of FreshRSS for syncing. I use Obsidian to capture pages for reference and linkding for what I plan to (someday) read or reference.
  • Parcel: the most flexible and reliable package tracker for Apple's ecosystem.

iOS

macOS

  • Mp3tag: a powerful utility for editing and managing music metadata (it also allows you to edit extended tags which can be important when adding music to Navidrome).
  • Meta: another music metadata editor, but one that I use primarily to organize my music into a consistent folder structure.
  • noTunes: a lightweight utility that prevents Music.app from launching. It also allows you to set a new default music player.

Dev tools

  • Cursor: I know, I know, I know. We use it at work and I don't like context switching. It's a superior VS Code.
  • Ghostty: a superb, configurable and fast terminal emulator.
  • Catppuccin: nearly as ubiquitous as Dracula but lighter and more playful, I've started using this theme wherever I'm looking at/reading/writing code.
  • Mono Lisa: a relatively new find, I've been enjoying how pleasant and readable this font is (and have even gone so far as to install it on iOS via FontCase).

Services

  • Proton: the premier, privacy-focused email, calendar, et al provider.
  • forwardemail.net: a powerful and reliable service for hosting, forwarding and routing emails for the domains I own. I use it to handle emails for Coolify, my site and send API notifications.
  • Kagi: my favorite search engine that avoids AI cruft, provides relevant results and myriad other features (like ranking results) and highlighting trackers present for a given result.
  • Coolify: for web application management and deployment.
  • Hetzner: a modern, dependable web host.
  • Navidrome: a self-hosted, performant, music-streaming application.
  • audiobookshelf: a self-hosted audiobook and podcast server (the only podcast I can find time for is 404 Media's).
  • FreshRSS: not the prettiest RSS reader, but it's powerful, flexible and reliable.
  • linkding: a self-hosted bookmark manager for things I want to reference or read later.
  • Goatcounter: light-weight, privacy-friendly and performant analytics.
  • Bäikal: a lightweight CardDAV and CalDAV server I use to sync contacts across devices (as Proton doesn't sync with local contacts).
  • Ente Photos: end to end encrypted and open source photo storage and management.
  • bunny.net: an affordable and altogether user-friendly CDN. I host the images for my site with them and use their optimizer/transforms heavily.
  • Backblaze: my go to web storage platform. I use it to host the images for my site, back up my laptop, archive data, backup Coolify databases — you name it.
  • NextDNS: a privacy-focused, set it and forget it DNS service. I use their security features on my home network and a profile with strict ad-blocking rules on all of my devices.
  • DNSimple: a robust, user-friendly DNS provider and registrar.

Check out uses.tech for more lists like this one.