Digital Tools

Last updated on 20/10/2025

Same as I like reading about other people’s toolchains, I thought it might be useful for others to outline some of the soft- and hardware I’m currently using.

Hardware

MacBook Air 2024

After 7 years with my old MacBook, I’ve finally upgraded to one running on Apple Silicon. It’s my first MacBook Air and a testament to how far compute has come in the past decade: this thing is fanless and chews through a Docker build of a Rust app in 6 minutes. By comparison, my Intel-based MacBook took more than 10 times as long, with its fans always running at full speed. And the battery life is incredible: yesterday, I streamed a series for around 50 minutes, and when I checked the battery level afterwards, it was still at 100%.

iPhone 11 Pro Max

Mainly bought this for the camera and its battery life. Besides the iPhone 4, this is my favorite iPhone generation out of the ones I’ve owned so far — it packs great improvements compared to its predecessors and still holds up well compared to newer iPhone models. I’ve written a post on how I’ve configured iOS here.

AIAIAI TMA-2

My work headphones. I was looking for long-lasting, high-quality, minimalist, wired headphones. TMA-2s have been around for a while now and they fit that bill perfectly. Plus, they’re completely modular, meaning I can exchange or upgrade individual components should they break.

Nothing Ear 2

Even though I own an iPhone and a MacBook, I’m not interested in venturing further into the Apple ecosystem, let alone spend over 200 USD on earphones. I like what Nothing is doing design-wise, the price-to-value ratio of these is impeccable, and the companion app is well made, too. So far, I’m pretty happy with them.

Onyx Boox Go Color 7

Great display, compact and lightweight — just what I was looking for in an eReader. Upgraded from a Kobo Libra H2O for being able to use Android and Onyx’s excellent NeoReader. The physical page-turn buttons are a bit smaller and harder to press than on the Kobo, but everything else, including the display, has been a clear upgrade. Couldn’t go back to an eReader without physical page-turn buttons though – especially on a small device, you’ll easily turn thousands of pages in a month if you’re a regular reader. Hence, it’d make sense to optimize for making this a comfortable interaction.

Onyx Boox Note Air2

A leaner, meaner reMarkable tablet. Runs Android and has excellent pre-installed apps for opening all kinds of different text files (.djvu, .pdf, .epub, just to name a few). And the hardware is really good, too.

Raspberry Pi 4

Raspberry Pis are cheap, silent and powerful. I use them to self-host some of my personal infrastructure, for example, my self-hosted news setup or my Time Machine server.

Keychron Q11

Almost a year in, still decisively the best keyboard I’ve owned so far. Replaced the switches with Kaihl Pro Purple ones and 3D-printed a tenting kit. I’ve written up a review here.

Logitech MX Vertical

I feel like there’s a market niche to be served when it comes to well-designed, sturdy ergonomic mice. Like, the Logitech MX Vertical is the best one I found, but while it’s comfortable, I think the surface material looks and feels cheap. If it’d break, I’d sure shop around for a bit rather than just rebuying whatever the newest generation of it would be. Previously, I had the Anker Vertical mouse, but while it’s only a fraction of the price (around 30 USD vs. 100 USD), it doesn’t have a built-in battery and feels even cheaper than the Logitech. Which I guess is fair enough, given that it is much cheaper. If you just want to try vertical mice, I’d start with the Anker.

Code

NeoVim

After using amVim in VSCode, switching to NeoVim felt like a natural progression. I wanted the ability to navigate the file tree using Vim keybindings, and the idea of maintaining a set of config files that I could commit to a repository and refine over time was very appealing. I made the switch over a year ago and haven’t looked back since. Currently, I use a lightly customized AstroVim ↗ configuration.

iTerm & zsh

I used to use Hyper, mainly because it looks beautiful out of the box. However, once I switched from VSCode to NeoVim, I found myself spending much more time in the terminal and wanted something with lower latency and better resource utilization. Within zsh, I prefer using the pure ↗ prompt. Fira Code is my go-to typeface for the terminal.

Volta

Helps me keep NodeJS versions on my machine in order.

OrbStack

I use Docker to cross-compile Rust applications for deployment onto my Raspberry Pi. And to pack up NodeJS applications for deployment. I prefer OrbStack over Docker Desktop because it’s faster and “just works”.

Emoji Log

Sets me up with a few aliases to commit & push with fewer keystrokes and easier to parse commit messages. You can find it here ↗.

Design

Figma

The tool of choice for most UI/UX designers — with good reason. Figma democratized screen design and while doing so, pushed the boundaries of what web apps are expected to do.

Productivity

Todoist

Excellent keyboard-driven navigation. Handles almost every imaginable productivity system you can throw at it with its support for Kanban boards, lists, sections, projects, priorities, tags and so much more. Plus, its date parsing is second to none and there are clients for almost every major platform. What’s more, a plethora of integrations and an API help me integrate Todist into almost any workflow.

Obsidian

I prefer raw Markdown over proprietary text formats and editors like Elicit or Notion. Obsidian allows me to write Markdown files and is super extensible via its plugins. It also has core plugins that help me stay on the keyboard while writing, like its command palette plugin. With the Minimal Theme plus the Linter and Hider plugins, you’ll get a no-nonsense writing experience that’s as focused as can be.

Raycast

I used to use Alfred as my Spotlight replacement of choice but switched to Raycast last year for the higher quality of plugins, its more macOS-native feel and the higher pace of development. The features I use most often are its clipboard history and the Unicode symbol search extension.

Rectangle

I like the window snap gestures that Windows introduced. This app lets me have them on macOS. I can rearrange windows via global keyboard shortcuts, easily splitting the screen between two different applications. One of those invisible helpers that I easily use a dozen times per day.