Tools I Currently Use

2024-08-13
2 min read

Tools I Currently Use

I am quite open-minded in trying out new digital tools. The following list collects those I heavily use, and I really can recommend.

Nowadays, I mostly try to use native iOS / macOS applications because of the cross-device synchronization, although one might not get same functionality than in the alternatives.

Note Taking I mostly use Apple Notes for digital notetaking. But occasionally, I need something more powerful which is when I will use GoodNotes and Obsidian.

News and Literture Research

  • Zotero incl. WebDAV file synch to private Nextcloud and Zotero Cloud and Chrome Connector. Also, very nice for reading papers.
  • Google Scholar Plugin for Chrome because of nice reference previews.
  • NetNewsWire: My RSS Feed Reader with iCloud synch. Really helps to stay up-to-date in all different areas of interest. RSS feeds even exist for daily arXiv submissions in chosen areas.

Visualizations

  • Apple Keynote (because of native Latex support) for presentations and posters.
  • Inkscape for vector graphic modifications.
  • TikZ with tikzit.
  • Excalidraw (math preview) for technical /architectural sketches preferred over tikz.
  • Furthermore: Geogebra for plots and mathcha for even more math that needs to be written down to tikz.

Software Development

  • Enjoying the full JetBrain Suite (IntelliJ , DataSpell, clion, … ).
  • Code Editing via VS Code / vim bindings / Plugins for whatever is currently needed.
  • Proxyman and Postman.
  • Environmental tools: VirtualBox (WIN)/UTM (MAC) & Docker & WSL2 (if on WIN systems)

Misc

  • Task Management & Canban Board: Apple Reminders
  • Mail + Calendar: Outlook
  • Webpages: Mostly powered by static-page generator Hugo and hosted (for free) with Netlify + custom Github commit triggers.
  • Password Management: KeePassX, but being slowly replaced by Apple Passwords
  • Grammarly for spell-and grammar checking.
  • iTerm + zsh as default terminal.
  • Raycast as a replacement of the default Spotlight Search.
  • PDFSam for PDF operations.
  • brew for MacOS package management.

Lukas Retschmeier

PhD Student in Privacy