My toolkit for 2026
Another year, another toolkit update. I’ve been doing these annual snapshots since 2019, and this one feels more like the 2023 and 2024 editions than last year’s: an overhaul rather than a few swaps. There are new tools across writing, coding, and personal design work, and much more of my day now runs through AI.
Hardware
Almost everything stayed the same this year, which I’ll take as a good thing. The additions were the AirPods Pro 3 (my sister took my AirPods Pro 2), the Akko Air 01 (replaced the Keychrons, the NuPhy Air75 V3, and the Lofree Flow 2), and the Sony RX100 VII. The camera is small enough that I think it can finally start going everywhere with me instead of sitting in my tech drawer.
On my desk
- MacBook Pro M4 Pro 14-in (home) and MacBook Pro M3 Pro 16-in (office)
- Apple Studio Display (home)
- Rapoo MT760 Mini
- Akko Air 01
- Magic Trackpad
- HomePod mini
- Bose QuietComfort Ultra
On the go
- AirPods Pro 3
- Audio-Technica ATH-CKD3C
- iPhone 17
- iPad mini 7 + Apple Pencil
- Sony RX100 VII
Software
Work & productivity
Dia + Safari — Dia is the default browser on my laptop, Safari on my phone and iPad
Tinycast — a native app launcher with an inline calculator, window management, emoji picker, and Raycast extensions without the bloat
CleanShot X — screenshots, annotation, video recording, OCR. The new Studio Mode is awesome.
Dashlane — password manager
Spark Mail — personal email, the same setup on my laptop and my phone. RIP Notion Mail, which I was using for work email.
Raindrop — bookmarks and links
CliperX — clipboard history app with iCloud sync that doesn’t cost a fortune
Hotspot Shield — VPN that comes with my Dashlane subscription
AI
Superwhisper — the best dictation software out there, in my opinion. I oscillate between dictation and typing by hand depending on what I’m doing.
Claude — prototyping, coding, research, and design
ChatGPT — searching and quick chats, with Codex sometimes handling one-off coding tasks
Design & development
Figma — where a good chunk of my design work still happens. Moving between Figma and Claude via MCP means I can stay in the design loop instead of treating them as separate tools.
Paper — where I play around with personal design ideas for my personal site. It holds the design tokens and a loose structure for the homepage and blog, so I can quickly mock up something, test a font or layout, or see an idea on a canvas. I also briefly tried pen.dev and was impressed, but I prefer Paper.
Zed — my code editor and the one that finally replaced Sublime Text for me
Ghostty — my default terminal
Writing & organization
iA Writer — my new default for writing long form, including every post here
Apple Journal — daily entries on my phone and laptop
Writer — notes and everything in the archive I want to find again. I haven’t abandoned Obsidian, but I open it far less on my laptop now, even if I still use it on my phone. Writer has what I need in a simpler, more minimal interface.
Travel & finance
Dime — monthly budgeting
Wallet by BudgetBakers — tracks all my accounts
Numi — calculations using natural text
Xe — currency conversion when I need to quickly compare exchange rates
Flighty — flight tracking
Media, reading & photography
Apple Music — music. AutoMix on iOS 27 is really good.
Apple Books — I read all my books here
Audible — audiobooks for when I’m on the road or want a break from reading
Readwise — resurfaces book highlights so I remember what I read. The redesign is fantastic and definitely overdue.
Photomator — editing my RAW photos
Zerocam — the new PRO mode now lets you control every setting so I’m back to using it
Utilities & system tools
Vorssaint — all-in-one utility app that replaces probably a dozen apps I was using before: BetterDisplay, MiddleClick, CleanMyKeyboard, Mac Mouse Fix, and likely a few more that I forgot
LookAway — reminds me to rest my eyes
Mole — cleans up caches and junk
BatFi — keeps my laptop’s battery healthy
Mojito — type : anywhere to find emoji and GIFs without leaving the keyboard. This habit from Slack finally snuck up on me.
Monocle — nicely blurs everything except the active window when I need to focus
Karabiner-Elements — keeps shortcuts consistent across my keyboards
Dropover — shelf for moving files around
Clop — optimizes images, videos, PDFs, and whatever lands on the clipboard
Folder Preview — Quick Look for folders in Finder
Markdown Preview — should have come in as a built-in app really
Browser extensions
Fontanello — shows a page’s typography from the right-click menu. I love peeking at fonts, and I’ve kept it around for years.
Remove YouTube Shorts — hides Shorts entirely, less brainrot (or that’s the hope)
Obsidian Web Clipper — mostly for the reader mode when I read articles
Decentraleyes — serves common libraries locally instead of from CDNs
Minimal Theme for Twitter / X — strips X back to be more minimal and hides ads
Modern for Hacker News — restyles HN
Modern for Wikipedia — restyles Wikipedia
That’s it for 2026, so far. I still have a couple of months to change my mind, but for now, this is what my desk, my backpack, and my dock look like. The Sony had been out of its drawer, too, by the time I finished writing this post.
FYI, I keep this list up to date on my personal site’s /uses page.
If you’ve enjoyed reading, consider buying me a coffee!
My toolkit for 2026 was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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