Default apps, 2026
Part of getting into tech is watching reviews and trying out a boatload of different options, but part of staying in tech is developing an RSI from clicking too many download buttons and just wanting to cozy up with some kind of default and never think about it again.
For which reason I mostly stopped using third-party apps for all & sundry and just started using the defaults that Apple ships with their computers & their phones. I’m prone to second-guessing myself anyway and I spend most of my life living at the top of the midwit bellcurve overthinking everything, so having all of this decided for me is a frivolous mental burden relieved.
Because these are lowest-common-denominator services, I purposely don't have to learn some new methodology to take advantage of them. In fact they almost resist methodologies. The fact that they offer a very basic feature set is itself the best feature.
Here’s what I think about all of it. I told you I overthink things.
Caveat
macOS Tahoe sucks and the software feels as though it’s been on a downward trajectory for a few years. But generally speaking, Apple’s services are still good enough and compatibility between all of the different parts of the ecosystem is top-notch.
I also read that blog post about the guy whose Apple Account got bricked because he used a dud gift card. This worries me but not enough to seriously diversify. For really important stuff (passwords, emails, notes), I keep backups outside of Apple’s ecosystem.
Is this bad for The Ecosystem? Maybe yes. I don’t know. I’m doing this so that I don’t need to think too hard about any of it. Anyway I’ve spent a lot of money purchasing the alternatives only to not stick with them, so I feel that I’m at least sort of doing my part.
Alternatives marked in bold are ones that I use over, or alongside, the Apple default equivalent.
Apple Notes
Alternatives I’ve tried: Notion, Obsidian, Simplenote, Evernote (a long time ago), The Archive
Apple Notes is good enough for 90% of use cases. It doesn’t offer syntax highlighting for code blocks, or inline code spans. No plugins for tasks or dataviews. Markdown formatting isn’t supported, oh well. Power users can pound sand. I'm talking to you, Forever Notes. If I’m honest, I like Markdown but I don’t miss it here. The hardest part of taking notes is remembering to take the note, and Apple Notes makes that part easy. Easier.
Reminders
Alternatives I’ve tried: Things, Obsidian+Tasks, Todoist, Basecamp, Linear, Trello
Setting dates with natural language is a little flaky. I’ve not yet figured out a good way to sort tasks by list (except for Groceries) but I suppose this is just a limitation of todo apps. Tags are pretty much useless. I like that task notes support a small subset of Markdown but I don’t like that there isn’t a fuller task view so that you can write down more notes. My whole life is just taking notes @ this point. The killer app is “hey siri remind me to write this blog post tonight”. Oh and the fact that it's also on my wife's phone. Did you know that there’s a kanban view? I don’t use it.
Calendar
Alternatives I’ve tried: Fantastical
It’s a calendar. Here again: extremely flaky natural language processing. But it doesn’t take that long to create an event manually. I appreciate the timezone support but I suspect that alternatives offer this feature as well. I like the iOS app better than the macOS one. Fantastical was really slow on my iPhone 12 Mini back when I had that one and so I stopped using it.
Contacts
Alternatives I’ve tried: Cardhop
Debated not including this one at all. The Contacts app is so feature-poor that it’s almost insulting. It’s also so uninspiring that I struggle to think of anything it does that could reasonably be called a "feature". Oh I know: proper relationships!
Mail+
Alternatives I’ve tried: Gmail, Tutanota, Fastmail, Migadu
I’m talking specifically about bringing your own domain for iCloud Mail. I like the catchall email pattern, e.g. I can use strava@ for Strava and letterboxd@ for Letterboxd. Emails show up basically right away — push rather than fetch, which I don’t get with Migadu (or Gmail, maybe?). Sent emails have gone to junk before, but that might just be because I don’t use these emails for sending that often. There was a weird bug when I first set it up and it didn’t work for months. I had several calls with support and they couldn’t figure it out. And then one day it just started working.
The default Mail app itself is alright. Surprisingly good Touch Bar support! Mostly I like that it doesn't try to suggest AI generated responses for me. Does anyone use those.
Music
Alternatives I’ve tried: Spotify, Tidal
Everyone else has already written about this; I have no original thoughts. I’m currently annoyed that the API’s latest tracks endpoint doesn’t include playedAt time — just a list of latest tracks — which makes tracking music for Teal.fm problematic. The API kind of sucks but I think that’s by design. Spotify is full of podcasts (bleck) and Tidal didn’t have Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (ブレック).
Podcasts
Alternatives I’ve tried: Pocket Casts, Overcast
The app is fine — the lack of features here is itself a feature. The few features it does have, I nearly totally ignore. I barely ever use the “New” page, and the different categories on the “Library” page are pretty much useless — who is listening to podcasts by category? I only ever use “Latest Episodes”. Seems to have gotten better at keeping your place up-to-date on iCloud, so you can pick up on your computer where you left off on your phone. Sometimes, when I run out of episodes I'm subscribed to, I listen to the episodes suggested under “For You”.
Journal
Alternatives I’ve tried: Day One, Markdown files in a folder, standalone Word document
Buggy, but not so much so that it prevents me from using it. Frankly I don’t understand how such a simple app took so long to ship, and so long to get ported to macOS, and how bad it is on macOS. If you resize the window then the whole app starts to lag after like 200 words. Autocorrect seems to conk out on iOS around that point as well — like it just stops autocorrecting. I do like that adding entries is so low-friction but I don’t like that longer entries get cut off on the index view. No good way to pick a point in time and then read your way back through time. This was my favourite feature of writing my journal in a single big Word document, which is what I did back in high school.
Maps
Alternatives I’ve tried: Google Maps
Better than Google Maps for directions to a specific address — seems less inclined to route you via backroads. Google Maps overthinks things. On the other hand Apple Maps is very bad for discovery — businesses are missing, opening hours are wrong, datasets are incomplete. If you are looking for something new, Google Maps is unbeatable. The Maps team seems to be pretty responsive when you Report An Issue however.
Books
Alternatives I’ve tried: Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle app
The biggest feature of Apple Books is that you don’t have to carry around another device. I’m already taking my phone to the toilet. Basically every other feature other than reading a book is useless, though. And something feels more socially acceptable about reading from a physical book or Kindle than sitting there staring at your phone; I wish there was some way to signal to people on the train that I’m reading literature and not just scrolling through TikTok or something.
Safari
Alternatives I’ve tried: Chrome, Firefox, Arc, Zen, etc etc etc
It’s a web browser. They all do more or less the same thing. I liked that Safari pre-Tahoe didn’t have a lot of window chrome; on Tahoe it’s all comparatively larger and that annoys me. Profiles are not useful to me. Neither are iCloud Tabs. I haven’t found the limited extension library to be a problem. Maybe once a month, something doesn’t quite work the way I expect it to and I have to boot up Firefox or Chrome. I still do all frontend dev in Chrome because Safari’s devtools are rubbish.
I use Firefox for work because of its better support for containers and tab groups, and because I try to use as little Google as possible.
Photos
Alternatives I’ve tried: Google Photos
Shared Library is awesome. I don’t care for the algorithmically-generated photo albums. Search tends to be hit-or-miss. A long time ago I used Google Photos but haven’t used any alternatives in the last decade so not sure what else is available. Plenty of space in iCloud for all my pictures. Never felt any need to use anything else to manage photos.
Passwords
Alternatives I’ve tried: 1Password, pass, Lastpass
Missing support for non-website-password secrets (API keys, license keys, credit cards) but good enough for what it does support. Firefox extension introduces weird lag to certain textareas — ones with event handlers on them maybe? Speaking of, the extension for Firefox/Chrome feels a bit unpolished overall but it does work. Being able to share passwords with family is a game-changer, especially for parents-in-law who don’t like to manage passwords themselves.
Find My
It’s good when it works. Have some AirTags but the AirTags are valuable enough that I always mentally index where they are. The few times that I’ve had to use this, e.g. when my wife dropped her phone at a Brand New concert, it was invaluable.
Freeform
Alternatives I’ve tried: Mural, Figma
I like using it but nobody else does, and sharing these things is basically the whole ball game. Sometimes I use it to handcraft memes. Everyone at work uses Mural. For work I mean, not memes.
Messages
Alternatives I’ve tried: WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger
No one uses this in the UK, which is frustrating. From a pure functionality perspective all of these apps basically do the same thing. I don’t like WhatsApp because I don’t like Facebook, and I like Signal generally but I only know one person who uses it.
Fitness
Alternatives I’ve tried: YouTube???
Really well-integrated if you’ve got an Apple Watch, slightly less valuable if you haven’t. I spend the most time with guided yoga and meditation; the other exercises have never really appealed to me (i.e. as a replacement for some kind of traditional aerobic exercise (running, cycling, rowing, etc) or weight lifting).
TV
Alternatives I’ve tried: Netflix
Agree with everyone else that Apple produces higher-quality television than the other streaming services, but we watch so little television to begin with. Enjoyed the first couple of seasons of For All Mankind, have watched pretty much all of Slow Horses. Watched Sunny & then immediately forgot it. Napoleon was not very good and I never bothered to see F1. I’m glad that Apple is still producing entertainment though because the alternative is that media converges on unbearable mediocrity.
Translate
Alternatives I’ve tried: Google Translate
Covers the 80% use case and nothing else. Missing a ton of languages, no consideration of context or alternative translations. I go to Google Translate for anything more complicated than translating German memes I see on Reddit. I’ve not used it but I hear that the auto-translate for conversations works well, especially if you have AirPods Pro.
Home
Alternatives I’ve tried: GivEnergy, E-ON Next, Tapo
Our house is pretty Dumb so we don’t get a lot of use out of this one. The smart appliances in the house (solar panels, cameras) are only marginally compatible with HomeKit, if at all — so we wind up just using the first-party apps for these.
Time Machine
Alternatives I’ve tried: manually putting files on a hard drive?
I’ve only ever backed up my computer using Time Machine, but I’ve very rarely actually used Time Machine to retrieve a deleted file. I do remember how futuristic it felt when it was released with… Leopard? We have an old Time Capsule with a 2TB drive but it isn’t going to be supported by the next macOS update. Currently shopping for an external drive.
News
The fact that they show ads even though I have News+ or whatever annoys me so much that I don’t use this at all.
Spotlight
Alternatives I’ve tried: Raycast
Disclaimer: I don't use this one. It's one of the few proper improvements on Tahoe, but still behind Raycast in terms of actual utility to me. Every interaction has a 300ms debounce on it; I just can't get over it. im a power user ok. I do like that it can search all of the above apps natively — but in practice I just open the app and search there instead.
AirPods
Alternatives I’ve tried: Sony WH…something…4, some Anker wireless buds
I had some first-gen AirPods which I used until the battery lasted only an hour and then Ghyll chewed on the case and I got the third-gen ones. They’ve been great. I’m impressed at how well they automatically switch between devices. Buds with silicone tips are uncomfortable to me but Apple’s plastic earbuds have always fit me really well — so I’m glad that they still offer the hard “basic AirPods” ones without the tips. I see no current need to replace them, except for better Find My and wireless/USB-C charging support. Over-ear headphones are always better for me (more comfortable, better battery) if I’m not moving around, i.e. if I’m at work or on a plane.