Rethinking My Defaults

Maybe it’s AI and my constant tinkering via Claude and Codex, maybe it’s because I’ve had some time off from work and wanted to change some app’s. Maybe it’s because I’ve so fecking tired of Safari crapping out on the Mac in some form…but I’ve finally switched a few of the default app’s I’ve used for years.

First up, it’s bye bye Safari and hello Chrome. Well it was until I used Chrome for a day and realised Google has neutered ad-blocking. So after trialling Brave I’ve settled on Firefox as my default browser on the Mac. Fast, great extensions and so far no major issues after a few days of use. Safari was always complaining about high memory usage, had rendering issues and every so often some extensions just failed to work properly. I’ve got Firefox setup on iOS and iPadOS as well but will likely stick with Safari on those platforms as it’s faster.

Next up, Apple Notes. The app has improved greatly over the years and although I’ve not really had any sync issues, I wanted a bit more control over the note-taking experience and I also wanted something that could talk easily via Claude or Codex. Considered Notion but settled on Obsidian. I’ve sued Obsidian in the past and liked it, the challenge will be settling on a view that I like and with limited amount of plugins but its almost impossible not to keep tinkering in the first few days of use.

I’ve cleaned up the notes in Apple Notes and migrated over only what I needed – so much legacy cruft that I just wasn’t using. So far, all working well and syncing across platforms.

And the final change is to ditch Day One for journalling and move all 7000 odd entries into Obsidian. Not as slick an interface in Obsidian but one less app that I need is where my head’s at right now.

Will these changes stick? Hope so as I want to simplify my app’s down but not trade that for less functionality or a drop in stability but already seen an improvement in that front now that I’m no longer hitting daily Safari issues. Whats next?