The Lifehacker-Approved Mac Apps You Might Not Need

BearandSimplenote

I feel a sort of normie shame when I actually like Apples default apps.

But while several of my Lifehacker colleagues use third-party note apps likeBearandSimplenote, Im happy withNotes.

It syncs easily through iCloud, its searchable, it uses folders.

Ive even gotten used to the bad, unchangeable default font.

Because crucially, Notes supports basic text formatting.

Every otherwise decent Notes competitor is text-only or Markdown.

I really dont understand this!

All the old-style text editors have WYSIWYG formatting: Word, Google Docs, TextEdit, Notepad.

Hell, MacsStickiesapp supports text formatting.

Why cant the bundle of notes apps handle this without resorting to pseudo-code solutions like Markdown?

Why is it so hard to use bold and italics?

I dont want to resort to a heavy, subscription-based app like Evernote.

Speaking of which:

Im probably justusing Evernote wrong.

But now Im not using it at all.

If Im working on a visual project, I sometimes save things to a privateTumblr(free).

If it’s crucial that you combine both, you could useOneNoteorGoogle Keep.

Or if youre like me, you dont really need an everything bucket.

But as I wrote at the time, the hardest thing about Cardhop is remembering to use it.

After a couple of weeks, I didnt use my free review copy of Cardhop.

So I cant recommend paying $20 for it.

Its hard enough for me to figure out which tasks are faster or slower with Siri.

I dont have the mental room for another command line.

So I stopped experimenting with these fullscreen, locked down apps likeOmmWriterandOmmBitsthat supposedly force you to write.

But in the long run, Vanillas minimalist interface felttoominimalist, so I switched back.

But so does the free web serviceTune My Music.

Its like a localizedIFTTT.

(The built-in version doesnt work in some fields, including the address bar.)

But these days I dont delete many apps in the first place.

I think something fundamental changed.

Ive never gotten burned by this system.

I asked Lifehacker tech editor David Murphy about ditching AppZapper.

But he recommends the free alternativeAppCleaner.

What apps did you leave behind with your last old computer?