New features of my digital life in 2021
In my quest for digital minimalism, better privacy and independence from tech giants, I'm reshaping my digital lifestyle and introducing new tools into it.
NewPipe (Android Youtube client) – absolutely no ads, wonderful user experience, customizable feeds for separate topics, playing videos in the background...
RSS feeds – they helped wean me off social media a bit and let me easily keep up with many blogs, fb pages, news, and other content sources without distractions. For the RSS reader I started with Feedly, tried out a few free options, and eventually settled on Inoreader. I will likely eventually get a Pro version because of its many awesome features.
Firefox – I'm still in progress of switching to it from Chrome. I love its customizability so far, together with a few extensions, most notable of which (not including various ad/tracking blockers) are Multi-account Containers and Dark Reader. I was able to set Startpage as a default search engine too!
KeePass – I still use another option for a password manager (for now?), but KeePass is proving to be extremely handy for keeping track of what accounts I own, and I love that I can set up custom icons for categories! Generating hard to crack passwords is also a nice feature.
Syncthing – brilliant little piece of software that lets you synchronize files between devices in a highly customizable way. The greatest use by far is moving photos and other files between my phone and my computer. I've always had issues with using cables or bluetooth for that, and I highly dislike using an online drive as an intermediary. Caution: syncing frequently edited files, such as text files, might lead to sync errors. If you edited a file on one device, wait until everything is 100% synchronized before editing it on another device.
Plaintext & Markdown – I'm in progress of switching from Google Docs to local text files. I've had a great, smooth experience with writing in Sublime Text for plaintext planning and everyday quick notes, and Obsidian for longer interlinked markdown notes, such as my TTRPG projects and personal knowledge management. For notes on the go, I use Markor on my Android phone.
(This post will keep on being updated until the end of 2021!)