Title says it all. I'll go first:
I don't really have any on my computer (all I use that for is Vim, Firefox, and Git), but on my phone: Orbot (basically Tor as a VPN on your phone).
Edits: Added link, fixed formatting
Everyone knows about VLC but I don't think many people know it has a really good Android app! I use it as my primary music app and it's great. Even has android auto support and a surprisingly sleek interface.
I haven't used those so I don't think so. But it lets you add music from local networks, and you can add streams from a URL (even supports youtube links, which is a way to watch youtube without ads without pihole or a third party app).
Jellyfin app (at least for Android) can play in external video players.
Oh shoot! I forgot about Bitwarden, I feel like I use it so much that it just fades into the background now!
Everything search app is easily my most used on my Windows PC. Instant, as-you-type file search by name with detail sorting and wildcard support. I set a keyboard shortcut as well. It puts Explorer search to shame. As good as Spotlight, which I was missing from when I had a Mac in 2008.
LaunchyQT - modern fork of Launchy that actually gets development. App launcher, dead simple.
FanControl - Fan curve software with all the features I want including hybrid temp sources, sensible automatic settings, visual graphs with an intuitive interface.
AutoHotKey - Hotkey scripting language that I can use even as someone who barely codes.
Transcribe! - Not open-source but it's a reasonably priced audio and video slow down app for transcribing.
Spotlight, which I was missing from when I had a Mac in 2008
Amazing that Spotlight is that old!
I cycle to work. This takes like 60-70 minutes, there is a ferry ride. The app MoopMoop is like google maps and a weather app in one. It show the rain on your route.
InnerTune. Basically all you could need for free music streaming. Beautiful FOSS client that rips from YouTube music.
This looks really good. The only thing missing is the ability to follow YouTube playlists. I have a couple of shared playlists, so that's a must for me.
On my PC
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Rednotebook for journalling and Tomb to easily encrypt it through the command line
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Librewolf because manually making tweaks to Firefox was kind of tiring
On my phone
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PokerTH because I wanted to learn to play Texas Hold 'em without micro transactions and a required online connection
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AntennaPod because I dislike using Spotify for podcasts
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Aegis because it was easier to transfer authenticator codes. I think Google Authenticator now allows for local backups and exports
Edit: Actually the coolest (but least useful) has to be brow.sh. I'll attach an image but essentially it lets you run a browser through your terminal in a way that's a little more indepth than apps like Lynx.
In order to really see the extent of what it can do you really need to see how it handles video playback.
*removed externally hosted image*
brow.sh
Wow! That's crazy! I never thought I'd see video playback like that on the terminal! Also, how are you liking Tomb?
Love it. I wrote some custom scripts to basically combine it with anything I wanted an extra layer of security on and didn't want to manually go through and use a program like Veracrypt
The commands are also humorous and easy to remember. When you close a Tomb file for example it says something along the lines of "Your bones can now rest in peace".
Alright, I saw their webpage earlier today actually and though it looked cool, so I'll have to give it a shot!
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I thought it was regarded as a dick move to put a lot of traffic through tor?
I hear such mixed messages about this and would love for somebody to educate me. Do we:
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Avoid using tor to free it up for those who actually need it
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Use tor whenever, and normalise it so that somebody using tor isn't immediately considered to be a journalist/dissident/person with something to hide.
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Yeah, you really aren't supposed to... I rarely use Orbot to be honest, it's just super useful if I do need to use it, like on a network that blocks a whole bunch of things and you want to catch up on Matrix messages or whatever. Also, if you're worried about your phone updating or making a bunch of useless requests, you can turn on low data mode/mark your current connection as metered.
SearXNG.
It's like having a search engine customised to my needs.
Automatically filters out SEO junk sites, and redirects links automatically (e.g. reddit.com -> old.reddit.com)
Change your
settings.ymlto have thisenabled_plugins: - 'Hostname replace' # see hostname_replace configuration belowAnd then define the rules like this:
hostname_replace: # My redirects '(.*\.)?reddit\.com$': 'old.reddit.com' # My filters 'slant\.co': false 'dailymail\.co\.uk': false
SearXNG
Gosh, I love SearXNG, and how you can fit it to work into your workflow!
Anki is pretty sweet if you're trying to learn anything that can use flashcards.
Threema
Where Signal is secure - Threema is private and secure (e2e encrypted, uses PFS but doesn't need your phone number for sign ups. You can be 100% anonymous should you wish)
Threema
Yeah, but how many people use it (half-joking, I'm a Matrix user myself and understand the pain)?
Was a genuine challenge. I ended up purchasing a copy for my whole family so everyone can use it.
Resilio Sync instead of something like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Never used syncthing so I'm not sure. Resilio is running a modified bittorrent protocol. It's always been fast and easy for me so I've never had the motivation to look into anything else.
I forget what it's called, but I have one I got off F-Droid that just does a spectrogram of the microphone input. It's cool seeing the world yet another way.
I've taken the extraordinary step of walking a few feet to my phone, and it looks like it's just called "Audio Spectrum Analyzer".
One thing you pick up on quickly is that speech is mostly undertones, and the actual information carrying part is subtle variation in the higher parts of the sound. Singing is noticeably different, and manner of speech is also very visible.
- KeepassXC [password locker]
- SyncThing [keep some dirs synced between computers]
- Thunderbird [Check 4 email accounts simultaneously]
- PikaBackup [Relatively easy disk backup utility]
- FSearch [Fast searcher of all files on my computer. Like Search Everything for Windows but worse in many ways]
- AudioBookshelf [Podcast server]
I use all of those pretty regularly. Honorable mention on iOS is a program called Is It Snappy? which helps me measure input lag. It doesn't collect any data or run ads (rare trait on a phone app). I actually made a purchasing decision with the help of this thing to correctly conclude that the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller had a noticeable input delay (enough to make me return it). The funny thing about that was if I just looked up spreadsheets others have done I would have seen that same conclusion there, too, without having to go through the effort of buying it myself :P.
PikaBackup
Out of curiosity, its there a reason not to just SyncThing your
~/Documents, or is it more of a Time Machine for Gnome kinda deal?FSearch
Oh wow, that looks nice, epically that RegEx support (actually serious, I am a huge fan of RegEx).
Nintendo Switch Pro Controller had a noticeable input delay (enough to make me return it)
Nintendo do be like that... have you found a good alternative, or just the Joycons?
PikaBackup is more of a Time Machine style backup system. Not just for Gnome, it simply is made with the GTK.
Ultimately, I went with a Sony DualSense for my latest gaming controller. It has low latency when wired and the buttons are not clacky. Solid construction. I also have an 8BitDo Pro 2, which has one thing I especially like -- hardware turbo buttons. The rest of the controller is merely OK, and IMO not worth the extremely high praise it otherwise receives. Serviceable controller.
I use Tachiyomi (J2K fork) for reading manga and manhwa, and Shosetsu for fanfiction (AO3 extension). MoeList for MAL (My Anime List), Myne for public domain books, and Librera for EBUPs (I like using TTS). Also NewPipe (SponsorBlock fork) is my only YouTube client.
