A list of tools and resources that I use to get stuff done. (Last updated: November 2017)
HARDWARE
The usual suspects:
MacBook Pro
(13-inch, 2016, with Touchbar, 2,9 GHz Intel Core i5, 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3) - I use it as often as I can with as many external displays as possible. And yes, the touch bar is useless indeed.
iPhone 7+
The best possible camera was the reason for the choice. As I am doing a lot of reading on the phone, the big screen is a plus as well.
iPad Pro 12.9-inch (with pencil)
It's my drawing tablet and a second display for my MacBook if I set up an office on the road (see Duet app below). The later is much more productive than I thought. It doubles screen space and enables me to keep workflows that are based on two displays.
Apple AirPods
The best product that Apple launched since the original iPad. Completely underrated and as podcast addict currently my most loved gadget.
Anchor Power Pack
Nothing is more stressful than searching for a power outlet when things need to get done. Solid emergency charging for iPhone and MacBook.
Apple Magic Mouse (3rd gen)
Classic.
Apple Watch (1st gen)
Looking forward to the day when you need only some AirPods and a watch to manage your digital life. So far only a fitness tracker device and notification tool.
Freitag Bags
My main bag since 2008: The F17 JOE by Freitag. A messenger bag made from recycled materials. Big fan of the company, their story and their products.
Kindle White Paper
Unbreakable and the best option for reading under sunny conditions. The killer feature of the device though is that it is distraction free compared to the iPad or iPhone. The software side of things is still underwhelming.
Field Notes
A notebook is a notebook. This one though is a constant reminder that it is possible to make a product special by telling a great story.
Muji Erasable Pens
For sketching wireframes and scribbling. The ink in the erasable pen has a color temperature setting. The frictional heat generated by the eraser at the end of the pen erases the ink immediately.
PROJECT / PRODUCTMANAGEMENT
Things
After the redesign to Things 3, my personal to-do list app to keep a peace of mind. A joy to use if you are into the GTD method. The pricing is... interesting.
Slack
The virtual office space of a remote worker. With all the pros and cons of an office space. It's as useful and as distracting as the people that use it.
Trello
For projects that need a "Kanban boardish" organization, the first choice.
Asana
My favorite project management tool for bigger projects with bigger teams.
Harvest
Time tracking tool with a nice design.
Skype
The oldie is still the first choice for video calls. Mainly because it's still the most spread video calling platform and for 1:1 calls reliable.
Google Hangouts
For group video calls it's easier to organise and manage than Skype.
WRITING
iA Writer
The first dedicated and minimal writing tool that I really loved. Many copycats followed. I stay with the Swiss original.
Dropbox Paper
I am a bit tired of the Google Docs design. Paper is a fresh alternative for managing and collaborating on documents with a team.
Grammarly
Checks my second drafts for all the crimes I commit to the English language. It has a Mac app as well as a Chrome browser plugin.
Hemmingway Editor
The Hemingway Editor cuts the dead weight from your writing. It highlights wordy sentences in yellow and more egregious ones in red.
Wordy
A service that involves real humans if you need some editing help. A fast and nice way to double check my texts before embarrassing myself.
OFFICE APPLICATIONS
Spark
The email application of my choice for Mac as well as iOS devices. It has a smart inbox feature and it mimics many features from the good old "Mailbox app" like snoozing. Under the hood I use Gmail, which is because of the spam filtering the most useful solution.
Calendar
After Sunrise went dark forever, I am using the classic, based on Google Calendar accounts.
Dropbox
There is always a need for a place in the cloud to share your files with others. Dropbox is still a simple reliable choice.
Google Suite
Not my favorite set of office apps, but for the daily life in a team the easiest solution.
Keynote
Still the best app for creating slide decks and my tool for public speaking or pitching.
Backblaze
I have one local backup via Apple time machine and one in the cloud via Backblaze. Unlimited cloud backup for your Mac for a reasonable price.
Zapier
A tool that helps you to connect services and web apps you already use. Let's say, you want to automatically update your spreadsheet with your MailChimp data. Done.
MAC UTILITIES
Numi
My place for doing some calculations and thinking with numbers. Great design.
Pastebot
A tool to manage your copy and paste history. It stores not only text, but also any kind of images or screenshots.
Tunnelbear
VPN service. Nice and simple. If you need a proxy to use your favorite video streaming service, have a look at ExpressVPN.
Textexpander
Insert snippets of text from a repository of often used text snippets and other content, as you type. A real timesaver. Especially if you do anything close to customer support or outreach campaigns.
HiddenMe
Hide your icons and files from your desktop with one click.
Noizio
An ambient sound equalizer for staying focused.
NOTES
Apple Notes
The last redesign finally got it on a level that made it a simpler and free alternative to Evernote.
Pinboard
Independent no frills bookmarking tool.
DESIGN
Sketch
My homebase for everything related to UX and UI design. Still very impressed that they were able to compete with Adobe products. An open API allows third parties to design useful plugins, which is a huge plus. See the "Sketch Plugins" section below.
InVision
InVision becomes more and more the central platform for a design team. Great for sharing files, coordinating workflows, gathering feedback from clients and simple prototyping.
Adobe After Effects
I'm playing with it for vector animation stuff. With the bodymovin plugin the SVG export is smooth. There is now also an iOS/Android/React Native library that renders After Effects animations in real time. It allows native apps to use animations as easily as they use static assets.
Adobe Illustrator
When there is some more complex vector work to do, that exceeds the feature set and performance of Sketch.
Zeplin
My favorite tool for handing over designs to front end devs. Even though InVision offers now similar features, I still like to use Zeplin.
Abstract
The new "GitHub for Designers". A new tool developed by a dream team of designers. I was part of the beta, but haven't used it for a production project, yet. It looks promising, though it feels as if it would be most useful for design teams with 3+ people.
Framer
For building high-quality prototypes for user testing or client presentations.
Adobe Draw
On the iPad Pro currently my choice for doing some drawings. The copy-paste sharing with the Mac works flawlessly. As well as sharing projects with Adobe Illustrator.
Duet
This little app connects your iPad to your Mac, and enables you to use the iPad as a second display.
Coolors
For creating color palettes.
Astropad
If you want to use your iPad as a drawing device for your Mac, like a Wacom, this is your app of choice.
SKETCH PLUGINS
Sketch Toolbox
Let's start meta: This is a little app to discover and manage all your Sketch plugins.
Magic Mirror
An image perspective transformation tool for creating mockups.
Sketch Style Inventory
It gives you an overview of all the styles you've used so far and helps you merge the styles of similar layers into one.
Content Generator
Generate random content, whether that be names, addresses, profile pictures or background photos.
Sketch Dynamic Button
Create buttons with a fixed padding, no matter how long the text is.
Sketch Measure
Create spec overlays on top of your design (distance between elements, dimensions of icons, HEX code of colors etc).
Craft
A suite of plugins made by Invision. You can build prototypes, design with real API data, manage an asset library or get easy access to stock photos.
TYPOGRAPHY
Google Fonts
Always a great place to start with. Especially if the budget situation is unclear in the beginning. It never hurts to start with a free font, but it hurts to downgrade from the font you felt in love with to a free version.
Typewolf
You had a beautiful font in mind, but you need a similar free alternative? A guide by Typewolf matches popular and classic fonts with a free font alternative. The "site of day" section is also a nice place for inspiration.
Fontshop
My dealer of choice.
CODING
Atom
My text editor choice when I write code.
Ruby on Rails
Ruby framework that I use for all my side projects that need some backend development.
Webflow
If you are not coding front end stuff on a daily basis but just every few weeks or months ... Webflow is a great way to build fast production-ready HTML/CSS code. Of course also great for building functional prototypes.
Wordpress
Squarespace is nice if you don't write code or if you have to launch something super fast. Otherwise installing Wordpress on some third party web-host is currently my way to go.
Bitbucket
Github is great, though private reps for free is a plus. Especially if you play some early client projects or pitches.
Stackoverflow
This place still gets not enough praise. It's not just a community, it's a real tool. Solves tons of problems.
ANALYTICS
Google Analytics
The basic tool that might be much more powerful if Google finally would fix the UX.
Mixpanel
Using Google Analytics is not enough to make the most out of your user data. Mixpanel has a feature set that makes it much easier to track specific user journeys and cohorts.
Heap
In the early phase of projects it is often unclear what you actually want to track. Then when you finally find out, in most cases you don't have set up the trackers yet. Heap has the advantage that it tracks everything from the start, without adding any code.
Optimizely
For any A/B testing experiments. Fast, easy to manage. Google launched a competitor now though.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Tweetbot
For Mac as well as iOS. Tweetbot is by far the best way to consume Twitter (besides Nuzzle). Great UX design, many little big details, and one huge feature: No sponsored tweets in your stream. - Huge fan.
Nuzzle
Still the one must have feature that Twitter has not build yet. A tool that helps you to keep track what's going on in your Twitter stream.
Reeder
The best RSS Reader out there. Wait, what is RSS? Yep, I am an old guy. Subscribe to a website is one of the most underrated features, that the internet already had. Somehow we lost it. If you take the time to curate a bunch of RSS feeds that mean a lot to you, your RSS reader is still a treasure box of content.
Buffer
Do you use social media for marketing purposes? Buffer is the best place for organizing your stream of content.