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Ask HN: What’s the one app that’s changed your life?
3 points by jjwtieke 1104 days ago
And why? For me it’s the simple Notes app. Like my brain is always bursting with ideas and I can tap them out anywhere any time and come back and read them and add to them.

What’s yours?

9 comments

KDE Plasma desktop (if this can be called an app). It is by far the best desktop environment and it made me switch from Windows to GNU/Linux which was one of the best things in my digital/computer life.

https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/

Spotify - in my youth, I was constantly infecting my computers with viruses from downloading pirated music, when iTunes came along, paying for an individual song sucked because I tend to get sick of them - so when Spotify came along, it was actual happiness. Value for money for sure.
But how satisfying was watching your MP3s download one at a time over the course of 2 hours?
Like watching grass grow. But the dopamine hit when you finally got your song was unparalleled to any other!
Can’t pinpoint one. Here’s a few:

- Down Dog Yoga helped while I was trying to improve posture. Also just makes me feel better. - Slumber helps me get a good night sleep. - Habits helps me build, you guessed it, good habits.

Down Dog is great! Looking forward to the future generative AI version of it.
Travel apps- currently Waze/Citymapper. I have some sort of travel anxiety, dreams about missing trains, losing luggage. These apps have created an altogether more relaxing world.
Workflowy.

I discovered it almost a decade back and has been with me since. I have seen people move onto other shinier apps but I have never needed to.

It stayed simple and easy to use and just works.

I run a $4 million profit / year software business on it and a lot of my life (although I do not plan every single thing of my life. Less is more here I think).

https://workflowy.com

This is really cool! Thanks for the tip!
Search Engines:

First one I used was Alta Vista, then several others were tried till I discovered Google. I still mainly use Google, though I had short bursts of DDG and Yandex too.

Today, 'Google' is a verb, but when search engines first arrived they turned the World Wide Web from a mere curiosity into something truly usable.

ILSpy/dnSpy. Being able to see clearly how some software was written(and then modify it) has been an extremely mind-opening experience for me personally.
tcpdump allowed me to dive deep into network protocols like TCP, IPX, AppleTalk, and NetBEUI, and gave a big boost to my programming career.
Tinder !
Met my wife in tinder, so me too I guess!