My Favorite Developer and Productivity Apps Right Now

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Matt: Every once in a while, a new app actually sticks and changes how you work. So in this episode, Mike is walking through some of his favorite developer and productivity tools right from now. Right now? Right from now? I- it, it's my, it's my first day back from vacation, so I'm gonna start messing stuff up. I'm also in my last clean shirt, and by clean I mean there's some schmutz down here.

So I tried to wash it off and then now there's a water stain. Horrible. Just... Anyway, so I'm all schmutzed up. My hair's not done. Messing up the, the hook. Anyway, that's the hook for this episode. No. Um, and productivity, productivity tools right now from AI browsers and agent IDEs to macOS workflow apps and even a new Android launcher.

That one I'm particularly interested in because I'm an old man and go like, "Well, the phone came with this. I hate it. Guess I have it for life." So if this sounds interesting to you and you wanna support the show, you can go and check us out on that Patreon, leave a review or rating in your podcast app.

Join us in our Discord server or share this with your friends. And [00:01:00] if you wanna take some coding courses you can do so on Scrimba. Scrimba has an interactive media player code editor, at least that's what I call it. And what it does, it allows you to pause the lesson and play with the code that the instructor is teaching you live right there inside of that media player.

You can go ahead and break things, move things around, change the la- change the name of things, et cetera. All the little kind of, little questions and little curiosities that you have in the middle of the lesson. Then you can press play and have the lesson continue right where it left off. So go and check that out.

Our link is in the RSS description as well as in the show notes. It gives you up to 20% off a Scrimba Pro Plan. Full details on how it works in those show notes on htmlallthethings.com. And so Mike, these are your tools, your productivity suites, your Android launchers. Why don't you take it away?

Mikhail: All right. Uh, first of all, welcome back, Matt. Uh, it's

Matt: Thank you

Mikhail: good little, good little week here, and [00:02:00] I just wanna dive in because this isn't something that happens very often for me. I am in my, I guess, older age getting more locked into things than I used to before. Like, I used to switch, you know, launchers and browsers and IDEs every month.

Like, that was a g- it, it was a good chunk of time when I was trying out different tools all the freaking time, and I would get to the surface level, understand that I don't like it, move on, move on, move on. Lately, I've been a little bit more reluctant to switch, especially browsers, uh, just because I just got locked in.

I got locked into Arc Browser of all things, um, and I, I've talked about it on the podcast before. I really liked it, then it kinda got abandoned. I switched over to their kinda new browser called Dia, which is their AI browser, uh, before they got purchased by Jira or Atlassian or whatever And, uh, it was, it was fine.

Honestly, it was okay, but I f- I noticed that it just wasn't getting any better. There wasn't anything... Like, it was taking up a lot of resources. It was the slowest browser I've ever used in my life. Um, which isn't a huge, like, [00:03:00] as big of a deal as you'd think because my com- my, like, my MacBook is fast, and it kind of, you know, doesn't really matter how slow a browser is.

It's fast, like, my MacBook is fast enough to make everything load. But I noticed it eating a ton of memory. I noticed it just being stagnant. And the biggest thing was, like, had AI features, and it was labeled as an AI browser, but w- just wasn't, like, AI anything really. Like, it was, like, a literally, literally a chat window that could see your context. But anyway, so to say on top of that, like, I t- I've tried out a few different apps over the last maybe month or two that have actually stuck in my workflows, which is, again, rare. And I wanted to bring those to you guys. I wanted to bring what I'm currently using and what I've, been using for a little bit while longer.

Like, there's a few apps in here down the, down the list that I've used for a while longer, probably like six months to a year, that have just incre- like improved my workflow. And if it helps you, great. If it doesn't, you can move along, that's fine. Maybe you'll learn [00:04:00] something a little bit here. Um, but especially these first two apps that I wanna talk about.

The first one is Aside AI Browser, okay? So this is a new browser. Its main claim to fame, for me at least, is the fact that it's very similar to, like, the Arc, you know, uh, workflow. It has the sidebar on the left as the m- primary layout. It has a bunch of, like, profile management stuff, so I can have, like, uh

y- you, I could s- I could quickly switch between two different profiles really easily, and it, it's on ch- it's a Chromium-based browser. And essentially it, it matches everything I had with Arc and Dia pretty much one-to-one. that was my baseline that I needed 'cause there was other browsers that kinda tried to be this, like a lightweight version of them, but they never really matched one to one.

These guys did. But on top of that, and this is k- maybe even the more important thing, at least in today's day and age for me, is the AI stuff. So This isn't like a, a ch- just a [00:05:00] chat window that you open to the side and talk to your webpage style AI browser. That's what Dia was. This is a, "Hey, I'm o- I can open up a chat window and have it actually do things for me in whatever tabs, cross tabs, whatever, launch tabs, close tabs, fully from that chat window." So it i- like, to me, this is what I was looking for in an AI browser. I, I... You can almost, like, not even look at the browser anymore. You can look at just the ta- chat window and have it do all the browser actions that you need to do. Like recently, for example, uh, as like a small little test, I asked it to return something on Amazon for me, right?

Like, hey, I told it, "Hey, I bought a couple cables. They didn't work. Go into my Amazon profile and start the return for me. Tell me when you're done, and give me, like, the, the thing that I need to do." it did it end to end without me having to go into Amazon. Like, obviously I've-- I'm already logged in on the browser, but it did the whole thing, no, like, no issues.

The only question it asked me was, "Hey, where do you want to return this?" And it gave me the list of options that Amazon gave it. I told it, and it finished it. So [00:06:00] it, it delivers on the task, not just on context, like just reads context and gives you like a step-by-step guide, is super cool. So that's kind of like one thing that I liked about Aside AI, the, the Aside browser. the other thing that I was looking for, and again, this is maybe even more important than that last one, uh, is how it interfaces with my already existing agents. I had a problem where Dia specifically, and even Chrome, was giving me issues where it wasn't allowing me really to connect my agents to it.

There-- I, I think there were ways to fix that, especially on Chrome, by enabling remote debugging. But I, I went through a couple troubleshooting steps, didn't get to it. I don't use Chrome anyway, so it was kind of annoying. Dia was like a non-starter. It just wasn't working. This browser has an, a, a, an, like, essentially an agentic MCP built into it so that agents can directly talk to that browser. whenever I have Codex, for example, build something, I have it actually talk to my Aside, [00:07:00] Aside browser to then start testing it end to end. And because everything can be logged in, it's kind of testing it as if it were me. So it, it can test your database connections, it can test your, you know, back-end, front-end server connections, and it will have a back-and-forth conversation with the browser itself, and you can actually view those conversations in, in a specific t- uh, tab about what it needs to test, how it's testing it.

It'll send screenshots back and forth, and it's, it's kind of like I, I, I didn't realize what this unlocks, but it really does unlock the full end-to-end feedback loop for me in terms of building something start to finish. Before, I would have to do a lot of manual testing. Now I still do manual testing.

Obviously, I can't, you can't trust these things 100%, but usually the product that I get back when I start manual testing is much more polished and finished because it's already went through a bunch of rounds of this automated end-to-end AI testing

Matt: I, I have a question here. So I'm just, I'm just kind of curious. So you're using this [00:08:00] Aside browser. Is this primarily for work? 'Cause I know that in previous episodes and, and you've mentioned to me obviously on the side as well, is that most of your life resides in Google. And so when you were s- first talking about this, I brought up the website, and one of the things, of course, is, and this is just one of many features, but it, it is, they have, uh, kind of an AI password manager.

And so I guess my, my question there is, is like you live in Google, so more or less you, uh, you would assume when one says that you live on your Google account, and then by association you live in Chrome with the Chrome, uh, the Chrome password manager, and then obviously the Google Authenticator on your phone and things like this.

So so- something like this, like are you considering this Aside browser your work browser? Are you specifically... Like how are you, how are you dealing with this also? Like I know that you mentioned, one of the questions I was gonna have, maybe you can expand on it also, is like you, you use multiple different AI chats, but also agents as well.

But it's something like, for example, when I used to use... I, I still use Microsoft Edge as my browser, but I used to also use Copilot heavily, [00:09:00] meaning

not not GitHub Copilot, but like Microsoft's Copilot, the consumer version. I used to, you know, kind of toss, this is pre-agents, but I used to kind of like toss tasks back and forth 'cause I would like start a conversation in the Copilot app, then go on my browser, and then there's like the Copilot chat button.

I can click there, get, get, get some of the work that I've done sort of in the chat, and then like apply that to whatever I'm doing in the browser and I like I don't, I haven't done that in a while. But there was like that smoothness there. And so what I'm seeing here with the, all the things I've just mentioned, the password manager, the, the, the chat history, and then you have more stuff, more advanced stuff going on with the agents.

I could see there being a speed bump here in between the two. Like are you now using two browsers? Like how are you handling all this?

Mikhail: No, so, okay, so is kind of like a, quote-unquote, magical thing for me, but it essentially took everything from Dia that I had, including my passwords and my sessions, my logged-in sessions, and it transferred them one-to-one to this browser during import.

Matt: Okay

Mikhail: And it, it, it's a Chromium-based browser, and it's a [00:10:00] Google, like a, so...

And it has more, like it's not just, it's, it's not a stripped Chromium. It's a pretty robust Chromium.

Matt: Okay

Mikhail: able to use my Google Password Manage- Manager in it, right? So you can use that AI password manager. I haven't switched over to that quite yet. This is maybe day seven with this browser at this point. So, like, I'm slowly kind of integrating, but like the, the, the transfer over was seamless. So it's like, it's almost like I had the br- the, everything set up already for me on that browser. I didn't have to log into anything really.

Matt: Угу

Mikhail: to go. There was a couple of apps that required a re-login because I think, um, it detected the browser agent being different, and it had some sort of verification there to re-log in. But it was a, it was a smooth re-log in because I just, you know, it, it remembered my password. So overall, there's not much friction on that side, or, uh, no fr- I, I would say no friction at all on that side. On the agent side, another thing that I really liked about it, it's like [00:11:00] it hit all my... I, I don't know how this happened, but like it literally came out of nowhere for me. I wasn't following it really, and it came out of nowhere, and it literally hit all my check marks because I can actually lo- I can... It uses my Codex subscription as the agent inside the browser. So I don't have to like sign up for a browser account. I'm just using Codex. It's using Codex as its agent,

Matt: Oh, okay. That, that's smart. Okay

Mikhail: exact- And you can use whatever subscription. I'm not sure if you can use the Cloth subscription because it's kind of iffy on what it allows, like a harness, like what harness it allows it to use, 'cause this does kind of use it as a harness. Um, but I, for sure you can use Codex. I think you can use Cursor.

I think you can use Grok. Like you can use a bunch of different

Matt: Can you use Copilot? Is that a thing? Like, is Copilot, like, kinda open to that even though they have their own browser?

Mikhail: don't know. Uh, I could probably easily check. Let me, let me see here. How do I get, even get into settings? But, uh, I'm, I'm pretty sure that can use something like Copilot. I don't [00:12:00] know. Uh, let's see. Appearance,

Matt: 'cause my, my, my thought there is, is like Copilot is, is definitely like a con-- I, I consider Gemini and Copilot, just personally, I consider those to be more consumer-facing AIs. Like many people who use tech just as a tool in their daily lives and they don't... Are-- They're not super techy, Gemini's gonna be exposed to them, or if they use their laptop more, Copilot's gonna be exposed to them.

So like naturally, just like how Internet Explorer was popular because it was just on Windows machines, I assume, you know, Copilot for the Windows machine user, and then maybe for the Android user, let's say, is gonna get Gemini kinda shoved in their face. They might be, i- i- like that, that's the AI that they're gonna touch, and so if they ever wanna dabble in anything more like a side, I just...

I'm just curious like whether or not, like, that's possible, I guess.

Mikhail: So I-- This is where Microsoft stuff is confusing to me. You can use GitHub Copilot subscription.

Matt: Okay

Mikhail: It doesn't say anything about any other Copilot, but it does have GitHub Copilot as an option for the subscription.

Matt: Okay.

Mikhail: Claude subscription does work, so

Matt: Okay

Mikhail: I didn't [00:13:00] know that. And Groq and Kimi Code. That's on top of the ChatGPT subscription. So

Matt: OK

Mikhail: those are the subscriptions you can use. You can use any API gateway or any API you want, then it's gonna charge at API pricing, obviously. And then you can obviously... And you can al-also add a custom provider. I don't know what that is. But like you can use GitHub Copilot at least.

I'm not, I'm not sure how those transfer from, like, Microsoft Copilot to GitHub Copilot. I think they're separate,

Matt: They, as far as I understand it and as far as I've used, they are separate, yeah

Mikhail: But at least, at least you can use GitHub Copilot. So, like, it gives you a lot of options, and it also has its own option, by the way. It does have its own, like, "Hey, use ours," and then it's like a, you know, a seamless whatever. You don't have to worry about it, and you can pay us and all that. But if you're using your own subscription, you don't have to pay them any money. There's no, there's no subscription anything to do that for free. So that was super awesome for me, 'cause again, Dia and these other AI browsers, I don't know. I can't remember which the other...

Perplexity has one. I think ChatGPT closed theirs. Anyway,

Matt: Yeah, Atlas I [00:14:00] think was closed.

Mikhail: Yeah, I think if-- There's a few other AI browsers. They're all like you have to subscribe on top of your own subscriptions. That was annoying for me. I wasn't willing to do that. This was something that opened up that allowed me to do that.

And then again, as I was talking about it, the, the fact that it has, like, the, the MCP gate-- the MCP tools to connect to your agents, your coding agents, that is what changed my workflows end-to-end. The only thing I don't know, and the on- the ca- the, the caveat that I will say is this might introduce more usage than using something like a Playwright testing, end-to-end testing library or maybe even, like, the regular Chrome remote debugging. Um, I'm not sure. I haven't tested that out yet. Uh, I, I ha- I anticipate it might because of how robust these conversations are that I'm seeing in the actual end-to-end testing. But I'm also getting way better results, so maybe that's the trade-off. Like, you get better results, so you're using more tokens. I'm okay with that at this point, but it's so- It's, you know, your mileage may [00:15:00] vary depending on how big of a subscription you have, if, uh, if it'll fit your workflows to do everything in end-to-end kind of thing.

You might still wanna keep some stuff in, like, Playwright, for example.

Matt: Well, it's a good, it's a good mention regardless because there's gonna be some people that are curious about tokens or are on like a budget, I guess, of tokens, and then they're gonna wanna, they're gonna wanna know that. So definitely, you know, if you're out there l- like wondering, definitely do some, some, some of your own testing in, in that regard if you decide to try a side.

Mikhail: Exactly. Yeah. And like the other agent stuff that you can do inside the browser, it has y- it, it, it can connect to your history. It has a memory of what you've browsed. So like you have a lot of like contextual awareness as you're doing stuff, it starts to build like, you know, the workflows for you that you, that it does over and over.

Like you get, you can get a lot of repeated structured content back because of that. So I don't know. It's, it's a s- it was a surprise for me because again, I don't really switch browsers very easily. I don't like [00:16:00] switching browsers. It's probably one of my most hated things. switch was smooth, and I've recommended to a couple more people in the last couple days, and they've came back to me and said that their switch was smooth.

So that's why I wanted to have this discussion on the podcast, 'cause not a lot of things in my current state will cause me to actually a previously like entrenched tool, and this is one of those things

Matt: I think, I think that what we're starting to see, uh, with these tools now is we're... Like, people are getting a rapport with their own, whether it be their own chats or their own agents, and so your, your, like the memories realistically inside of the bot, like whether you're using a ChatGPT or a Codex or you're using a Copilot or whatever, are actually valuable.

'Cause you can go to it and say, "Hey, I want you to like..." Like if you're planning a trip, for example, you talk to it at length about a trip to The Bahamas, and then in a future conversation in a couple of weeks you just say, "Hey, like I wanna [00:17:00] do this for my trip," that's just so much more natural because it knows, oh, trip to The Bahamas, like I...

And it just starts doing it. And you can take that very simple example and extrapolate it out. So having tools that kind of allow you to bring, bring on your own tools, your own AI tools that are familiar with you and you're familiar with them is, is gonna be a huge, a huge, uh, positive

Mikhail: I-- The other thing I will say, I think this is my, maybe the first sign of AI accelerating actually useful development. Because from my understanding, the, the, the-- Or not my understanding, this is the, like, the data I just pulled up. They launched June 23rd of 2026. It's been 71 days, like two months.

Matt: Yeah, it's not long

Mikhail: And I, I, I, by the way, I tried them out the first week of launch. It was a little bit rough. I, I saw the, I saw the idea that they had, and I was like, "Okay, I'll, you know, maybe I'll come back to it later." this might be the most stable [00:18:00] product I've ever used after this amount of time.

Matt: Dang

Mikhail: I, I think this, like, and again, I might be hyping stuff up a little bit too much here, so take it with a grain of salt. but we might be seeing the first, like, or for me at least, this might be my first time experiencing AI actually accelerating workflows enough to build out good products. Because before people were saying, "Oh, AI is doing this," and I'd like, where are the good pro- Like, where's my new, you know, phone?

Where's my new OS? Where's my... Like, that's what, that's, like, the, the feedback that always comes back

Matt: Of course

Mikhail: question of, like, why, why are we not seeing these new apps come out that are game-changing, right? Like, not that I would say Aside is game-changing, but it's a polished browser which seems pretty big does solve things that weren't solved before, at least easily for me.

And, like, I'm, I'm assuming they're using AI heavily. This is a very big assumption on my part, but I'm assuming they're using AI heavily to build it. And if that's the case, then this, this is the [00:19:00] thing. Like, this is the app. Like this, hey, this came out. This would not have been possible without the AI backing it after two months of work. Like, you know, it, it's been two months and it's already this, in this state. We're seeing something happening here.

Matt: I mean, it, it's something, it, I think it's something that is, uh, important to have replaced in your daily life too. Like you mentioned, uh, an OS and things like this. Like a browser is... I mean, many people use Windows just solely to like boot their computer up more or less, and then they just like go to the browser and they do all their work in the browser, and the browser's super important.

So this is one of those like foundational things that, you know, with AI, this big revolutionary technology. Very good question. Like you said, many people are like, "Hey, why isn't it changing the tools I'm using?" Steps like this could be the beginning to that, and it, and it's, and this one for y- is, is that c- is the case for you.

Like, you know, this is starting, this is one of those like foundational pieces of tech that have been replaced, at least for now. I'm sure there might be more in the future or different ones, but, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's cool to see the, the foundational block slowly but surely being revolutionized[00:20:00]

Mikhail: Yeah. And if it is being built with AI, like workflows they're using, I would love to learn more about it. Uh, bec- I might even reach out to them honestly after this and be like, "Hey, I need to know more," because there's a lot here that guys are using workflows, you guys are doing it correctly. Um,

Matt: be cool to honestly talk to them on, even on the show if we could, if if,

could even swing that, that'd be cool to, to talk to them about that

Mikhail: Yeah, if you're out there listening and you know someone that, that's working on it, let me know. But I'll be- I'll reach out as well directly to them on X. I, I know they're on there, and hopefully we can get them on the show because, yeah, I just, it, I just think that there's something here. There's something here that is worthwhile to, to talk about Similarly, this next product, uh, is, is called Orca Agent IDE. I've mentioned it a little bit on the podcast already. I've been using it for a few weeks now, so maybe close- closer to a month. Um, and this is my replacement for essentially VS Code [00:21:00] Cursor, not Cursor like the agent stuff specifically, 'cause I'm still actually using that, but I'm using it through Orca Agent IDE. How I would describe this thing is it's essentially like a, a development environment or a harness for your harnesses, right? So like I'm using my Claude Code, my Codex subscription, my Cursor subscription through Orca, and it's combining it all and I... Like essentially creating these things called projects.

So each, each, you know, each project is essentially a repo for me, and then inside of projects it's creating worktrees, which is like a feature. So if I'm working on a feature, it's gonna be in a worktree. Worktrees are a Git, uh, a Git thing. And then inside, inside of the each worktree, I can add any agents that I want.

So I'll, I'll alwa- I'll pretty much always have at least a Claude agent and a Codex agent working on a single feature doing different things, and they'll have all the context, they'll have all the files that they need. And [00:22:00] you're also getting all of the other, you know, VS Code-like features, like a file browser, file explorer, like, you know, code editor, um, all of that almost on the side.

Like it's very much on the side, where it's like it's not the main thing. The main thing you're, you're looking at is terminals, uh, that, that are powering these different agents, and then you open up a file here and there to edit it and, and check it and stuff like that. It also has like full Git integration into it, uh, so you can do your diff checking and your PRs and all that inside there.

And the other kind of really good workflow that it's unlocked for me, uh, is the ability to connect to it through my phone or other machines. what, what... If, if I set-- W- when I set it up, so I'll have my MacBook Pro 16 that I don't really take many places anymore. It kind of sits on my desk for the most part. I have a MacBook Air that I'm actually just borrowing from my mom to do some remote coding stuff, uh, to do some testing stuff on. [00:23:00] I actually installed Orca on the MacBook Air and connected it, and it now sees my MacBook Pro and I can kick off agents on my MacBook Pro from my Air, and they can, you know...

And then I can monitor it. As long as my MacBook Pro is on, it can all work the same way, and it's actually very fast, and obviously the MacBook Pro is much more powerful. And not only that, I can do the same thing on my phone. if I'm out and I have an agent that's running for a long time, I can go and check what the status and I can, you know, if it has a question for me, I can answer it. And it'll go back and everything's running on my MacBook Pro, but really, like, you know, I can do the same thing that I would do from home on my phone. And since it's like a Codex or a, a Claude, I can get it to do stuff even on my computer if I wanted to because it has computer access. So kind of... It unlocks a lot of things that I haven't really taken advantage of quite yet, I would say. But I do see the advantage being that, like, I can do whatever the heck I want on my computer without actually having my computer on. Like I'm already, [00:24:00] I'm already thinking of doing a Linux installation on my computer and having that as like my agent machine that's running the main Orca instance, and having my MacBook just connect to that and do all my, you know, development on that thing, and then having essentially a, like a thin client, uh, that sips battery

Matt: Well, so hit us, hit us with a, an example. Like, hit us with an example of something that you would do, like maybe, I, I'm just gonna roughly like very high level, 'cause I'll let you fill all this in, but it's like maybe you like, you know, you're at your desk or you're doing some stuff, and then you have to leave your desk for whatever reason, doesn't matter.

You have to leave your desk. Like, what are you doing, you know, remotely? What are, you know, what, what are the type of tasks? Like, maybe you like start the chats and get all the planning done or whatever, and then you're like, "Okay, the, the coding of all this planning and everything is gonna take like an hour and a half or whatever, whatever the job takes."

Is that what you're kicking off? Like-

Mikhail: exactly. That's exactly what I'm kicking off. So I'll, I'll, I'll ki- I'll, I'll do the, all the planning [00:25:00] obviously that's live, that happens pretty instantaneous back and forth. There's a lot of like the-- We, we, we had an episode recently with Agent Skills where I, where I talked about the Grill Me with Docs.

That's, there's a lot of questions back and forth, answers. That's all I have to pretty much be sitting at my computer. Like, I mean, I can do it from my phone, and that's kind of a terrible experience to do from your phone. But something that I can't, uh, that, that I can do from my phone is, like you said, I do all that, I start the planning session, and it starts building. Sometimes in the, in the building phase I'll, I'll ask it to run verifications and not-- don't stop the agent until all verifications pass. some of those verifications require user input of some sorts, like me having to guide it somewhere or something, and it'll come back and it'll stop the agent and ask me to do something. I can do that from my phone real quick. The other thing is like I can just monitor a really long-running loop. So I have, um, I'm working on this like AI auditor thing, uh, for work right now. I can't really talk too much about it, but essentially [00:26:00] the, the gist, the gist of it is the audits can take anything from five hours to like eight hours, right?

And right now I'm, I'm, I'm having this issue of like, you know, if, if an audit fails halfway through manually, then I have to go back and restart it. Well, what I've done is I've made an agent just monitor that audit. So every, you know, five minutes it'll just check. It doesn't eat that many tokens because it sleeps for five minutes, checks quickly, sleeps for five minutes, checks quickly.

If anything goes wrong, I tell it, "Hey," uh, this is like in the initial prompt, "If, if s- if anything goes wrong, adjust, fix, and l- and, and rerun." And so it'll... That loop can run for I think the, the most I've had is like 16 hours. just being able to monitor that to make sure that there's nothing that's, you know, stopping it from running gives me the flexibility to still go to, you know, go to the park with my daughter and s- and like in the middle of the day kind of thing, uh, and allow that to continue to run.

So like it does [00:27:00] give me a little bit of like safety almost. I don't check it very often, I'll be honest. Uh, I've probably only opened the mobile app like three times in the past three weeks. But the fact that I have that option gives me the ability to step away more, if that makes sense.

Matt: Well, I was, I was gonna say that like it, it, y- y- you're gonna be more chained, like,

Mikhail: Mhm

Matt: your laptop kind of thing because you're like, "Oh, I don't have that option." But you and I are w- used to remote working, so th- you opening it just a few times in a few weeks, I think you said there, makes sense. Because, like, we know to be like, "Okay, I'll on..."

Like, I'll just roughly, it's like I'll on-ramp while I'm at my desk on my lap- laptop, desktop, what have you, on my work setup, and then I know that I can kinda like give it a smack when I'm remote, where I'm like, "No, don't do it that way. Do it this way," right? Or I can, I can come back in and be like, "Okay, thanks for generating that report for me.

Now put it in a PDF," or like, "Okay, let's push it to GitHub." You know, just like the little smack where it's like if I kn- if I don't have that option, I'm gonna immediately [00:28:00] think, "Okay, I better stay at my desk, wait for the task to run, then I'll push it, then I'll go to the park or what have you," like you're saying.

Like there's... Once you get used to work- working remotely with remote tools, like I think opening them less, depending on, heavily depending on what it is you're trying to do remotely. But in, in this case, we're just trying to use it as an assistant, so that, that totally makes sense what you're saying

Mikhail: Yeah, it's a side thing, right? Like it, it's just the ability for me to almost feel safer, uh, running things longer and, yeah, like not, not having to worry about like checking in on my computer every, every, you know, hours or eight hours or whatever it is

Matt: Absolutely

Mikhail: that I need to do. So I, I like that. Like th- this thing has been super smooth too to start up.

Um, like when I first logged in, it just like, "Hey, what..." It detected all my agents that, that were already on my computer. I didn't have to like connect anything, quote unquote, and it just kind of threw me into the terminal, and I was able to continue my work as if I was in a terminal. But now I had all these other extra features like, you know, [00:29:00] connect- uh, having the projects and workspaces on the sidebar and all of my IDE features on the other side.

Because, having like... What I was doing before essentially was like having, uh, Cursor as my IDE and I was having Ghostty as my terminal. This has kind of combined those two things pretty well. And I know Cursor can technically do some of this stuff, like you can spin up a, um, a terminal inside of Cursor.

But I just-- It felt a little bit more clunky to me because again, like you're, you're kind of using like Claude code inside of Cursor and that, that, that whole process I don't-- It, I never-- And, it never vibed with me for whatever reason. This one is kind of built around that as the, as the first principles, so it's a little bit to get started with on, in, in that sense.

And yeah, it replaced two apps, brought it into one. It works. I haven't had any bugs I don't think. Like I honestly think that it's been, it's been another one of those like [00:30:00] solid apps. Um, gets updated quite often, but the updates don't kill the, the actual like agents working, which is nice. Because if I have a 16-hour agent that's working, it would be a pain in the ass having to like update and restart them.

It just, it updates seamlessly and then comes back and the agents are still working in the same route. Because they're all working in separate like terminal processes that it just keeps running during an update. There's like a few things like that that have just been like, "Oh, this is, this is nice." Like I, I like this. only thing I'll say, um, on this one is this rely-- this requires you to work in pretty much only CLIs, like terminal-based, UIs. something like T3 Code, which is Theo's version of this application essentially, actually has its own UIs for all of these. in my opinion, they are slightly better, like using a UI versus a CLI, they are slightly better.

But T3 Code is a little more rough around the edges for me. I, I still need to go back to, to try it [00:31:00] again, I think, because again, I, I kinda like the UI The, the, the fact that you're using like actual UIs rather than terminals for your agent work, I, I think I like that more. There's just, you know, more flexibility there and just it, it's a little bit...

For me, I'm not a terminal native guy, like it's not my thing. But I've been fine with the terminals I've gotten used to them. It's fine. Uh, that's why I haven't reached for it. And like, again, I, I just had a few rough around the edges experiences with T3 Code that I just haven't gone back to yet to try again.

But tho- those two, like if you're gonna try one, try e- either of those two, Orca Agent or, uh, like, or, or, sorry, it's just called Orca or T3 Code. They both do the same thing. They replace your terminal and your, uh, your code editor in one. So d- and, and they g- they both give you access to like use it on your phone and stuff like that, which is cool But that's it for that one. Uh, the next one here is gonna be a quick [00:32:00] one. Uh, I don't have too much to say about it. It, it just replaced something for me, so I wanted to say it. Uh, instead of Docker Desktop, I'm using something called Orb Stack. Docker, Docker Desktop, especially on my MacBook Air, was eating up a ton of memory for whatever reason.

I don't know why. And it was also d- draining battery like crazy. Like, every time I checked my battery results, it was like Docker Desktop is at the top. I, I don't know. It just got annoying, and I looked up a different solution to it, and there was Orb Stack, and it replaces Docker Desktop one-to-one. I like it better.

It's a little bit faster opening. It l- uses less resources. There's not much else to talk about. If you understand-- If you know what Docker is, it's like a Docker, like, TLDR is, like, a small little micro container essentially that's running a single instance of, like, a Linux VM with only the things that you need in it to run a single, like, service or application. And you can have multiple of those, and you use something called a Docker Compose file or a Docker file, and then a Docker Compose script to [00:33:00] start and stop them. It's just like a, a-an easily repeatable VM container s- specifically designed for, like, microservices

Matt: Well, like, I'll give you an example. Like, so in the website space, like I have a Docker container that is, uh, for a, a blank WordPress. It just fires everything up. It gets the SQL Server going, it gets, you know, it gets everything going, and then basically I just go to like the website, uh, the URL, whatever. I can't remember what I set it to, but I, I have like a URL I go to and, and, you know, and then boom.

Like, that's it. Like it's, you know, it's ready to go. It's a, it's a fresh one and I can duplicate that, uh, you know, umpteen times 'cause sometimes I wanna see, okay, like, is this plugin actually tanking the performance of WordPress or is it like a conflict? Let me spin up a fresh one. Let me just install that plugin, check the performance, uh, for, for...

That's just one example of many things you could do with it. Um, but no, I mean, this Orbstack sounds like it's... And correct me if I'm wrong, like, like you were talking about Mac- MacBook, on a MacBook Air. MacBook Air is obviously a less capable machine in terms of com- computational power. It sounds like this would be very, very valuable to people who maybe only [00:34:00] have an older laptop, only have a maybe a MacBook Air or an Ultrabook or something like that where they don't really have all that much computational power.

I mean, they're gonna wanna save that, kind of budget that wherever they can, kind of ration it around, and this would be a, a way to do that. 'Cause even on, like I have a, a newer, you know, for all intents and purposes like a gaming rig more or less, uh, that I built maybe about a year and a half ago or something like that approximately, and I mean, even that, like you- Docker when it fires up will...

It fires the fans up like more than some AAA games, you know, just for a few moments at the very least. But it's definitely, uh, a little bit of a, a little bit of a pig, let's just say, in terms of, in terms of performance, so.

Mikhail: Yeah, exactly. And, and, and like a lot of that is due to the Docker containers themselves, but I, what I found and s- was surprised by is that Docker Desktop was eating up a chunk. And I was like, "Why? It's just managing these containers. Like I don't... It's just a GUI to manage containers." So I don't know if it's just built inefficiently or maybe there's something I'm missing there.

I don't know. But [00:35:00] I've switched to it on my MacBook Pro as well. Like I've switched to Orb Stack 'cause it's just like a, kind of a cleaner experience. The UI isn't like the greatest thing ever, but I need to just see the containers that are open and stop, like stop them sometimes and delete them sometimes.

That's really all I need, and it gives me that. But that's, that's that for-- That's Orb Stack. That's replaced something for me, so we talked about that. Uh, another thing, I think I've talked about this on a podcast before, at least once, but Aerospace. So

Matt: you've mentioned it in passing once, if I remember correctly

Mikhail: I'll, I'll talk about a little bit more in depth right now because essentially this has kind of ruined Windows li- Windows computers for me because I haven't been able to even get close to replacing this.

But this is a i3-inspired window manager for macOS. If you're, if you're a Linux user, you probably have used a tiling manager before. That's like a very common thing for especially developers. But essentially what that is is, uh, the ability to, from the [00:36:00] keyboard, split your, you know, windows, have, you know, the left window here, the right window on, on, on the other screen, and then flip them, put them in any orientation you want, have like four windows open, have three window, whatever.

Like you're, you're able to like use a bunch of shortcuts to change the way your windows are displayed on your screen, and it's very like quote-unquote rigid. It's not floating. Like the windows aren't floating. They're very much like locked to a certain position,

Matt: L-

like, like fif-, like just, like 50/50 for would be an example.

like

columns, 50/50. This window's half, this window's half

Mikhail: Exactly, yeah. So th-that's part- that's the probably one of the main things in the Tiling Window Manager, which is ironically the thing I use l-least. Um, the other thing that I use the most is the ability to control spaces. So what I have is instead of having, like, a bunch of windows that are, you know, idle at the bottom and you going in with your mouse and clicking on VS Code or Chrome and having them show up wherever, um, what I have is different spaces that c- that house these apps, and I'm able [00:37:00] to quickly switch between them using a short- shortcut.

So I'll have almost my entire keyboard is just space shortcuts, Option A, Q, Z, S, W, any, any letter or number other than a few specific ones open up a different space. And I'll, like just from muscle memory, know what's on that space. So like I have, for example, my, uh, personal browser, personal aside browser window open on Option A. And I'll have my work aside brow- browser window open on Option B-- Option S, sorry. And so switching between those two is super easy. I just like flip it back and forth and I'll have my like tur- my, uh, you know, what, what is it? Aside-- the, the Orca Agent ADI open on Option 2. So again, it just allows me to s- almost switch between apps really cleanly and easily, and then you can also obviously switch between grouped apps.

So if you have like, I-- on my, one of my side monitors I have like a status window and then a file explorer just in case I need to pull something in quickly, so I can switch [00:38:00] between those as well. Like it's, it's made working with i- macOS very smooth for me I think, 'cause I, I just didn't like the way they launched apps initially and how, how their floating windows work specifically.

So I was trying to figure out a better way to do that. But what that inherently did was make it so that I can't even use Windows, 'cause Windows doesn't have tiling manager or real, real definition of spaces. 'Cause spaces in Windows, like the, the different, uh, what, what is it called? What are they called? Snap is fine. Like s- I'm not saying, like they, th-their tiling system is okay, I think. Like I can work around that, but I don't really use that often. It's more the spaces stuff. So like being able to launch, being able to open and, open and like essentially shut down the other application that was running using these different shortcuts and having them run in their own like full screen mode kind of thing on each page.

Like that, that's the thing that I wasn't able to replicate or haven't been able to replicate on Windows quite yet.

Matt: I, I would say the closest is gonna be [00:39:00] your different desktops, right? Like your multiple desktops

Mikhail: Yeah, but e-even, even then, those are like, everything else, so like all of your running apps are different and stuff like that on the bottom. And so like it's almost like a different environment.

So

Matt: Yeah

Mikhail: environment, like a work desktop on Windows, but that itself would have like my work browser, my work IDE, my work everything, which would I would have to then manually switch between. So this is like the next version of that where I don't have to manually switch between it. It's all done through like a very quick shortcut on the keyboard

Matt: Is this like... Now understand, to the audience out there, I do not use macOS, so,

Mikhail: Угу

Matt: BlackBerry Blend in a way? Where like you remember how like BlackBerry had that like work and personal mode and there was like a blend in between them, but then you could like, you could then be like, "Oh, like work shuts down at 4:00 PM," or what have you, and then

Mikhail: Not really, I would say. Like, I don't think there's much there. Like, there's, there is obviously blending of things. You can have it so that it doesn't blend. Like, I don't think there is [00:40:00] a-- there's any, like, specific use for that. I think this is more of a, just a, a faster way of navigating your Windows. Um, I prefer-- Actually, like, one, one of the things I prefer is having one app open at a time on my Windows screen, on, on my screen. So I'm a, I'm a full screen kinda guy. Like, I like to focus on things. Um, so that's again why I don't use tiling very often, is because it's just not something I prefer. So this leads itself, like the Spaces, uh, organization and shortcuts leads itself better for me because I'm able to, you know, switch between apps really quickly. That's the main reason I use it. Like, that's the number one reason, is I wanna be able to switch between my browser and my IDE as quickly and efficiently as possible. Like, my shortcuts are very close to each other. I can switch between it in like 0.1 second. I don't have to lift my hands. I don't have to, you know, hover over something on a mouse, because sometimes I'm testing something really quickly, and I need to [00:41:00] quickly switch back and forth. realistically the main reason. There's, uh, there might be a way to replicate that on Windows,

Matt: I was gonna say, I'd, I'd love to see this in action, 'cause like I've done this where, like I have like a heavy communication day on Windows, and so I open up a separate desktop. Now I usually like a single desktop. That's usually my workflow because I start forgetting that things are open on other desktops so it becomes a big mess.

But sometimes what I'll do is I'll say, "Okay, that's it." Like I need to have like a snapshot of the, of like three chat apps because it's just a heavy communication day. So I'll open up a second desktop. I will throw and like snap in a grid like, okay, Outlook's gonna be here, WhatsApp's here, Messenger's here, et cetera.

Whatever else needs to be open. In this thing, it's multi-monitor, so I have two monitors, so I do that. And then I just use the keyboard shortcut, which is like Control, Win, uh, and then, uh, the arrow keys. And so I can just like whoosh, whoosh, back and forth, back and forth. So like, like my main like desktop one, if you will, is gonna be just like all my work and all my regular stuff, and then desktop two will be all my communication so I can quickly be like, "Okay, did, did that guy make it back to me?

[00:42:00] No, not yet. Okay, get back to work for a little bit. Check it, you know, check it in again in 10, 10, 10 minutes." And it does allow me to like kind of emulate that where I know it's not full screen like you're saying. It could be, but I, in, in that case, I'm creating like a little almost like a live tile board for myself with the actual chat apps

Mikhail: Yeah, and I used to use that quite often, like exactly the way that you described it there, like even with the shortcuts and everything. Um, but again, it didn't really satisfy the, like being full screen and fast. Especially because like the, the, the s- desktop switching animation is a little bit annoying. Like for me, this is like an instantaneous, there's no animations. Like it's just boom, you're, you're switching between one app and the other app. Um, it's instant. And also the fact that I think I could set up numbers, the numbers to be specific desktops, so I could switch between like desktop four and desktop one by using Command-Shift, uh, or like, sorry, Windows-Shift-1 or Windows-Shift-4.

I can't remember. This has been a lo- a long time ago on Windows. But

that

Matt: there is like

power tools that are by Microsoft that you can download, and it, I don't know if [00:43:00] that's one of them, but they do allow a lot of stuff like that

Mikhail: Maybe, yeah, something like that. I re- I believe I got it to be able to switch, but again, it was just-- it wasn't the same type of experience that I wanted to create. And again, it was only numbers that you could use. You couldn't use any of the letters, so, like, you had to... It kind of is awkward to use just the numbers. and I have a lot, like f-f- like have seven... No, sorry, 15 different spaces with different apps

Matt: Whoo-wee

Mikhail: Yeah, so, like, I need a lot. Like I need, I need a, a considerable amount of options. Um, especially 'cause it's like each space on a monitor is different too, so, like, I can switch between different monitor, different spaces on different monitors pretty quickly.

So anyway, just one of those things that has kind of changed my workflow pretty drastically over the last few years is, is going through and figuring out how to use these tiling and window managers and space managers. Um, again, if [00:44:00] you're, if you're Linux native, you probably know this already. Uh, the other thing that's really cool, like really good about these ty- style edit- uh, managers, their configuration files are all, like, text files, dot files. what that allows, and what I've been using recently, is literally just get AI to change them for me. Instead of having to go and look like, "What exact thing do I need to change to make it so that this shortcut does this?" I just tell AI, and it goes and looks at the documentation and adds it directly for me in the, in the dot file, and everything just works.

So having AI be able to configure it, has been pretty nice, and, um, I've actually used that quite a bit, by the way. Like, I've made... If anything has, like, a, a dot file configuration, for example, like, uh, my terminal, uh, uh, like ZS- ZSH, which is, like, my terminal, um, what is it called? Like, it's a theme or something.

I, I don't think, I don't know if it's a theme or just, like, a, a version of the Bash, Bash terminal. I was able to get AI [00:45:00] to just, like, enhance it quite a bit because it's, again, just a dot file and it was-- I a- it added autocomplete for me. It added a bunch of co- like really, really nice theme color for me for different things.

It added a bunch of Git, variable, like a bunch of Git, um, niceties. Like it, you know, it shows the branch really well, and it shows the everything that I'm working on really well, so it... been really cool. Anything that has a dot file, I highly recommend you get AI to kinda do the configuration for you to make it better, and you could tell it.

You could lead it. You could be like, "Hey, just do the recommended configuration," whatever. And ha- and, and then it can tell you what it did and how to activate it, which is nice. Um, all right

Matt: It's kind of interesting in that, in that regard is like,

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: it's like in, in gaming, like you're always kind of tinkering if you're, if you're trying to get o- old games to work especially or if you like to tinker with games, like you're always kind of messing around with INI files. And, uh, I feel like software's gonna start leaning more toward files like that a little bit.

Like the...

Mikhail: so

Matt: Do you know what I mean? Where it's like, [00:46:00] like a bot can very easily go in and change it, but then it's still pretty much just as easy for us to go in and just take a look at the properties that have changed or things that have been added or removed or modified. I think that like maybe we're gonna see more that type of, uh, change rather than have like specific, specific and rigid settings menus.

Um, and, you know, we'll... In- instead, they'll, they'll just be like, "No, like all the files and all the properties are here," and the, the manufacturer or the developer, original, original developer will put together a, a list of properties and settings for you that they think is good for a starting point, and then you can have your AI or just you manually go in and just quickly change the stuff.

It's a little more technical, like for sure, like especially if you're not techy. But I mean, we're talking about stuff that's more power user, and so power users would be more, more than, you know, used to this type of thing

Mikhail: Yeah. I think the, most likely what's gonna happen and what happens to a lot, with a lot of these, like VS Code, for example, has both. It has the dot, like the J- the configuration JSON, and it has the UI,

Matt: Oh, sure. Absolutely

Mikhail: two and they [00:47:00] update, you know, seamlessly between the two. I think the, the, that's a really good option

Matt: Uh, b- b- many video games have that too. Like the INI file will, let's say, have 10 properties, and then the, the in-game settings menu will have like six 'cause like the remaining four are like so rarely changed, but if you need it, it's there

Mikhail: Yep. exactly it Uh, next thing here is kind of along the same lines as the previous one, where it just makes it so that I don't have to use the mouse as much. Um, it's called Raycast, and I think, again, another one that I think I've talked about on the podcast before a little while ago. But, uh, yeah, it's something that's been a mainstay for me for a while now. It's a keyboard-first launcher, essentially, so launching any app, uh, that I don't have open already. So if an app is already open, it's already assigned to a space usually for me. Uh, so I don't need to use Raycast for that. But if I don't have an app that's open, then I'll use Raycast to open that app, and then I'll assign it a space. Um, and then the other stuff that Raycast does is, like, it actually [00:48:00] not just opens apps. You can go into, like, configuration set-settings, like Bluetooth settings, for example. Uh, when I have to disconnect or reconnect my AirPods, I can do that straight through Raycast, like through a com-command space is my, um...

instead of Spotlight, like I replace Spotlight with Raycast. And then it just, like, opens up a text box on the f-on the screen, and I'm able to just type in whatever I want, like Bluetooth, and, uh, I'm able to do, you know, switch to, like, change AirPods, whatever, uh, whatever I wanna do for that configuration. And it works across, like, a lot of native macOS configurations as well. Like, if I wanna lock the screen, if I wanna put my computer to sleep mode, if I wanna just turn off my displays, if I wanna set volume to a certain level. Like, all of these different configurations that you would ma- usually manually do either through keyboard shortcut or, uh, through the mouse.

Uh, you can do most of those through the, through the Raycast settings. And then there's also extensions. Like I have a sticky note extension where I'll t- [00:49:00] you know, put up a Raycast note, and then it'll be one of those little sticky notes on the screen. I'll type whatever I need into that, and then I'll remove it, and then that's all launchable through, through Raycast.

And I have like a Pomodoro timer. I have a to-do list thing there. Like, there's just a bunch of different extensions that you can add to it, uh, that allows you to use it. And then there's like that have their own extensions to it to give you deeper functionality. Like, for example, Chrome. I... Or when I was using Arc, it had like a deep extension inside of Raycast where I was able to do like any sort of browser configuration inside of Raycast and stuff like that.

I don't use that as much, 'cause I just don't configure stuff very often, uh, that I need to dive into that. But, um, the fact that it's there is kind of nice. There's al- free, but there's a, there is a paid tier that I do not pay for with like AI stuff and like other things. I can't remember what else. Um, but the free one is already a massive improvement over Spotlight search, which is pretty basic. This one [00:50:00] allows you to do a lot of actions and commands, and it also allows you... It actually has its own tile manager built in. So theoretically, if you need just tile and management, Raycast is more than enough for you.

Like, you can, you can literally like snap stuff into r- like spots, like different windows to different spots with it, through it, and you can assign shortcuts to anything that you have in Raycast. So if you want to do a bunch of different really custom things, you can do it inside there. I don't go that deep yet, um, but it's a good-- it's definitely a good tool.

Like, it's a, it- it's a solid tool that's been kept up with a long time, and it has a significant amount of funding behind it as far as I understand, and it's been my mainstay for me for, since I essentially started on macOS, so something I wanted to talk about

Matt: I was gonna say this, this is a, sounds like it's a great replacement for little things you don't want a separate app for. Like, I was playing with a Pomodoro timer there and I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll try this, this method." It didn't really end up working for me. But part of the reason why it didn't really work for me is 'cause I downloaded some hi- some [00:51:00] highly rated apps and, like, it just...

The alarms wouldn't go off, like Android's coming in and it's like, "Oh, like turn that off," right? Like it's a battery using process, like shut that off or, "Oh, you know, on Samsung you need this," or whatever the, the situation is. And my point there is that I had to, I... For each of these little kind of bits of, these little productivity apps, these little tasks, I would have to download its own app.

Like I'm talking about just a Pomodoro app. So something like Raycast, I haven't used it myself, but it sounds like it- it's allowing you to like replace a bunch of those little apps, get it, get it working, give it the right permissions, get it all, you know, kind of up and running, and then allows you to just do that, right?

Like, I mean, it's, it's, it... I never got a Pomodoro timer working on my phone and so it just...

Like, it just, not a single one would sound the alarm. Like I don't know whether it was a security thing, something was wrong with my clock app, but like my clock app works to wake me up in the morning, so I don't know what the heck's going on there.

I would set it and it'd be like, "Okay," and then it just wouldn't work. It just wouldn't ring, doesn't matter. I tried like heavy, like [00:52:00] something's, I don't know. Something's going on. But the point is, is that that's the experience that you might have

Mikhail: mhm

Matt: you were to constantly like, "Oh, I'll have a, a search files app.

I'll have a manage a clip- a clipboard management app. I'll have this, I'll have that." This allows you to kinda do all those things like you mentioned, but then it also allows you, obviously Raycast is testing them together. So it's not like, "Oh, my clipboard app messes up with my search files app, so now we got, you know, now we have this weird conflict.

You have to have the workarounds." Like Raycast knows they have a search files functionality as well as a manage clipboard functionality, so they work together and there's, you know, hopefully no conflicts there. And so there's stuff like that, um- mess. Like w- when you, when you individualize it, like it, and, and you want a bunch of little things, like it can be a mess.

So like, it sounds like Raycast is just a great little sort of like side tool

Mikhail: That, that's exactly it. It just makes stuff easier. It makes me-- It makes it easier for me to get back to work. A lot, a lot of these apps are me just trying to focus in and get back to work. Notice I didn't add any, like, entertainment apps in here. This is specifically, like, a work [00:53:00] segment. Like, this-- these are the apps that make it easier for me to work, and that's why we're talking about them. Um, gonna go into the next one here real quick because we're about to get, like, the storm of the century apparently with, like, a tornado here and I'm hearing thunder and lightning all over the place,

so I'm a little

Matt: I heard about this on the news, so

Mikhail: Yeah, I'm a

Matt: oh boy

Mikhail: power cutting off. So let's, let's quickly do this last one and stop the recording so that we can save it.

But, uh, the last one here is Niagara Launcher. So this is my Android launcher. Again, this is kind of a mainstay app for me for a while that I've kept coming back to and I've been stuck on for a long, long time. This is probably one of the main things that's keeping me on Android, to be honest, 'cause I tried, uh, iOS maybe like six months ago.

I tried iOS for the first time for, like, a long period. For I think two to three months. And it was fine. Like, it's-- honestly, it's, like, it's, it's fine. Like, it-it's a, it's a good, it-it's a good option. Uh, but missed the minimalist, [00:54:00] like, launcher experience that An- Niagara Launcher gives me. it, it's a very clean, minimal launcher.

You're able to make it super, super light, so you just have literally, like... It's a vertical launcher, so you have a bun- like, a vertical list of apps and it makes it super easy to search apps. It makes it super easy to see the main apps that you need. Um, it has some nice visual, like, animation stuff. But the idea is you have one widget on top which will have, like, weather and time usually. You'll have a list of, like, five to ten apps and then the rest of it is just you just kind of searching using, like, something called Sesame Shortcuts which allows you to really easily, similarly to Raycast actually, search and do functions from the search bar that you would need, that you would ki- commonly do, right?

So a lot of it is you kind of adapting to this minimalist approach. Like, you don't have all these apps blaring at you. You just have the main apps that you need on your phone that allow you to be more productive and whatever, and entertainment [00:55:00] if you need. Um, and it also has a bunch of features built in like, uh, you know, it'll turn off apps at certain times of day if you want, if you want it to.

It, it detects how long you've been using certain apps and, you know, can give you warnings. Like, it has a bunch of those kinds of features, like, just to literally kind of along the line of minimalist, uh, use. So minimizing the use. I don't-- I'll be honest, I don't use any of those features. Um, I can't... have a hard time tricking myself, if that makes sense.

Like, I, I, I know how to get around those things, so, like, it just feels like I'm tricking myself, uh, the most part. But what it does do is it, it does limit my phone use anyway by just showing me less stuff when I see it. So

Matt: It, it's like you're child gating yourself when you're not a child. You're an adult. You know how to open that child gate. You know how to, you know how to, like, lift the thing and then pull. You

Mikhail: Correct. Yeah. And for some people that's enough, and that's great, and I, like, I, I wish. Um, but that, that type of friction doesn't really stop me from, from overusing something. In [00:56:00] fact, it almost, like, works counterproductive to me. Like, "Hey, I now, like... I, I have to, you know, and try to do this," and then I feel bad about myself.

I don't know. It just, it doesn't make any sense.

Matt: Well, Niagara Launcher is interesting too because, like, it's the default launcher that's gonna be coming out on the Clicks Communicator, which is sort of like the BlackBerry-like device that's being made by CrackBerry Kevin and some other people like Jeff Gadway, stuff like that, uh, which is, which is kinda neat.

Um, and, uh, I mean, one of the things that I was pumped about and then stopped using it immediately was I've been on the hunt for, like, a BlackBerry Hub-like app. And yes, on Android there is a BlackBerry Hub app, and I do have, uh, a friend that actually uses the BlackBerry Hub app to this day, and he still thinks it's amazing, but I never was a fan of the Android version.

I was always a fan of the BB10 or the BlackBerry 10 version. And so when Niagara Launcher come out, it was like, okay, so n- they, we have this Niagara Launcher. We have, uh, like, this top part that shows the notifications in this sort of, like, waterfall thing [00:57:00] Like maybe it'll be like a BlackBerry Hub, but then I find out, oh, it's only for like your favorite apps or there was some sort of limitation.

It would only show a few, or it was only for some of your favorite apps and things, and it's like, okay, that's kind of annoying. More or less what I'm looking for is the notification panel to me always feels very ephemeral, whereas the BlackBerry Hub, you went into like almost like an app that was always running, and then you would go into there and it was like, okay, this is where your notifications are.

And then you would like click and an app would open, and then you could fill in your reply, click back, and you'd be back in the BlackBerry Hub. That is unfortunately not how Niagara Launcher works at all, unfortunately. Uh, not the way I, like thought it would, and so, you know, I guess I'm still on the hunt, if you will.

Mikhail: Mhm

Matt: the waterfall too. The waterfall kinda got to me, where I, I'm so used to like I have all my folders. Like I'm just using One UI. And so I

Mikhail: Hej

Matt: all my folders, I have everything ready, I have all my widgets and things, and I just kinda got to a point where I was like, okay, like if I'm trying to be super minimalistic to the point of this, I almost would [00:58:00] just rather just delete the app or like put the app timers on there, put those like kind of baby gates in front of them, something like that.

Uh, like I was putting a baby gate in front of Facebook for a while 'cause for whatever reason, I don't like scrolling Facebook, but I kept doing it. So I was like, okay, I gotta stop this for a bit. Once I kinda got used to not scrolling it, I just took the baby gate off and I don't really scroll Facebook too much.

So like, I mean, it's fine. But

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: I, I don't, I, I don't, I don't know about this Niagara Launcher. I'm not 100% sure

Mikhail: Uh, it, it's a pretty radical change. Like, it's a pretty radical shift from the regular launcher, so I totally get that. Um, I, I think it's my, like, inherent thing of using more keyboard shortcuts and using more, like, search versus scrolling. I, I, I very rarely will actually, like, scroll down that waterfall.

Matt: Okay

Mikhail: I'll just scr- I'll just, um, I'll just, uh... What is it? Swipe up. Swipe up is the shortcut to get to the search, and then I'll start typing, and then I'll click on a thing. [00:59:00] So, like, I... to me, is the, the way to use this launcher, um,

Matt: I mean, that could be very... Oh. I don't know if you're hearing this, but yeah, we're getting a destructive winds in the area,

Mikhail: yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I think we need to wrap up this, this recording before our literal computers explode or something like that. So we need

Matt: Y- look a little, little chaotic. I, I just gotta... Yeah, if you heard that, that's the Canadian government warning system

Mikhail: Yep.

Matt: that blasted through my silence. Like, I do

not, do not have my notifications on,

Mikhail: Yeah, that was loud. Mm-hmm. didn't, we haven't had, had that one yet, but I'm assuming we're gonna get it pretty soon because it's getting pretty, pretty crazy out there right now.

Matt: Well, it was daylight in the window, and that was a couple minutes ago, and now it is getting very dark.

Mikhail: Yep

Matt: Um, all right, well, we'll conclude this episode due to weather, which sounds ridiculous on a prerecorded podcast. But, um, I mean, if you, uh, liked any of these tools, we have, uh, links. I started putting links in as Mike was talking, and then realized that he already did at the bottom, so that was, that was my mistake.

I I didn't scroll down far enough, so that's my mistake. So anyway, so [01:00:00] links to the, links to all the tools we discussed will be in the, uh, episode show notes on htmlallthethings.com. And remember that we are on... Oh, I hear Mike's, uh, government warning system now also going off, so yeah, we're gonna conclude this.

Anyway, remember that if you wanna support episodes like this and help us through this, this tragedy of weather, that's a joke, uh, remember we're on Patreon. That's patreon.com/htmlallthethings, and many thanks to our $3 tier patrons, Tim from The Web Hacker on thewebhacker.com, Jason from Geek Life Radio via geekliferadio.com, Garrett Segall, Level Up Financial Planning via www.levelupfinancialplanning.com, Magnus from Yes Web via yesweb.se, Syntaxify from the HTML All the Things Discord server, and Stacy Moschler from the website swoonworthydesigns.com.

And remember that we have a contributing author. That's Michael Larocca. He's the author of Self-Taught: The X Generation Blog at selftaughttxg.com. And we have a Scrimba link. Get up to 20% off a Scrimba Pro plan. You can go and check out the link in the RSS description or in the show notes with full details on how it works in the show notes on htmlallthethings.com.

I'm talking very fast because it's [01:01:00] getting very windy right now. So feel free to leave a comment or review in the platform that you are listening to this on, and we are signing off possibly for the very last time

Mikhail: Bye.

Matt: Goodbye