My current setup (start of 2024 edition)

20th January 2024

This post lists out all of the tools and equipment I use day-in, day-out. I'll update this post semi-regularly, whenever I make any major changes to my setup.

Workspace

I'm planning on re-doing my workspace in the next couple of months so watch this space for changes 👀

At the moment, however, here's what I'm working with:

  • Laptop: MacBook Pro M1 14" (2021)

  • Monitor: LG 34WL500-B 34" Ultrawide

  • Keyboard: Keychron Q1

  • Mouse: MX Master 3 Mouse

  • Headphones: AirPods Pro

  • Webcam: Logitech C920S

  • Desk: IKEA BEKANT sit/stand desk

  • Chair: Unsure... it was a Christmas present

Development

I'm a heavy user of VS Code. It's far from the stock defaults, thanks to Caleb Porzio's Make VS Code Awesome course.

Most of the time, I'm using the terminal inside VS Code. However, when I'm not, I'm using iTerm (which I again, have customised):

I'm using Zsh with a lot of bash aliases & functions. If you're interested, you can browse them all in my dotfiles repository.

Aside from my code editor & terminal, there's a few other apps I use on a fairly regular basis:

  • Arc (Chromium-based browser)

  • Tower (my Git GUI of choice)

  • TablePlus (my database GUI of choice)

  • Tinkerwell (makes it super simple to tinker with code)

  • Ray (easy dump debugging without the need to break the request)

  • HELO (local email testing)

  • Tuple (for 🍐 programming at Statamic)

Productivity

I'm fairly happy with my current "productivity stack". I've looked at switching things up before but nothing quite compares to these...

  • I use Things 3 for keeping on track of my tasks, both personal & work ones. It's got to be one of the most well-designed macOS and iOS apps out there!

  • I use Bear for taking notes. I love being able to use a hierarchical structure for my notes and the iOS app works well for writing long notes.

  • I host my emails with Fastmail. It's a great privacy-focused email service and has a really decent web UI & iOS app which I use on a daily basis.

Business

Finally, these are a few of the apps I use to run my business:

  • Since I started freelancing, I've always used FreeAgent to send invoices, handle my bookeeping and file my tax returns. It makes the whole process seamless - I don't know what I'd do without it.

  • Starling Bank is one of the big challenger banks here in the UK. I've been using them for the last few years and they've been great. It's a free account and you can have it open within a few hours.

  • I use Wise so I can send & receive money from abroad. Wise has really good low rates compared to the rest of the market.