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Published on January 1, 2025 (16d ago)

(Un)Ricing MacOS, Part II

How I'm simplifying my system in 2025

#webdev

#workflow

#Apple


Almost a year ago, I published Ricing MacOS (For Beginners), where I talked about a few of the technologies I was using on my machine. Since publishing that article, my workflow has changed a bit. I want to share what I'm exploring now and what I've found to work better for me in the time since I published that article.

I'll try to be concise, so let's just get straight into it!


TL;DR —

WM: none
Hotkey Daemon: none
IDE: Neovim & VSCode
Terminal: Ghostty
widgets: none
Organization: Obsidian


Window Management & Hotkey Daemon

To be clear, I really, really liked using yabai and skhd. I even specifically said that I had no idea how I could ever go back to not using them.

However, I've found that the organization of a window management tool and navigation between those windows just wasn't that important to me. At some point, it just felt like it was getting in the way more than it was helping me stay organized. So, I opted out of any window management tool.

IDE

I still use VSCode for a lot of my work, but I'm getting more and more comfortable using Neovim. I fully intend on a complete transition to Neovim eventually, but I'm waiting (and hoping) for a point where I can feel the difference in productivity.

For now, I handle small side projects in Neovim, with the bulk of everything else I do in VSCode.

I haven't done anything special with Neovim, so no screenshot (yet)!

Terminal

For the vast majority of people, I'm not sure that you'll be able to feel a real difference in terminal emulators. Sure, if the terminal is central to your workflow, you'll be a little selective about what you use. However, at this point, that just doesn't apply to me. I edit files, run git commands, and do other pretty basic command-line stuff.

I'd probably be fine with the default Apple Terminal, but I like exploring and supporting new things, which is why I'm using Ghostty. It's handled everything I've needed it to, and that's fine with me.

Widgets

Since doing away with yabai & skhd, I've also removed the widgets I was using. They looked clean when I had window management, but again, it just got in the way. I'm perfectly fine with spending two seconds to find something on the system that would be displayed in a widget.

Organization

I've used Obsidian for the majority of my needs since early 2023 and I don't think I'll ever use something else. I started using it as an editor for my blog, since every post is just a Markdown file, but now it's the knowledge base for my life.

One of the best features in Obsidian is the graph view, which visualizes every single note and their connections to other notes via links, tags, etc. It's helped me tremendously in connecting and organizing my thoughts, and I've come to rely on it. I would highly recommend Obsidian to anyone and everyone.

Conclusion

I'm still configuring my workflow. I don't know that I'll ever stop. I spent a lot of time configuring things for the sake of productivity with no real or measurable gain. What worked for me almost a year ago doesn't quite work for me now, and what works for me now might not work for me in the next year.

The most important thing to me is building things. As long as my workflow allows for that, I'm willing to add or cut whatever I need to. I want to focus on practical utility over aesthetic/technical complexity.

Thanks for reading! If you have any suggestions for tools, feel free to tell me about them! & as always, happy coding!

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