My Favorite Apps 2024
The digital companions that got me through another year
There’s something deeply personal about the apps we choose to live with day after day. They become extensions of ourselves—quiet partners in our productivity, fitness, and time management. After another year of digital experimentation (and yes, a fair bit of app hopping), I’ve settled on three companions that have earned permanent spots on my home screen.
Todoist: My Second Brain
Have you ever had that moment when your brain feels like an overflowing inbox? That was me before Todoist. This isn’t just a to-do app; it’s become the external hard drive for my thoughts.
What makes Todoist special isn’t just its clean interface or cross-platform harmony. It’s the feeling of weightlessness that comes from knowing nothing will slip through the cracks. Every fleeting thought, every “I should really…” moment gets captured and organized without friction.
The killer features that won me over:
- Natural language input that understands “Finish blog post tomorrow at 9am” without making me tap through date pickers
- The perfect balance of structure (projects, labels) without overwhelming complexity
- That tiny dopamine hit when checking off a task (I’m convinced they’ve engineered this to perfection)
After trying countless productivity systems that eventually collapsed under their own weight, Todoist has stayed with me because it disappears when I don’t need it and appears instantly when I do.
Fantastical: Time as a Visual Language
Let’s talk honestly about calendar apps—most of them feel like digital versions of those paper planners from the 90s. Fantastical reimagines what scheduling should feel like in 2024.
My relationship with time changed when I switched to Fantastical. It transformed scheduling from a chore into something approaching… dare I say it? Fun.
What sets it apart:
- The natural language parsing that turns “Coffee with Sam Tuesday at 10” into a perfectly formatted event
- Calendar sets that let me separate work and personal life with a single tap
- The week view that somehow manages to make even my busiest days look manageable
Fantastical has become my trusted gatekeeper, protecting my most valuable resource—time—with an interface that makes visual sense of my chaotic schedule.
Obsidian: The Digital Garden Where Ideas Grow
I’ve always been a collector of ideas—scraps of thoughts, interesting connections, half-formed theories. Before Obsidian, these lived as scattered notes across various apps, never quite connecting into anything meaningful.
Obsidian changed that by creating a space where my notes could talk to each other. It’s less about organizing information and more about creating an environment where ideas can collide and evolve.
What made Obsidian indispensable:
- The magical bidirectional linking that turns static notes into a living knowledge graph
- Local storage that keeps my thoughts private and portable
- The plugin ecosystem that lets me customize my note-taking experience to fit exactly how my brain works
- Markdown-based editing that stays out of the way of my thinking process
While I should mention I’ve begun experimenting with Logseq in early 2025 (a story for next year’s favorite apps post!), Obsidian was my trusted thought partner throughout 2024. It transformed my digital notes from a graveyard of forgotten ideas into a thriving ecosystem where concepts grow and evolve over time.
Strong: The Gym Companion That Doesn’t Judge
I’ve had a complicated relationship with fitness apps. Either they’re too simplistic to be useful or so complex they require a personal trainer just to navigate the interface. Strong hits that elusive sweet spot.
What made me commit to Strong when all other fitness apps eventually got deleted:
- The frictionless workout tracking that focuses on progress, not perfection
- Templates that remove decision fatigue from my gym sessions
- The satisfying graphs that visualize progress over weeks and months
- The fact that it doesn’t try to upsell me every time I open it
Strong doesn’t try to be everything to everyone. It does one thing—track and guide strength training—and it does it exceptionally well. It’s like having a spotter who’s always there but never gets in the way.
The Common Thread
Looking at these four apps, I realize they share something important: they all reduce mental friction in areas where my brain tends to get stuck. They’re not flashy or trendy, but they’re reliable in ways that matter.
The best technology doesn’t draw attention to itself—it quietly removes obstacles between you and what you’re trying to accomplish. These four apps have mastered that art, and that’s why they’ve earned their place in my digital life for 2024!