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Nick Taylor
Nick Taylor Subscriber

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at nickyt.co

Tools that keep me productive

This page details mostly all I use as a developer. I use a Mac, so a bunch of tools are macOS-specific, but there are some OS-agnostic ones in the list.

One thing to mention before we get started is that these are the tools that make me productive. Maybe they won't make you productive like the way they do for me. I always say, use the tools that make you the most productive.

Some of these tools are free but some are paid. I personally think the paid ones are worth it, but I leave that up to you and your wallet.

Note: I've put some referral links in here. Just want to be upfront about that is all.

Editor

It all starts with the editor. Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is my go-to editor. I was using the Insider’s Edition for the longest time, but some extensions would try to log in and redirect to VS Code regular edition, so I decided to go back to it. That said, VS Code Insider's is very stable.

I was a big fan of the Dank Mono for the longest time, but GitHub released a bunch of monospaced fonts this year and I've been loving Monaspace Krypton.

For the theme, it varies. I've been on the light modern default theme recently as I find it's better for my live streaming, but I'm also a fan of the Houston and Fortnite themes.

Me when I tell them I use a dark theme in my editor.

Although I have iTerm installed, a great terminal for macOS, I honestly live in the VS Code terminal 99.999% of the time.

Editor Settings

If you're interested in my editor settings, here's my current settings.

One of the more fun ones is you can change the title bar, so I've added some emojis to mine.



  "window.title": "🦙⚡🫡 – ${activeEditorShort}${separator}${rootName} – 🫡⚡🦙",


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An alpaca floating through a rainbow

Another setting that I find super handy is terminal.integrated.autoReplies. I never want to source my .env file and this handles it perfectly.



  "terminal.integrated.autoReplies": {
    "dotenv: found '.env' file. Source it? ([Y]es/[n]o/[a]lways/n[e]ver)": "e\r"
  },


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Maybe Zed Soon?

I do want to give a shout out to the Zed editor. I use it occasionally and it’s super fast, but it hasn’t become my main editor yet. I think once the extension ecosystem blows up a little more is when I move to this. Maybe in the next year. We’ll see. 😎

Browser Extensions

I don't use all of these everyday, but these are my go-to browser extensions.

Desktop Apps

These are most of the desktop apps that I use every day. Let's get started with some general ones.

General Tools for Common Things I do Everyday

Arc Browser is a Chromium-based browser that, in my opinion, has nailed a tonne of the user experience (UX) issues I've encountered with any other browsers. Vertical tabs, command palette, and auto-picture in picture video to name a few.

I used Vanilla for the longest time for my top menu bar icons, but once I got a MacBook Pro with the notch, it just didn't work well. I've since moved on to Bartender for managing my menu bar.

The emoji picker on macOS isn't that great, but Rocket makes it so easy to add emojis. I can't tell you how many times a day I use this.

Raycast is my go-to replacement for macOS' spotlight. It's like Spotlight on steroids. I previously used Alfred, another outstanding Spotlight alternative, but for some reason Raycast grew on me. I also use it for window management.

For those evenings where I'm in front of the computer, f.lux is a must. Like some wise person said, "Be kind to your eyeballs". macOS's Nightshift kind of works, but f.lux destroys it.

For managing meetings, Dato is a better date app for macOS. It's great for having multiple time zones in the address bar. I have my local time as well as UTC. I also use it for upcoming meetings and events. Previously I was using Meeter which is great for this, but it's one less app I need now.

I take screenshots or short video recordings almost daily, and Cleanshot X is so great for this.

Tools for Git

I do most of my "git"ing on the command line, but sometimes I need a graphical user interface (GUI) to really understand what's going on. When I need that, I reach for Fork.

Cassidy demonstrating squash, rebase and merge

Shoutout to Cassidy (@cassidoo) for the awesome GIF!

If you're using Git, which I imagine most of you are, signing your commits is super important. GPG Suite makes this easy to set up.

Frontend Tooling

I do a lot of work building user interfaces (UIs) and these are some indispensable tools for that kind of work.

xScope is a fantastic tool set for frontend development. Rulers, guides etc.

Figma is where I live when I need to coordinate with our designer, look at designs, or pull some assets.

I had heard about Polypane before and I think I may have tried it a few years ago, but nowadays, It's a must for frontend. It helps you build out responsive, accessible apps with all kinds of goodies. Curious about it? I hung out with the creator of Polypane, Kilian Valkhof (@kilianvalkhof), on a live stream earlier this year.

For color contrast issues, TPGi's Color Contrast Analyzer is top tier. I can't recommend it enough. Thanks to Todd Libby (@colabottles) for recommending this to me last year.

Other Desktop Apps I Use

  • Cloudflare Warp - Faster Internet and some VPN goodness
  • Plash - An interactive desktop background (one or more web pages) for your Mac
  • CleanMyMac X - A suite of utilities for keeping your Mac in tip-top shape.
  • Starship - A cross shell prompt

Live Streaming Software

I'm sure there are streamers with bigger audiences that have a better setup, but this is how I roll.

Restream.io is what I use to stream to multiple platforms, currently Twitch, YouTube, X/Twitter, and LinkedIn.

OBS is used by many including myself. It's a great piece of open source software. I use it for streaming instead of Restream Studio or similar tools like Streamyard because I have custom overlays and some other customizations.

GitHub logo obsproject / obs-studio

OBS Studio - Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording

OBS Studio <https://obsproject.com>

OBS Studio Build Status - GitHub Actions
OBS Studio Translation Project Progress

OBS Studio Discord Server

What is OBS Studio?

OBS Studio is software designed for capturing, compositing, encoding, recording, and streaming video content, efficiently.

It's distributed under the GNU General Public License v2 (or any later version) - see the accompanying COPYING file for more details.

Quick Links

Contributing

Krisp is outstanding for filtering out unwanted noise on calls and streams. Say goodbye to fire engines in the background while you stream. 🤣

I use Loopback for virtual audio sources. This is super helpful because I create an audio source, which is my microphone and the guest's (guests') audio, and treat it as one input source. I use this audio source as the audio source for live captioning.

I don't have a fancy camera for streaming. I used to use my Logitech webcam, which was fine, but when I finally got a decent iPhone, I was like the camera on this is amazing! So I decided to use that for live streaming. Camo makes it possible to do that, and it has plenty of niceties like zooming, watermarks, filters, etc.

Tools for Live Streaming Guests

For the longest time, I couldn't figure out how people brought guests on to livestreams. In my early days of streaming, I used to bring in the full Discord screen and share that on my live stream. Although that worked, it was not ideal. I also tried Zoom similarly, and then I also started cropping parts of Zoom on my screen, but again, not ideal.

Eventually, I discovered vdo.ninja. The TLDR is, it uses peer-to-peer technology to bring remote cameras into OBS or other studio software.

GitHub logo steveseguin / vdo.ninja

VDO.Ninja is a powerful tool that lets you bring remote video feeds into OBS or other studio software via WebRTC.

⚠ Notice! We've rebranded from OBS.Ninja to VDO.Ninja - all else is staying the same ✨

What is VDO NINJA

VDO.Ninja uses peer-to-peer technology to bring remote cameras into OBS or other studio software.

In most cases, all video data is transferred directly from peer to peer, without needing to go through any video server. This results in high-quality video with super low latency. In a small number of cases, video data may go through an encrypted TURN server, which is used to facilitate peer connections when otherwise not possible.

VDO.Ninja is designed to allow content creators to produce real-time live shows using remote media streams. It can also turn smartphones into wireless webcams, with additional Virtualcam software.

VDO.Ninja is freely available to use as a managed service over at https://vdo.ninja. There's also native app versions available on the App and Play stores, however these native apps are quite…

It's a fantastic project and I highly recommend it. If your guest has a Twitch account, another similar piece of software is Twitch's Stream Together. I use this as well, depending on the guest.

Command Line Interface (CLI) Tools

I don't have many CLI tools, but here are some of my go-to ones:

  • Homebrew - The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux)
  • GitHub CLI - GitHub on the command line. Great for creating PRs, etc.
  • nvm - Node version manager
  • cloudflared - Exposes local servers to the public internet over secure tunnels

If you're curious about the reset of my setup like hardware and office setup or what I bring when I'm on the go, feel free to check out my uses page.

Until the next one!

Other places you can find me at:

🎬 YouTube

🎬 Twitch
🎬 nickyt.live
💻 GitHub
👾 My Discord
🐦 Twitter/X
🧵 Threads
🎙 My Podcast
🗞️ One Tip a Week Newsletter
🌐 My Website

Top comments (44)

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ryandotfurrer profile image
Ryan Furrer

Thanks for all the tabs to sort through! 😅

Long list of tabs in web browser.

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hinogi profile image
Stefan Schneider

twitter.com/sodiumPen/status/17851... I see another case coming up but with arc :D

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor

Stephen Colbert saying Welcome to the Nerd Zone my friend

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hosseinyazdi profile image
Hossein Yazdi

I've long ago submitted to join the early access of Arc browser for Windows. Thanks for the share Nick!

For those who'd like to explore more useful tools, WebCurate provides a great selection of helpful tools for both development & productivity.

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor

Thanks for sharing Hossein. It's the first time I hear about WebCurate.

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hosseinyazdi profile image
Hossein Yazdi

You're welcome Nick! :)

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valentiniljaz profile image
Valentin Iljaž

Thanks for sharing your list :-) Raycast really piqued my interest; so I'll definitely give it try.

I also appreciate apps that offer convenient access to extensive collections of micro tools, such as onlinetools.com and particularly webacus.dev

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Nick Taylor

Glad you enjoyed it Valentin and thanks for sharing your tools!

Amy Poehler being cool

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alexk profile image
Alex Kaul • Edited

Thanks for sharing the tools! Also take a look at Freeter
Story on how I boosted my productivity with it: dev.to/alexk/how-i-boosted-my-prod...

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor

Actor Zach Galifianakis giving a thumbs up in a convertible car

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ipetinate profile image
Isac Petinate

Try clingon.dev to see if it fits into your productivity tools

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Nick Taylor

I've never heard of it but I see it's open source. What's the value add? From glancing at it, it's mainly scaffolding for web projects?

GitHub logo ipetinate / clingon

Create components, functions, pages, and other files for your project with a few commands

Clingon CLI logo

Build CI Release CI Coverage Status Website

GitHub Release Date GitHub Release version NPM Version

Clingon CLI

Create components, functions, pages, and other files for your project with a few commands

Tired of creating components by hand? And still without any help from the VS Code interface or other IDEs?

Clingon comes to simplify this creation flow You are going to create a React or Vue component, but this component needs a test file and a stories file (if you use storybook), with its entire structure being grouped or separated, it is a very tiring task to create all of this, add the code boilerplate (which I know you will copy from another ready-made file and change everything).

Let's simplify all of this, execute a command, answer some questions, or select your favorite template and that's it, everything is created, just start coding.

Links

Description

Clingon is a command line tool…

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ipetinate profile image
Isac Petinate • Edited

Hello everything is fine? I wrote an article talking about the motivation for doing this project (you can read it here: dev.to/ipetinate/clingon-the-cli-t...), but your question is great.

The central idea of this tool is to reduce time when creating resources in a project, and obtain pre-configured minimal code ready for development. But I have plans, for the future of the application, I want to make it flexible enough to create complex structures for projects, let's say that in your project, every View/Page has a Wrapper component for titles and action buttons, has some specific config or request, in the future it will be possible to add this structure to your own templates, and use them. This adds value to the team, making the learning curve of new engineers on a project easier and faster, or you save time by performing fewer manual tasks when creating a simple component, or page, or whatever (little by little the tool will allow more options).

But I also see advantages for new programmers who don't have as much knowledge, getting a minimum ready to code, or getting opinionated standards instead of creating their own standards.

In fact, in the future with the local templates mode (which I intend to develop and launch soon), the tool becomes flexible and agnostic, serving any type of file or project, not just web projects.

I started implementing web templates, as that is my need at the moment. In the article linked above I talk more about this, but anyway, the tool has space for several important features to add Developer Experience to your daily life.

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Nick Taylor • Edited

I do want to give a shout out to the Zed editor. I use it occasionally and it’s super fast, but it hasn’t become my main editor yet. Maybe in the next year. We’ll see. 😎

I'm going to add this comment to the post actually.

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oculus42 profile image
Samuel Rouse

Great list and details!

One thing to mention is the very recent hullabaloo over Bartender changing owners and the lack of transparency with a change to an app that has such broad system permissions. Just yesterday MacRumors had an article of Bartender Alternatives for those wary of the new owners.

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Nick Taylor

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for letting me know about the Bartender change of hands! 😅

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hinogi profile image
Stefan Schneider

And now, make a list for Windows users :D

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Nick Taylor

Buy me a Windows machine. 😜

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hinogi profile image
Stefan Schneider

Ok, if you buy me a Mac :D

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Sean Davis

Holy moly, you have so many tools that you''re using. I'm excited to start procuring my own set of tools that will be my go-tos. For now it's just VS Code and some extensions... haha 😆

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Nick Taylor

Gotta start somewhere. 😅

Thanks for checking out the post!

Hackerman from Kung Fury putting on a Nintendo Power glove

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Nick Taylor

Jack Nicholson nodding yes

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sagar profile image
Sagar

I ❤️ this article. I really enjoyed 👍

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Nick Taylor

Thanks Sagar!

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