HN Explorer

Ask HN: What’s the one app that’s changed your life?

3 points by jjwtieke ↗ HN
And why? For me it’s the simple Notes app. Like my brain is always bursting with ideas and I can tap them out anywhere any time and come back and read them and add to them.

What’s yours?

14 comments

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Quinzel
Spotify - in my youth, I was constantly infecting my computers with viruses from downloading pirated music, when iTunes came along, paying for an individual song sucked because I tend to get sick of them - so when Spotify came along, it was actual happiness. Value for money for sure.
jjwtieke
But how satisfying was watching your MP3s download one at a time over the course of 2 hours?
Quinzel
Like watching grass grow. But the dopamine hit when you finally got your song was unparalleled to any other!
aznpersuasion16
Can’t pinpoint one. Here’s a few:

- Down Dog Yoga helped while I was trying to improve posture. Also just makes me feel better. - Slumber helps me get a good night sleep. - Habits helps me build, you guessed it, good habits.

uLogMicheal
Down Dog is great! Looking forward to the future generative AI version of it.
cratermoon
tcpdump allowed me to dive deep into network protocols like TCP, IPX, AppleTalk, and NetBEUI, and gave a big boost to my programming career.
RA2lover
ILSpy/dnSpy. Being able to see clearly how some software was written(and then modify it) has been an extremely mind-opening experience for me personally.
ilrwbwrkhv
Workflowy.

I discovered it almost a decade back and has been with me since. I have seen people move onto other shinier apps but I have never needed to.

It stayed simple and easy to use and just works.

I run a $4 million profit / year software business on it and a lot of my life (although I do not plan every single thing of my life. Less is more here I think).

https://workflowy.com

jjwtieke
This is really cool! Thanks for the tip!
beardyw
Travel apps- currently Waze/Citymapper. I have some sort of travel anxiety, dreams about missing trains, losing luggage. These apps have created an altogether more relaxing world.
jlpcsl
KDE Plasma desktop (if this can be called an app). It is by far the best desktop environment and it made me switch from Windows to GNU/Linux which was one of the best things in my digital/computer life.

https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/

simonblack
Search Engines:

First one I used was Alta Vista, then several others were tried till I discovered Google. I still mainly use Google, though I had short bursts of DDG and Yandex too.

Today, 'Google' is a verb, but when search engines first arrived they turned the World Wide Web from a mere curiosity into something truly usable.