Tech

We get giddy over customizing computers! This is an overview of some of the tools and technologies we've tried for our setup, inspired by beeps' blog.

MacBook

TBA

Browser: Zen

A bit of history: We chose Google Chrome on a school-issued laptop. Ad blocking is extremely important to us, so we switched to Firefox to get ahead of Manifest V3.

Later, Arc shook up the browser scene with bold new ideas about navigation and tab management. But it's Chromium-based, and automatically closes tabs on a timer, so we only used it secondarily to manage tasks with deadlines. Also, despite having actual innovations at first, the devs kept leaning further into "looking things up is too hard"-type AI nonsense, and have reportedly pivoted to creating a new browser, casting the future of Arc into total doubt.

Zen is the good parts of Arc but in the Firefox engine. That's all we wanted to begin with.

Maybe Firefox itself can win us back with updates like a vertical tab view and (finally!) tab groups. For now, Zen still has advantages over it, like an implementation of Arc's Peek feature, where you can ⇧ Shift + click a link to preview it in a temporary overlay instead of dedicating a new tab to it. I hope more of Arc's good ideas catch on and the browser space continues to innovate.

(TBA: extensions…?)

Utilities

On its own, macOS can feel somewhat sparse and obstinate, so we've collected a bunch of utilities to address that.

• We wanted BetterTouchTool since we got our own MacBook, and yeah, we really should've gotten it as early as possible. The potential for input method customization that it opens up is exciting, from adding the missing three-finger middle-click to the trackpad, to invoking commands and other utilities with hot corners, gestures, and key sequences.
• Our window snapping shortcuts are still set up in Rectangle. It has a bunch of window placement options, including centering, and lets us repeat left and right snaps to cycle between widths (1⁄3, 1⁄2, 2⁄3). With BTT, we also added gestures over the menu bar to invoke various Rectangle shortcuts from a tap or flick, inspired by Swish.
• Itsycal adds a small calendar preview accessible from the menu bar. Since the macOS clock now opens Notification Center for some reason, we set Itsycal to only show the date. With BTT, we can also open the calendar by clicking the very corner of the trackpad. (A Force click opens the Calendar app proper.)
• More TBA

iPad

The iPad has been described as a magic sheet of glass. This sucks, so we got a Paperlike. Past that, the interface is surprisingly fun to use; connecting a spare keyboard and mouse provides a bunch of redundant input methods that we can choose based on our mood from moment to moment, which always feels liberating. (Every method of text input without a physical keyboard is miserable, though.)

The Stage Manager windowing system is indispensable here. A quirk we grew to appreciate is the lack of pixel precision: windows snap to preset sizes and positions. We already rely on Aero-like window snapping, and we hate accidentally dragging a window some unknowable amount of pixels, knowing the OS has just saved that mistake as an invisible, unresettable user preference. We are so glad that iPadOS strips out this particular fine control to make things like window sizing intentional and reversible.

The iPad is also useful as an extra screen for macOS with features like Sidecar. But that feels like an indictment with the state of iPadOS's supposedly "desktop-class" selection of big iPhone apps. While the iPad is something we use, we haven't found many ways to embed it into our flow yet.

Procreate

The main reason we got an iPad is to make art with Procreate.

We're forcing ourselves to stick to digital art to avoid logistical issues with physical space and organization. We used a screenless Wacom tablet with our laptop for a few years; it was perfectly serviceable, but we felt like we were hitting a skill barrier with the indirect input method.

Using Procreate does switch one sense of directness for another: now all the controls are touchscreen graphics. You can't use them by feel, you have to look away from your art. To fix this, we got an 8BitDo Micro controller, which is honestly right up our alley anyway. It has a Keyboard Mode where you can map the D-pad to ⌘ Command + Z and so on.

Of course, only keyboard shortcuts that Procreate supports can be mapped. Every command you can add to the QuickMenu should have a keyboard shortcut, but that's not the case. Hopefully the devs patch this in later rather than never.