Starting this year, I use a Midnight MacBook Air with an M3 chip as my primary school computer. I mainly got it so I could use notes apps like Obsidian natively and not have to host a web instance on my server, which would be very insecure. I previously Hackintoshed my PC and used it through Chrome Remote Desktop on my school Chromebook, before it was eventually blocked by my school’s administration. So, I got a Mac during the summer and set it up with some apps that are now part of my daily workflow for school.
My Favorite Apps
I recently switched from Microsoft Edge to Orion for my browser. I didn’t like how bloated and buggy Edge is. One drawback of Orion for me is the lack of an Android client, but I figured that I could just use Firefox on my phone instead. Orion’s made by Kagi, a premium search engine that decided to make a premium browser. Orion has a free tier that I use and has every feature, but you can get Orion+ to support the people behind it.
For notes, I of course use Obsidian. I have a homepage that automatically loads when I start Obsidian that shows my recent notes and courses for this semester. I can quickly create a new note with Cmd+N and load a template with Cmd+T. I have the Border theme installed, which is clean enough to let me focus on writing and not on tiny details like some maximalist themes.
Just today, I decided to give the free trial of Pixelmator Pro a try, and so far I love it. In fact, the thumbnail for this post was made in Pixelmator. I used Figma for previous thumnails, but it was pretty limited for design that wasn’t for interactive sites or apps. Meanwhile, Pixelmator is a full Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom replacement for a single $50 purchase. Plus, it was just bought by Apple, so it might become a real competitor to those apps soon.
Customization
I made two scripts to change the color theme from light mode to dark mode and vice versa at certain times of day. I have dark mode come on at 8 PM and stay on until 4 AM, because if I wake up after 4 AM, I’m not going back to sleep. Light mode helps keep me awake and dark mode reduces blue light exposer, helping with sleep. I set cron to automatically run these scripts, so even if my Mac is asleep it still runs them. I also auto-hide the dock to save on screen space, use Bartender to hide menu bar items, and Al Dente to monitor and cap my battery life.
Workflow
I always start each class the same way: open up my School profile in Orion and open my class’ dashboard in Obsidian. I do this right when I walk into class and those windows stay open until class ends. I have a goal of taking one note for each topic covered in class, and having three notes linked between classes by the end of the semester. My school uses Canvas for everything, so I have it pinned on Orion and open it as my first tab. I then make new tabs under the Canvas homepage for the class agenda and any assignments. I worked with my teachers to let me take notes and write for assignments in Obsidian so I can keep everything organized and formatted in a way that I prefer. Depending on the class, I might have a journal just for the class that I have to turn in at the end of the unit. Obsidian can export notes as rendered PDFs, so that’s what I do most of the time. If I’m writing something for a report though, I’ll copy the contents of the report from Obsidian to Apple Pages for better control over the formatting.
No matter what I add to my workflow, I always make sure it doesn’t add to procrastination. For example, if I added Notion for assignment tracking, it would be a big distraction because Notion is too customizable and would make it hard to focus on my work and not on making the perfect dashboard. However, my workflow is just that: my workflow. So, if you have something else that works, maybe using (god forbid) Chrome instead of another browser, that might be better for you. Experiment when you can and see what works!
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