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My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech. This issue of Creativerly is brought to by Exist, personal analytics for everything you do. Supercharge your Apple Health data with context about your productivity, your habits, and more, to uncover the patterns that lead to a happier, healthier, and more productive you.
Hey and welcome to Creativerly 291 👋Sometimes, I get amazed by the fact that after five years writing, building, and maintaining Creativerly, I still love exploring and writing about new apps. As I explored hundreds of different apps over the past five years, the ones that were from independent designers, developers, and creators stood out to me the most. Someone who identified a problem, built an app to solve that problem, and poured loads of hours, energy, and money into creating that app, created a product in which you can experience that level of passion while using it. And that gets me incredibly excited about those kind of apps. The app I dedicated this week's deep dive to is also an indie app, and yet again I felt pure joy experiencing and exploring it. A quick spoiler: I enjoyed it that much that I added it to my personal toolstack. Enjoy the newsletter.
I do not like horses except this one - with Horse BrowserAs a child, I got faced multiple times with the same situation. After I introduced myself to friends or acquaintances of my parents, and they heard my name, suddenly they felt the urge to explain that my name dates back to Philippos, which is Greek and means philos = aficionado and hippos = horse, so to them Philipp basically meant horse lover. I always felt a bit annoyed hearing that, because I just do not like horses. They are unpredictable, they have a lot of power, and I heard a lot of stories of accidents from friends and families where horses were involved. So, yeah, I do not like horses. However, I recently met a horse that I actually like. Luckily, it is not a real horse. The horse I am dedicating this deep dive to is a browser that got designed for work, focused on research, and aimed at the ones who get distracted by internet tabs. This is Horse Browser*, the only horse I like. Browsers are weirdBrowsers make the internet more accessible. They should provide a user-friendly interface for accessing and navigating the World Wide Web. Over the years, the browser became an incredible powerful piece of software. You can pretty much do everything within a browser – designing, writing, 3D, music production, image editing, video editing, programming, and more. However, somehow it does not feel like browsers were made for those kind of workflows, at least not exclusively. We did not get much innovation from major browsers like Safari, Chrome, Edge, or even Firefox over the course of the last couple of years. In contrary to that, we did get a wave of new browsers that were trying to disrupt the market. We got Orion, a lightweight, WebKitbased browser that has been engineered from the ground up as a truly privacy-respecting app, and then decided to do a partnership with Brave, a browser that replaces advertising and affiliate links with their own, embrace crypto nonsense, led by a guy supporting homophobic legislation, and broadcasting misinformation about the pandemic. We got Stack, a spatial browser that turned tabs into cards, wanted users to organize everything in flows, and that tried to sell 4242 Lifetime Pro Licenses as NFTs, which should earn user annual cash rewards, and custom cursors. We got SigmaOS, a Y-Combinator backed browser, that featured an exciting UI, workspaces, vertical tabs, powerful keyboard shortcuts, but suddenly decided to jump on the AI wagon. We got Arc, the browser that initially did not feel like a browser, it felt intuitive, and got me excited, but with every video they posted, the app became more gimmicky to me. I mean, they shared a video series called We might not make it, and in the first episode, Josh Miller – co-founder and CEO – announced that they raised $50m and flew out their managers to Paris for an offsite to discuss how they will navigate through the upcoming months. Besides that, Arc doubled down on AI-powered features. Some of them felt quite cool, like hovering over a link to get a quick preview and summary of that page, but others pretty much set the stage to destroy the internet I like: their Search or Browse for you feature just scraped websites to deliver a single summarized page. They cut the fun part of browsing the internet, which is in fact, browsing the internet, but beyond that, they just said we do not care about independent creators, as someone who is relying on the traffic driven to their websites will earn nothing because Arc just sends potential visitors to a custom page, instead of the creator's website, oh and did I mention that they scrape the content of the creator to create that page? Finding the right browser is an incredible overwhelming task (please keep reminding me about this topic, as I have a post about it in my drafts). There are so many options. And while I managed to filter out a couple of them, I still do not feel like I found the one solution. I am not sure if there is actually one without making compromises. Browsers feel weird, and Tyler Sticka wrote a great round-up on why they do so. Since the beginning of 2024, I have been using Vivaldi on all my devices. It is fast, privacy-focused, has vertical tabs, workspaces, tab groups, cross-device sync, and pretty much does all the things I need. Nevertheless, it also feels quite overwhelming. There are so many panels, bars, icons, buttons, and so many different customization options. Now, I know I do not have to use them, but upon installing Vivaldi you get confronted with all those things, and you have to spend a serious amount of time first to figure out how to hide or turn off those things. Simplifying those settings and customization options, as well as giving the UI a glow up would make Vivaldi an even better browser. Read the whole post here:
Track everything and understand your life It's been just the two of us in Melbourne, Australia, making Exist for a decade now. We started with the idea that tracking your steps and sleep would be much more useful if you could add more context about the rest of your life from other sources too. We believe all that data should be useful to you, not corporations that just want to make you buy stuff. These days, we can sync health and activity data from nearly anywhere, as well as stats from other sources like your calendar, Todoist, RescueTime, last.fm, Mastodon, and of course the local weather. And you can track anything else you like directly in the Android, iOS, or web app—symptoms, habits, activities, people you're with, and so on. We've helped folks manage their mental health, go sober, lose weight, discover triggers for health symptoms, and just generally uncover relationships in their data that show which things lead to a happier or more productive day. When you quantify all these factors in one place, it's amazing the sort of insights you'll find. This is a paid promotions or affiliate link to support Creativerly. If you are interested in putting your tool, product, or resource in front of over 2000 creative minds, consider advertising in Creativerly and book a sponsor or classified ad spot. Find all the important information at creativerly.com/advertise.
Fresh Updates & NewsWith the fragmentation of social media, and me no longer posting to Creativerly's X account, I thought about where I could repurpose Creativerly's content. I quickly found a home at Mastodon, however I also decided to post to LinkedIn and Bluesky. In order to streamline my social media posts, I like to create and schedule them in advance. For that, I use Buffer, as it gives me the possibility to post to Mastodon, Bluesky, and LinkedIn simultaneously. The newest Buffer update brought the possibility to now schedule Mastodon threads too. Threads on Mastodon work the same way as you probably experienced them on X already. So, whenever you have a longer story to tell, you can create a chain of posts In a recently shared post on Shortcut, Figma's blog, the company announced its new and overhauled visual identity, color palette, illustration styles, and their new commissioned typeface, Figma Sans. Back in 2019, Figma introduced its updated brand identity using Whyte by Dinamo Typefaces. The new typeface is designed by Swiss and American type foundry Grilli Type, a popular type foundry especially know for typefaces like GT America or GT Super. To get the full insight story of creating Figma Sans, head over to Figma's blog and read through the post. It is always lovely to get such insights into the processes of creative minds. With the newest update, Ghost introduced a simple way to give your audience the possibility to support your work with one-time payments, without a membership. Tips and donations are now natively supported in Ghost. Any Ghost publication with an active Stripe connection can have a dedicated payment link that will allow your audience to send you a one-time payment.
Mental Wealth❯ The Sleep-Creativity Cycle: Why Sleep is the Secret Ally of Creative Minds – “Sleeping is strange. We spend on average a third of our life asleep. That’s time we’re not spending working, socializing, or reproducing. Yet, sleep is necessary to our survival. While it can be tempting to spend as much time awake as possible so we can be productive, not getting enough sleep is actually detrimental to both our mental and our physical health.” ❯ The Art of Finishing – “It’s a quiet Saturday afternoon. I’ve carved out a few precious hours for coding, armed with a steaming cup of coffee and the familiar urge to dive into a project. As I settle into my chair and open my terminal, I’m confronted with a challenge that’s become all too familiar: deciding which of my many unfinished projects to tackle.” ❯ Software with a Soul: AI’s Underestimated Frontier – “When generative AI first gained mainstream traction, people were surprised at how “human” it felt. AI didn’t just automate rote tasks, it wrote poetry about your dog, or drew a picture of a llama playing basketball. It was a toy. And then it wasn’t. It was something more…” ❯ Technology is changing our work – “Whether we want to acknowledge how new technology is changing the landscape where our work gets done or not, it is now imperative to do so. Ignore at your own peril.”
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Appendix❯ ICYMI Looking for an app that gathers powerful switches, one that simplifies time tracking, and another one that keeps your Mac awake? Check out part 4 of Tiny macOS utility apps I love, in which I wrote about One Switch, Daily, and Caffeine. ❯ Quick Bits
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