What software did you purchase that positively impacted your family life

Not family wide but very personal: MacroFactor. It healed my relationship with food, and helped me lose 60 lbs. Worth every penny ($12/month subscription).

Todoist. My wife and I can share lists, assign tasks, track completion, all sorts of stuff. It’s not perfect, but I’m really mostly happy with it.

Also, setting up an iCloud family. Most of the sharing stuff we can do can be done without being in a family unit, but it makes it that much easier since it makes assumptions about who I wish to share with. From there, native Notes, Calendar, all that stuff has made our life so much easier.

Agree with 1Password family. Being able to send direct links and not passwords is amazing.

Interestingly, a theme here is that these tools allow me to have work stuff and personal stuff alongside each other, but still somewhat isolated. I think that’s more than a coincidence.

back in the day I had to buy a GPS software for my "smart phone", more like a palm with phone capabilities. A HTC model with windows 7 (i guess). Was the first time I felt confident in driving cross state by myself.

The whole time I was think "this thing can predict the future" cause I could see sharp turns and straight roads before hand. Simpler times...

Family email address? Does that forward to all or both of you? I hobbled together a forwarding list with a gmail account set to forward auto to one of us, and the a filter to forward on a broad flag to the other, but something can skip the filter. A proper mailing list for family would be nice.

iCloud storage, Google plus, family setup so I don’t have to clean out inboxes or photo libraries too often for a family of 5. We do the Find My, shared notes, calendars and task in iCloud, but projects like vacation planing will be a Google doc since iCloud doc sharing is a bit squirrelly.

Shared password manager is key.

I would like notion, but there’s a fair bit of lockin with that format, and after Evernote I’m wary of building on sand.

Piggybacking onto this thread, does anyone use software or any services for their parenting that they find invaluable? I imagine mentors and services like Kumon are popular with this crowd? How about the non-academic front?

Privacy.com - let's you easily make virtual burner cards that you can use for free trials and not worry about having to cancel the subscription on time.

I don’t have to, but I pay for Open Broadcaster Studio’s software through their Patreon page because learning to use it to stream was fun, made me learn valuable skills, and helped me make new friends and keep in touch with old ones.

https://obsproject.com/

https://www.patreon.com/obsproject/overview

AnyList (https://www.anylist.com/). Streamlines grocery shopping and the paid version is absolutely worth the money. ~$15/year for a family.

Fantastical family plan, hands down.

YNAB

Google photos, I have all devices syncing photos to one place and now I don’t need to worry about did in-law A remember to backup their phone when they inevitably lose it at the grocery store. Arguably the only remotely important thing we have on our phones is photos and maybe chat history but it’s not earth shattering to lose that. Despite having more photos of ourselves than any other generation ever, It’s still soul crushing to lose family photos.

That said, I’ve been gradually losing trust in Google storage services so I’m searching for alternatives (and not finding anything remotely as good unfortunately).

Key features I live by * search by ocr, object, location, face * multi-platform sync * originals storage * auto-face match * duplicate detection

Spotify premium, superhuman, YouTube premium, airtable, chatgpt/gpt, 1Password, otter, sublime text, rewind

I’d miss each of them if I couldn’t access them and had to switch to an alternative

We bought Tody before they changed to a subscription model. The app allows you to create a task list for cleaning of each of the rooms with a desired repetition period for a given task (for example mop the kitchen floor every 3 weeks). I found that having a list of tasks that are overdue in the house helps a lot with the mental burden of cleaning.

Spotify Duo. Works across all the variety of devices we have, jam group sessions are fantastic feature when riding the car together and their weekly discovery consistently brings in a lot of new music.

We use AnyList (https://www.anylist.com) for grocery shopping. Much as we like to imagine we are wide-ranging eaters, we eat similar ingredients every week.

AnyList lets us make shopping lists easily, add items as they run low (with previous items available to us, and check them off as we shop. There are some more sophisticated features we don't use like recipe imports and meal planning.

We also have lists for eg the hardware store, which notify us when we are nearby. And I use it for eg making packing lists for overnight trips.

We all (family of 4) have iPhones and use FindMy to see where everyone is and when they’re going to be home to time dinner. We also have a family chat on iMessage that really comes in handy.

Tody (https://todyapp.com/) an app for household chores. It makes it easy to create chores to do, tune the cadence to do them at, and divide them up by room and by person. It keeps chores more fair and balanced between my wife and I and helps out with those chores that need to happen every few weeks or months and you forget about them. I also am the type of person that needs a clean inbox or 0 unread messages so it definitely works for my brain. I'm sure there are alternatives or systems that work just as well or better but it works well for us so sticking with it until it doesn't.

Joplin (free, but sponsored) in combination with a Storagebox at Hetzner. Joplin allows us to share notes, shopping lists, to do lists, etc via Webdav between our various devices (mobile phones, laptops, desktops).

https://joplinapp.org and https://www.hetzner.com/de/storage/storage-box

Otter.ai

Audio transcription with auto summarization. Saves me tons of time and edfort.

https://www.hopperapp.com

Our twist on the family email is to have $VARIABLE@domain.com point to a Google Group that for the moment, only goes to the adults in the room. Makes sorting/labeling things significantly easier.

$KID1@domain.com, $PET2@domain.com, $HOUSE1@domain.com, etc.

We also do the email thing but as an alias to sends it to both our inboxes. That is a great 'life hack' for flights, car rentals, reservations, important purchases, etc.

I purchased foldersync for android to copy nightly photos off the phones to our nas to \name\yyyymm\ to backup our photos without relying on 3rd party sync. Solves the issue of losing videos/photos if a phone breaks. http://photos/ can browse them with photoview.

For me free software is more valuable: keepass, seafile, and paperlessngx with a printer that scans to it with a button and a scan@mydomain.tld has made a huge difference particularly to be paperless and has WAF.

I purchased an airgradient indoor + outdoor after multiple plugs here and it is helpful for deciding if we should open windows as sensitive to forest fire smoke so it also counts. (I will say it had damage when it arrived and it's been annoying having to reach out a couple times to see if it can be replaced.)

Finally, I recently added lunchmoney.app for finances but time will tell if it is more than a novelty.

Flow Club is a virtual coworking website and it's been the best thing for my productivity. It's been the biggest positive impact for me in my life. I just find it keeps me on task and makes me a lot more productive vs the gtd rabbit hole that I fell down before.

I really like Superhuman and Obsidian as well. I used to use notion, but I find obsidian to just work a lot faster and be more free form.

I pay for the Chatgpt subscription and we love it. Grammarly is pretty good but my wife mostly uses it.

Youtube Premium for no commercials is also really awesome.

Trip it is great for traveling

Kagi, a paid search engine.

I accepted paying for it after the trial because every other search engine just sucks or isn't customizable enough in comparison. Not to mention ads and tracking.

Kagi results are really, really great. I find it better than Google for technical queries and better than DuckDuckGo for localized queries. Unfortunately, it's not 100% SEO-trash proof, but I can permanently block those domains from results in one click - a refreshing experience. The AI quick answer is on par with Bing's (more accurate than Google's), but the best feature is the possibility of banning/re-ranking websites (such as those SEO-spam ones).

This feature is probably the one any family member will find useful: prioritising websites they like the most and blocking/down-ranking those they dislike. For example, I hate Pinterest and have banned it. My girlfriend, on the other hand, loves it and gave a better ranking. Guess that's what customisation is for...

The lenses are probably also family-worthy, since you can quickly create personalised results pages for good sources for homework research, safe online games for children, trustworthy news for your grandma, etc. But I've never used it extensively yet.

There's also some minor features (auto-login link for anonymous tabs, bangs, news, etc) that you pretty much expect from a search engine nowadays, too. IMO, the most complete and efficient search engine I've used so far.

Software I wish I could pay for: Firefox Sync. I use it every day, to send tabs between my phone and computer, and to sync passwords between devices.

Having a family plan for 1Password means I can access my mother's list and help her with some online stuff. And it's not just because she's 83. Some of the services she has to use are actually bad. I'm an old nerd and I was cursing her bank's website; it sucks.

Hopper Disassembler -- https://www.hopperapp.com/ -- I purchased it years ago, though I’ve since forgotten the reasons behind the purchase.

Over time, I’ve used it on numerous occasions to bypass the security of almost every piece of software used by myself and my family members. This has translated into substantial savings, potentially totaling hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in family expenses. This is particularly valuable in today’s economy, where many applications require a subscription fee.

Hopper is among the rare software that I’ve actually paid for, alongside iCloud, Little Snitch, Mullvad VPN, SublimeText, and 1Password. However, I continue to use a cracked version of SublimeText and 1Password because I’m not a fan of the background network activities they perform, and I can’t just block them with Little Snitch because then a feature or the entire program stops working.

Notion - I moved from Evernote so for the most part I still use it like Evernote, although I'm adopting the more complex features as I find them useful.

Microsoft Office Family pack - I keep an eye out for discounts on this through the year so I don't think I've ever paid the sticker price. 1TB of storage for 6 users is a good thing, the kids know where to store their stuff, and Office is sometimes handy as well.

Affinity Photo - I'm never going to pay Adobe for a Photoshop subscription, and this competitor gets better over time.

Currently trying to migrate away from our password manager but need to find the time and energy to give 1Password a go.

We also use Keep Notes for general lists and shopping stuff - packing lists for trips away are really useful, as well as lists of jobs around the house.

1password,YNAB for finances, migadu for email. I am evaluating kagi again, but it's really frustrating using it with Italian language.

Also evaluating chatgpt, it's actually pretty good at some tasks.

Logseq, it's open source but i donate for it. Just mind blowing, brought me away from notion. When my wife asks "where did you put..." i check my #location tag. Same for food recipes, or how tall my daughter was 2 months ago, and so on.

- Bitwarden: Been great for sharing passwords and other secrets. We moved to it from LastPass, never tried 1Password, which seems to have a lot of proponents here

- Syncthing, Restic, Backblaze B2: Syncs photos and other files from devices to a NAS, then Restic to create backups locally and on Backblaze B2. For the in-laws and others, I make sure they're backed up using Google Photos or Apple iCloud

- Jellyfin: Streaming our own movies and shows.

- Tailscale: Connect to the home network from anywhere

- Caddy server: Reverse proxy in front of the services like Jellyfin

- Paperless-NGX: Document repository that's hooked up to the scanner and email accounts to keep things organized.

There's a few other ones that get some use, but we use the above almost daily.

We use todoist synced with Alexa through ifttt. For the more complicated things we use clickup so I can get all into the details and he just gets a list or an email once a day with any tasks!

1password team account since it was cheaper when I signed up.

We don't bother with shared a calendar anymore, we kept missing events, so we just send invites to each other.

Occasionally we'll have a shared apple note but that process is painful to get setup! Still looking into a good solution for notes tbh Evernote would have been perfect but I've lost trust in them tbh

1password , fastmail, joplin

Setup Adguard DNS based adblocker for Android/iOS games the kids play. And of course adblock. Steam/play pass/netflix Also try AI chat characters/adventures https://netwrck.com It's also an AI art generator, and try other unconventional games like guessing where something is on Google maps/what am I drawing

Lots of stuff is free eg docs sheets.

There's a Don't disturb mode/night mode on your phone/kids phones to stop notifications/calls at night which are basically never okay.

If you have use cases for a VPN you probably have use cases for a to rr ent client too...

I went all in on apple ecosystem this year after literally 13 years of using android.

Wife and I got iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch 8 and AirPods Pro. Got HomePod mini and Apple TV for home. We got bunch of home kit compatible tech at home (baby monitor, smart plugs, bulbs etc). We also subscribe to apple one family. The results are fantastic.

Everything works with everything else, which is impossible to explain without experiencing it. For example, none of the Apple ads/promotions will tell you that if you connect your phone with carplay and ask for directions, your watch will also be automatically a part of it and show you next turns. The watch will also gently vibrate when you are approaching a turn. This requires no configuration. It just works as is. We can ask my homepod to switch off the tv. We can use either of our phones or watches as remote to the TV. The video from baby monitor can be seen on our phones or TV (as pip), or on our watches if needed.

Usually every evening, we put the baby to sleep, switch on the TV, put on our AirPods, put the baby monitor video pip on top right corner of the TV and play a TV shows directly to our AirPods which can connect simultaneously to the TV. Again no config needed, it just works as it is. All we have to do is to login with our accounts (Even this is easy since you do it through phone)

I download shows/tv to my Mac, drag and drop to Apple TV app, they show up on the main TV over wifi. No casting etc. They just look and play as if they are streaming from Apple TV. I can put my phone on a stand, FaceTime with my family on the TV directly using my phone's camera and mic. It looks and works stunning - https://images.macrumors.com/t/0gxYFSdAW32RTme9jwsKnVnYidA=/.... iMessage and FaceTime are much much more reliable than WhatsApp and much higher quality. All my files are synced up between all my devices without any pain. I can copy text on my phone, and just paste it in my laptop and vice versa. I can right click on my Mac to insert image from iPhone Camera. You can use your iPhone camera on your laptop for teams/zoom calls. When we both leave the home, everything (lights, fans, AC etc) switches off and the entrance lights switch on when we come back automatically. we can control all apple home devices from any of our phones, watch, Siri on AirPods, home pod, MacBooks, etc. and every one of the device with microphone responds to "Hey Siri" keyword.

I don't know about Apple hardware as standalone devices, but the who ecosystem is just bloody brilliant. I just cannot go back to the old way of sitting and configuring each device and bluetooth pairing etc. Since we made this switch in March my productivity has gone through the roof.

ElementaryOS as I use it daily and saves me tons of time.

Bitwarden. A few private domains and dns hosting at Gandi.net. Tried namesilo but when compared to gandi it is just unusable.

Fastmail does our family email.

Recently got a Spotify family plan replacing our Tidal. And though I love tidal, Spotify has jumped leaps and bounds feature wise.

We paid for Todoist but didn’t use any of the paid features so stopped doing that. Plus Todoist does not show ticked items in a decent way. How do I know what child took out the trash? I don’t.

Minecraft. Four accounts.

Nextcloud, gitlab, Firefox, pihole, pivpn, are the main free software that have a positive impact on family life.

Adobe CC. This enables our family tradition to produce photo books for our important events and vacations of our life. In the past we used softwares provided by photo book companies but all of them either phased out their software or being acquired. (They might be rebranded softwares by someone else, seems to be written in Java.)

Since then after I finished doing photo retouching with Lightroom Classic, my wife would use Photoshop and InDesign to design the photo book.

Other Adobe CC apps are at times very useful such as Premiere for Video editing videos we took during a vacation.

Investing into a system like this can be very expensive, not in the $ sense but more like time invested and vendor lock in. Once you invested the time to train in this tools it is very costly to migrate away from it as you become more busy with life. But then it is also very hard to find an alternative that does everything I need from Adobe. Adobe is an ecosystem and is an easy path to start.

Not purchased, but installed pihole-vpn combo so we got rid of most ads on all our devices. Another nice thing is pixel og+syncthing combo - unlimited original quality uploads to google photos Office 365 family so that we got 1Tb each in cloud

This is an interesting thread as a lot of the comments mention services as opposed to software straight out. That said i bought the lifetime membership of jetbrains IDE. I think it was worth the money personally.

Services based i would have to say Spotify. It's been a game changer for me over the years with an unhealthy habit of hoarding music.

[delayed]

Lifetime license of Wallet by budgetbakers.

My own family dashboard. I did not purchase it but wrote myself and it was a life changer.

It is an always-on screen (during the day) where everything family oriented happens: all our calendars merged for today and tomorrow (and important events within 6 days), weather, when kids are back from school, info when I am on my way back from work, various alerts on stuff breaking at home, etc.

When I finally installed it, my wife told me to get rid of this monstrosity. After a few days I just switched it off one evening and the morning after it was chaos at home. Switched back and fast forward to 7 years and there we are.

Probably the most useful thing I built in my life.

Bitwarden. I have an easy way to exchange a huge amount of data (not only passwords) across my family with specific access rights to objects.

Ross-tech VCDS for VW fuel pump timing

edit: to be fair the software is free but bought the obd2 adapter

In my case it’s more about the software i _didn’t_ purchase. Removed windows and got rid of macos. Switched to linux. Couldnt be happier.

I don't have a family, but self-hosting Actual Budget via Docker helped me provide a budget app for my friends who I converted to YNAB4, and who I didn't want to point to subscribing to "New YNAB" which is less useful.

I like being able to just host things on my Synology NAS, set up usernames for people, and go "here's a reverse proxy'd URL, go nuts." While it makes me responsible for their data in a way, it feels like I'm helping.

I hate paying subscriptions for anything, but I have found Greenlight to be worth it for managing allowances, letting my kids build their financial competency, and keeping an eye on their spending.

Hyper Space Delivery Boy!!!

My son and I had a great time with it when he was 6...