Software Worth Paying For

Software recommendations are a bit strange. Most apps solve a problem, get the job done, and are eventually replaced by something newer. Every now and then, I come across software that manages to stick around for years. Not because it has the most features, but because it changes a small part of how I use my computer.

These are six pieces of software that quietly earned a permanent place on my devices.

1. The App That Made Me Stop Bookmarking Things

I bookmarked hundreds of articles, posts, recipes and ideas, things I was certain to revisit. As you can probably imagine, I never did.

Resurf approaches this differently. Instead of just letting me save things, it resurfaces them. Being able to save text, links, images, music, videos, and even colours from everywhere makes curation feel rewarding rather than hollow. It has just enough intentional friction to feel mindful without being a hassle, stores everything in iCloud, and the AI features feel optional rather than mandatory.

Saving things now feels more like an aesthetic version of journalling than clicking a button I'll never look at again.

2. The App I Found After Trying Every Alternative

Everyone told me to use a to-do app. I tried Todoist, TickTick, Microsoft To Do, Apple Reminders, and countless others. None of them stuck. Things 3 was different.

What keeps me coming back isn't some revolutionary feature. It's the design. Things 3 feels intentional, perfectly measured, and incredibly polished. Capturing tasks is effortless, reviewing a long list never feels overwhelming or judgmental. Especially with AD(H)D, that makes a difference. I was hesitant at first given the price, but it's probably the best software purchase I've ever made.

3. The App I Always Wonder About Not Being A System Default

Switching between apps was never a real problem. Just one of those tiny annoyances I had accepted as part of using a computer. Pieoneer changed that.

Instead of forcing me to remember where everything is, it presents apps in a simple wheel that feels more natural than Launchpad, Spotlight, or endless CMD + Tab cycles ever did. After a few days it became muscle memory, and like many great utility apps, it left me wondering why macOS doesn't already work like this.

4. The Closest Thing To Talking To My Mac

I've always wanted dictation to work. Every time I tried it, I quickly reverted to typing, speaking slower, pronouncing words more clearly, avoiding switching between German and English mid-sentence. It felt like more work than just typing.

Speakmac was the first exception. For the first time, dictation felt genuinely faster than typing. Even mixing German and English in the same sentence feels natural, something I had never experienced before. Dictation stopped feeling like a gimmick. For the first time, speaking felt like a genuine alternative to typing.

5. The Subscription I Never Question

Most AI assistants feel like tools. You open an app, ask a question, get an answer, and close it. Poke approaches things differently. For the first time, I opened Messages instead of an AI app.

The conversations feel natural, the language surprisingly human, and the assistant becomes part of your day rather than just another destination. It stopped feeling like using software and felt more like continuing a conversation. Unlike most AI products, it never felt optimised around extracting the maximum amount of money from its users. The pricing is refreshingly fair, and you can actually haggle with Poke before closing a subscription.

6. The App That Keeps Me Honest

Subscriptions have quietly become a normal part of software. SubscriptionDay² brings them back into view. Most are small enough to ignore individually, but collectively they tend to disappear into the background.

The app tells me what's coming up, how much is left this month, and on which day each payment lands. Seeing recurring expenses laid out clearly made me cancel a few subscriptions I would have kept paying for otherwise. The widget alone has probably saved me from opening my banking app many times.

Conclusion

Looking back, none of these apps ended up on this list because they were revolutionary.

The best software is rarely the software that does the most. It's the software that understands the problem well enough to disappear behind the solution. Years later, these are still the apps I'd happily pay for again.