Better late than never, I guess? Here is my review of 2021. Let’s go! 
The pandemic is ongoing and we’re probably all sick of it. Well, I hope you stayed healthy! 
I’ll continue with my “best of” lists because it’s always fun to reflect on that. With three adjustments though: I’ll reintroduce the highlights of Skymatic, remove the categories “Music” (because I’ve been listening to the same music over and over again, just check out last year’s review) and “Games” (because I don’t play that much anymore), and add a new category… “Books”! 
Skymatic
On November 8th, 2021 we had our official 5 year anniversary. It’s crazy to think about it. Our small team of 8 is still passionate about maintaining Cryptomator and making it better and better.
Some highlights:
- May
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New articles on our website about “Open Source”, “Encrypt Dropbox”, and “Boxcryptor Alternative”. Read them here, here, and here.
- June
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Open Source and Beta Release of Cryptomator 2 for iOS. More details here.
- August
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Proof-of-Concept of Cryptomator Hub. More details here.
- October
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Release of Cryptomator 1.6.0 with the new Vault Format 8. More details here and here.
- December
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Release of Cryptomator 2 for iOS. Completely rewritten in Swift and fully integrated into the Files app. More details here.
My personal highlight is the release of Cryptomator 2 for iOS. We started working on it in April 2020 by rebuilding the iOS app from scratch in Swift. We achieved many things with it but these are my highlights:
- The iOS app is now fully open source instead of open core. With that, the entire Cryptomator family is now open source.
- The iOS app is available for free for the first time as a freemium app.
- Most importantly, we fulfilled a highly requested feature by integrating Cryptomator into the Files app.
Movies
I’ve watched 24 movies in 2021 (and 10 of them were from 2021). I’m hitting yet another all-time low with 14 fewer than last year.
My favorite movie of 2021 is Spider-Man: No Way Home! I know, I know, please don’t yell at me. Marvel is extremely polarizing. But this movie achieved something that is extremely hard to replicate. The reward is very high if you’ve watched everything Marvel-related.
I was only four times in the movie theaters last year. And I’ve watched Spider-Man twice. It’s amazing. If you like disappointment though, then watch The Matrix Resurrections.
TV Shows
My favorite new(!) TV show of 2021 is Loki. Haha, I must be joking, right? Marvel again? It’s not my fault that they produce extremely good movies and TV shows. The soundtrack is mesmerizing.
Runner-ups are Dopesick, Foundation, Squid Game, The Book of Boba Fett, Dexter: New Blood, WandaVision, and Hawkeye.
YouTube
My favorite YouTube video of 2021 is We Made Slightly Offensive Bowling Animations by Corridor Crew. I’ve been following Corridor and their crew for many years now. They’re always fun and entertaining. But this is hilarious in the best way. 
Some other channels that I’ve subscribed to last year and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed so far: Stuff Made Here and Thomas Game Docs.
Books
In the beginning of last year, my new year’s resolution was to read more books. I’ve read 10 books in 2021 (and 3 of them were from 2021).
My favorite book of 2021 is Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive by Philipp Dettmer! You may have heard about this book because the author is the founder and CEO of Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. I’m not sure how much is taught about immunology in school (I didn’t pay attention in biology) but it’s probably not as engaging as this book. It makes you appreciate how your body and immune system functions.
Runner-up is Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX.
Th-th-th-that’s all folks! Happy new year and stay healthy! 