If you want to play around with lightning bitcoin first and get familiar with sending and receiving sats then try a quick custodial option like:

• coinos (web)
• zebedee (mobile)
• wallet of satoshi (mobile).

Once you're ready to up your security then consider trying a convenient self-custodial lightning wallet where the channel management is taken care of for you, e.g.

• Breez (mobile)
• Phoenix (mobile)
• Bitkit (mobile)

When you've saved up enough sats to go onchain then consider getting a hardware signing device (or 3), such as a Jade, seedsigner, coldcard, ledger, trezor and pairing it with an onchain wallet like:

• Sparrow (desktop)
• Green (mobile, desktop)
• Specter (desktop)

To use it privately you'll want to run your own Bitcoin node, which you can do on your windows/macos/linux computer but to keep it in sync you might want to get a dedicated device that you can leave running 24/7. There are specially designed personal server operating systems that make it easy like:

• Umbrel OS
• Start OS

Once you're running your own node you can start experimenting with managing your own lightning channels and using mobile lightning wallet options that you can pair with your node like Zeus.

I've missed out a lot of wallets because I just wrote this quickly off the top of my head, so please do your own research. Personally if I was just starting out today I would play around quickly with coinos on web, then when you have a few sats move them to Breez on mobile, and once you've got a big enough stack to take onchain I would start with a simple set up of a Blockstream Jade + Green wallet (on mobile and desktop). There are plenty of 10% discount codes out there for the Jade, but it still sets you back a little bit so it only makes sense once you've got a bit of savings going. The last code I saw floating around was "ORANGEMART"

Here you have all explained https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/lightning-wallets-comparison And here I explained how to choose the right wallet #70725

Alby Extension for desktop browser (mozilla also wants to bring desktop extensions to android firefox, so it might come also to phones)

You can connect to your own node, or use as a custodial wallet like I do. Also it's open source.

Here a are my favorite NON CUSTODIAL wallets.

• lightning: Phoenix, is for your phone, very easy to set up. On the site you can see the fees and all the details.
• On Chain: Samourai for your phone and Sparrow for the pc. This two are the most complete wallets, they offer privacy tools and standard transactions. So if you are starting the bitcoin journey just use the basic part and practice and learn on the tesnet.

Is there a case that custodial wallets are more private. So for example Wallet of Satoshi requires no details at all to use. Clearly you do not have key control but neither do you have any connection to hardware running the nodes or the transmitting hardware sending the sats: you're basically a line in a database.

I think for small amounts it works well. Happy to be corrected though.

This is how I arrange my coins

1. Pocket change This is my everyday wallet I can loose it (backup seed, saves it) or get robbed without crying. My app here is Phoenix Wallet can both send and receive lightning network and swap-in/out on-chain. The requirement is; it shall just work seamless when I need to buy things or pay friends with lower amounts.
2. My piggy bank I top up my everyday wallet from here, I'm technically savy and play around with StartOS or Umbrel. This could be something else just an easy way to send lightning network transactions to top up my Phoenix wallet.
3. My savings account This is on-chain, this is rarely touched, I'm using hardware wallets with several seed backups on different physical places. This is long term saving and monthly amounts goes in here.