What Are the Most Underrated Tools You Use Every Day?
4 deepmistry 6 6/14/2025, 3:50:19 PM
Everyone talks about VS Code or Docker, but I’m more interested in the small, niche, or overlooked tools that quietly improve your workflow.
For me, it's:
fzf for fuzzy finding in the terminal
ripgrep instead of grep
tldr for fast command help
Shortcat is probably the lesser-known and underrated of the two. It invokes a Spotlight/Alfred-type command palette that provides access not only to all commands in the system and application menus, but also allows the user to click on various parts of the screen using only the keyboard.
I'm also a fan of TextSoap and HoudahSpot, which I do think are underrated.
And Keyboard Maestro, of course.
On iOS, Vibration Alarm is a free app that will allow you to easily set an alarm to wake up in the morning but will only vibrate your phone or Apple Watch so you don't wake up your partner or anyone else in the house.
Cross-platform, I love Glossika for language learning. The number of languages it offers is unmatched, and it's simple system of many repetitions of sentences in your native and target languages (paired with spaced repetition of you want it) gets the job done. I use it to keep up my Spanish fluency; I have enough Russian to understand a lot; and basic conversational French with probably 80% comprehension of whatever French I come across.
There's an Obsidian extension that lets you encrypt notes. I use that for my diary.
Firefox account containers are also quite nice.
- aws-vault https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault
- often paired with the "open in container" Firefox extension (even if you use Chrome for everything else it's still great for color coding your account's "severity rating" to cut down on misclicks) https://github.com/honsiorovskyi/open-url-in-container and https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/open-url-in-contain... ; the $(aws-vault login --region $AWS_REGION --stdout "$my_profile_name") will emit the URL to login to the AWS console via their Federated Login behavior, then if one URL-encodes that and feeds it to $(firefox "ext+container:name=${con_name}&url=$url_enc") poof, it spawns the console authenticated with that aws-vault profile
- teamocil https://github.com/remi/teamocil#readme
- gojq which has just vastly superior error messages and yaml input https://github.com/itchyny/gojq
- org-mode, worth it even if you're not already in Emacs https://org-mode.org
- the 1Password cli's $(op inject) option for putting creds into files or env vars without really putting them in env vars e.g. https://developer.1password.com/docs/cli/secrets-environment...
* Voidtools Everything (<https://www.voidtools.com/faq/#what_is_everything>): Find files instantly by filename or file path. If you have an SSD, it's basically an instant search... blows my mind that this free software has existed for at least a decade & Microsoft hasn't been able to natively build anything nearly as good.
* Mythicsoft FileLocator (<https://www.mythicsoft.com/filelocatorpro/information/#featu...>): Search the contents of files. I use this constantly for searching notes I've taken over time, but can't remember the file name or subfolder where I saved it to. I used it free for nearly a decade before I spent the money to purchase a personal license.
* BinaryFortress DisplayFusion (<https://www.displayfusion.com/Features/>): The best multi-monitor software I've used on Windows. One of its least well-known but IMO most valuable features is allowing you to add icons and hotkeys to any windows, which enables you to do things like minimize that window to the system tray or move it to the next/previous monitor. Totally worth the money for a personal license.
* Stardock Start11 (<https://www.stardock.com/products/start11/>): Start menu customization utility. So long as Microsoft continues to prove itself proves incompetent at designing a Start menu that people actually want to use, I'll keep spending a few bucks per major Windows version to buy this software.
* FreeTube (<https://freetubeapp.io>): Free YouTube desktop client. I'm so sick of youtube.com and the awful job it does with letting me consume content the way I want to.
* Sumatra PDF (<https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader>): Free lightweight, barebones PDF reader.