“We have software solutions for just about every action a person could take in the world today. When talking about productivity, design, and collaboration, we often think of Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and Google Drive. But there’s an underbelly of underrated software, the kind that doesn’t get as much attention yet which gives extraordinary functionality — sometimes more than its more popular peers. Here are some gems you likely haven’t come across that you might want to start using.”
In Image: A Person using their Laptop
Taskade: A Versatile Productivity and Collaboration Tool
In Image: Taskade logo
Taskade is just one of many productivity apps, but it distinguishes itself as simple and flexible according to how you want it to be. Taskade — a powerful to-do list, mind map, and collaborative workspace It provides a powerful visual way to capture and organize ideas, tasks, and projects. Whether as lists, kanban boards, mind maps, or multiple other ways, the software provides different views and ways of working for teams to customize how they want to work.
One of the strong points in Taskade is real-time collaboration. Teams can have a chat, do a video call, and edit projects all at once. Well, the fundamental difference is that while there are great overall productivity tools such as Notion or Asana, they are often overwhelming with too many features, while on the other extreme, there are other apps that just free things out. It is a clean tool, easy to use, and can be an underrated alternative to more complex project management tools like Trello or Asana.
In addition, the basic version of Taskade comes with rather powerful features that are most of the time limited in other platforms, making it a perfect choice for solo users and small teams looking for a strong but user-friendly tool.
Joplin: A Privacy-Focused Note-Taking App
“Note-taking apps are typically well-covered by the big names, such as Evernote and OneNote. On Joplin, however, is an open-source alternative, with new impressive features, while emphasizing much more on your privacy. Joplin aims to be minimalist while not sacrificing features for function. It also supports Markdown, so you can turn your notes into rich-text, nice-looking notes.”
It is worth mentioning that one of the major features of Joplin is the end-to-end encryption that keeps your notes safe on every device. The software is cross-platform, which works with Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. On top of that, Joplin also enables effortless synchronization with popular cloud services such as Dropbox, OneDrive, and Nextcloud.
Finally, if you are very sensitive to man-in-the-middle attack and are an open-source software snob, I’d recommend choosing Joplin as your note-taking application. It is also extremely customizable with plugins and themes, so users can configure it for their own particular workflow.
Obsidian: A Second Brain for Knowledge Management
“If you want a note-taking tool that steps into the territory of knowledge management, Obsidian is an underappreciated gem. Obsidian is a markdown-based software for a network of connected notes that creates a web of linked ideas for your thoughts. This is especially helpful for people conducting research, students, or anyone who deals with large amounts of information and needs to connect different ideas.”
Obsidian has a unique graph view, where you see a visual representation of how your notes relate to each other. The software is extremely modular and can integrate plugins developed by the community to add features to the base program. Whether you are a writer, an academic, or anyone else who needs to keep track of lots of complicated information, Obsidian is your powerful “second brain.”
Obsidian is also 1000% offline, so you own all your data, which is another big plus. You can also use third-party services to sync your vault across your devices without sacrifying security.
Notion: The All-in-One Workspace That’s Gaining Traction
“Others are slowly discovering Notion, but, given the extent of its functionality, it’s still underrated.” Not only is it a note-taking app, it is an entire all-in-one workspace that combines your documents, databases, tasks, and wikis in one platform. One of the things that makes Notion special is its almost unlimited customization options. “In one interface, users can do everything from create pages to create databases, kanban boards and calendars.”
Notion is a dream come true for teams It offers a single interface which enables everyone to collaborate, track progress and manage resources, eliminating disparate applications. That flexibility applies to personal use, too, whether you’re keeping a reading list, planning projects or just organizing your life.
The downside to Notion is that it’s complex — it can be intimidating for newcomers. However, when you master it, it becomes basically an essential app that allows a person to organize work and life. Notion is one of the most powerful yet underrated pieces of software in existence because it allows you to create relational databases and link information from different pages.
ShareX: A Software Swiss Army Knife for Screen Capture and Recording
“When it comes to screen capture software, people tend to think of Snagit or the built-in features in Windows and macOS,” One of the lesser-known tools that probably should be in the spotlight more often is ShareX, which has a pretty broad set of features. ShareX:A free, open-source tool for those who need more than basic screenshotsShareX is a free, open-source screen capture and recording tool that’s perfect for those looking for more than just simple screenshot functionality.
ShareX software lets you capture your screen in various ways, such as, region, window and scrolling. It also offers advanced annotation tools for real-time image edits immediately after capture. However, what makes ShareX really special are its automation features. It allows you to create custom workflows that can automatically upload your screenshots to a specified cloud storage, copy the URL to your clipboard and perform many more tasks like apply watermarks or image effects.
Other features of the software include GIF recording, screen recording with audio, and even OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for extracting text from an image. Due to its crazy amount of capabilities, ShareX is one of the most underrated tools out there for doing screen captures and videos on a regular basis.
FastStone Image Viewer: An All-in-One Image Management Tool
“When talking about image–management software, it’s typically Adobe Lightroom or Google Photos. For those seeking a lightweight yet potent image management tool, FastStone Image Viewer is a hidden gem. Though the interface looks a bit old-style, FastStone is truly feature-rich. “It brings image viewing, editing and batch processing into one application.”
It is lean, mean and fast, perfect for running through thousands and thousands of images rapidly. It’s not limited to the most commonly used formats out there and features nifty functionality like a batch image converter/renamer, image comparison, and basic editing functions like cropping, resizing, and adjusting color.
Photography or digital art professionals requiring a slick, not bloated, image management utility should search no more than FastStone Image Viewer. And since it’s entirely free for personal and educational use, that makes it a valuable addition.
f.lux: Enhancing Eye Comfort While Working Late
In Image: f.lux company logo
f.lux software is one of those life-changing tools that you never knew you needed and makes a big difference if you do a lot of nighttime screen working. It will modify the colour temperature of your display based on the time of day to lower eye strain by filtering out blue light in the evening. Blue light emitted by screens can disrupt sleep patterns by tricking your brain into thinking it’s still daytime. f.lux helps you do the transition between work and rest a lot more natural by progressively warming up all the colors when the evening comes.
It runs automatically, yet it also allows for you to customize it according to your needs. You can set various warmth levels and even select your wake-up time, which the colors can then shift toward. Though macOS and Windows each have their own built-in night modes, f.lux gives even more granular control and works across multiple operating systems (including Linux).
Everything: The Fastest Search software Tool for Windows
In Image: Interface of Everything application
The built-in search function Windows softwares has leaves a lot to be desired. It can be very slow, and often skips files that are ensconced in deeply buried folders. Enter Everything, an ultra-quick file search utility for Windows. When you start typing your search query Everything immediately displays the results — quicker than and far more efficient than the in-built searching function.
The speed of Everything stems from its being able to index your files as soon as its installed. It also indexes in real time, so you never have to wait for it to catch up after new files have been added or deleted. The tool is lightweight, quite easy to use, and very configurable. For those who work with big files daily, Everything is a godsend.
Greenshot: A Lightweight Screenshot Tool with Advanced Features
“Greenshot is an underrated screenshot tool that rarely gets mentioned. Greenshot is less flashy but also a lot less of a resource hog, managing to pack in many useful features without running too much of an overhead. You can take screenshots of the full screen, a window, or a region using straightforward commands. Once captured, Greenshot offers integrated annotation tools for adding text, arrows and highlighting.”
What makes Greenshot special is how fast it works and how well it integrates. It saves time when it comes to screenshot sharing since you can directly export to different platforms like Imgur, email, cloud storage, etc. It also supports plugins for additional features, such as OCR that can extract text from images. Greenshot is a lightweight screenshot tool that’s ideal for users seeking a screenshot tool that’ll work with no unnecessary features and won’t hog system resources.
Zotero: A Reference Manager for Academic Research
In Image: Zotero company logo
Managing references and citations can be a Herculean task for students, academics or anyone engaged in large scale research. You are a free, open-source reference manager that automates this process. The process of collecting, organizing, citing, and sharing research sources, with ease. The software integrates directly into web browsers, allowing users to save references from research papers, articles, and websites in one click.
Zotero’s perhaps most useful feature is its ability to automatically format citations to use in papers in a variety of styles in softwares (like APA, MLA, and Chicago). It’s also synced across any of your devices, meaning you can access your research library anywhere. There’s also the group library feature in the software, which is a great tool for collaborative research projects, as it allows multiple users to contribute sources and manage the library of sources.
“EndNote and Mendeley are probably the most used tools for reference management, but I feel like Zotero is under-appreciated and free (mostly) — new Zotero features available in a largely free package. The active community continues to develop plugins and fix bugs.”