5 Productivity Tools I Can’t Live Without
A list of really awesome tools I use every day to increase my productivity.
Kifi (kifi.com)
Update: Kifi shut down, but Refind is a very similar product that contains the features described here.
Kifi revolves around bookmarking, search, and collaboration. In its core, Kifi is a Chrome Extension that lets you keep web pages with a click. It indexes the content of a kept page, and makes it easy to find later. So let’s say you encounter this tutorial, “Sever-Side Rendering with Redux and React-Router”. You don’t need it right now, but maybe in the future, so you keep the page. In a month, you totally forgot about it or how you got to it. Just search something like react server side render and it’ll appear first (most likely) on Google (the extension makes it happen). No need to tag the page or anything, it’s full-text search.
In addition to this awesome personal search engine that you curate for yourself, Kifi has an on-page chat for collaboration/quick sharing for you and your team/friends (we use it at work) and the ability to find links kept by people you follow. This can be extremely useful.
Alfred & Power Pack (alfredapp.com)
Over the years, Apple has improved Spotlight a lot. Naturally, it still lacks integration with 3rd party products and powerful developer tools.
Alfred is a well known alternative that has been around for a few years. On its own, it’s a simple alternative for Spotlight, but with the Power Pack it gets workflow/plugin support. I use several workflows daily: Evernote (search/create), Translate, Copy Paths to Clipboard, My IP, and more. I also wrote a few that open all terminal (iTerm) windows that start all commands of a project (api server, test, client side server, db console etc). Writing your own workflow is easy using the integrated editor and a programming language.
HyperDock (bahoom.com/hyperdock)
This is one of my favorites. It brings window previews to the dock when hovering on an icon. Yes, like Windows’, and it’s super helpful. Other than the preview, it shows which desktop the window is at, and it has some cool features like Spotify/iTunes controls and iCal calendar event list.
Bartender (macbartender.com)
Simple: OS X’s menu bar fills quickly with a lot of app icons. Not all are necessary frequently. Bartender lets you hide some icons from the bar and put them in a designated sub menu. Keep it clean.
Gestimer (maddin.io/gestimer)
Quickly create a timer. I mostly use it when I need an extra reminder to do something, when I’m engrossed in my work and not paying attention to time.
Know other tools? I’d love to hear about them!
