TryShadowing
Shadow YouTube. Speak English.
Home
Browse
Dictation
NEW
My Library
en
0
days
Sign in
The 10 Best Windows Productivity… — Thomas Frank shadowing | TryShadowing
TryShadowing
Shadow YouTube. Speak English.
Home
Browse
Dictation
NEW
My Library
en
0
days
Sign in
Home
Browse
Thomas Frank
The 10 Best Windows Productivity Apps in 2022
The 10 Best Windows Productivity Apps in 2022
Thomas Frank
·
14:58 · Feb 26, 2022
Start Shadowing
0:00
0:00
Record
×1
1x
VI
EN
JA
KO
ZH
FR
PT
TH
IT
DE
IPA
Pronunciation scoring isn't supported on this browser — you can still record and listen back.
-
I
have
a
central
tenant
Translating…
Turn on Record to capture your voice and get scored
Smart
Karaoke
Original
Line
1
/401
0:00
- I have a central tenant
0:01
that I follow for any kind of work
0:02
that I'm doing.
0:03
And it's this.
0:04
If I find myself doing something repeatedly,
0:06
there is a process I have to follow all the time over
0:09
and over again,
0:09
then anything I can do to make
0:11
that process more efficient either by making it faster,
0:14
removing steps or automating steps, I should do.
0:16
And with that idea in mind that today,
0:18
I would like to share with you my top 10 favorite productivity apps,
0:21
specifically for Windows.
0:23
Now I've got a couple of friends who have done these kind of app
0:25
roundup lists for the Mac.
0:27
And I do use Mac OS.
0:28
I use a lot of those apps, but I actually use Windows more often.
0:31
I prefer on the desktop platforms
0:33
and I haven't seen a whole lot of these videos for us Windows folk.
0:37
So today I'm gonna be breaking down my top 10,
0:39
including the one that I think is probably gonna be the most interesting for
0:43
you.
0:44
My surprise pick, one that you're probably not expecting,
0:47
a pair that work insanely well together.
0:49
They're the ones that I'm most excited to share with you in this video.
0:52
And finally, the one that is objectively the most useful app on this list.
0:57
One other great thing about this list is
0:59
that every app on it is actually free.
1:02
So let's get into this list,
1:03
starting with the one
1:04
that I think you might find most interesting
1:06
which is an app called Sharex.
1:09
Sharex is a screenshot tool for Windows.
1:11
It's free, it's open source.
1:12
And I use the heck out of it
1:14
because I take a ton of screenshots in my work
1:17
and I do this for multiple different purposes.
1:18
I do it for content creation.
1:20
If you've seen any of my written Notion tutorial over on my website you've
1:22
probably seen my screenshots
1:24
and animated GIFs but I also use it to communicate more efficiently with my
1:28
team.
1:28
For instance, the other day my personal website had a bug on it
1:31
and I was able to just take screenshots of the bug
1:33
and send them in Slack to my developer,
1:35
Martin, to show him exactly what was going on.
1:37
It's a lot more efficient than trying to type up a long description,
1:40
but Sharex has a trick up its sleeve
1:42
that a lot of other screenshot apps do not have
1:44
which is optical character recognition.
1:47
You can actually take a screenshot of some text within a picture
1:50
or YouTube video and it will pull
1:52
that text out and put it right on your clipboard.
1:54
So you can then paste it into your note taking application.
1:56
Now I should mention
1:57
that there is a builtin screenshot tool within Windows called Snip
2:01
and Sketch and it's honestly very capable.
2:02
You can use it by hitting Windows, Key, shift S.
2:05
You can take screenshots put 'em on your clipboard, draw on them.
2:08
But the editor that comes within Sharex is just vastly more powerful
2:12
and lets you do things like adding boxes,
2:14
drawing arrows adding pixelation and blurring for sensitive info.
2:17
It's just overall a lot better.
2:19
And that's why I personally like using it over Snip and Sketch.
2:22
Now there are a couple of little tweaks
2:24
that I add to share X to make it a little bit better.
2:26
First I add multiple hot keys for different jobs.
2:29
So I like to use control shift F to add a screenshot directly to
2:32
my clipboard or control shift C to open up the editor
2:35
so I can make boxes
2:36
or arrows or what have you.
2:38
And then I use control shift alt C
2:39
if I want to use the optical character recognition
2:42
and pull text out of an image.
2:43
And I also configure my default screenshots to live inside of Google drive.
2:48
So all my screenshots are available to me across all my different devices.
2:51
App number two on this list is called Quick Look.
2:53
And if you've ever used Mac OS you probably know there is a function
2:56
built into the operating system called Quick Look
2:59
which is sadly absent on Windows.
3:01
Well, this app brings it in there.
3:04
Now in Mac OS Quick Look is a function in finder where you can
3:07
basically click on a file without opening it
3:09
and see information about
3:10
that file in the sidebar.
3:12
You can see an image preview, if it's an image,
3:14
you can see text inside of a text file.
3:16
And the Quick Look app inside the Microsoft Windows store adds this to Windows.
3:20
You can click on a file
3:21
and without opening it you can just hit the space bar to preview it.
3:25
Now, this is less useful for really simple file types like images
3:28
or text because notepad
3:30
and the Windows photo viewer open pretty quickly
3:33
but this also works on Photoshop files.
3:35
So I can preview Photoshop files in a very big window without open up
3:39
Photoshop.
3:39
I can open up animated GIFs
3:41
or videos and preview them without launching a dedicated app for it.
3:44
So overall really useful tool.
3:46
And I love that it has a button that'll let me make the preview
3:49
stay on top of other windows,
3:51
as I sometimes want to say,
3:52
take a screenshot and make sure it floats on top of something else,
3:56
just so I can reference it.
3:57
App number three on this list and you probably saw this coming, is Notion.
4:01
I can't make this list complete without Notion
4:03
because I use it every single day.
4:04
And there is in fact desktop app.
4:06
So I can use it directly on Windows
4:08
which means I'm not breaking the rules of this list.
4:10
Now I do have a confession to make,
4:12
which is that I think
4:13
that Mac OS has a greater number of top tier note-taking applications than Windows
4:18
does.
4:18
It has Ulysses, it has Bear and has Apple Notes, which is frankly fantastic.
4:23
But at this point,
4:24
notion has made enough improvements both in its speed
4:26
and in fixing some of the annoyances I used to have with it
4:28
that it is now my favorite note taking application,
4:31
in particular, just recently,
4:33
they fixed the bug where you couldn't select text precisely across blocks,
4:37
which was actually kind of a bug in pretty much all based text editors.
4:41
I think Whimsical was the first one to really fix it at least
4:43
that I noticed,
4:44
but now Notion has done
4:45
as well which means
4:46
that I can select text like I could in a regular word processor like
4:50
Google docs.
4:51
And that means I can write
4:52
and I can edit precisely inside of Notion
4:55
and Notion runs a lot more than just my note taking.
4:58
In fact, I run my entire content creation process inside of Notion.
5:02
We capture ideas there, we run the entire content pipeline in there from research,
5:05
to scripting to editing.
5:07
And we even have a library of all of our past videos
5:09
so we can pull information from them
5:10
when we need it.
5:11
That system is called Creators Companion.
5:13
I've actually turned it into a template
5:14
and you can check it out over@thomasjfrank.com/cc.
5:17
And for personal productivity, I like to manage my tasks in notion.
5:20
I have a full template for that.
5:21
I do my note taking in Notion,
5:22
but what I've really wanted ever since I discovered this app is a full
5:26
on second brain template.
5:27
Something would marry tasks
5:29
and projects and notes
5:30
and goals and have them all work in harmony.
5:33
I've been kicking around with this design in my head for a very long
5:35
time.
5:35
It's very tough to get right to get the UX to be easily usable,
5:39
so it won't turn into a mess later on
5:41
but I think I'm just about done designing this template.
5:43
And I've got a second channel called Thomas Frank explains.
5:46
It's all about Notion build guides and tutorials.
5:48
So if you are interested in that kind of thing, check that channel out.
5:51
I'll have it link the description down below
5:53
and let's move on to our fourth app in this list
5:55
which actually takes our award for the most surprising app on the list.
5:59
And it's actually Microsoft Edge.
6:01
The browser that comes built into Windows.
6:04
Yes, I have had Microsoft popping up little things telling me to switch over
6:07
from Chrome to edge for years now
6:09
but I've always ignored it until I looked up some stats
6:12
and found out that Edge is actually a faster browser than Chrome.
6:16
And I was getting kind of tired of Chrome just hogging up tons of
6:18
resources on my system.
6:19
So I decided to give Edge a try.
6:21
And what do you know?
6:22
It's actually kind of great.
6:24
At this point, it's built on top of Chromium
6:25
which is the engine
6:26
that Chrome is built on.
6:27
So it's very familiar.
6:28
All the keyboard shortcuts are the same
6:30
and crucially you can install extensions from the Chrome Web store into Edge.
6:36
Pretty much any extension that works inside of Chrome now works in Edge,
6:39
which means that I'm not losing anything by making the switch.
6:42
And I'm gaining quite a few things.
6:43
Number one, Edge does feel snappier
6:46
and it feels like it takes up less resources than Chrome does.
6:48
There's even a built in feature
6:50
that will put tabs to sleep after two hours by default,
6:53
if you're not using them which frees up system resources even more.
6:56
But maybe my favorite feature on Edge is
6:58
if you go up to your tab bar
6:59
and right click you can turn on vertical tabs,
7:01
which will move your tabs from being a horizontal list across the top of
7:04
the bar to a vertical list on the side,
7:07
which means that even if you are a tab hoarder like I am,
7:10
you can still see the names of all your tabs,
7:13
which you cannot do in Chrome without a third party extension.
7:17
App number five on the list is actually one
7:18
that is built right into Windows
7:20
and it's the Windows Clipboard Manager.
7:22
So if you've ever used a clipboard before
7:23
if you've ever copied
7:24
and pasted you probably know
7:25
that the clipboard is one of the most useful functions in any operating system.
7:29
But by default, it has one major limitation.
7:31
It only remembers the last thing you copied.
7:33
It's a lot more useful
7:35
if you have clipboard history turned on
7:36
so you can see everything you've copied
7:38
and you can go back
7:39
and paste something old.
7:40
And that is exactly what the clipboard history feature does.
7:43
So if you wanna turn it on all you gotta do is hit Windows
7:46
key V.
7:47
It will ask you if you wanna turn it on,
7:48
and then you can even sync your clipboard history across devices,
7:52
if you want to.
7:52
I don't do that
7:53
because I put passwords on my clipboard
7:54
and I don't really like the idea of having it transmitted across anything
7:58
that isn't into my Password Manager
8:00
but it is an option
8:01
if you want to use it.
8:02
And that brings us to one of two apps
8:03
that I am personally most excited to share with you in this video.
8:06
These two apps work really well as a pair.
8:09
So that first app is called Flow Launcher.
8:11
And all Flow Launcher does is bring up a small text window on your
8:15
computer when you hit a key command by default alt space.
8:18
But once it's there,
8:19
you can type commands to do pretty much anything on your computer quite a
8:23
bit faster than you would by doing it normally.
8:25
Again, we're going back to
8:25
that concept of taking repeat processes
8:28
and making them more efficient.
8:30
So with Flow Launcher, I can launch websites.
8:32
I can do Google searches.
8:33
I can bring up files or directories on my computer.
8:36
I can even do calculations quite a bit faster than I would with the
8:39
stock calculator app.
8:40
And I can even control Spotify.
8:43
I can type SP in the name of a playlist
8:45
or a song and I can start playing it.
8:47
I can turn on shuffle.
8:48
I can do all kinds of cool stuff.
8:49
I absolutely love Flow Launcher.
8:52
And you can customize the heck out of it to just bring up this
8:54
little thing and do stuff quite a bit faster.
8:56
And I'm just gonna roll right into the seventh app of the list
8:58
which is called Espanso.
9:00
And Espanso is a text expander app
9:02
which you'll find very useful
9:03
if you often find yourself typing the same long strings of text,
9:06
like your email address
9:08
or common URLs or
9:09
if you do customer support
9:10
or something,
9:11
the same exact response to customers.
9:13
You can define these very short key snippets
9:15
that when you type they automatically expand into
9:18
that longer snippet of text.
9:20
So for instance I can type EMT to auto expand my email address.
9:24
I can type PWF to auto expand my Notion fundamentals URL
9:27
which I'm constantly pasting inside of comments.
9:30
I can even expand really really long strings of text as well.
9:33
And I personally love Espanso more than then say Auto Hot Key,
9:36
which I used to use for this purpose
9:37
because Espanso also comes with a search bar
9:39
that you can bring up very similar to Flow Launchers,
9:42
but you can search your snippets
9:43
and then automatically paste them without having to type the entire thing,
9:46
which is really, really nice.
9:48
And I'm putting Flow Launcher and Espanso together because in my workflow,
9:53
they work very well in tandem.
9:55
Personally, I have to bring up a lot of different directories on my computer
9:58
very often.
9:59
I've got one for video thumbnails.
10:00
I've got one for current projects being edited.
10:03
I've got one for my second channel.
10:04
So I've defined little key snippets in Espanso
10:07
that I can type into Flow Launcher to automatically launch those directories way quicker
10:13
than I would get to them
10:13
if I was navigating normally
10:15
and to continue my complaints about Windows Explorer,
10:18
we're gonna move on to app number eight, which is called Everything.
10:22
And Everything is a simple utility
10:23
that lets you search your files
10:25
and folders and Windows
10:26
because Windows's folder search
10:28
and file search is famously slow.
10:30
It takes forever.
10:31
And for whatever reason,
10:32
everything indexes your hard drive and lets you search pretty much instantly.
10:37
Now there was also an Everything plugin for Flow Launcher.
10:39
So you can actually use Flow Launcher to search your computer pretty well,
10:42
but sometimes you're looking for a file
10:43
and you wanna be able to browse a lot more on your screen than
10:46
Flow Launcher will show you.
10:47
So I also recommend having everything installed by default
10:50
so you can use it
10:51
when you need it.
10:51
App number nine on this list is good old Google Drive.
10:55
I don't think this list would be complete without an app
10:57
that gets files off of your computer
10:59
and syncs them to another destination,
11:00
so they're backed up and also available on other devices as well.
11:05
Google Drive, I think is the best option still even
11:07
though there is also a Dropbox
11:08
and OneDrive and other options
11:10
because for free,
11:12
they give you the most storage space.
11:13
They give you 15 gigs versus OneDrive's five and Dropbox is paltry two.
11:18
And my tip for using Google Drive efficiently is to ignore the documents, pictures,
11:23
music all those different directories on your computer
11:26
and instead create a sort of root file system within your Google Drive folder.
11:31
That way you're gonna have a single place that you know to go to,
11:34
to start looking for files,
11:36
if you're not choosing to search for them using say Everything.
11:39
And that brings us to our final app on this list
11:41
which is probably objectively the most useful app out of any
11:45
that I've covered here.
11:46
And that is F.lux
11:49
or maybe F.lux if you wanna pronounce it
11:50
that way.
11:50
This is a very small tiny utility
11:53
that does one thing
11:54
as it gets closer to dark,
11:56
to your bedtime, it dims your screen and it makes it warmer.
12:00
And the reason it does this is that light,
12:02
be it artificial light or sunlight messes with our circadian rhythms.
12:07
There's a little part of your brand called the suprachiasmatic nucleus
12:10
that is connected to your eyes
12:12
and when your eyes intake light waves it essentially adjusts your circadian rhythm
12:16
and it can make it harder to fall asleep
12:18
or to get quality sleep,
12:19
if you're exposed to artificial light late at night.
12:22
And as it turns out,
12:23
blue light affects this more than other types of visible light.
12:27
So the idea behind F.lux
12:29
and the idea behind those blue blocker glasses you probably heard about is it
12:33
gets rid of some of
12:33
that blue light and possibly makes it easier for you to fall asleep
12:37
or to have better quality sleep.
12:39
So if you find yourself on the computer late at night
12:41
or on your phone late at night,
12:43
using something like F.lux may actually help you sleep better.
12:46
And as we've talked about in many different videos sleep is one of the
12:49
three pillars of health with the other two being your nutrition
12:52
and your exercise,
12:53
that really form the foundation of your ability to get things done.
12:56
So all these other tools we've talked about are kind of just, you know,
13:00
extra icing on the cake.
13:01
F.lux may actually help you live a more healthy life
13:04
and hence a more productive one.
13:05
Now, earlier I talked about how Notion was my constant companion for my video
13:09
production process.
13:09
One of my most essential tools for getting these videos done
13:12
and done more efficiently.
13:14
Let me share one additional resource
13:15
that really helps with my video production process
13:17
as well.
13:18
And that is Story Blocks, who have kindly sponsored this video.
13:21
If you are a creator,
13:22
if you make videos like I do you definitely want to check out Story
13:24
Blocks because they give you access to a library of more than 1 million
13:28
creative assets that you get unlimited access to use inside your content.
13:32
That includes a B roll and stock footage.
13:34
It includes sound effects and music.
13:36
So you can level up your sound design.
13:37
It includes After Effects templates, motion graphics templates,
13:41
tons of stuff that can level up your content.
13:43
And to give you a bit of an insight to our actual video production
13:46
process we cut down this talking head footage to what we call an A
13:49
roll cut.
13:50
At that point, my team
13:51
and I come up with B roll ideas to go on top of
13:52
that A roll and we do shoot some of
13:54
that B or selves
13:55
but often there are shots
13:56
that we just can't get on our own.
13:58
And Story Blocks allows us to get a lot of
14:00
that which allows us to make our content a lot more engaging.
14:02
And another great thing about Story Blocks is that they are extremely affordable.
14:06
Normally if you wanna license stock footage a lot of sites wanna charge you
14:09
hundreds of dollars per clip,
14:12
seriously, but with Story Blocks you have one low subscription
14:16
that gets you unlimited access to
14:17
as many assets as you want.
14:19
And they have plans to fit pretty much any budget whether you're a solo
14:22
creator or running a large team.
14:24
So if you wanna start leveling up your content and get started,
14:26
go over to storyblocks.com/thomas to sign up
14:29
or go to the link right there on screen.
14:32
If you do choose to use Story Blocks,
14:33
thank you so much for supporting my sponsors.
14:35
This is a great to support this channel as well.
14:37
Hopefully you enjoyed this.
14:38
If you found something useful,
14:39
maybe a brand new tool that's gonna help your workflow hit
14:42
that like button for the algorithm.
14:43
And if you're looking for something else to watch I've got a great companion
14:45
video for this one on the best browser extensions for productivity
14:49
or if you are a Notion user,
14:51
I just made a brand new video on 10 things you might be doing
14:53
wrong in your Notion workspace. check those out
14:55
and I'll see yet in the next one.
Like
Share
Thomas Frank
View all →
B1
Productivity
Karaoke
13:23
How to Organize Your Calendar - The Ultimate Guide
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
12:52
How to figure out what to do with your life
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
11:43
How to Wake Up Early Without Feeling Tired
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
Karaoke
8:59
How to Break Your Phone Addiction
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
10:49
A video for anyone feeling behind in life
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
Karaoke
11:39
How I Automate My Finances
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
Karaoke
12:51
5 Ways to Improve Your Writing
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
Karaoke
14:42
The 10 Best iPhone Productivity Apps in 2021
Thomas Frank
Suggested videos
B2
Productivity
Karaoke
25:56
Success Is Hard Until You Build Systems Like This
Ali Abdaal
B1
Productivity
Karaoke
13:23
How to Organize Your Calendar - The Ultimate Guide
Thomas Frank
B2
Productivity
Karaoke
28:56
How to Change Your Life
Ali Abdaal
B1
Productivity
12:52
How to figure out what to do with your life
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
11:43
How to Wake Up Early Without Feeling Tired
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
Karaoke
8:59
How to Break Your Phone Addiction
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
10:49
A video for anyone feeling behind in life
Thomas Frank
B1
Productivity
Karaoke
11:39
How I Automate My Finances
Thomas Frank
