As someone who spends the bulk of my time on my Windows PC, having the right tools at my disposal makes all the difference. I use these tools for both work and personal tasks, and they’re so good that they’ve earned a permanent spot on my toolbar.
Grammarly
No matter how good you are at writing, you need to edit and proofread. Even if your content is ultra-clean on the first draft, there’s always going to be at least one weird typo and something that you could rephrase for clarity.
I started using Grammarly in 2021, and it has saved me from many embarrassing mistakes, so it tops my list of ultimate productivity tools. Not only that, but it has helped me work faster. As someone who writes for a living, having a little help with proofreading and editing my copy is invaluable. There’s a point every day when I feel like I can barely read my text, whether it’s due to eye strain, screen fatigue, or my brain simply getting tired.
Even if you aren’t a writer or a content creator professionally, Grammarly is an invaluable tool for speeding up your productivity. If you write a lot of emails, Grammarly can help you hone your text into a more professional, concise tone. If you enjoy creative writing as a hobby, Grammarly can help you refine your copy. You get the idea.
Grammarly works as a desktop client, integrating into apps like Microsoft Word, or as a browser extension, enabling me to edit directly in my Google Docs or WordPress. I can also copy and paste text into the browser version.
You don’t need to subscribe to Grammarly to benefit from it. The free version offers the basics that most people will want, such as grammar mistakes and type detection.
The Premium subscription (which costs $30 per month or $144 annually) provides me with more advanced tools, including suggestions for word choice, clarity, tone, and style, as well as catching misplaced punctuation and grammatical errors. For me, Premium is worth the cost, as it helps me with lengthy editing projects. The free version, though, is still gold for anyone who wants a little help editing their text. I don’t think it’s a complete replacement for the human eye, as Grammarly can sometimes make unusual suggestions. However, using it as an assistant editor can really save a significant amount of time.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT has quickly become my go-to partner for problem-solving and brainstorming. I don’t pay for a premium subscription because I don’t need to. Most regular users will find the free version perfectly acceptable.
I genuinely use the ChatGPT Windows app on a daily basis. For my purposes, I use it to help me brainstorm headlines for articles or to flesh out an idea for a piece into a full outline. This tool is also great for helping with research whenever I’m stuck and don’t have any idea where to track down a source. Google is great, sure, but if I ask ChatGPT for research articles on a particular topic, it compiles them in one spot, and I can click through the links to find the studies posted on reputable websites like PubMed or those endorsed by the American Psychological Association (APA).
When I’m tackling a challenging creative project, ChatGPT can also help me understand things outside my wheelhouse, too. Like one of my relatives who used AI to learn how to build guitar pedals, I’ve used ChatGPT to understand concepts that previously felt out of my reach. Not to mention, playing around with creative aspects of AI, like generating illustrations of what your life looks like based on what ChatGPT knows about you, can be some good fun if you’re bored.
Using ChatGPT requires you to use your own brain and discernment, and it doesn’t always get things right. However, it can be incredibly helpful for ideation, brainstorming, research, and outline creation, among other tasks, if you know how to utilize it effectively.
While most people use Windows’ built-in search bar, I sometimes forget it even exists. That’s because I use the Everything search tool to help me locate files and folders. This free app works at lightning speed to search my entire PC for the keywords I enter. While this tool may not be for everyone, I’d specifically recommend it for people who have cluttered desktops and a multitude of folders (and more folders within folders).
Everything is perfect for digging up files you know are on your system, especially when you can’t remember their location. Even if you do know where something is, Everything’s speedy interface is faster than clicking through multiple folders to get to a file.
As someone who hyper-organizes Windows files, this saves me a lot of time. For example, say I want to open one of my creative writing projects, and I know the title of the file. Instead of having to click through a “Short Stories” folder, then a “Drafts” folder, and then a “Multiple Versions” folder, I can simply open Everything, type in the file’s name, and double-click it to open it. Those extra clicks to get to a file can start to eat up your time if you’re doing that every computer session.
After downloading and installing this tool, it runs quietly in the background, allowing you to locate the files you need in seconds.
Ditto Clipboard Manager
I copy text a lot. Whether it’s work notes, an outline, a brainstorm, an article layout, or something for my personal calendar, I spend a good deal of time copying and pasting. I get incredibly frustrated with Windows’ clipboard, since it only stores one copied item at a time. While that might not be a big deal to some, I also know I’m not the only person who accidentally copied another string of text before pasting the previous one.
This frustration of having to go back and track down information to recopy led me to discover a tool I find invaluable in my workflow: Ditto Clipboard manager. This handy little free tool keeps a history of everything that I copy, so if I overwrite a copy of something, it’s no big deal.
With Ditto Clipboard, I can easily pull up my clipboard history and paste a copied item into text by double-clicking on it. Its interface is ridiculously simple and easy to use. You can adjust its settings to delete your copy history after a specific number of days and also limit the number of copies it stores at one time. The default storage setting is for 500 items.
I currently have mine set to delete past a week. I can’t tell you how many times I need to scroll back through my copy history from a few days ago, so this works well for me. If I don’t want to scroll and already know the text I’m looking for, I can also type in the search bar to locate specific text.
I’d recommend using Ditto Clipboard’s hotkey to pull it up or going to its “Quick Options” page and setting it to “Always on top,” so the clipboard doesn’t disappear every time you click on another window. It sounds like a small hack, but this tool is particularly helpful for writers, content creators, students, or anyone who does a lot of copy-and-paste work.
Boost Your Workflow for Free
In my opinion, the best free Windows tools are the ones you keep going back to every day. These types of tools enhance your workflow, save you time, and improve your productivity. While there are plenty of other helpful tools available, apps like Grammarly, ChatGPT, Everything, and Ditto Clipboard are my everyday workhorses.
I’d recommend these to any PC user who wants to streamline their workflow, email writing, or research. Since they’re all free (though some have paid plans if you wish to invest in those), you have nothing to lose by trying them out. I suspect they might become some of your favorite workflow tools, too.
