📐 What are your top 5 tools?

Question

I loved https://yourstack.com because it allowed me to list (stack) the tools I'm using (to make stuff). Basically answering the question "which tools are you using/recommending?".

Yourstack was also great becuause you could browse the stacks of other makers to (re)discover tools and compare approaches as well as sharing tips and tricks around those tools.

🏝 While yourstack is currently on (permanent) vacation (https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/1512068093090041869) I was wondering if you only could take 5 tools to an island: which tools would you pick and why?

Ideally name tools that you rely on regularly. Can be evergreen tools or something new. Bonus points if you made something using those tools. Feel free to share what you made for context : )

Will also share my top 5 tools after a few comments (wow, narrowing down is not easy)!

Emily Jackson · Accepted Answer

I am an amateur photographer, so I always use photo enhancers to give my works a little touch-up to make them look more attractive. Here are my top 5 photo-editing tools:
1. VanceAI https://vanceai.com/ -The most functional and simplest AI photo enhancer, which has 19 features that basically cover all the needs in photo editing
2. Image Upscaler https://image-upscaler.com/ -Enlarge small and low-quality images by 800% online.
3. Colourise https://colourise.com/-A powerful tool for colorizing black and white photos online. And there is no need to sign up or download any programs. It’s hassle-free.
4. Passport Photo Maker https://vanceai.com/passport-photo-maker/ -An online editor that supports major countries’ passport photo models. People can manually set their country’s passport photo size parameters and replace the background with a solid color background.
5. BGremover https://bgremover.vanceai.com/ -AI-powered tool that can help you remove background from images online for free. It could be a handy assistant for e-commerce sellers.

Jamie Gotz · Answer

@__tosh this is some of my stack:

GMeet - remote meetings
Shepherd - meeting notes & structure
Miro - ideating
Notion - company handbook
Gyazo - screenshots / bug reporting
Slack - comms HQ

Anthony Mainero · Answer

My most essential:

1. iTerm
2. VSCode
3. Slack
4. Figma
5. Asana

Marina Đurić · Answer

My essential tools for coffee work grind ☕:

Notion - life and work organization, mainly used is content planning for 
              LinkedIn
Loom - screen recording and great for tutorials
Canva - for making presentations and carousel picture type posts
Lead Delta - the #1 tool for LinkedIn management, indeed a game- 
                    changer for doing business on LinkedIn
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/leaddelta
Slack - for team communication, everyone's favorite
Grammarly - for content and copywriting, an essential

Michael Cash · Answer

1. Intercom
2. Notion 
3. Canny
4. Zest
And of course
5. Centered.app which was featured today!

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/centered-groups

Nderim Topalli · Answer

I am a web developer and these are some of the tools I use everyday:

1. Alfred - first thing I install on macos
2. VS Code - best of both worlds (IDEs and text editors)
3. Vivaldi - highly customisable chromium based browser
4. Slack - team communication
5. Github - all my code lives there

Others:
Netlify and Vercel - deploys all my apps
Zsh and oh-my-zsh - cant use the terminal without
Joplin - open source note taking app
Google Meet - team meetings

Michi Huber · Answer

Things (!)
basecamp (not great, but prefer over eg slack)
vim
recently replaced alfred (great) with raycast (happy so far)
fantastical

Patrik Inzinger · Answer

It changes every few months, but those are long-time favorites of mine:

1. @todoist / manages my entire life
2. @craftdocsapp  / go-to notes and writing app
3. @around_hq / fantastic collaboration tool for distributed teams
4. Basecamp
5. Brave Browser

And some lesser-known tools as a bonus:
* https://numi.app/ / calculator on steroids
* https://getkap.co/ / super-quick screen recorder
* https://hyper.is/ / electron-based terminal

Johannes N · Answer

1. @linear_app 
2. @around_hq 
3. @signalapp
4. @firefox 
5. @iterm

Danny Hatcher 🔎 · Answer

This is an easy one for me.
Obsidian - My daily note driver as a researcher
Zotero - My storage of articles
Morgen - My task and calendar app of choice (syncs with gcal)
Affinity Photo - for all image manipulation for digital marketing
Filmora 9 - Video editing software.

I don't use anything else really to run my YouTube channel and my research.

Johannes N · Answer

@__tosh themes, tabs (I think terminal back then did not support it), and customizations in general. maybe it can all be done today in the default terminal as well :shrug:

Chris Messina · Answer

Airtable
Alfred
Spotify
Refind
Keynote/Figma/Sketch

Jha · Answer

1. Nawvel - creating resource collections like what you've done with the post! 
2. Notion - note taking, project management (second brain)
3. G suite - communication and collaboration
4. Miro - ideation and discovery (UX) 
5. Figma - design (UI)

Paul VanZandt · Answer

Some of my favorite tools to use daily:

Fresco: Brainstorming, ideation, and collaboration
Slack: Team communication and alignment
Idenati: Really slick password management
ClickUp: Personal task management

Michael Kohl · Answer

Raycast - Used to be a heavy Alfred user but this is better in (almost) every way.
Obsidian - Personal knowledge base based on Markdown files.
1password - Not many other products I can think of that so consistently add useful features (like the recent SSH key integration or the masked email feature with Fastmail) while generally staying out of your way.
Edge - Yes, it's from MS and we all still have IE nightmares but it's a great Chromium-based browser with surprisingly sane defaults and some nice features of its own (e.g. collections, good PWA support, vertical tabs without extension)
Neovim - A modernized fork of Vim with Lua scripting, native LSP support, etc.

📐 What are your top 5 tools?

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