The Apps and Tools That Changed How I Work in 2025
A practical, opinionated look at the software and AI tools that saved me time, reduced friction, and earned a permanent place in my workflow.
As 2025 draws to a close, I wanted to share the apps that had the biggest impact on my work and productivity this year. For some, these are new (to me) apps that transformed my workflow. Others are new features in existing apps that punched well above their weight.
Here are the apps that changed how I work in 2025:
WisprFlow - I thought I was a fast typist, but dictating everything, from emails to Slack messages to texts, is much faster.
Superhuman and Ask AI – Imagine having a ChatGPT window right inside your email client. You can instruct Ask AI to draft fully formed, comprehensive emails based on data stored in your past messages. This has already saved me hours in the few weeks since it rolled out.
Granola - AI-generated meeting notes, formatted for maximum efficiency.
Howie - Hate scheduling calls and meetings? Same. Let Howie be your virtual assistant. Most people won’t even realize they’re talking to an AI.
Todoist and Ramble mode - Dictate your tasks, including metadata like project list, due date, priority flags, and even corrections, and Todoist figures it out. Pro tip: map your phone’s Action Button to Ramble mode and dictate tasks without even unlocking your phone.
ChatGPT - What can I say, another year (or just another month?) and ChatGPT continues to be working for our company as something between a very good first-year associate, a career coach, a paralegal, and a proofreader. Trust it just enough, but not too much, and it can save you hours.
Honorable mentions:
Arc Browser - I still think The Browser Company made one of the biggest blunders in tech when they pivoted from Arc to Dia, but Arc still works, and there’s nothing like it.
Notion Calendar - Notion Calendar has now fully replaced Fantastical for me. I just wish it had an agenda view on iOS.
Raycast - I use Raycast for fairly pedestrian things, from file searching to window management. But even with my limited use case, it’s still better than macOS’s new Spotlight.
Also, here’s a pro-tip: You can use WisprFlow to dictate disjointed thoughts directly into Ask AI in Superhuman and let Superhuman AI transform those jumbled prompts into cohesive, professional emails.
What I’ll be Watching in 2026
Slackbot - a fully rebuilt AI assistant that you and your team can use to surface work knowledge across Slack and your other apps.
Puzzle - can a new software company chip away at QuickBooks’ dominance among SMBs? I sure hope so.
Notion and MCP - I remain curious which service is going to be the AI connector between all of our work apps. Not sure it will be Notion, but they are aggressively pursuing this angle. The open question is what the emerging Superhuman/Grammarly/Coda triumvirate cooks up.
What apps, tools or new features changed how you work in 2025? Let me know in the comments below.