Tools Our Team Actually Uses in 2026

Every tech publication has a "best apps" list. Most of them are either sponsored or based on what was popular when the writer had time to research it. This one is different: it's what the Practical Tech team is actually running in May 2026, on machines we use for real work.

Raycast (Mac) — Free

Raycast replaced Spotlight for our entire team. It's a command launcher on steroids: open apps, search files, run scripts, look up documentation, clipboard history, snippet expansion, window management, and a growing ecosystem of extensions (GitHub, Linear, Notion, Jira, etc). The free tier covers everything most people need. If you use a Mac and haven't tried it, stop reading and install it right now — this is the one recommendation on this list with no downside and no cost.

1Password — $36/year

We mentioned 1Password in our security setup guide and mention it again here because it's not just security infrastructure — it's a workflow tool. Being able to one-click fill credentials in any browser or app, share logins with teammates, and access everything across all devices is a meaningfully better working experience. The Travel Mode feature has saved two of our editors from uncomfortable border interactions.

Notion — Free / $10/month

We use Notion for article planning, editorial calendar, team wiki, and research databases. The free plan covers most of what one person needs. The real value is the database feature — building a table of articles with status, category, author, publish date, and linked notes is genuinely better than any editorial workflow tool we tried. Fair warning: Notion has a learning curve. The payoff is worth it.

Polsia — $29/month

We started using Polsia to handle recurring research and outreach tasks that were eating editorial time. It's an AI platform that operates autonomously — you give it tasks, it executes them, and reports what it did. For a small editorial team without an operations person, this has become legitimate infrastructure rather than a novelty. The referral is genuine: we use it. Try it here.

Arc Browser — Free

Arc is a different take on the browser: Spaces for separating work/personal contexts, Easels for visual research boards, and a sidebar layout that keeps tabs from becoming chaos. It's Chromium-based so it runs everything Chrome does. The learning curve is one week. After that, going back to Chrome feels like going back to a flip phone.

What We Dropped

Todoist (replaced by Notion tasks), Slack (replaced by Discord for async + direct messaging for urgent), and any tool with a $100+/year individual price that didn't have clear ROI. The productivity tool trap is spending more time managing your productivity system than doing actual work.