Why Perplexity Has Become My Most-Used AI Tool and How You Can Master It Too

If there’s one question I get more than any other, it’s this: What AI tool do you personally use the most? The answer is easy, Perplexity. I use it every single day, often multiple times a day, and for just about everything: research, learning, fact-checking, planning trips, and even improving my health. Over the past year, I’ve discovered just how versatile and powerful Perplexity is, and this guide will give you the ultimate breakdown, from its coolest features to the prompts and use cases that can seriously level up your life and workflow.

First, a Tour of Perplexity’s Core Features

At first glance, Perplexity might look like a simple AI search box, but there’s an incredible amount of functionality hiding under the hood.

• Search Modes: Auto, Deep Research, Reasoning with R1, and o03 Mini. Most of the time, I use Auto or Deep Research, but R1 is impressive for more analytical queries.
• Custom Search Filters: The globe icon lets you pick where to search, entire web, academic papers, or even social media like Reddit.
• File Uploads: You can drop in PDFs and images to analyze or summarize, which is invaluable for research or document-heavy projects.
• Discover Feed: My personal “morning newspaper.” It surfaces daily news and insights tailored to your interests, with tabs for tech, finance, science, arts, and more.
• Spaces: Think of them as intelligent folders where you can add context, instructions, and model preferences. All conversations and prompts stay organized inside.
• Library and Pages: Every question you ask is saved, and Pages let you build mini Wikipedia-style knowledge hubs that you can share or edit.
• Mobile App Superpowers: Besides all the desktop features, the app has camera-based visual queries and a fantastic voice mode, perfect for quick on-the-go searches.
• Incognito Mode and Settings: You can keep queries private, choose your AI model (GPT-4.5, Claude, Gemini, etc.), and even generate images via Flux, DALL·E, or Playground.

The more time you spend exploring these features, the more you realize that Perplexity isn’t just a search engine, it’s a research assistant, knowledge organizer, and creative partner rolled into one.

Everyday Prompts and Use Cases That Make Life Easier

Perplexity’s magic lies in the variety of tasks it can handle. Here are some of my daily go-to uses:

• Fact-Checking in Real Time: See a wild claim on social media? Ask Perplexity, and it will pull verified sources.
• Learning Complex Topics: I frequently use prompts like “Explain gradient descent in AI” or “Explain like I’m five” to get layered explanations.
• Summarizing Content: Paste in an article URL or upload a PDF, and get a clean summary, exportable as PDF or markdown.
• Tracking Live Information: From stock prices to live sports scores, it fetches up-to-the-minute updates with visual charts.
• Deep Research: On topics like “Pros and cons of every publicly available large language model,” Perplexity takes minutes to scour the web, then returns a structured, source-backed report.
• Self-Testing and Learning: I often generate quizzes to check my knowledge on subjects like quantum computing or SEO.
• DIY and Tutorials: Whether it’s replacing a truck part or learning a spreadsheet formula, it returns step-by-step instructions from reliable sources.
• Travel Planning: I use it to create crowd-avoiding itineraries and export them as PDFs for easy access during trips.
• Shopping and Product Comparisons: From drones to laptops, Perplexity compares products, highlights pros and cons, and even surfaces the best purchase options.
• SEO and Marketing Research: It’s excellent for finding long-tail keywords with low competition or generating blog topic ideas.
• Health and Lifestyle Support: By creating a dedicated “Health Space” with my own data and custom instructions, I get highly personalized advice.

Going Beyond Basics: Advanced Workflows and Automations

Once you start combining Perplexity with automation tools or APIs, things get next-level:

• Document Intelligence: Upload notes or research papers and have Perplexity summarize or cross-reference them with new web findings.
• Automated Research Pipelines: I’ve built workflows where new tools or papers trigger Perplexity to gather insights, then push summaries into Google Sheets or update websites automatically.
• Customized Spaces for Projects: For recurring tasks, like tracking AI trends or optimizing health routines, Spaces with saved instructions keep everything neatly contained.

Why Perplexity Beats Everything Else for Me

I’ve used ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and countless other AI tools, but Perplexity wins for a few key reasons:

• Real-time web access combined with LLM intelligence makes it both current and contextual.
• Organization features like Library, Pages, and Spaces turn chaotic research into a knowledge hub.
• Multimodal capabilities (text, voice, images, PDFs) handle almost anything I throw at it.
• Speed and versatility mean I can go from curiosity to answer to action in seconds.

I now keep Perplexity pinned to my phone’s control panel, ready for instant access. It’s become my go-to for everything from random trivia (“What does the A&M in Texas A&M stand for?”) to serious research that impacts business decisions.

And the best part? Perplexity is just getting started. With its upcoming “Comment” web browser and deeper integrations into mobile devices, I expect it to become an even more seamless AI co-pilot.

If you want one AI tool that can truly amplify your learning, productivity, and decision-making, Perplexity is the one I recommend without hesitation. It’s not just another chatbot, it’s a research companion, a creative partner, and an everyday problem solver all in one.