perplexity is a super popular AI tool but a lot of its most useful features get overlooked so here are five powerful features you might be sleeping on first if you're not already familiar with Perplexity when you enter a query it searches the web reads all the best sources summarizes them and gives you a direct answer with citations it's like combining the best aspects from Google search and chatbt into one research assistant i've found it to be much more accurate for search-based queries or up-to-date information than ChachiPT where is the cool cave with the pool they jump into in 127 hours i live in Utah now where a lot of that was filmed i'd like to find it chachi PT says it was a man-made set in London so I clarify it comes out that where it was actually filmed was in the Homestead Crater in Midway Utah basically it made up the first answer while ask this same question in perplexity and it gets the answer right on the first try that's just the basics you probably already knew let's dive into the deeper features first is a quick and easy feature that totally changes the vibe of your answers and most people never use it focus mode lets you control where perplexity pulls information from what are the benefits of sauna use then down here I'll switch up the focus to academic right that gives a great and very thorough answer and cites all its sources and that's the important part so we can see it used 14 sources and most of these are PubMed or Semantic Scholar so it's drawing largely from published medical journals so I'll use this same question again but this time switch up the focus to social now the answer is more experienced-based and you can see in the sources it drew mostly from Reddit not where I would go for a question like this but if I were to ask are the Meta Rayban smart glasses worth it that makes a lot of sense to use the social focus for real user experiences and reviews feature number two is spaces with spaces you can keep multiple threads saved under one topic like having different folders and that's already useful but the best part is you can add custom instructions for each space that will tell it how to respond to every thread you create in that space i have one for YouTube research where I can drop a new tool and get some quick info about it my instructions say what I'll be inputting and how to respond starting with a quick overview key features how it compares to other similar tools what makes it surprising disruptive or unique the hook or title ideas for a YouTube short or full video then some real world reactions when available and the basic tone to respond with i'll start a new thread in this space what was in the new chat GPT updates it gives me one sentence that covers it all then a little deeper on each the new 03 and04 mini updates the expanded memory and image generation basically everything from the past week or two next it gives me a comparison to Gemini this section is usually helpful what makes it surprising or unique chat GPT can now act as a true AI assistant remembering and adapting to you over time it's got some hook and title ideas chat GPT's biggest upgrade ever it remembers everything i mean that's a solid title a little too clickbay though i wouldn't say that was the biggest upgrade ever then after that we've got some reactions and how people are using it now I like this type of response when there's a new update it gives a really broad overview with unique angles and experiences so I can cover a lot of ground really fast to see if there's interesting angles to dive into more for a video and another useful feature of these spaces is you can upload files that it will reference for each new thread that way you don't have to upload the file for each new conversation i'm covering some of the powerful but lesserk known features in this video but I also have a free PDF on how to implement all this provided by HubSpot this is a 5-minute tactical guide with everything you need to leverage Perplexity's research capabilities right away it's an actionable guide there's three power moves you can try immediately like how to generate competitive analysis that would take hours manually it covers all the basics plus some of the features I'm going over then there's five advanced prompts you can copy and paste those are really solid plus there's a 24-hour action plan this is just a super actionable nofluff guide to making Perplexity work for you right away again that is completely free to download using the link in the description and thank you to HubSpot for sponsoring this video now I'll move on to the feature everyone's been talking about deep research mode honestly the hype is warranted this isn't just a longer response it's basically a custom research report i'll ask how does retrieval augmented generation work and what are its limitations now it's starting and we'll go through a series of researching tasks before compiling the report depending on the type of question this can take up to 30 minutes i chose something that would be a lot easier probably just a minute or two here it is it came back with a full breakdown the main overview four key stages seven limitations and failure points of rag systems operational challenges and the conclusion it's all sourced sectioned and fully cited this looks amazing and it will go a lot deeper than this if you ask it to this is a just gigantic timesaver across a ton of different industries having an agentic research model has been a big breakthrough perplexity is not the only one that's implemented it but it does work really well in here you can use deep research for complex topics that deserve a true deep dive rather than just a couple paragraph summary now I'll use that as a leadin to the next feature pages once you've gone deep with a thread or a deep research output like this one Perplexity lets you instantly turn it into a clean sharable web page i'll click these three dots then convert to page now it formats that entire output into something that reads like a mini article with sections headers and citations already built in you can edit this further and customize it how you'd like so I'll add a hero image up top then I can add images for each section it will automatically pop up with something it thinks is a good image but you can change that if you want then you can move stuff around and edit as much as you want here then instead of just a chat transcript I've got something I can reference later drop in a video description or even send to someone who's wanting to learn the topic this doesn't have to be from an existing conversation you had you can come over here by library hit the plus button then create a page from scratch here I'll just use one of their examples for tenant movie explained that could be useful so it's got it all laid out i'll select some images to use and honestly this would probably be very helpful to read after watching that movie i'll publish that and now it's sharable pages are good to use when your thread feels too valuable to just leave in your chat history next up is file uploads which lets you talk to your documents or use them as context instead of just digging through them so having this builtin is really helpful i just finished my first 25K trail race the other day and I'm thinking about signing up for the Speed Goat 50K which is one of the gnarliest races in the US a giant jump from what I just did now to get more info and see how terrible of an idea that really is I'll upload the official guide and regulations PDF to Perplexity and now I can start asking questions what is the total elevation gain in the 50k 11,000 ft that is indeed gnarly and when I hover over the citation it shows that it did source that directly from the document I uploaded i can ask whatever I want here what gear is required how many aid stations are there it gives me straight answers without me having to scroll through 10 pages of PDF plus it's still able to search and find additional information when I need it and since it remembers the context I could keep asking follow-up questions without starting over that was the five features but I've got a bonus round with three more that are worth a quick look if you click your profile in the bottom left you can switch to incognito mode this will create anonymous threads that don't appear in your library and expire after 24 hours you can use that for any sensitive questions or just random one-off questions you know you'll never want to reference again then we've got model switching you're not locked into one model by default Perplexity picks the best one for your query but you can choose any from the list maybe you just want a second opinion or to compare models or some are just better at different things like if you want something that involves creativity or writing Claude is a good choice now there's proarch this digs deeper pulls more sources and gives longer and more nuanced answers you get three of these per day under the free plan 300 per day under the pro plan so this is a good time to mention the other parts of the pricing basically everything I've mentioned in this video can be done under the free plan but you get more under the paid plan on free you get three file uploads per day or one deep research task for a lot of people the free plan is plenty but it all depends on what other tools you're using and what you're using them for a lot of these features do exist in some form across other tools everyone's situation is a little different on what they need and the AI subscriptions can add up fast i've gotten a lot of value from the free and pro plans one more bonus bonus you can do all of this on your phone too the Perplexity mobile app is awesome i use it all the time and if you want to go way more in depth learning AI on Futureedia we have over 20 comprehensive courses on how to incorporate AI into your life and career to get ahead and save time you can get started with a 7-day free trial using the link in the description or check out this video with 13 AI tools that can save you a,000 hours in 2025