Headphones. I don't wanna listen to your tik toks on a bus.

Since we're on Lemmy, USB jump drive so they can reinstall a new distro of Linux every ~3 months

Keyboard. It’s got hotkeys for the most used characters. It’s so much faster than manually drawing each character in Paint.

A good chair. I know it's not technically a gadget but if you're spending half of your day on the computer you should spend on a good chair with proper lumbar support. Your back will thank you.

External hard drive big enough to hold more than the entire memory of the computer. Keep everything you find valuable at least, or better yet back up the entire computer on there and update it regularly. Leave it unplugged from the computer between updates.

In other words, an offline backup of everything on your main computer.

A mouse. Just any mouse. There are so many trackpad warriors out there (primarily Apple users) that complain they're being handicapped but they don't just go for the easy solution.

I've even seen some idiots stubbornly trying to do CAD work with a trackpad, and struggling in the process.

Get a fucking mouse.

A good mouse and keyboard are probably a good start.

Get a multi port USB charger. I have some from Anker that have 2 usb-c ports and 2 usb-a ports. Can charge everything from my laptop to all my gadgets.

You can't have enough usb chargers.

A mouse with programmable keys on the side. It's so convenient combining control keys with mouse movements in one hand.

Monitor arms and/or a standing desk. Monitor arms free up so much space on your desk and having a standing desk is just good for physical health especially if you work from home.

While I guess not technically a gadget, a nice footrest is surprisingly comfortable when sitting at the computer a while

A good pair of pants.

A small screen (3-4") phone
Best way to kick the habit of spending every free minute looking at the screen, but still perfectly functional for a wide variety of tasks, unlike a dumbphone.

YubiKey

if you draw or photoshop, a wacom screen is a life changer. not an ipad pro or surface, a 20"+ wacom cintiq on a solid desk is still light years beyond anything else out there. also, if you edit video, a usb shuttle wheel with mapable hot buttons makes cutting much faster than click and drag. really good speakers are important. lastly, get the best chair (with a headrest!) you can afford.

If you are a pc enthusiast I'm going to say you need a sensor panel. I built one myself, 7" lcd display and driver board costs less then 30€ and the result is incredible. I always look at it for any sort of reason it has temperatures, FPS, cpu/gpu/ram usage, network bandwidth.. I always know what's going on!

One of these, the world's most sophisticated form of protection.

Refrigerator

I used a Kinesis Freestyle 2 split keyboard for my software dev work, and it eliminated the ulnar neuropathy I was experiencing in about a month.

Appropriate game controllers for what you play. Gamepads, arcade sticks, racing wheels and flight sticks all have their uses. Mouse and keyboard isn't always the best control scheme and it's annoying to see steam reviews where people complain about that.

Nas systems like Synology, u can store photos, files, or anything without public cloud services.

Anything you interact with on a daily basis. Keyboard, mouse, desk, monitor... If you're going to be spending a couple hours a day at it why not treat yourself?

A 4k monitor. It's like making your desk 4 times bigger.

Large desk mat comfy chair good keyboard wrist rest decent 1440 monitor

Ultrawide monitor, especially for gaming.