blog/windows-free-apps

[GorvGoyl]

Discussion related to the article:
Title: Megalist of free & open-source apps I use on Windows
URL: https://gourav.ioblog/windows-free-apps

[GorvGoyl]

some more tools I collected from the Internet but haven't tried myself:

EarTrumpet - multi-application volume control.

Bitwarden is a cross-platform password manager.

Calibre for e-book management / multi-format conversion.

WizTree - so you don't grow old and die waiting for WinDirStat.

Macrium Reflect 8 Free to image your system before every Patch Tuesday.

Sumatra PDF is a very lightweight PDF / e-book reader.

Signal - encrypted communication software for Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone.

Eraser for securely deleting sensitive data.

qBittorrent for downloading / sharing large files.

MusicBee is a music player with tons of features.

Audacity for audio editing.

Handbrake with VideoLAN's libdvdcss .dll for video conversion and ripping DVDs.

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Utilities:

7-zip: file compression

Ditto Clipboard: clipboard manager, clipboard history

Chocolatey: package manager

Shutup 10: Manage some hidden Windows settings for improved privacy and less annoyance

VeraCrypt: Encrypt hard drives and protect sensitive data

WinDirStat: Analyze what is taking space on your drive

Sysinternals: Lots of powerful tools that give you a deep look into Windows, if you know how to use them

ProcessExplorer: Task manager on steroids

ProcessMonitor: Record what the processes are doing (file access, registry access, etc)

TcpView: Monitor network connections by process

Autoruns: Control what gets run automatically at startup / login

a lot more ...

Macrium Reflect: For backups

Notepad++: good and fast general purpose text/code editor

LockHunter: Which process is keeping that file open?

KeePass 2: Opensource password manager that doesn't store your secrets in the cloud

Internet:

Firefox: better privacy, less resource hungry, more customizable than the competition. I use it with the following add-ons:

uBlock Origin: Powerful ad blocker for Firefox

KeePassHttp-Connector: Directly read passwords from KeePass. Makes login to websites extremely easy

h264ify: Makes FF prefer h264 codec, because better hardware support (= less CPU load) when watching movies

Greasemonkey: run custom scripts when visiting certain websites

Multi-Account containers: log-in to the same website with different accounts at the same time. Isolate sites from each other for improved privacy

Dict: dictionary for English <--> German, English <--> Italian, English <--> Spanish and some more

a few more, but too specific to mention each separately

Thunderbird: email client and calendar

JDownloader: powerful download manager

Media:

Spotify: for streaming music

VLC: for playing movies

Productivity:

LibreOffice: Office suite, with word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, vector graphics drawing, database. Similar to Microsoft Office, but free

Programming:

Git: Version control

Visual Studio Code: a bit slower than Notepad++, especially startup. But more/better features for developers. Like Git integration, debugger, etc.

Docker: For running containers, like PostgreSQL or MariaDB, ...

Python 3: Programming / scripting language

Temurin JDK: OpenJDK for backend development

NodeJS: For web / frontend development

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Browser

Firefox - Uses less resources and far more privacy focused than Chrome.

uBlock Origin - by far the best ad blocker, a must-have to block ads.

Bitwarden - a handy password manager.

Video

VLC - plays virtually everything.

PotPlayer - a great alternative to vlc with better UI.

Image

Paint.NET - light weight photo editor.

JPEGView - lightweight image viewer for Windows.
ShareX - screen capture tool with other nice features.

Docs

LibreOffice - best free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Office.

Sumatra PDF - lightweight pdf and ebook reader that's very fast.

Utilities

7-Zip - powerful zip archiver utility.

Everything - a must have to search for files and folders instantly.

Czkawka - a very powerful duplicate file detector tool.

WizTree - fastest disk space analyzer.

Advanced Renamer - a powerful file rename utility.

Downloaders

JDownloader - the best download manager.

yt-dlp - powerful command-line video downloader and the best for youtube.

qBittorrent - best torrent client.

WFDownloader - best multi-purpose bulk downloader tool.

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Photodiva, a free portrait editing software

Clipify, an auto video editor that works fine even on my slow laptop.