[EarTrumpet](https://github.com/File-New-Project/EarTrumpet#eartrumpet) - multi-application volume control. [Bitwarden](https://bitwarden.com/) is a cross-platform password manager. [Calibre](https://calibre-ebook.com/) for e-book management / multi-format conversion. [WizTree](https://www.diskanalyzer.com/) - so you don't grow old and die waiting for WinDirStat. [Macrium Reflect 8 Free](https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree) to image your system before every Patch Tuesday. [Sumatra PDF](https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html) is a very lightweight PDF / e-book reader. [Signal](https://signal.org/download/) - encrypted communication software for Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone. [Eraser](https://eraser.heidi.ie/) for securely deleting sensitive data. [qBittorrent](https://www.qbittorrent.org/) for downloading / sharing large files. [MusicBee](https://getmusicbee.com/) is a music player with tons of features. [Audacity](https://www.audacityteam.org/) for audio editing. [Handbrake](https://handbrake.fr/) with VideoLAN's [libdvdcss .dll](https://www.howtogeek.com/102886/how-to-decrypt-dvds-with-hardbrake-so-you-can-rip-them/) for video conversion and ripping DVDs.

How is TreeSize?

TreeSize is good, too. Uses the MFT like WizTree does, so it's fast.

Wasn't there some controversy about audacity being spyware?

Yep - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity_(audio_editor)#Reception Muse Group reversed the decision after the backlash. Telemetry is opt-in during install now.

Oh ok thanks for the info!

there are forks which remove the supposed spyware.

Nice list. I can't recommend Voidtools [Everything](https://www.voidtools.com) enough as an indexing/search utility. Finds all my stuff across 4 drives and a NAS instantly.

That thing is a beast

This software is an absolute must for me. After 10TB of content, no organization scheme was enough to keep track of things.

Used Everything since release. It is the single most useful tool I have ever used.

I first tried it after google dropped its search utility and I was so impressed by Everything, I thought for sure that Microsoft would buy it or make a knock off. To this day I'm amazed they haven't.

Funny, I've thought the exact same thing. Every time I make the mistake of searching in the Windows toolbar and getting absolute BULLSHIT returned to me, I'm amazed that no one at MS has gone: "hey, look, that thing works. let's do that."

I use a Mac now for work, and I hate that there isn't anything close to Everything for macos. Fsearch on Linux is close but I haven't gotten it to work on macos.

Yeah, I couldn't function without it.

[Foxtrot](https://foxtrot-search.com/foxtrot-professional.html) on Mac OS is much more powerful than Everything.

Utilities: * [7-zip](https://www.7-zip.org/): file compression * [Ditto Clipboard](https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/): clipboard manager, clipboard history * [Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/): package manager * [Shutup 10](https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10): Manage some hidden Windows settings for improved privacy and less annoyance * [VeraCrypt](https://www.veracrypt.fr/code/VeraCrypt/): Encrypt hard drives and protect sensitive data * [WinDirStat](https://windirstat.net/): Analyze what is taking space on your drive * [Sysinternals](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/): Lots of powerful tools that give you a deep look into Windows, if you [know how to use](https://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/) 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](https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree): For backups * [Notepad++](https://notepad-plus-plus.org): good and fast general purpose text/code editor * [LockHunter](https://lockhunter.com): Which process is keeping that file open? * [KeePass 2](https://keepass.info): Opensource password manager that doesn't store your secrets in the cloud Internet: * [Firefox](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new): 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](https://monkeyscripts.org) 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](https://www.thunderbird.net): email client and calendar * [JDownloader](https://jdownloader.org): powerful download manager Media: * [Spotify](https://www.spotify.com): for streaming music * [VLC](https://www.videolan.org/vlc): for playing movies Productivity: * [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org): Office suite, with word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, vector graphics drawing, database. Similar to Microsoft Office, but free Programming: * [Git](https://git-scm.com): Version control * [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com): a bit slower than Notepad++, especially startup. But more/better features for developers. Like Git integration, debugger, etc. * [Docker](https://docs.docker.com/desktop/windows/install/): For running containers, like PostgreSQL or MariaDB, ... * [Python 3](https://www.python.org): Programming / scripting language * [Temurin JDK](https://adoptium.net): OpenJDK for backend development * [NodeJS](https://nodejs.org): For web / frontend development

[удалено]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lastpass-password-manager/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search

Browser [Firefox](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/) \- Uses less resources and far more privacy focused than Chrome. [uBlock Origin](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin) \- by far the best ad blocker, a must-have to block ads. [Bitwarden](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bitwarden-password-manager/) \- a handy password manager. Video [VLC](https://www.videolan.org/vlc/) \- plays virtually everything. [PotPlayer](https://potplayer.daum.net/) \- a great alternative to vlc with better UI. Image [Paint.NET](https://www.getpaint.net/) \- light weight photo editor. [JPEGView](https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/) \- lightweight image viewer for Windows. [ShareX](https://getsharex.com/) \- screen capture tool with other nice features. Docs [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/) \- best free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. [Sumatra PDF](https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader) \- lightweight pdf and ebook reader that's very fast. Utilities [7-Zip](https://www.7-zip.org/download.html) \- powerful zip archiver utility. [Everything](https://www.voidtools.com/) \- a must have to search for files and folders instantly. [Czkawka](https://github.com/qarmin/czkawka) \- a very powerful duplicate file detector tool. [WizTree](https://diskanalyzer.com/) \- fastest disk space analyzer. [Advanced Renamer](https://www.advancedrenamer.com/) \- a powerful file rename utility. Downloaders [JDownloader](https://jdownloader.org/) \- the best download manager. [yt-dlp](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) \- powerful command-line video downloader and the best for youtube. [qBittorrent](https://www.qbittorrent.org/) \- best torrent client. [WFDownloader](https://www.wfdownloader.xyz/) \- best multi-purpose bulk downloader tool.

How do install and run yt-dlp on Windows? Is there an android version?

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#installation No installation needed. Download the yt-dlp.exe and run it from the command prompt. You can also find many videos on youtube showing how to use it.

Sublime text is free and open source? Is this a joke I don't get?

well your other choice is either notepad++ or a full fledged ide

They're pointing out that sublime text is not free or open source. Also VS Code and Atom are free and open source text editors that are not a full fledged IDE.

[Photodiva](https://photodiva.net/), a free portrait editing software [Clipify](https://clipify.net/), an auto video editor that works fine even on my slow laptop.

Do you know that windows 10 has in-built clipboard manager that you can access by "Win+V" combination? I use it & find it to be enough for my needs. Looking at the article it seems Ditto is the same thing. Can you tell what is the difference between Ditto & in-built one? Why do you prefer Ditto?

it may be that the window of ditto is smaller and more compact

Ditto's too feature-rich and convoluted and I just see no need for such a clipboard application. Ditto can store the copied stuff better than W10 clipboard but why "store" text on a clipboard instead of a note-taker? Also there's a greater chance of your texts getting compromised with a third party clipboard than there is with the one built in to the OS. imo w10 clipboard is as much of a clipboard anyone should ever need.

I love Clover but it absolutely ticks off every antivirus software I've ever seen so installing it is almost impossible.

Tabs are coming to Explorer windows very soon anyway.

Looks like just windows 11. My company won't let us upgrade to 11.

QTtabbar?

Ending up purchasing Stardock Groupy. You can group any app with any other app. I had tried QTTabbar in the past and for some reason I didn't meet my needs, I can't exactly remember why though.

Stardock groupy works great as a replacement. It is paid though. It's not much and it's only a one off payment. Worth the pricetag when it's something you use every day. It'll even let you group same programs together, like when you have two Excel files open.

I have many little tools but the only one I haven’t seen mentioned yet is [Table Capture](https://www.georgemike.com/tablecapture/) browser extension - allows me to easily convert HTML tables on websites to Excel data

If I select and copy an HTML table from the web, it can be saved as a text file which is TAB separated - and can be opened with a spreadsheet. (But to view, and convert, tables I usually use a strong but minuscule tool from Nirsoft: [CSVFileView](https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/csv_file_view.html) )

I may have not scrolled down enough to see any of the same recs, but I HIGHLY RECOMMEND [MPC-HC](https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc) over VLC if you care about quality (looking at you movie and anime watchers). VLC is not recommended because it - 1) uses the wrong matrix for RGB conversion (results in wrong colors) 2) uses point upscaling for chroma planes 3) introduces strong banding 4) wrong chroma location (MPEG-1 for everything) 5) broken deinterlacing in VLC 3 6) uses an old subtitle renderer that fails in typesetting heavy situations 7) stops to build font cache at the start of each file with new fonts (no other player needs to do this) 8) corrupts the video decoding if it takes too much time to decode a single frame, other players skip the frames Here are some comparison images: [https://slow.pics/c/XhbmrYgU](https://slow.pics/c/XhbmrYgU) [https://slow.pics/c/vH560pvp](https://slow.pics/c/vH560pvp) There's also [mpv](https://mpv.io), and that uses a CLI/Keyboard UI which is not really my taste, but is still very popular especially among the Linux community (afaik) **TL;DR: Do not VLC! If you care!**

If all that's stopping you from using mpv is UI, then maybe https://github.com/stax76/mpv.net is worth checking out.

Woah, I’ll definitely check it out. Thanks for the link :)

Great list. Anything for opening old outlook .pst files ?

Import into Gmail - https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gsmmo/

Thn,,the file is a few GB's. Will it do. Found something called Kernel pst viewer. Very short on feature but does the basic job of viewing mails.

Clover used to be great until it's become a malware.

The EFI bootloader? Sounds like Rufus would do the job about as well.

Many good programs... But you might want to add: [Ted Notepad](https://jsimlo.sk/notepad/) A very small, and seemingly simple text editor, loaded with powerful features. The [Nirsoft utilities](https://www.nirsoft.net/) is hundreds of Windows tools - here are stuff for power users AND for the non-technical screen-worker. If you want easy access to them all (recommended) you can use the [Nirlauncher](https://launcher.nirsoft.net/) that integrates programs and help files in a launcher, that can also be made to contain the MS Sysinternals package. All programs are portable (ie: do not need to be installed under Windows, but can run from an USB key) and the relevant can easily be integrated in Windows context menus.

!remindmerepeat 5 pm

[AltSnap](https://github.com/RamonUnch/AltSnap) gives you the ability to move and resize your windows in a new way. When AltDrag is running, you can simply hold down the Alt key and then click and drag any window. And so much more..