Windows
I use these software on my Windows 10 Systems
Boot Media
balenaEtcher is a free and open-source image burner with support for Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux. It makes USB and SD card image burning as simple and fast as possible.
FEATURES
- Validated Burning - No more writing images on corrupted cards and wondering why your device isn't booting.
- Hard Drive Friendly - Makes drive selection obvious to avoid wiping your entire hard-drive
- Beautiful Interface - Who said burning SD cards has to be an eyesore.
- Open Source - Made with JS, HTML, node.js and Electron. Dive in and contribute!
- Cross Platform - Works for everyone, no more complicated install instructions.
Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc.
Features:
- Formats USB memory sticks to FAT/FAT32/NTFS/exFAT/UDF/ReFS
- Creates bootable USB drive from a wide range of ISOs
- Creates MS-DOS/FreeDOS bootable USB memory sticks, with no external files required
- Creates BIOS or UEFI bootable drives
- Checks for bad blocks
- Modern UI, with UAC elevation for Windows Vista and later
- Fully Open Source (GPL v3)
It can be be especially useful for cases where:
- you need to flash a BIOS or other firmware from DOS
- you need to install an Operating System or run a Live CD from USB
- you need to work on a system that doesn't have an OS installed
- you want to run a DOS low-level utility
Despite its small size, Rufus provides you with everything you need!
The multi-monitor display extension app, spacedesk lets you use other devices and computers on your LAN (Local Area Network) as monitors for your Windows desktop.
This project is a fork of the work of Jays2Kings: DS4Windows
DS4Windows is an extract anywhere program that allows you to get the best DualShock 4 experience on your PC. By emulating an Xbox 360 controller, many more games are accessible. Other input controllers are also supported including the DualSense, Switch Pro, and JoyCon controllers (first party hardware only).
SoundSwitch makes it easier to switch playback devices (sound cards).
Normally, to switch a Playback device you need to right click the sound icon in the bottom right corner of your screen (system tray), choose "Playback devices" and then change the default playback device. Every time you want to switch.
With SoundSwitch you just configure once between which Playback devices you want to toggle and then you can press Ctrl+Alt+F11 to toggle automatically! (Or a different key combination if you want)
Text Files
Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.
Based on the powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.
Advantages to using Notepad Replacer
Won't replace ANY system files, or change ANY file permissions Won't trigger Windows File Protection warnings (WFP) Won't run all the time, won't take up any system resources in the background Doesn't require special support by the alternative application Just un-install Notepad Replacer to revert back to the default Windows Notepad
How does this work?
Just download and run the Notepad Replacer setup file (below) Follow the installation prompts, and browse to your replacement application Done! If you ever want to revert back to the default Windows Notepad, just un-install Notepad Replacer. Easy!
Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features.
Sublime Text may be downloaded and used for free without an expiration time limit, however a prompt appears occassionally to "ask to" purchase a license
Internet & Network
Brave Web Browser is a fast, free, secure web browser with a built-in ad blocker*, tracking and security protection, and optimized data and battery experience.
*What is Brave Ad Replacement?
Brave’s goal is to speed up the web, stop bad ads and pay publishers. One of the ways we plan to accomplish this is with ad replacements. We will also invite users to fund their wallets and to use those funds to pay the publishers of their favorite websites.
Deluge is a full-featured BitTorrent client for Linux, Unix and Windows. It is written in python, uses libtorrent (rasterbar) at its core and GTK for the main user interface along with web and console interfaces for advanced client/server facility.
Deluge features a rich plugin collection; in fact, most of Deluge's functionality is available in the form of plugins.
Deluge was created with the intention of being lightweight and unobtrusive. It is our belief that downloading shouldn't be the primary task on your computer and therefore shouldn't monopolize system resources.
Deluge will work just fine across many desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, XFCE and others.
Are you a power-user with 5 minutes to spare? Do you want a faster internet experience?
Try out namebench. It hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use. namebench runs a fair and thorough benchmark using your web browser history, tcpdump output, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation. namebench is completely free and does not modify your system in any way. This project began as a 20% project at Google.
namebench runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and UNIX, and is available with a graphical user interface as well as a command-line interface.
Storage Devices
Manage all your Disks, Drives & Partitions
AOMEI Partition Assistant is a disk partition management software which has earned good reputation among worldwide users. It comes with so many powerful features that you can completely control your hard disk and partition. For example, "Extend Partition Wizard" enables you to increase partition size to completely solve low disk space problem, or you can flexibly manage disk space with "Resize Partition", "Merge Partitions", "Spilt Partition" and "Copy Partition". AOMEI Partition Assistant embeds sector-level data protection technology. Strictly tested by our R & D team, it enables you to realize more safely partitioning operations as you expected. No matter whether your disk style is MBR or GPT and no matter whether your disk is small or larger than 2TB, our product is able to help you solve various problem of your disk partition.
You could easily resize/move partition, split partition, merge partitions, allocate free space, etc. Cannot read, shrink or resize exFAT-partitions.
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All-in-one Disk Partition Manager: MiniTool Partition Wizard aims to maximize disk performance. It helps create/resize/format partition flexibly, convert disk between MBR and GPT disks, convert partition between NTFS and FAT32, and convert dynamic disk to basic without data loss in a few clicks.
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Data Recovery: MiniTool partition manager software offers two perfect solutions for data recovery. Partition Recovery Wizard can quickly find and recover the lost partitions while Data Recovery feature just hit the score when you are struggling to recover deleted files and retrieve lost data from damaged, formatted, and inaccessible drives.
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Disk Clone Tool: Disk clone or system migration is most frequently used to back up and upgrade hard drive. Disk cloning works perfectly when you are forced to make an instant backup. System migration returns you to act on the new disk in a while. No need to spend hours reinstalling operating system and applications.
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Disk Diagnostic: As comprehensive disk check master, MiniTool Partition Wizard can measure disk read/write speed, analyze disk usage on computer, verifies the file system integrity of a volume and fixes logical file system errors, and quickly detect if there are bad sectors on the drive.
With the Free Edition, home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful yet free partition manager to manage their hard disk. Functions include: Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition, Partition Recovery.
NOTE: Free Edition cannot resize dynamic partitions.
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Adjust the system to the SSD SSD Fresh fits your Windows system to the use of an SSD.
Avoid write access SSD Fresh reduces the number of read and write operations and thus increases the lifetime of your drive.
Increase performance By disabling unnecessary services also the system performance is increased.
LIMITATIONS IN THE FREE VERSION Contribution request screens, no background watcher
The SD Memory Card Formatter formats SD Memory Card, SDHC Memory Card and SDXC Memory Card (respectively SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards) complying with the SD File System Specification created by the SD Association (SDA).
It is strongly recommended to use the SD Memory Card Formatter to format SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards rather than using formatting tools provided with individual operating systems. In general, formatting tools provided with operating systems can format various storage media including SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards, but it may not be optimized for SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards and it may result in lower performance.
The Formatter offers:
Data portability of SD memory cards among SD host products like computers, digital still cameras, digital video camcorders, broadcast recorders, set top boxes, drive recorders, smartphones, drones and many other devices. Formatting within FAT parameters optimized for flash memories in SD memory cards for better performance and endurance.
SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards have a “Protected Area” for SD Card security purposes. The SD Memory Card Formatter does not format the protected area in the SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards. The protected area shall be formatted by an appropriate PC application or SD host devices that provide SD security function.
The SD Memory Card Formatter doesn't support SD/SDHC/SDXC Card encrypted by the “BitLocker To Go" functionality of Windows. Please format the SD/SDHC/SDXC Card after it has been unlocked.
Data Files
7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio.
The main features of 7-Zip
High compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression Supported formats: Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM Unpacking only: AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z. For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats Self-extracting capability for 7z format Integration with Windows Shell Powerful File Manager Powerful command line version Plugin for FAR Manager Localizations for 87 languages
7-Zip works in Windows 10 / 8 / 7 / Vista / XP / 2012 / 2008 / 2003 / 2000 / NT. There is a port of the command line version to Linux/Unix and macOS.
BleachBit deletes unnecessary files to free valuable disk space, maintain privacy, and remove junk.
Rid your system of old clutter including cache, cookies, Internet history, localizations, logs, temporary files, and broken shortcuts.
Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean Adobe Acrobat Reader, APT, Bash, Beagle, Chromium, Epiphany, Mozilla Firefox, Flash, GIMP, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Internet Explorer, Java, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Opera, RealPlayer, Safari, Second Life viewer, Skype, VIM, XChat, Yum, and more.
BleachBit has never bundled any junk like browser toolbars.
FastCopy is the fastest copy, delete, & sync software on Windows. It uses modern checksum verification to ensure copy accuracy and data integrity. It handles long Unicode path names over MAX_PATH (260 bytes), and automatically optimizes copy mode operations between the same storage device, or different storage devices.
In Diff HDD mode, reading and writing are multithreaded in parallel. Same HDD mode uses a larger read buffer so write operations will not cause slow disk thrashing. Because FastCopy doesn't use the OS cache, other applications and processes remain fast, and speed approaches the limit of the storage device. High performance is obtained from using the Win32 API instead of MFC.
FastCopy has an Include/Exclude filter that allows you to customize large file operations, and it has a job manager. FastCopy can automatically run only one operation at a time, to avoid disk thrash, and achieve the highest possible speed. FastCopy is freeware.
dupeGuru is a free and open source tool to find duplicate files on your computer. It can scan either filenames or contents. The filename scan features a fuzzy matching algorithm that can find duplicate filenames even when they are not exactly the same. dupeGuru runs on Mac OS X, Linux, & Windows.
FileBot makes organizing your movies and TV shows a breeze! We'll automatically match your files with information from various online databases. How you want your media files to be named and organized is completely up to you. Our groovy format engine supports pretty much anything!
- Drag movie or episode files into the "Original Files" list area
- Right-click "New Names" list area and select your preferred datasource
- Hit "Rename"!
Fetching subtitles is just as easy, just drop it in! Besides automatic lookup you'll also be able to manually search and download subtitles, preview subtitles and fix encoding problems (e.g. force UTF-8).
- Drag your movie or episode files onto the top-right drop area
- Hit "Download"!
Use FileBot from the command-line! There is a simple CLI for core tasks like renaming media files and fetching subtitles as well as checking or creating SFV files. On top of that you can use our scripting engine to define more complex automated processing. There's already shared scripts for various tasks that you can just run right away or further customize to your needs.
- Watch media folders and organize new files automatically
- Extract files from multi-volume rar archives
- Fetch artwork and create nfo files for TV shows or movies
- Export your media files including media info as CSV text file
- Transfer files from and to any server via FTP/SCP/SFTP and run commands via SSH
- Update your Kodi or Plex library ... and more!
Setting up a fully automated media center – extract archives, organize tv shows and movies, download subtitles, fetch artwork and metadata, update Kodi – with FileBot it's that easy!
Audio & Music
4k Video Downloader allows to download video, audio, subtitles, channels and playlists from YouTube in high quality and to save it on your computer. This program is free for downloading videos and playlists of no more than 25 videos. This limitation may be removed by paying a license fee.
AIMP is powerful free audio player for Windows OS that supports for local files, NAS, clouds, and podcasts. Additionally, it includes powerful tools to operate with audio files.
What started out as a BPM detection tool for DJs, runners and dancers, has become one of the finest iTunes™ library management tools around.
beaTunes' powerful inspection feature lets you clean up your iTunes track data in a way unrivaled by any other software on the market today. Easily find typos or different spellings of artists' names, automatically fill in the album artist names, and much more. No more R.E.M. and REM in your iPod's artist list! No more albums hidden in the compilations section.
beaTunes can even help you to find the titles of tracks that have no artist or title associated with them.
And once you have a clean collection, the built-in playlist generator works even better.
Here are some more examples of what you can do with beaTunes:
- Automatically determine BPM (beats per minute) and store the result in iTunes
- Automatically detect the tonal key of your songs
- Look up track metadata using acoustic fingerprints
- Inspect and fix your music library (typos, wrong genre, wrong sortname, missing file a.k.a the iTunes exclamation mark problem, etc.)
- Create matchlists, i.e. playlists based on one or more sample songs
- Import lyrics and determine their language automatically
- Sort existing playlists so that matching songs succeed each other
- Browse songs from your music collection that match the currently selected song
- Discover albums that aren't in your music collection, but would complement it
- Keep up to date through Amazon™ album charts
- Categorize songs by their sound color *Automatically set start and end times of songs based on their volume
- Create blog entries on blogger.com with your favorite playlist or songs
- Add del.icio.us like tags to your songs
- Manually determine BPM and store the result in iTunes
Breakaway Audio Enhancer dramatically improves the quality of the listening experience by digitally remastering audio in real-time with the same technology used by the pros in the music and broadcast business. Any media player playlist can sound like a professionally produced CD with automatic adjustment of volume dynamics and spectral balancing.
EarTrumpet is a powerful volume control app for Windows
Features • Visualize audio with multi-channel aware peaking • Standalone volume mixer • Move apps between playback devices • Default playback device management • Automatic updates via the Microsoft Store • Support for light/dark mode and all accent colors • Configurable hotkeys • Modern context menus • Growing multilingual support
Supported operating systems: Windows 10 and Windows 11
Equalizer APO is a parametric / graphic equalizer for Windows. It is implemented as an Audio Processing Object (APO) for the system effect infrastructure introduced with Windows Vista.
Features:
- virtually unlimited number of filters
- works on any number of channels
- very low latency, which makes it suited for interactive applications
- low CPU usage
- modular graphical user interface
Requirements:
- Windows Vista or later (currently only Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 have been tested)
- Sound card driver must support APOs (this includes most onboard sound drivers)
- The application must not bypass the system effect infrastructure (APIs like ASIO or WASAPI exclusive mode can not be used)
REW is free room acoustics analysis software for measuring and analysing room and loudspeaker responses. The audio analysis features of REW help you optimise the acoustics of your listening room, studio or home theater and find the best locations for your speakers, subwoofers and listening position. It includes tools for generating audio test signals; measuring SPL and impedance; measuring frequency and impulse responses; measuring distortion; generating phase, group delay and spectral decay plots, waterfalls, spectrograms and energy-time curves; generating real time analyser (RTA) plots; calculating reverberation times; calculating Thiele-Small parameters; determining the frequencies and decay times of modal resonances; displaying equaliser responses and automatically adjusting the settings of parametric equalisers to counter the effects of room modes and adjust responses to match a target curve.
Video & TV
MPV is an audio and movie player based on MPlayer and mplayer2. It supports a wide variety of video file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types. It shares some features with the former projects while introducing many more.
- Streamlined CLI options MPlayer's options parser was improved to behave more like other CLI programs, and many option names and semantics were reworked to make them more intuitive and memorable.
- On Screen Controller While mpv has no official GUI, it has a small controller that is triggered by mouse movement.
- High quality video output mpv has an OpenGL based video output that is capable of many features loved by videophiles, such as video scaling with popular high quality algorithms, color management, frame timing, interpolation, and more.
- GPU video decoding mpv leverages the FFmpeg hwaccel APIs to support VDPAU, VAAPI, DXVA2, VDA and VideoToolbox video decoding acceleration.
- Embeddable A straightforward C API was designed from the ground up to make mpv usable as a library and facilitate easy integration into other applications.
Netflix is the world’s leading subscription service for watching TV episodes and movies on your phone.
Besides offering a popular DVD rental-by-mail service, Netflix allows you to stream thousands of movies and TV shows to your computer. Watch movies instantly from your PC (with Microsoft Silverlight), mobile device, or straight on your TV.
No commercials. No hidden fees. Try one month free. You can cancel anytime.
You can also download some shows and movies to mobile devices for offline viewing. The feature is included in all plans and available worldwide, but Android devices must be able to stream Netflix in HD to select video quality.
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
Features
Simple, fast and powerful media player. Plays everything: Files, Discs, Webcams, Devices and Streams.
Plays most codecs with no codec packs needed: MPEG-2, DivX, H.264, MKV, WebM, WMV, MP3...
With Zattoo TV streaming you can watch TV live and on demand simply over the internet on your TV device. No binding contract, no tangled cables, always set to receive. All you need is an internet connection and a web-enabled device, such as Samsung Smart TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, streaming player or Xbox One. Your German, Swiss, or Austrian account also lets you watch TV on the go with the apps for iOS, Android and Windows. Zattoo is only available for users registered in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
