Open-Source Apps for Windows
I will cover open-source software that is available on windows. This list goes gradually from software for everyone to software that only fits a particular niche like art. I most definitely can not cover all the open source software. All the software covered is all available on windows, Linux and in most cases mac-os.
Web Apps
Secure email with absolutely no compromises, brought to you by MIT and CERN scientists.
Swiss Based ProtonMail is incorporated in Switzerland and our servers are located in Switzerland. We are outside of US and EU jurisdiction and all user data is protected by strict Swiss privacy laws.
Zero Access Because of our end-to-end encryption, your data is already encrypted by the time it reaches our servers. We have no access to your messages, and since we cannot decrypt them, we cannot share them with third parties.
Backwards Compatible ProtonMail works out of any modern web browser, there is nothing to install. We are also backwards compatible with other email providers so you can continue sending and receiving emails from friends who are not using ProtonMail.
Forever Free We believe privacy is a fundamental human right and should be available for everyone. That's why we offer multi-tiered pricing including a free version that anyone can use. Let's bring privacy back to the people!
Fully Anonymous We do not log IP addresses or require any personal information to sign up. We accept bitcoin and cash payments for paid accounts to ensure even paid account users have complete privacy.
Cross Platform ProtonMail works on all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. It's as simple as visiting our site and logging in. There are no plugins or apps to install - simply use your favorite web browser.
First Tier
LibreOffice is a free and open-source office suite that is compatible with other major office suites, and is available on all operating systems. It is an independently-developed version of the OpenOffice.org suite.
The office suite includes:
LibreOffice - Writer, a word processor with similar functionality and file support to Microsoft Word . It has extensive WYSIWYG word processing capabilities, but can also be used as a basic text editor.
LibreOffice - Calc , a spreadsheet program, similar to Microsoft Office Excel . It has a number of unique features, including a system which automatically defines series of graphs, based on information available to the user.
LibreOffice - Impress , a presentation program resembling Microsoft Powerpoint . Presentations can be exported as SWF files, allowing them to be viewed on any computer with Adobe Flash installed.
LibreOffice - Draw , a vector graphics editor and diagramming tool similar to Microsoft Office Visio . It provides connectors between shapes, which are available in a range of line styles and facilitate building drawings such as flowcharts. It also includes features similar to desktop publishing software such as Scribus and Microsoft Office Publisher .
LibreOffice - Math , an application designed for creating and editing mathematical formulae. LibreOffice - Base , a database management program, similar to Microsoft Office Access .
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.
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...
DeaDBeeF is a lightweight graphical music player created for easy playback of music and management of playlists. It supports major audio codecs and tags, global hotkeys, gapless playback, streaming audio, command line control, and has an 18-band equalizer. For the full list of features, please check the official website.
ImageGlass is a simple picture viewer with which you will be able to display your image collection in a very similar way to the one that Windows provides by default, but with some additional functions. This application will allow you to better manage your pictures thanks to the options it includes and the extension it enables to install for adding more functions and widening its possibilities.
ImageGlass Features
The unique features of ImageGlass are the following:
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ImageGlass works great with GIF, ICO and PNG formats, among others
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Various zoom options: zoom in or zoom out, scale to height, scale to width, lock zoom ratio, etc.
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20 image formats supported, including JPG, JPE, JFIF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, ICO, BMP, DIB, TIF, TIFF, EXIF, WMF, EMF, TGA, PSD, HDR, EXR, SGV, WEBP (non-animated)
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Fast switch between images
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Image frames extraction from GIF files
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Thumbnail images can be shown in the current viewing folder
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Different theme packs available to change the look of the interface
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'Slide Show' viewing functionality
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Conversion can be made in up to 14 different formats
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Possibility of uploading the image being viewed to Facebook
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Multilanguage support, which makes the user able to create its own packs
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Easy installation of new extensions to widen the program's possibilities
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Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail, news and instant messaging client. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox.
It supports POP (storing mail locally on your hard drive so that it can be accessed without an internet connection), and IMAP. It features excellent mail filter capabilities and management.
Thunderbird has strong support for using multiple accounts and identities, including automated signature features.
Chat functionality is built in, so you can enjoy real-time conversation with your contacts, right from your favorite messaging application, with multiple supported networks. Thunderbird makes it easy to search through both past conversations and received emails.
Thunderbird can also function as an RSS/Atom feed reader, and has a large selection of add-ons that extend it with calendar support, PGP support, integration with online services and much more.
Available also as portable app: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable
Thunderbird for Android is known as K-9 Mail
Go ahead, video chat with the whole team. In fact, invite everyone you know. Jitsi Meet is a fully encrypted, 100% open source video conferencing solution that you can use all day, every day, for free — with no account needed.
What else can you do with Jitsi Meet?
- Share your desktop, presentations, and more
- Invite users to a conference via a simple, custom URL
- Edit documents together using Etherpad
- Pick fun meeting URLs for every meeting
- Trade messages and emojis while you video conference, with integrated chat.
Jitsi Meet is packed with premium features. Yep, it’s free — and it’s technologically advanced, too. In fact, Jitsi Meet:
- Sounds better, thanks to HD audio with Opus
- Is anonymous: No need for an account, ever!
- Keeps conversations private with encryption by default (and advanced security settings)
- Is developer-friendly: Modify and customize it to your heart’s content. It’s 100% open source.
Jitsi Meet is the successor of the legacy project Jitsi Desktop
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.
2nd Tier Apps
KeePassXC is a community fork of KeePassX, the cross-platform port of KeePass for Windows. Every feature is cross-platform and tested to give users the same feel on each operating system, including the loved auto-type feature.
The complete database is always encrypted with the AES (alias Rijndael) encryption algorithm using a 256 bit key. KeePassXC uses a database format that is compatible with KeePass Password Safe. Your wallet always works offline and requires no Internet connection.
The source code is published under the terms of the GNU General Public License. KeePassXC is and always will be free as in freedom as well as in beer. Contributions from everyone are welcome.
WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool, inspired by KDirStat .
You can also examine Network Drives very fast.
Language for application AND help files can be set to Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, English, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Russian.
3rd Tier Apps
VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.
Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4, 2.6, 3.x and 4.x), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD.
Virtualbox is available in 28 languages.
LICEcap can capture an area of your desktop and save it directly to .GIF (for viewing in web browsers, etc) or .LCF (see below). LICEcap is an intuitive but flexible application (for Windows and now OSX), that is designed to be lightweight and function with high performance.
Features and options:
Record directly to .GIF or .LCF. Move the screen capture frame while recording. Pause and restart recording, with optional inserted text messages. Global hotkey (shift+space) to toggle pausing while recording Adjustable maximum recording framerate, to allow throttling CPU usage. Basic title frame, with or without text. Record mouse button presses. Display elapsed time in the recording.
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.
Art
GIMP is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, and more.
Krita is a complete creative sketching and painting application with advanced, commercial quality features. It's open-source and available across all major desktop platforms. Krita is free on the official website and paid on Steam and Microsoft Store: the money will support Krita development.
User Interface - An intuitive user interface that stays out of your way. The dockers and panels can be moved and customized for your specific workflow. Once you have your setup, you can save it as your own workspace. You can also create your own shortcuts for commonly used tools.
Pop-up Palette - Quickly pick your color and brush by right-clicking on the canvas.
Brush Stabilizers - Have a shaky hand? Add a stabilizer to your brush to smoothen it out.
Brush Engines - Customize your brushes with 9 unique brush engines.
Wrap-around mode - It is easy to create seamless textures and patterns now. Press the ‘W’ key while painting to toggle wrap-around mode.
Resource Manager - Import brush and texture packs from other artists to expand your tool set.
Layer Management - Krita comes with vector, filter, group, and file layers. Combine, order, and flatten layers to keep organized. Add drop shadows and other simple effects using visual styles.
Full Color Management - Krita supports full color management through LCMS for ICC and OpenColor IO for EXR, allowing you to incorporate Krita into your existing color management pipeline.
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
It supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.
Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.
It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, water simulations, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications, rigid body, fluid, cloth and softbody dynamics, modifier based modeling tools, powerful character animation tools, a node based material and compositing system and Python for embedded scripting.
Blender is Free Software. Free to use for any purpose. Forever.
Kdenlive is an acronym for KDE Non-Linear Video Editor. It's free, and open-source and works on GNU/Linux, Windows and BSD. It's an intuitive and powerful multi-track video editor compatible with latest video technologies. Most of the video processing is done by the MLT Framework, which relies on many other open source projects like FFmpeg, frei0r, movit, ladspa, sox, etc. Notable features:
- Multi-track video editing
- Supports all audio and video formats and codecs that FFmpeg does for both input and encoding, including various HD standards, like HDV, DNxHD, AVCHD, ProRes etc.
- Workspaces for each stage of video production; Logging, Editing, Audio, Effects and Color.
- Configurable interface and shortcuts
- Create 2D titles for your projects
- Many effects and transitions
- Keyframeable effects
- Audio and video scopes
- Proxy editing
- Automatic backup project file
- Timeline preview
- Online resources of render profiles, wipes and title templates accessible directly from the interface.
HandBrake is an open-source, multithreaded video transcoder – it compresses and converts digital media from one format to another. HandBrake can rip encrypted DVDs with libdvdcss (libdvdcss is installed with VLC media player on macOS, or AnyDVD/DVD 43 on Windows).
Supports • Any Blu-ray or DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD, and some .VOB, .m2ts, and .TS files. Without VLC, HandBrake requires media to be unencrypted or already decrypted by third-party programs (i.e. DVD rippers). • Almost any other multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode.
Outputs • File format: MP4 and MKV • Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora • Audio: AAC, CoreAudio AAC (macOS Only), MP3, or Vorbis. AC-3 pass-through, DTS pass-through (MKV only)
Other features • Support of chapter selections • Support of subtitles • Integrated bitrate calculator • Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling • Live Video Preview
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. You can use Audacity to record live audio, convert tapes and records, edit sound files, change the speed or pitch of a recording and much more.
A free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite. Firefox is highly extensible, with thousands of third-party add-ons available.
Firefox version 60+ (Quantum) is presently faster than Google Chrome and use less memory than Chrome. Compare to previous versions of Firefox, the Quantum version is twice as fast, promote parallelism, and has more intuitive user interface.
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.
