windows recommended software
An efficient blocker add-on for various browsers. Fast, potent, and lean.
uBlock Origin is NOT an "ad blocker": it is a wide-spectrum blocker -- which happens to be able to function as a mere "ad blocker". The default behavior of uBlock Origin when newly installed is to block ads, trackers and malware sites -- through EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe’s ad/tracking/malware servers, Online Malicious URL Blocklist, and uBlock Origin's own filter lists.
diagrams.net (previously draw.io) is a free online diagram drawing application for workflow, BPM, org charts, UML, ER, network diagrams. No login or registration are required and features include the ability to save locally (including SVG), a range of stencils, .vsdx, Lucidchart and Gliffy import and real time diagram sharing.
AudioMass lets you record, or use your existing audio tracks, and modify them by trimming, cutting, pasting or applying a plethora of effects, from compression and paragraphic equalizers to reverb, delay and distortion fx. AudioMass also supports more than 20 hotkeys combinations and a dynamic responsive interface to ensure ease of use and that your producivity remains high. it is written solely in plain old-school javascript, weights approximately 65kb and has no backend or framework dependencies.
It also has very good browser and device support.
FEATURES Loading Audio, navigating the waveform, zoom and pan Visualization of frequency levels Peak and distortion signaling Cutting/Pasting/Trimming parts of the audio Inverting and Reversing Audio Exporting to mp3 Modifying volume levels Fade In/Out Compressor Normalization Reverb Delay Distortion Pitch Shift Keeps track of states so you can undo mistakes Offline support
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.
CPU-Z is a freeware system profiler (system monitor) application for Microsoft Windows (for all versions from 95 on) that detects the central processing unit, RAM, motherboard chipset, and other hardware features of a modern personal computer, and presents the information in one window. CPU-Z is more in-depth in some areas than the features that Windows XP provides to identify various hardware components, and is thus needed to identify certain components without opening the case, especially the core revision and RAM clock rate.
youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube and more than 1000 sites. It requires the Python interpreter and is therefore platform-independent.
It augmentable with front-ends such as Youtube-DLG. It can be integrated in other programs and so be used to watch online videos in local applications such as MPV.
The GitHub repository was shut down in October 2020. It was restored the following November. Meanwhile, youtube-dl was forked to youtube-dlc (a.k.a yt-dlc) during this time. The development of youtube-dlc was soon discontinued. But further youtube-dlc forked to yt-dlp.
The development of youtube-dl began in 2006 by rg3. rg3 withdrew in 2011 and the lead developer has changed.
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
MobaXterm is an enhanced terminal app that brings the advanced features of a Unix-like command-line to Windows. It takes the power of Cygwin and wraps it in a sleek, visual interface that's super easy to use, lightweight and portable. MobaXterm bundles an X11 server, SSH client and other crucial network tools such as FTP, VNC, RDP, telnet and rlogin, all in a single executable file.
KEY FEATURES:
Fully-configured X server based on Xorg. Tabbed terminal with anti-aliased fonts and macro support. Easy DISPLAY export from any remote host. X11-Forwarding capability in OpenSSH. Cygwin-based Unix/Linux commands such as rsync, wget, sed, awk, grep, cd, ls, cat and cp. Session manager with all multiple network clients: RDP, VNC, SSH, telnet, rsh, FTP, SFTP and XDMCP. No installation required, can be run from a USB stick. Light and portable application, packaged in a single executable.
KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).
Ditto is an extension to the standard Windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats. 17 translations available.
Don't be confused with Ditto! (iOS messenger).
Features
- Easy to use interface
- Search and paste previous copy entries
- Keep multiple computer's clipboards in sync
- Data is encrypted when sent over the network
- Accessed from tray icon or global hot key
- Select entry by double click, enter key or drag drop
- Paste into any window that excepts standard copy/paste entries
- Display thumbnail of copied images in list
- Full Unicode support (display foreign characters)
- UTF-8 support for language files (create language files in any language)
- Uses sqlite database (www.sqlite.org)
Total Commander is a shareware Orthodox File Manager (OFM) for Windows. Some features include a built-in FTP client, file compare, archive file navigation, and a multi-rename tool with regular expression support.
Features include:
- Two file windows side by side
- Multiple language and Unicode support
- Enhanced search function
- Compare files (now with editor) / synchronize directories
- Quick View panel with bitmap display
- ZIP, ARJ, LZH, RAR, UC2, TAR, GZ, CAB, ACE archive handling + plugins
- Built-in FTP client with FXP (server to server) and HTTP proxy support
- Parallel port link, multi-rename tool
- Tabbed interface, regular expressions, history+favorites buttons
- Thumbnails view, custom columns, enhanced search
- Compare editor, cursor in lister, separate trees, logging, enhanced overwrite dialog etc.
- Unicode names almost everywhere, long names (>259 characters), password manager for ftp and plugins, synchronize empty dirs, 64 bit context menu, quick file filter (Ctrl+S)
- USB port connection via special direct transfer cable, partial branch view (Ctrl+Shift+B), and many improvements to ftp, synchronizing and other functions
- And many more!
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.
Sumatra PDF is a free PDF, eBook (ePub, Mobi), XPS, DjVu, CHM, Comic Book (CBZ and CBR) viewer for Windows.
Sumatra PDF is powerful, small, portable and starts up very fast.
Simplicity of the user interface has a high priority.
Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application made by users, for users. Many languages, designed around the concept of the logical book, i.e., a single entry in your library that may correspond to actual e-book files in several formats.
Calibre can sort the books in your library by title, author, date added, date published, size, rating, or series, along with extra metadata such as tags and personal comments. You can easily search your book collection for a particular book, based on any of this information. Calibre can also go onto the internet to find online books based on existing title/author or ISBN information.
In addition, Calibre also: -syncs to your ebook reader -downloads news from the internet and converts it into ebook form -offers a ebook viewer that can display all major ebook formats
Features:
Library Management E-book conversion Syncing to e-book reader devices Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form Built-in e-book viewer Content server for online access to your book collection E-book editor for the major e-book formats
Features a free draw tool, arrows, lines, circles, and other tools for editing screenshots you take. Possibility to add text, but not possible to change text size. Screenshots can be uploaded to Imgur, saved to a local file, or copied directly to your clipboard to easily paste in other programs. Many configuration options are available, such as hiding icons or changing the colors used in the program. Flameshot is also open source, so experienced developers can help improve the program.
Fast and compact image viewer/converter trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. Many supported file formats and features. Features included: multi-language support, Thumbnail option, Painting, slideshow, toolbar skins, fast directory browsing, batch conversion/editing, multipage editing, alignment (rotation) of single pdf pages around a small corner (e.g., 2 °), scanning to pdf-Files, OCR_KADMOS plugin, file search, change color depth, scanning, cut/crop, IPTC edit, capturing, lossless JPG operations, effects, ICC support, EXE/SCR creating, many hotkeys, command line options and plugins.
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.
Online photo editor, made with HTML5. Open, edit and save PSD and XCF - Photoshop and Gimp files. Convert between PSD, XCF, JPG, PNG and WebP.
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.
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...
OBS Studio (also known as Open Broadcaster Software, or OBS) is a screen-casting and live-streaming software available across multiple platforms including macOS, Windows and Linux. Boasting features typically only found in commercial screen recording apps, OBS also provides one of the simplest workflows with an intuitive and easy-to-learn interface that makes recording and streaming a breeze. It's also totally free and open-source.
With its long standing history of continued updates and considering its ease of use and free cost, it's no wonder OBS is one of the most popular and highest recommended apps for screen-casting and live streaming.
NOTABLE FEATURES:
Cross-platform (available for Mac, Windows and Linux). Encoding using H264 (x264) and AAC. Support for Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV), AMF and NVENC. Unlimited number of scenes and sources. Live RTMP streaming to Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, DailyMotion, Smashcast and more. File output to MP4, MKV or FLV. GPU-based game capture for high performance game streaming. DirectShow capture device support (webcams, capture cards, etc). Windows 8 high speed monitor capture support. Bilinear or lanczos3 resampling. Light and dark themes to support various working conditions and preferences.
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.
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
TeamSpeak is a proprietary Voice over IP software that allows users to speak on a chat channel with other users, much like a telephone conference call. A TeamSpeak user will often wear a headset with an integrated microphone. Users use the TeamSpeak client software to connect to a TeamSpeak server of their choice, from there they can join chat channels. The target audience for TeamSpeak is gamers, who can use the software to communicate with other players on the same team of a multiplayer game. Communicating by voice gives a competitive advantage by allowing players to keep their hands on the controls.
Clink enhances your productivity in Microsoft Windows' "cmd.exe". If you're familiar with Bash then you will be familiar with the changes that clink brings to "cmd.exe" (it uses the same 'Readline' library that Bash uses). It is a small utility to enhance "cmd.exe", adding more powerful command line completion, editing, and history.
Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. The display consists of two sub-windows. The top always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that it is in. The unique capabilities make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.
