Free Stuff for Windows
Some of the free programs I use for my Windows set up.
Browser Extensions
Avira Browser Safety is a FREE browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that blocks infected websites, protects your privacy and finds you the best deals for what you're shopping for
Privacy, simplified.
At DuckDuckGo, we believe the Internet shouldn't feel so creepy, and getting the privacy you deserve online should be as simple as closing the blinds.
Our add-on provides the privacy essentials you need to seamlessly take control of your personal information, no matter where the Internet takes you: Escape Advertising Tracker Networks — Our Privacy Protection will block all the hidden third-party trackers we can find, exposing the major advertising networks tracking you over time, so that you can track who's trying to track you. Increase Encryption Protection — We force sites to use an encrypted connection where available, protecting your data from prying eyes, like ISPs. Search Privately — You share your most personal information with your search engine, like your financial, medical, and political questions. What you search for is your own business, which is why DuckDuckGo search doesn't track you. Ever. Decode Privacy Policies — We’ve partnered with Terms of Service Didn't Read to include their scores and labels of website terms of service and privacy policies, where available.
Our add-on also adds a toolbar icon that shows you a Privacy Grade rating when you visit a website (A-F). This rating lets you see how protected you are at a glance, dig into the details to see who we caught trying to track you, and learn how we enhanced the underlying site's privacy measures. The Privacy Grade is scored automatically based on the prevalence of hidden tracker networks, encryption availability, and website privacy practices.
Too many people believe you simply can’t expect privacy on the Internet. We're fighting to change that, and have made it our mission to set a new standard of trust online. Install DuckDuckGo and take back your privacy!
Returns ability to see dislike statistics and rating bar. Shows full (not-shortened) likes and dislikes on hover over rating bar.
Enhancer for YouTube is a very lightweight extension that is highly customisable, easy to use, and that will greatly improve your YouTube experience!
It allows you, among other things, to:
- Control sound volume with the mouse wheel
- Remove ads from videos (automatically or on-demand)
- Remove annotations (automatically or on-demand)
- Disable autoplay
- Disable preloading
- Automatically play videos in 4K, HD, or any other preferred format (works for embedded videos*)
- Loop videos (in part or in whole)
- Automatically play videos using a better cinema mode
- Automatically enlarge the video player
- Execute your own actions using JavaScript
Bitwarden is the easiest and safest way to store all of your logins and passwords while conveniently keeping them synced between all of your devices.
Password theft is a serious problem. The websites and apps that you use are under attack every day. Security breaches occur and your passwords are stolen. When you reuse the same passwords across apps and websites hackers can easily access your email, bank, and other important accounts.
Security experts recommend that you use a different, randomly generated password for every account that you create. But how do you manage all those passwords? Bitwarden makes it easy for you to create, store, and access your passwords.
Bitwarden stores all of your logins in an encrypted vault that syncs across all of your devices. Since it's fully encrypted before it ever leaves your device, only you have access to your data. Not even the team at Bitwarden can read your data, even if we wanted to. Your data is sealed with AES-256 bit encryption, salted hashing, and PBKDF2 SHA-256.
Bitwarden is 100% open source software. The source code for Bitwarden is hosted on GitHub and everyone is free to review, audit, and contribute to the Bitwarden codebase.
This eye-care extension enables night mode creating dark themes for websites on the fly. Dark Reader inverts bright colors making them high contrast and easy to read at night.
You can adjust brightness, contrast, sepia filter, dark mode, font settings and ignore-list.
Dark Reader has also support for custom CSS skins, so it allows you to add different styles to the websites.
Dark Reader doesn't show ads and doesn't send user's data anywhere.
Smart HTTPS automatically changes HTTP protocols to the secure HTTPS, and if loading encounters error, reverts it back to HTTP.
Browsing on the internet has never been easier and smarter with Smart HTTPs Addon. It changes your HTTP addresses to the secure HTTPs. Whichever URL there is, the change from HTTP to HTTPs lets you browse the internet securely. Moreover, if there are any problems in encountering errors, it automatically reverts back to the HTTP protocol. The Smart HTTPs Addon works brilliantly well on all website addresses that do not support HTTPs. All such websites are saved to the memory in order to speed-up the protocol check processes. You can always see and delete these items from the Add-on's option page. Moreover, the add-on also comes with a toolbar button that serves as an on-off switch to turn the extension ON and OFF. Whenever there is a blue color, it states that it is ON and when the color is gray, it means that the add-on is switched to OFF.
Additionally, all the websites that do not support the HTTPs are saved to the memory and you can easily get rid of them in the options page. The add-on is available for all browsers and platforms. The extension is compatible with almost every website. But if there is an error on the website, all of the failed addresses will be listed alphabetically in the options page table.
4 Reasons to Use Smart HTTPS
- Seamlessly changes all HTTP addresses (protocols) to the secure HTTPS, and if an error occurs, it reverts back to HTTP address.
- All websites (addresses) that do not support HTTPS, are saved to memory; you can add and remove them in the options page.
- Toolbar button icon serves as the ON-OFF switch to turn the extension ON or OFF.
- Available for all browsers (Firefox, Chrome and Opera) and platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac).
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.
Privacy Badger is a browser-add on tool that analyzes sites to detect and disallow content that tracks you in an objectionable, non-consensual manner. When you visit websites, your copy of Privacy Badger keeps note of the "third party" domains that embed images, scripts and advertising in the pages you visit. If a third party server appears to be tracking you without permission, by using uniquely identifying cookies to collect a record of the pages you visit across multiple sites, Privacy Badger will automatically disallow content from that third party tracker. In some cases a third-party domain provides some important aspect of a page's functionality, such as embedded maps, images, or fonts. In those cases Privacy Badger will allow connections to the third party but will screen out its tracking cookies.
Gaming
The EA App, formerly known as Origin, is the built-from-scratch PC platform for EA players, games, and content. It brings you a faster experience, fewer clicks to jump back into your favorite games, and powerful Playtime Controls to help you keep tabs on how much time you and your family spend playing.
Designed for speed The fast, optimized platform makes it easier than ever to discover, download, and play. So jumping into your game takes less time and fewer clicks.
Built to connect Link your EA Account with your favorite gaming platforms to import friends lists and play together.
Discovery at your fingertips See what your friends are playing, find EA’s newest releases, and add them to your collection within a few clicks.
If you’re an Origin player, your friends list and progress on eligible games will carry over. And rest assured that you can still access all of your content on Origin, so you can pick where you play.
mGBA is a new Game Boy Advance emulator written in C.
The project started in April 2013 with the goal of being fast enough to run on lower end hardware than other emulators support, without sacrificing accuracy or portability. Even in the initial version, games generally play without problems. It is loosely based on the previous GBA.js emulator, although very little of GBA.js can still be seen in mGBA.
Other goals include accurate enough emulation to provide a development environment for homebrew software, a good workflow for tool-assist runners, and a modern feature set for emulators that older emulators may not support.
mGBA is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, and the code can be found on GitHub.
A Nintendo DS emulator with support for commercial games.
Kega Fusion is an emulator for the Sega Genesis / Megadrive, Master System, Game Gear, 32x, SegaCD/MegaCD, SVP, Pico, SG-1000, SC-3000, and SF-7000 emulator for Win9x/ME/2000/XP/Vista/Win7, Mac OSX (Intel), and Linux.
PCSX2 is a PlayStation 2 emulator for Windows, Linux & Mac, started by the same team that brought you PCSX (a Sony PlayStation 1 emulator).
Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii. It allows PC gamers to enjoy games for these two consoles in full HD (1080p) with several enhancements: compatibility with all PC controllers, turbo speed, networked multiplayer, and even more!
The Epic Games store is now open, featuring games from other developers. Epic's goal is to bring you great games, and to give game developers a better deal: they receive 88% of the money you spend, versus only 70% elsewhere. This helps developers succeed and make more of the games you love.
The first games on the store are Hades by Supergiant Games, Ashen by Annapurna/A44, and Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek by tinyBuild, and they’re available now!
Hades is the rogue-like dungeon crawler from the creators of Bastion and Transistor. It is available in early access, with updates to come every month until full release later in 2019. Ashen is an action RPG about a wanderer in search of a home. You can forge relationships in the game, inviting other players to join your camp - they might just help you succeed.
Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek is the prequel to Hello Neighbor.
The store will also feature one free game every two weeks throughout 2019. Epic is funding these free releases so you always have something new to come and check out. The first free game will be Subnautica, available from Dec 14th to Dec 27th, followed by Super Meat Boy from Dec 28th to Jan 10th.
The Epic Games store will be growing throughout 2019 and beyond, as it opens up more widely to other games.
GOG.com (Good Old Games) sells classic PC games through their download service at a low price, without DRM, and updated to run on the latest versions of Windows and other systems.
Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute a wide range of games and related media entirely over the internet, stretching from one-man independent efforts to some of the worlds most popular games. Steam is set apart from its peers in terms of functionality primarily by its residency in the system tray, and the desktop tasks that the client software performs to make use of that position.
Features:
Steam Chat Talk with friends or groups via text or voice without leaving Steam. Videos, Tweets, GIFs and more are supported; use wisely.
Game Hubs Everything about your game, all in one place. Join discussions, upload content, and be the first to know about new updates.
Steam Broadcast Stream your gameplay live with the click of a button, and share your game with friends or the rest of the community.
Steam Workshop Create, discover, and download player-created mods and cosmetics for nearly 1,000 supported games.
Available on Mobile Access Steam anywhere from your iOS or Android device with the Steam mobile app.
Early Access to Games Discover, play, and get involved with games as they evolve. Be the first to see what's coming and become part of the process.
Multilingual Creating a global community is important to us, that's why our client supports 28 languages and counting.
Purchases Made Easy Our storefront supports 100+ payment methods across over 35 currencies, giving you the flexibility to pay how you want.
Controller Support Steam encourages developers to include controller support in their games including PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo controllers.
Productivity
Xodo is the ultimate cross-platform PDF viewer and annotator. And it’s 100% free.
PDF Reader
• Bookmark PDF pages for future reference • Night Mode for comfortable PDF reading in dark environments • Tabs allow you to quickly work across multiple PDF documents • Crop pages to fit content precisely on small screens • Reflow reading mode shows the PDF text at a size of your choosing • A PDF table of contents allows you to jump chapters and sections • Printing • Full screen mode • Continuous vertical scrolling while viewing in single page, two pages, and cover page modes • Support for Samsung Multi Window • Full text search with navigable, detailed list of results, page rotation, high levels of zoom, and more
PDF Annotator and Editor • Draw and type directly on PDFs • Highlight, underline and strikeout text • Add arrows, circles, lines and more • See all annotations at a glance with the annotation summary, and just tap one to navigate to it • Scroll and turn pages by using two fingers while you annotate • Merge and split PDFs; rotate pages • Optimized for SPen and other select styluses • Thumbnail browser for deleting pages, changing page order, and inserting blank pages
Sign & Fill PDF Forms
• Fill out, save, and send PDF forms • Sign a document by hand, and save your signature for later reuse
Convert & Create
• Use your camera to scan a page, or open an existing image to create a new PDF (tif, jpeg, gif, png) • Create new blank PDFs and use Xodo to take notes
Dropbox & Google Drive Sync
• Auto-sync annotations back to Dropbox or Google Drive
File Manager
• Rename, copy, move, or delete docs and folders with Xodo’s built-in file manager • Recent files can be quickly accessed, and will automatically open to the last page visited • Grid view shows thumbnail previews of PDFs and easy access to file details
Annotate PDFs with others
• Add your PDF to Xodo Connect and invite people to view and annotate online in real time
OneDrive (formerly known as SkyDrive) delivers a satisfactory online file storage and sharing solution in a free and easy to use service. It has a design that is both attractive and functional. OneDrive lets you edit your Microsoft Office documents online, it offers a lite version of three of the major softwares of the suite Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, so if you don't have the suite installed on your PC or Mac you can simply edit them online. So you have full access to your documents on all your computers, wherever you are.
Get started with 5 GB for free. If you need more space, get 50 GB for just $1.99 a month.
Work together and share files and photos. Collaborate with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote from your desktop, mobile device, and the web. OneDrive for Business. Give your employees all the benefits of OneDrive for their work files backed by tools to allow IT to protect important company data.
Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service which enables user cloud storage, file sharing and collaborative editing.
Google Drive incorporates the Google Docs suite, a collaborative office suite of productivity applications that offers:
- Google Docs , a word processor;
- Google Sheets , a spreadsheet application;
- Google Slides , a presentation program;
- Google Drawings , a graphics application;
- Google Forms , a form designer.
Google Drive gives you access to your work from anywhere, across your Mac, PC, mobile devices and on the web. Simply download Drive on your Mac or PC to sync files from your computer to the cloud. Update a file on one device and changes are automatically saved to Drive and your other device, so you have the most up-to-date version of your files wherever you need them.
Bring your work to life : Share files or whole folders with individuals, your entire team or even customers and partners. In the Docs, Sheets and Slides editors multiple people can work on the same document at the same time
Buy what you need & grow flexibly : Start with up to 15 GB of included storage for each of your users. Need more? For as little as $4/month for 20GB, administrators can centrally purchase and manage up to 16TB (Yes, that’s 16,000 GB!) of additional storage for each user.
Microsoft To-Do is a simple and intelligent to-do list that makes it easy to plan your day. Whether it's for work, school or home, To-Do will help you increase your productivity and decrease your stress levels. It combines intelligent technology and beautiful design to empower you to create a simple daily workflow. Organize your day with To-Do's smart Suggestions and complete the most important tasks or chores you need to get done, every day. To-Do syncs between your phone and computer, so you can access your to-dos from school, the office, or the grocery store or even while you're traveling around the world.
You can quickly add, organize and schedule your to-dos while you're on the go. With important to-dos that you really shouldn't forget you can add reminders and due dates—we'll remember them for you. And if you have to-dos that you need to tick off on a daily, weekly or yearly basis you can set up recurring due dates to remind you each and every time.
What areas of your life do you want to be more productive in? You can have a color-coded list for each. Now you can quickly add your homework to one list, your groceries to another, your packing list, your work projects and your home DIY projects to yet more lists. You can create as many lists as fits your lifestyle. And if you follow a productivity system such as GTD (David Allen's Getting Things Done Methodology) then you can create a Someday list or a Follow-up list. To-Do is here for you, whether your goals are for this week or in 5 years time.
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 .
Browsers
Vivaldi is extremely customizable, presenting a wide range of settings and built-in features designed to put the user in control. Its Chromium-based engine makes it fast and compatible with most Chrome extensions, and Vivaldi removes the code that tracks users from it.
It includes fully customizable web browser behaviors, mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts, Quick Commands, the usual unlimited Speed Dial page, notes that can also be synchronized with the browser data, a webpage screenshot tool, a panel for displaying and managing bookmarks, history, etc, where users can also add their own web panels; the ability to edit the browser theme and toolbars by moving or removing buttons from the interface, moving the tab bar to the side or and/or the address bar to bottom of the window; powerful tab management with tab stacking, tiling and the windows panel, etc...
Vivaldi offers a built-in ad-blocker and partners with DuckDuckGo for the tracker blocker. There is also a support for blocking cookie banners https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-crumbles-cookie-dialogs-raises-privacy/ with the help of a popular extension named I don't care about cookies and Easylist Cookie List.
A Vivaldi account gives access to the browser data sync, the Vivaldi Community (blogging platform), support forums and Vivaldi Webmail.
It's considered the spiritual successor of the original Opera browser before the complete rewrite that scrapped many of its features and options and the move of the ownership of Opera Software to a consortium of Chinese investors. Vivaldi Technologies was founded by the co-founder and former CEO of Opera, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, and Tatsuki Tomita.
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.
