Windows Utilities
TidyTabs is a tool that brings tabbed browsing to all your programs. Ever wanted to have Chrome-style tabs in Windows Explorer, Microsoft Office or PuTTY? TidyTabs does just that. It integrates nicely with the OS and you will feel like the multi-tab functionality is a core part of Windows.
TidyTabs has been designed to interoperate nicely with AquaSnap, from the same author. Tabbed groups created with TidyTabs can easily be snapped, docked and tilled thanks to AquaSnap. Both tools are in fact very complementary and can permit you to achieve a major productivity boost.
Key features:
- Add tabs to every windows
- Possibility to group windows from different applications
- Possibility to exclude applications (blacklist or whitelist)
- Tab reordering
- Tab renaming
- Automatic updates
Aquasnap is a powerful window manager that helps you arrange and organize multiple applications on your desktop with minimum effort. It allows you to achieve maximum multitasking, especially if you own a high-resolution monitor or a multi-monitor setup.
With simple gestures (window docking), you are able to split your screen in 2, 3 or 4 areas and to easily adjust the layout to best fit your needs. By making your windows behave like magnets (window snapping), it allows you to efficiently align them without losing a pixel. Need to keep an eye on a small window? Just shake it and it will become transparent and always on top. AquaSnap also adds many easy to remember and customizable keyboard shortcuts to make you even more productive. And these are only some examples of what AquaSnap has to offer, try it and be amazed!
Key Features:
- Dock window to sides or corners of the screen
- Adjust the layout to best fit your needs
- Snap window to monitor edges or other applications
- Expand window by double-clicking on the edge
- Shake a window to make it top-most
- Multi-monitor support
- Works with child windows of Multiple Document Interface (MDI)
- Many keyboard shortcuts
- Highly optimized native code
WindowGrid is a modern window management program that allows the user to quickly and easily layout their windows on a dynamic grid. WindowGrid gives functionality to the normally useless right mouse button when moving a window. Doing this will enable the grid snap mode.
FEATURES
- Simple to control
- Portable and Installable
- Works with aerosnap
- Unintrusive
- Grid overlay can be customised (dimensions, opacity and color)
- Can auto update
- Supports Windows Vista/7/8/8.1/10
- Supports x86 and x64
- Written in C# and C++
- Low memory usage
What I'm using for my windows and layout management is the Window Layout Manager, or WiLMA for short (hey, as developers we're allowed to invent a dozen new acronyms each day and we like that little perk!). The following page provides a more detailed outline of what the Window Layout Manager does and how I use it. The Window Layout Manager is a small 500K application, written in C# and using The .NET framework 2.0 and higher, using a lot of imports from user32.dll and avoids any unsafe code. But I bet you could care less about THAT. :-)
AutoHotkey (AHK) is a free, open-source macro-creation and automation software for Windows that allows users to automate repetitive tasks. It is driven by a scripting language that was initially aimed at providing keyboard shortcuts, otherwise known as hotkeys, that over time evolved into a full-fledged scripting language.
You can use AutoHotkey to:
- Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes or mouse clicks, or via COM.
- You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or a recorder.
- Create hotkeys for keyboard, joystick, and mouse.
- Remap keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse.
- Expand abbreviations as you type them.
- Retrieve and change the Clipboard's contents.
You can also:
- Convert any AHK script into an executable file that can be run on computers where AutoHotkey is not installed.
- Create custom data-entry forms, user interfaces and menu bars.
- Automate data entry jobs by reading data from text files, XML, CSV, Excel and various database formats.
- Read signals from hand-held remote controls via the WinLIRC client script.
- Use the Component Object Model (COM).
- Use arrays, structures, matrices, and objects.
- Use variadic functions.
- Use DLL calls and Windows Messages.
- Use Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE).
- Use interactive debugging features.
Pulover’s Macro Creator is a Free Automation Tool and Script Generator. It is based on AutoHotkey language and provides users with multiple automation functions, as well as a built-in recorder.
All in one Windows automation software. Fully configurable text expander, start menu, shortcuts, auto complete and mouse gestures. User-defined commands to run files, open webpages, send macros or automate anything. Incredibly powerful but yet simple to use.
TEXT EXPANDER - Make customized abbreviations for your frequently used text. Type out a couple of letters and FastKeys replaces it with a whole sentence or paragraph or even simulates keyboard presses.
START MENU - Create a fully configurable menu to start any activity on computer. Simply touch the screen edge to call the menu.
Use keyboard or mouse SHORTCUTS to do just about anything with a keystroke. Run programs, open files and sites or make powerful scripts to automate Windows desktop applications.
Intelligent AUTO COMPLETE word and phrase prediction utility with learning capability.
Simple and amazing MOUSE GESTURES let you perform common tasks or execute complex actions.
Includes Clipboard Manager and Macro Recorder.
Hundreds Ready-to-Use Presets, including: AUDIO - Control volume with a mouse wheel, switch audio device, mute, control audio or video players, search and play songs... WINDOWS - Double Esc to close, minimize, maximize, make always on top, Alt-drag, auto resize, zoom, make transparent.... SEARCH - Fast Google and Wikipedia search, translate webpages... EMAIL AUTOMATION - Auto send email, auto replies, context aware response, auto signature... GENERAL - Swap or disable keys, change system shortcuts, run user commands... SEND TEXT - Write text and keystrokes with time and date variables, create user macro commands... GAMES - Auto clicker, rapid fire, auto shooter, jump, crouch, improve accuracy in 3rd person shooters, auto fire on pixel colour, scripts for popular games (CoD, WoW, LoL, Minecraft etc.)... UTILITIES - Clocks, timers, stopwatches, countdown timers, weather stickers, screen capture, date&time functions... ...any many more. More than 500 preset commands and keys available.
Actiona (formerly known as Actionaz) is a task automation tool. It allows you to create and execute action lists.
You don't need to know any programming language to use it: its intuitive interface allows you to create action lists (scripts) using drag & drop.
Advanced users can use JavaScript (EcmaScript) to extend its functionality.
Actiona is free software and runs under Windows and GNU/Linux. Binaries are available for Windows and Ubuntu for both 32 and 64 bits.
The program is developed in C++ and uses the Qt framework.
Quick Macros automates repetitive tasks, even the most complex. Your macros can press keys, click buttons, links, menu items, on-screen images and other UI objects, manage windows, run and manage files, wait for various events, show dialogs, send/receive internet files and email, automate web pages, get/set text of UI objects, process text/HTML/XML/CSV, automate Excel, use databases, and many more. Creating macros is easier with the mouse/kayboard recorder, tool dialogs, tools to capture various objects and images, intellisense, dialog editor, debugger. To run macros you can use hotkeys, autotext, mouse, window, schedule and other triggers, create pop-up menus and toolbars. Quick Macros can add your toolbars to any window, auto-close annoying popup windows, auto-complete or correct text as you type, remap keys, convert your macros to independent .EXE programs, run from a USB drive. More functions can be created with the QM programming language that supports user-defined types, classes, COM, DLL functions, embedded VBScript/C#/VB.NET/C scripts, and everything for programming even at Windows API level.
WinAutomation is the most advanced Windows Automation app, featuring a Macro Recorder and a Web Recorder.
With WinAutomation you can teach your computer to perform your repetitive tasks automatically.
Some of the tasks you can automate with WinAutomation:
- Automatically fill and submit web forms with data from local files.
- Web Scraping and data extraction from any web page into Excel or text files.
- Prerecord mouse clicks and keystrokes via auto clicker, mouse recorder and keyboard macro recorder sent to any desktop application.
- Retrieve and parse your emails and update a database with the data contained in the emails.
- Copy, move, edit, rename, compress, uncompress and manage files and folders in any possible way.
- Automate your FTP transfers: Download and upload files or entire folders at schedule.
Beyond Compare allows you to compare files and folders. By using simple, powerful commands you can focus on the differences you're interested in and ignore those you're not. You can then merge the changes, synchronize your files, and generate reports for your records.
You can compare entire drives and folders at high speed, checking just sizes and modified times. Or, thoroughly verify every file with byte-by-byte comparisons. FTP sites and zip files are integrated seamlessly, so you can update your website with the touch of a button. Beyond Compare also supports cloud storage and can be used directly from most version control systems. Folder synchronization is also possible and repetitive tasks can be automated using a flexible scripting language.
Create and manage System Restore Points quickly and easily, all from a free simple program. No more drilling through multiple menus in Windows just to create a System Restore Point, now all you have to do is run this program and that’s it. Follow the simple program layout and you have your System Restore Point created in no time at all.
Plus, for users of Windows 7 and Windows 8, creating System Restore Points is even quicker and easier with this program. Just pin this program to the Taskbar and you have the ability to quickly create System Restore Points using one of the two pinned Tasks (“Create System Checkpoint” and “Create Custom Named”) that the program creates. It’s that simple.
Create System Checkpoint – Creates a System Restore Point with the name of “System Checkpoint made by System Restore Point Creator” Create Custom Named – Asks you what you want your System Restore Point to be named and then creates one based upon what you inputted.
Right Click Enhancer gives you power to control the right click menu everyone uses. Right Click Enhancer allows yo to edit your right click menu in the way you want. Now with help of this wonderful tool you can add some good stuffs to your right click context menu.
FileMenu Tools lets you customize the context (right-click) menu of Windows Explorer. The application adds built-in utilities to perform operations on files and folders and adds customized commands that let users run external applications, copy/move to a specific folder or delete specific file types. With FileMenu Tools, you also can customize the "Send to..." submenu and enable/disable context-menu commands added by other applications. Many very useful additional functions: create symbolic-Links, sync folders with file-deletion in both directions, show the folder-size of all subfolders
Easy Context Menu enables you to add a variety of useful commands and tweaks for the Desktop, My Computer, drives, file and folder context menus. It helps in accessing most used windows components quickly and easily, it doesn’t get much easier than to check some boxes and set up what you want or use a lot in the context menu just click on the desired component shortcut to launch it, Easy Context Menu is a portable freeware application.
Ultimate Windows Context Menu Customizer is a freeware from door2windows that allows you to customize the context menu of many locations with ease in Windows
Context Menu Tuner is an application which allows you to customize Explorer's context menu in Windows 10, Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.
More screenshots are available below. Latest version is 2.1, see the change log below.
Unlike other tools, it provides you the following options:
Ability to add ANY Ribbon command to the context menu of any file, folder, desktop or/and specific file type. This includes even commands which are not added to the ribbon by default. Ability to add a custom command to the context menu of any file, folder, desktop or/and specific file type. You can specify the title and icon for the context menu item and add command line arguments for the application you use. For every menu item you added you can additionally specify the following: position: top or bottom; separator: you will be able to add a separator before or after the context menu item; you can prevent the context menu item from being the default action; you can tweak the context menu item to be shown only if SHIFT key is pressed on the keyboard.
Right-Click Extender will allow you to add or remove the following additional options to a File, Folder, Computer and Desktops Right Click Context Menu.
RecentX gives you fastest access to your files, folders, programs, websites and also clipboard history in Windows. What's special is that it automatically remembers your recent and favorite items so that you can access them faster than searching all the files, folders etc. You can assign tags to all of them. You will be surprised to see how much hassle it saves and makes computing really enjoyable. We have stuffed this app with innovations that will boost your productivity.
- Automatically detects recently and frequently used files and folders first for faster access.
- Indexes all files, folders, programs, Internet history, Internet bookmarks on your computer.
- Tag files, folders etc. based on your projects. Saves a lot of time.
- Provides convenient hotkeys for quick launch.
- Copy files, folders, rename, delete them right from RecentX without launching any file manager like Windows Explorer.
- Run programs that exists anywhere on your hard drive (not just the ones listed under Windows start menu).
- Access Internet History from all popular browsers - Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox & Internet Explorer.
- Access bookmarks from all popular browsers - Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.
- Remembers all that you copy to clipboard (text, images etc.) so that you can reuse them again.
- And a lot of interesting stuff specially designed for you :)
Easy Duplicate File Finder is a powerful tool that helps you to find and remove duplicate files from your PC or Mac.
Features:
- Delete duplicates automatically in three easy steps
- Flexible search algorithms for different types of duplicates including comparison by content, music tags mode, and search for duplicate Outlook and Mac Mail emails;
- Live Preview for better file management;
- Undo button for emergency file recovery;
- iTunes, iPhoto and Windows Media Library integration;
- Protection for system files and folders;
- Flexible results management
The trial version allows unlimited scanning and can be used to delete 10 duplicate groups.
Daily computer activity inevitably leads to accumulating duplicate files on your computer, especially if you are an active PC user. Auslogics Duplicate File Finder will find and delete duplicate files so you won’t experience lack of free disk space!
Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder will find fast all similar and duplicate pictures and photos in a folder and its sub folders. Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder uses advanced algorithms to find duplicate photos in a way that a human does. Due to that fact it can find duplicate images even if they are in different image formats, different bit depth and image sizes. You can specify a percent of image similarity that will be used during the scan. Using the similarity percentage level you can broaden your results or you can specify exact match varying only in image format and/or size. When the scan process is finished the program shows you all the duplicate images in groups and can automatically mark the smaller resolution and/or smaller file size images for deletion. With a couple of mouse clicks you can get rid of all duplicate images and save valuable disk space. It supports most popular image formats, has an intuitive user interface and is well documented. Due to its innovative and optimized algorithms it is the fastest and the most precise product of this type on the market. It allows you to process huge amount of images in less time.
Ashampoo WinOptimizer is a powerful system optimization tool that cleans your disks and keeps your machine running at constant speed. It also protects your privacy and allows you to customize Windows.
A free version of Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2021 is available at https://www.ashampoo.com/en-us/winoptimizer-2021
Duplicate File Detective uses state-of-the-art file content analysis technology to show you exactly where your duplicate files are (even when the file names are different). You can search multiple folders, drives, removable storage devices, even network shares - all in a single pass. Then move, zip, or remove duplicate files safely with assistance from our innovative SmartMark duplicate file selection system
Duplicate Sweeper can quickly find and remove duplicate files on your PC. The free program demo lets you scan your computer for duplicate documents, images, contacts, music and other files. The amount of duplicate files on your hard drive could come as a bit of a surprise, Duplicate Sweeper will show you these and let you choose which ones you wish to remove safely. The first step in using Duplicate Sweeper is to select which folders on your PC you wish the program to search for duplicates in. You can drag and drop your folders into Duplicate Sweeper, or search popular folders like Documents, Pictures, Contacts and more. Duplicate Sweeper will display the duplicate files found in your selected folders. A summary of the duplicate files is shown ordered by total file size, so you can see what is taking up your disk space at a glance. For each duplicate set, you can automatically select to keep the newest or oldest file. This selection can be made on individual groups of files, for file types or for all the duplicate groups found. Duplicate Sweeper also lets you preview the selected duplicate files. Removing duplicates can then be performed by simply clicking on "Recycle Duplicates" and these files will be moved to the Recycle Bin.
AllDup is a freeware tool for searching and removing file duplicates on your computer, network shares or external storage media. The fast search algorithm find duplicates of any file type, e.g., text, pictures, music or movies.
The powerful search engine enables you to find duplicates with a combination of the following criteria: File Name, File Extension, File Size, File Content, File Dates and File Attributes.
Additionally you can also search for similar file names, similar or almost identical pictures and similar or almost identical music files. Furthermore, you can find video & audio files with the same or almost same audio length or search your hard disk for Hard Links.
What AllDup can do for you:
Find and hardlink duplicate files! AllDup is a powerful tool to search for file duplicates on your computer! Find similar file names Find and remove duplicate files! Free up used hard disk space on your PC! Find files with similar names Finding out whether a file has hard links! It can be especially useful if you have large Music, Pictures, Downloads or Documents folders! Find, remove, delete, copy and move duplicate files! Find and remove duplicate files of ANY type! Remove duplicate files - as you want! Find and delete hard links AllDup helps you to find, view and remove files that have duplicate content, regardless of name! Delete duplicate music files! Remove duplicate photos and images! Find duplicate pictures Find duplicate photos Remove duplicate files faster and safer than with any other duplicate file finder! Find duplicate MP3 files with different ID3 Tags! No more file clones or file duplicates! Remove duplicate files - Easily and Anywhere! Find and remove duplicate files from your computer, notebook, network drives, flash drives, memory drives! Find and delete duplicate files! Clear your computer, music or photo collection from duplicate files!
Duplicate cleaner is a useful program to help you organize the contents of your home hard drive or corporate network. Find and delete duplicate files, mp3s, photos, old documents and much more. Once these files are found you are provided with helper tools to enable you to select which copies to delete or move. These files can be deleted to the recycle bin, moved into an archive elsewhere, or replaced with hardlinks.
Features:
Find Duplicate Files by content, fast! Cleaner hard drives means faster performance Fast Scanning and accurate duplicate comparison (Uses the MD5 Hash algorithm) Deep scans music - locate duplicate music formats (MP3, iTunes, etc) Flexible search parameters Intelligent Selection Assistant Search home or networked drives Search multiple locations Export / Import results in CSV format View Path,Size and Date of files Large, resizable list window Image preview window Delete duplicate files to the Recycle bin Move dupe files to a new location Turn duplicate file into hard links (NTFS file systems only) Protection for Windows and system files Supports multiple languages
There's also a pro-version with even more features, which is also meant for commercial use.
Xinorbis is a completely FREE, powerful Windows-based data storage analyser for single users or network administrators. Provides an instant visual display of the contents of a hard disk, single or multiple directories. Output reports to XML, CSV, HTML or plain ASCII.
Features:
analyse a single drive, folder or merge several together in one report
view file distribution by file type, location, attributes, size, user (owner) and date/time
in-built powerful search engine (+ save results to a file or clipboard)
find duplicate files (either by name or size)
save reports and tables for later comparison or for inclusion in other documents
shell support, scan a directory through Windows Explorer
use XinorbisCOM via the command line to update the File History archive through batch files
updated regularly
SpaceMonger is a treemapping tool for hard disks and file systems.
Scan, map and manage PC, network and cloud storage
Copy, move and delete files to free up storage space Locate large files and folders quickly with Treemap visuals Find files by size, type and custom criteria with flexible search Take clean-up actions on dynamically built file listsQTTabBar is an extension for Windows Explorer that brings tabbed browsing to Microsoft's file browser. It comes with a number of nifty features including a favorites function for launching folders and applications, groupings of folders that can be opened together, tooltip preview functions for a number of file types, and others. It is also highly customizable and hotkey-enabled.
QTTabBar was written by a Japanese developer known as “Quizo” (hence the name QTTabBar) but because of lack of time, he gave the project over to Paul Accisano. Actually "Quizo" was resumed development. Open source branch of QTTabBar: http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/
MysticThumbs generates thumbnails of many image types not natively supported by Windows. It does this transparently and in the background for Explorer so you don't have to run a separate application to preview your images. It is a native Windows Explorer plugin which means you don't have to do anything other than install it. This means you don't have any new interfaces to learn, think about or otherwise deal with. It also comes with QuickView - like a make click to see a preview of your image and its data.
MysticThumbs has a fully configurable control panel where you can adjust thumbnail generation options and icon overlays, with options like transparency, thumbnail borders, scaling, embedded thumbnail selection and more. Compound file support for files such as HTML, Maya and EML that use external files to make a complete image. Options are controlled on a file type / extension level or if required on specific files through context menu control in Explorer.
SageThumbs is a powerful shell extension allowing to preview enormous amount of image formats directly in Windows Explorer by using Pierre-e Gougelet's (XnView's author) GFL library.
Features:
- Extended thumbnail image view of Explorer folder
- Thumbnail image in explorer context menu (right-click menu)
- Extended info tips
- Support 162 image formats (224 extensions) via GFL Library
- Support additional 26 image formats via XnView plugins (if installed)
- Image and thumbnail easily sent by e-mail
- One-click conversion to popular image formats
- Wallpaper selection support
- Instant copying to clipboard
- Adobe Illustrator (ai), Postscript (ps, eps) and Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file thumbnails via Ghostscript library
JPEGView is a lean, fast and highly configurable viewer/editor for JPEG, BMP, PNG, WEBP, TGA, GIF, TIFF, HEIC, JXL, and AVIF images with a minimal GUI. Basic on-the-fly image processing is provided - allowing adjusting typical parameters as sharpness, color balance, rotation, perspective, contrast and local under-/overexposure.
As of 2022, development at SourceForge ceased in 2018. Another developer has taken over development on GitHub.
Features
- Small and fast, uses SSE2 and up to 4 CPU cores
- High quality resampling filter, preserving sharpness of images
- Basic image processing tools can be applied real-time during viewing
- Re-size and lossless-cut, color correction
- Slide show
- Movie mode to play folder of JPEGs as movie
- Multi-language (24 languages in 2023)
With Rename Expert you can quickly and easily rename files and folders. The program offers a variety of useful features to create meaningful names. For instance, you can automatically rename files using metadata (e.g., Exif and IPTC information to rename photos or ID3 tags to rename MP3 files). With this all-in-one renaming solution, it is possible to simultaneously rename folders along with subfolders and files (incl. network support). In addition to renaming, files can also be moved into subfolders whose naming is based on metadata (e.g., the shooting date of photos, image dimensions, artist or album of audio files). Rename Expert lets you easily number files and folders, shorten long file names, rename file extensions and much more. Additionally, lists, CSV files or even the file content can be used for renaming files and folders. All changes are shown in real-time and are checked for errors (e.g., duplicate or empty name) to avoid possible conflicts. If you made a mistake, the previous names can be recovered using the Undo and Redo feature. All renaming actions can be saved as template for future reuse. With Rename Expert, meaningless file names are a thing of the past!
DupScout is a powerful, fast and easy-to-use duplicate files finder utility allowing one to detect and cleanup duplicate files on local disks, networked computers and NAS storage devices. Users are provided with multiple product versions ranging from an easy-to-use free version to an enterprise-grade version capable of detecting and removing duplicates in an automatic and unattended mode.
