Windows Apps
Useful apps for Windows
Additional resources: https://www.softpedia.com/ https://www.majorgeeks.com/
Windows 11 is a personal computer operating system released by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems.
Alternatives: Ubuntu
VeraCrypt is a free open source disk encryption software for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Alternatives: Windows BitLocker
Back up your files to another drive and restore them if the originals are lost, damaged, or deleted.
Windows Defender is built into Windows to help guard your PC against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software in real time. Windows Defender features Real-Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against malware when it's detected, minimizes interruptions, and helps you stay productive.
Alternatives: Sophos Home, ESET NOD32 Antivirus
VirusTotal is a free service that analyzes files and URLs for viruses, worms, trojans and other kinds of malicious content.
Alternatives: MetaDefender, Jotti, VirSCAN
Winja is a free application for Microsoft Windows that lets you find potential malware on your system. It uses the scanning engine of virtually all antivirus products in the market to give you a very precise idea of the risk posed by a particular file. To do this, Winja first uses the VirusTotal public API to submit the fingerprint of a file. If this fingerprint exists, Winja returns the existing analysis report. If not, Winja sends the unknown file to VirusTotal servers for scanning.
In Windows, you can use Windows Firewall to block or unblock certain applications, but it doesn’t offer an easy-to-use interface for its advanced features. Firewall App Blocker makes the process very easy! Simply drag and drop the application you wish to block into the FAB window, or browse the hard disk to find it. That’s it!
Alternatives: Comodo Free Firewall, BiniSoft Windows Firewall Control, simplewall, SpyShelter
Unchecky aims to keep potentially unwanted programs out of your computer. Unchecky automatically unchecks unrelated offers, both saving you mouse clicks and making it less likely to miss a checkbox of an unwanted offer.
SUMo (Software Update Monitor) keeps your PC up-to-date & safe by using the most recent version of your favorite software! Unlike built-in auto update features, SUMo tells you if updates are available before you need to use your software.
Alternatives: Ketarin, Windows Package Manager CLI
Cmder is a software package created out of pure frustration over the absence of nice console emulators on Windows. It is based on amazing software, and spiced up with the Monokai color scheme and a custom prompt layout, looking sexy from the start. Think about cmder more as a software package than a separate app. All the magic is happening through ConEmu. With enhancements from clink.
The Windows Terminal is a new, modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive terminal application for users of command-line tools and shells like Windows Command Prompt, PowerShell, and Windows Subsystem for Linux. Its main features include multiple tabs, Unicode and UTF-8 character support, a GPU accelerated text rendering engine, and custom themes, styles, and configurations.
Alternatives: Fluent Terminal
Windows Task Manager is a task manager application included with Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems that provides detailed information about computer performance and running applications, processes and CPU usage, commit charge and memory information, network activity and statistics, logged-in users, and system services. The Task Manager can also be used to set process priorities, processor affinity, forcibly terminate processes, and shut down, restart, hibernate or log off from Windows.
A free, powerful, multi-purpose tool that helps you monitor system resources, debug software and detect malware.
Alternatives: Process Explorer
This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and when you start various built-in Windows applications like Internet Explorer, Explorer and media players.
AltDrag gives you the ability to move and resize windows in a new way. After starting AltDrag, you can simply hold down the Alt key and then click and drag any window.
Alternatives: Taekwindow, AlwaysMouseWheel, MoveInactiveWin
File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file systems. It is also the component of the operating system that presents many user interface items on the screen such as the taskbar and desktop.
Universal Extractor 2 is a tool designed to extract files from any type of extractable file. Unlike most archiving programs, UniExtract is not limited to standard archives such as .zip and .rar. It can also deal with application installers, disk images and even game archives and other multimedia files.
Listary is a search utility for Windows that makes finding your files and launching applications blazing fast, for casual and power users alike!
Alternatives: Launchy, Wox, Keypirinha
KeePassXC can store your passwords safely and auto-type them into your everyday websites and applications. KeePassXC is a community fork of KeePassX, the cross-platform port of KeePass for Windows. Every feature works cross-platform and was thoroughly tested on multiple systems to provide users with the same look and feel on every supported operating system. This includes the beloved Auto-Type feature.
PWGen is a professional password generator capable of generating large amounts of cryptographically-secure passwords—“classical” passwords, pronounceable passwords, pattern-based passwords, and passphrases consisting of words from word lists. PWGen for Windows: https://pwgen-win.sourceforge.io/
Seriously private browsing. Firefox shows you how many data-collecting trackers are blocked with Enhanced Tracking Protection. Firefox Lockwise makes the passwords you save in Firefox secure and available on all your devices. Firefox Monitor alerts you if we know your information is a part of another company’s data breach. Add-ons: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/
An efficient blocker add-on for various browsers. Fast, potent, and lean.
Alternatives: Adblock Plus, AdGuard
The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked. The Tor Browser lets you use Tor on Windows, macOS, or Linux. It can run off a USB flash drive, comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity, and is self-contained.
Tor Expert Bundle: https://www.torproject.org/download/tor/ ProxAllium: https://github.com/DcodingTheWeb/ProxAllium
Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize - and it’s loaded with great features! Add-ons: https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/ WarnAttachment: https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/warnattachment/ Minimize on Close: https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/minimize-on-close/ TBTray: https://github.com/sagamusix/TBTray ThunderbirdTray: https://github.com/TheGuardianWolf/ThunderbirdTray
Alternatives: eM Client, Microsoft Mail and Calendar, Postbox, Microsoft Office Outlook, PopMan
Organize your schedule and life’s important events in a calendar that’s fully integrated with your Thunderbird or SeaMonkey email client. Manage multiple calendars, create your daily to do list, invite friends to events, and subscribe to public calendars. From Thunderbird 74 onwards Lightning does not exist as a separate add-on but is integrated into Thunderbird. CardBook: https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/cardbook/
Alternatives: eM Client, Microsoft Mail and Calendar, Microsoft Office Outlook + Outlook CalDav Synchronizer
Microsoft To Do makes it easy to plan your day and manage your life.
Alternatives: Lightning Calendar, eM Client, Microsoft Office Outlook + Outlook CalDav Synchronizer, GeeTeeDee
Date Reminder reminds you of recurring or nonrecurring events, like birthdays, bills to pay, appointments etc...
A combination of alarm clock, world clock, timer, and stopwatch. Set alarms and reminders, check times around the world, and time your activities, including laps and splits.
Alternatives: TTclock
A simple yet powerful calculator that includes standard, scientific, and programmer modes, as well as a unit converter. It's the perfect tool to add up a bill, convert measurements in a recipe or other project, or complete complex math, algebra, or geometry problems. Calculator history makes it easy to confirm if you've entered numbers correctly.
Alternatives: SpeedCrunch, Qalculate!
Skype makes it easy to stay in touch. Talk. Chat. Collaborate.
Alternatives: Zoom, Whereby, Jitsi Meet
A sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. ST package manager: https://packagecontrol.io/
WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.
Alternatives: Diffinity, Beyond Compare
Sumatra PDF is a free PDF, eBook (ePub, Mobi), XPS, DjVu, CHM, Comic Book (CBZ and CBR) reader for Windows. Sumatra PDF is powerful, small, portable and starts up very fast.
Alternatives: Xpdf, Foxit Reader, Adobe Acrobat Reader
WinDjView is a fast, compact and powerful DjVu viewer for Windows with tabbed interface, continuous scrolling and advanced printing options, based on free DjVuLibre library.
Alternatives: DjVuLibre
LibreOffice is a free and powerful office suite, and a successor to Apache OpenOffice.
Alternatives: Microsoft 365 (Office), ONLYOFFICE, WPS Office
LanguageTool offers spell and grammar checking.
Windows Search, formerly known as Windows Desktop Search (WDS) on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, is an indexed desktop search platform created by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. Windows Search builds a full-text index of files on a computer. The time required for the initial creation of this index depends on the amount and type of data to be indexed, and can take up to several hours, but this is a one-time event. Searches are performed not only on file names, but also on the contents of the file (provided a proper handler for the file type is installed) as well as the keywords, comments and all other forms of metadata that Windows Search recognizes.
Alternatives: Agent Ransack, FileSeek, DocFetcher
Locate files and folders by name instantly.
FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files. Instead of copying every file every time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between a source and a target folder and transfers only the minimum amount of data needed. FreeFileSync is Open Source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Alternatives: Toucan, DirSync Pro
QTranslate is a free translator for Windows. With this small utility, you simply select the text you want to translate and then press the hot key to show translation in the popup window. QTranslate also has the ability to speak text and perform a dictionary search. QTranslate translates text by using online translation services, so you need an Internet connection.
Alternatives: Crow Translate, EveryLang
GoldenDict is a feature-rich dictionary lookup program. Lingvo dictionaries decompiler: https://github.com/nongeneric/lsd2dsl
Alternatives: ABBYY Lingvo Dictionaries
Klavaro is a simple tutor to teach correct typing, almost independently of language and very flexible regarding to new or unknown keyboard layouts.
Alternatives: TIPP10, Rapid Typing Tutor
XnView MP is a versatile and powerful photo viewer, image management, image resizer. All common picture and graphics formats are supported (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, WEBP, PSD, JPEG2000, OpenEXR, camera RAW, HEIC, PDF, DNG, CR2).
Alternatives: FastStone Image Viewer, ImageGlass
XnConvert is a fast, powerful and free cross-platform batch image converter, It allows to automate editing for your massive photo collections, you can rotate, convert and compress your different images, photos and pictures easily, and apply over 80 actions (like resize, crop, color adjustements, filter, ...). All common picture and graphics formats are supported. You can save and re-use your presets for another batch image convert.
Paint.NET is image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
Alternatives: Pinta
Free and full-featured audio player with seamless, high-quality playback and comprehensive format support.
Alternatives: foobar2000, Audacious
RadioSure is the best Internet radio player.
Alternatives: TapinRadio, Screamer Radio, odio
mp3DirectCut is a fast and extensive audio editor for encoded MP3 and AAC. Without re-encoding directly cut, crop, split and join your tracks, create fades on MP3 and much more. Direct editing saves encoding time and preserves the audio quality of encoded tracks. The built in recorder creates MP3 on the fly. With Cue sheets, Pause detection or Auto cue you can easily divide long files.
LameXP is a free multi-format audio file converter that supports a variety of output formats, including MP3, AAC/MP4, Ogg Vorbis, Opus as well as FLAC, and that can read a multitude of input formats. It also supports multi-threaded batch processing.
GUI for MediaInfo, an OpenSource tool for displaying technical information about media files.
Alternatives: MediaInfo Lite, MediaInfo
HandBrake is a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.
Alternatives: StaxRip, XMedia Recode
Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.
Alternatives: LosslessCut, VidCutter
Ant Renamer is a free program that makes easier the renaming of lots of files and folders by using specified settings. It supports Unicode names.
Alternatives: ReNamer, FileRenamer
The qBittorrent project aims to provide an open-source software alternative to µTorrent. Additionally, qBittorrent runs and provides the same features on all major platforms (FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, Windows).
Alternatives: Transmission, PicoTorrent
yt-dlp is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube and a few more sites.
aria2 is a lightweight multi-protocol & multi-source command-line download utility. It supports HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, BitTorrent and Metalink.
Alternatives: uGet, Free Download Manager
Serviio is a free media server. It allows you to stream your media files (music, video or images) to any DLNA-certified renderer device (e.g. a TV set, Bluray player, games console) on your home network.
Alternatives: Plex
NetSpot is an app for wireless site surveys, Wi-Fi analysis, and troubleshooting on macOS and Windows.
Alternatives: Acrylic Wifi, WifiInfoView
A unique, comprehensive, accurate & free Windows (and Linux/Wine) utility to determine the exact performance of local and remote DNS nameservers . . .
Alternatives: namebench
HWiNFO is a collection of professional hardware information and diagnostic tools supporting latest components, industry technologies, and standards.
Alternatives: CPU-Z + GPU-Z + PCI-Z + Windows System Information
PassMark DiskCheckup allows the user to monitor the SMART attributes of a particular hard disk drive. SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a feature on a computer's hard disk for providing various monitoring indicators of disk reliability. S.M.A.R.T. attributes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes
Alternatives: CrystalDiskInfo, GSmartControl, HDDScan
WizTree is a hard drive disk space analyser similar to WinDirStat but is MUCH faster.
Alternatives: WinDirStat
Disk Cleanup is a computer maintenance utility included in Microsoft Windows designed to free up disk space on a computer's hard drive.
Alternatives: BleachBit
Hashing utility for verifying integrity of files using a wide range of supported algorithms: CRC32, MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512, RipeMD128, RipeMD160, ED2K.
Alternatives: OpenHashTab, Hashtab
A text viewer application that has been carefully designed around its main task: viewing and presenting NFO files. It comes with three different view modes (Rendered, Classic and Text Only), export functionality and lots of options!
Alternatives: NFOPad
WinCDEmu is an open-source CD/DVD/BD emulator - a tool that allows you to mount optical disc images by simply clicking on them in Windows Explorer. If you have downloaded an ISO image and want to use it without burning it to a blank disc, WinCDEmu is the easiest way to do it.
Alternatives: ImgDrive, DAEMON Tools
TeamViewer is a comprehensive, remote access, remote control and remote support solution that works with almost every desktop and mobile platform, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Windows virtual machines for testing software are available at https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/
Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc.
Hiren’s BootCD PE (Preinstallation Environment) is a restored edition of Hiren’s BootCD based on Windows 10 PE x64. It includes the least, best and updated free tools used in Hiren’s BootCD. It is being developed for the new age computers, it supports UEFI booting and requires minimum 2 GB RAM. With the useful tools inside of the ISO, you can solve many problems related with your computer. It does not contain any pirated software, it includes only free and legal software.
Alternatives: SystemRescue
A malware cleaning tool that runs independent of the operating system from a CD, DVD, or a USB. It has direct access to the disc and the file system, and therefore is capable of removing the most persistent threats.
Alternative: https://ualinux.com/en/ubuntu-rescuepack
