🏆 = seriously impressed/impresses me
Manage time efficiently, organize tasks with lists and tags, and set priorities. Share task lists, attach files, and use collaboration tools.
🏆 Without this, my life would pretty much fall apart.
Store bookmarks with related content, organize thematically with real-time collaboration and privacy focus, offering web clipper and cloud sync.
🏆 The best, most beautiful bookmark manager ever.
Open-source password manager with AES-256 encryption and device sync. Store and access encrypted logins across platforms like iOS and Android.
🏆 Demolishes every other password manager. There's no competition. Bitwarden does it all and then some. Integrates with SimpleLogin too.
Aegis Authenticator is a free, secure and open source app to manage your 2-step verification tokens for your online services.
🏆 The most beautiful 2FA app I've seen yet.
Authenticator generates two-factor authentication (2FA) codes in your browser. Use it to add an extra layer of security to your online accounts.
A very minimal and nice little 2FA extension.
Open source solution to protect your personal email address. Generous free plan with uncapped bandwidth and infinite sends/replies, self-hostable, lot of powerful features, open roadmap, you can count on SimpleLogin to guard your email inbox.
🏆 I can have multiple accounts on a website and have all the emails go to one inbox. Also adds a nice layer of privacy.
Real-time navigation with community-reported traffic and hazard alerts, voice guidance, and map editing, ensuring a smoother drive every day.
Has shaved 30 minutes off of drives to appointments before. Traffic and hazard updates are just unbeatable.
Essential digital tool for comic and manga artists, offering specialized tools for shortcuts like panel layouts, inking, vector support, and 3D model import.
🏆 The Windows digital artist's best friend. Has a ridiculous amount of tools, and often goes on sale. Subscription-only on iOS and Android, and Windows and Mac will soon be subscription-only as well.
A free, open-source painting program for professional artists offering customizable UI, 9 brush engines, layer support, and color management.
The best open-source digital art app there is, period. Updates can be pretty slow, but it still feels like a commercial drawing app.
Comprehensive DAW for digital audio tasks, featuring advanced composition, arrangement, and editing tools, tailored for music professionals.
🏆 My DAW of choice. Also contains Edison, which is one of the greatest audio editors of all time. Very animated and intuitive interface. One time payment with updates for life.
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing.
Unfortunately, the gold standard of image editing tools. Extremely powerful, but I don't recommend giving Adobe money.
Real-time raster graphics editor with non-destructive edits, unlimited layers, and workspace for RAW editing, supporting major colour spaces and formats.
Very similar to Photoshop, but is a one-time payment and a TINY fraction of the price. Development is very very active.
Cloud storage offering 15 GB free space, automatic album and duplicate organization, AI editing, cross-platform sharing, and secure backups.
Having all of my photos stored in the cloud is outstanding, and Google's AI features are so good with image editing and object recognition, that it can be kinda scary.
Nine is a full-fledged email application for Android based on Direct Push technology to synchronize with 
Microsoft Exchange using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, and also designed for entrepreneurs or ordinary people who want to have...
🏆 The best email client for Android, period. It doesn't actually physically hurt to read and write emails from my phone now.
Real-time departures. Transit maps. Line status and real-time disruption alerts. Uber integration. Bike routing and live bike share info. Constant updates. Everything you need -- and may not even realize you need -- to manage your life in the city.
🏆 If I'm getting around a city or taking public transportation, I always use Citymapper. If you're in the US and used to driving, this takes out all the difficulty of transit. App is pretty much useless if you don't get the subscription, unfortunately.
The third-party Telegram android app. Contribute to NekoX-Dev/NekoX development by creating an account on GitHub.
A very feature-packed Telegram client for Android. Updates are slow, but it's a tradeoff made up for by the amount of features the app crams in.
Sync for reddit is a full-featured app for browsing the popular site reddit on the go. Featuring secure login, comments, messaging, profiles and much much more. Sync for reddit aims to provide you with the best and up-to-date reddit experience.
🏆 The best way to browse Reddit I've come across so far. Just an absolutely gorgeous app.
Swift Backup can backup your important data in minutes! Its quick, efficient and boasts an elegant design for a refreshing backup experience.
🏆 If you have a rooted Android device, and want to back up, then get this. I really wish something like this didn't require rooting, as this is such a powerful and intuitive way to back up things on an Android.
Repainter brings customizable, dynamic Material You theming to any Android 12 (and newer) device and ROM. Please read the entire description — ROOT MAY BE REQUIRED depending on your device and Android version!
Lets you make your Android 12+ device a little more pretty with Material You customization.
SAI is an app for installing and exporting split APKs - apps that consist of multiple APKs. SAI can install apps using standard Android API, using root access or using Shizuku.
Probably the easiest way to install APK bundles and APKs as root on Android. Interface could use a little more polish.
SD Maid SE (aka SD Maid 2) is a file management tool for Android that specialises in maintenance. Its core purpose is freeing up space and removing unwanted data.
🏆 An actually good storage cleaner for Android.
Solid Explorer is the best looking file and cloud manager with two independent panels, which brings to you a new file browsing experience.
Feature-rich Android file manager.
Open-source, decentralized alternative ensuring data ownership with encrypted communication and peer-to-peer sync, void of central server reliance.
🏆 Can be faster than transferring files over USB sometimes.
Windy.com is an extraordinary tool for weather forecast visualization. It’s fast, intuitive, detailed and most accurate weather app trusted by professional pilots, paragliders, skydivers, kiters, surfers, boaters, fishermen, storm chasers and weather geeks, and even by...
🏆 The most informative weather app in existence.
a) HARDWARE ACCELERATION - Hardware acceleration can be applied to more videos with the help of new HW+ decoder.
My video player of choice on Android.
🏆 I've tried a dozen ebook readers on Android, none of them match Moon+
Today Weather is a beautiful & simple-to-use weather app that provides the world's most accurate local weather forecasts.
🏆 My current favorite weather app for Android (RIP Weather Timeline). Super convenient, and has nice widgets and permanent notification for quick access.
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.
🏆 Required if you don't want to go blind from browsing the web at night.
Feature packed cross-platform music tracker for Last.fm, ListenBrainz, Libre.fm, Pleroma and other compatible services
🏆 This dude put so much effort into this masterpiece of a last.fm scrobbler. Nothing else on Android even comes close.
Violentmonkey provides userscript support for Chrome, Opera, Maxthon and Firefox supporting most scripts for 
Greasemonkey and 
Tampermonkey.
An essential if you want to use userscripts in your browser.
Comprehensive software providing screen recording and live streaming on Mac, Windows, and Linux with powerful encoding support and unlimited scenes.
🏆 Sometimes I don't even know how this piece of software is free. This thing is in the ranks with Blender and Krita in terms of commercial-grade open source software
FastForward circumvents sites which make you wait (like adf.ly), make you do something (e.g., show.co and sub2unlock.com) and even trackers (such as bit.ly and t.co)!.
Skips adf.ly links and other "url shorteners"
Bypass Paywalls Clean is a browser extension that allows you to read articles from (supported) sites that implement a paywall. You can also add domains as custom site and try to bypass the paywall. Weekly updates are released for fixes and new sites.
🏆 You can finally read that one news article.
Open-source game library manager unifying PC and emulated titles from platforms including Steam, GOG, and Origin with customizable plugins and themes.
🏆 The best game organizer and launcher there is. Lots and lots of customization and settings.
A way better way to check my money than my bank's app.
Does what is says on the tin. Undos YouTube's very dumb decision of removing dislikes.
Obsidian is a note-taking app that lets you create a personal knowledge graph with ease. It is designed for non-linear thinking and allows you to easily link your notes together wiki-style.
🏆 An insanely flexible note app.
Create stunning notes and professional documents effortlessly by hand, brainstorm ideas on an infinite canvas, and annotate PDFs seamlessly. Powered by the world's leading AI handwriting recognition technology, MyScript Notes offers a dynamic platform where handwriting...
Whenever I want to handwrite notes on my tablet, I use this.
Unofficial alternative for ad-free YouTube with SponsorBlock, background playback, auto-repeat, dislike counts, and offline downloads using custom patches.
🏆 Youtube Vanced, except now it's fully legal because all this does is patch your existing YouTube APK. Blocks ads, comes with SponsorBlock, and Return Youtube Dislike.
Highly customizable browser with built-in ad and tracker blockers, Chromium compatibility, advanced tab management, cross-device sync, and strong privacy features.
My web browser of choice.
Cloud service for file storage and sync, integrated with Google Docs suite, facilitating collaboration and offering scalable storage solutions.
Google Drive
AdGuard is the best way to get rid of intrusive ads and online tracking, and to protect your computer from malware. Make your web surfing faster, safer and more comfortable with AdGuard!.
🏆 The most powerful and comprehensive ad blocker there is.
SponsorBlock is an open-source crowdsourced browser extension to skip sponsor segments in YouTube videos. Users submit when a sponsor happens from the extension, and the extension automatically skips sponsors it knows about.
Skips sponsor segments in YouTube videos using the power of the community.
eM Client is a full featured e-mail client with a modern and easy to use interface. eM Client also offers calendar, tasks, contacts, notes and chat.
🏆 My email client of choice on Windows, but sadly pricing is really stupid.
Tabbed browsing, powerful file search, dual pane options, scripting, customizable interface, bulk renaming, portable use, and advanced preview for files.
🏆 Windows file explorer on super steroids. Once you take advantage of XYplorer's features, you never want to go back. Stupid fast and feature packed.
Accelerate your downloads by up to 8 times! Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a download accelerator to increase download speeds by up to 8 times, resume, organize and schedule downloads.
The most popular download manager there on Windows, and for good reason.
Comprehensive photo management software for viewing, batch converting, editing and resizing images and creating thumbnail sheets.
🏆 I've tried many image viewers and organizers, and none of them come close to XnView MP.
Customizable Windows media player offering broad format support, ad-free operation, hardware acceleration, advanced subtitles, and smooth 3D playback.
🏆 My favorite media player on Windows. Definitely beats VLC.
Advanced tool for GPU overclocking, video capture, and screen recording. Supports Nvidia and ATI cards, includes Kombustor stress test, portable and ad-free.
🏆 Monitor your FPS and hardware information while in a game.
A free, powerful, multi-purpose tool that helps you monitor system resources, debug software and detect malware.
🏆 Task Manager on super steroids.
Comments
A number of my personal favorites are on this list, happy to see. Unfortunately the majority of Reddit third-party software is now obsolete.