🏆 = seriously impressed/impresses me
Command line program that's a 
youtube-dl fork that downloads videos from YouTube and over 1000 sites. The main focus of this project is adding new features and patches while also keeping up to date with the original project.
🏆 Download videos from any website in existence, including YouTube.
Twinkle Tray enables brightness control on external displays in Windows 10 & 11. Even th Windows is capable of adjusting the backlight on most monitors, it doesn't support external monitors natively.
🏆 Control your monitor's brightness from inside WIndows. Don't know why this isn't a default feature in Windows.
Free and open-source tool for screen capture and recording; enables file uploads, annotation, dark mode, 4K support, and customizable themes.
🏆 The screenshot editing tools alone make this thing an instant recommend.
Manages clipboard history, supports text, images, and syncs across computers. Offers encryption, search, thumbnails, and full Unicode with multilingual support.
🏆 Let's you see everything you ever copied to your clipboard. 11/10
Advanced volume mixer for Windows 10 and 11 providing per-app control, device switching, audio visualization, hotkeys, automatic updates, and modern interface.
Easily control the volume of each app in Windows.
An open-source multithreaded video transcoder, HandBrake compresses and converts digital media, supporting MP4, MKV formats, and offers hardware-accelerated conversion.
Very good video converter/encoder.
With Connectify Hotspot, you can transform your PC into a real WiFi hotspot, and share your computer’s Internet connection as Wi-Fi with any other PC or mobile device.
This combined with a cheap router beats the Oculus link cable any day of the week.
Free and open-source tool for batch uninstalling multiple apps with minimal input, removing portable, protected, and damaged software, and cleaning up leftovers.
Uninstalls stuff and removes the leftovers.
Auto Dark Mode helps you to be more productive. When it is light outside, we enable you to have a bright and clearly readable OS. After the sun starts to set, your operating system switches to a matching theme to take care of your eyes.
Microsoft, why isn't this a built in feature?
Free open-source media system alternative to proprietary options, supports Chromecast, 4K streaming, plugin extensions, with privacy focus.
🏆 The best free media server there is.
My Android custom ROM of choice. Snappy and customizable. Daily driving this on my Mi 9.
Formats USB drives to various file systems and creates bootable USBs from ISOs. Supports MS-DOS/FreeDOS bootable sticks and offers BIOS or UEFI options.
Burn an ISO to a flash drive like it's a DVD.
Edit and organize audio metadata easily with comprehensive support for batch editing and various audio formats. Available free for Windows; macOS version costs $20.
My favorite tool for adding tags and cover art to music files.
Private networks made easy. Connect all your devices using WireGuard, without the hassle. Tailscale makes it as easy as installing an app and signing in.
🏆 Beautiful personal VPN.
Equalizer APO is a parametric / graphic equalizer for Windows. It is implemented as an Audio Processing Object (APO) for the system effect infrastructure introduced with Windows Vista.
🏆 Can add VST plugins to input and output devices. There's nothing like it. Makes my Modmic sound way better.
Pure instant messaging — simple, fast, secure, and synced across all your devices. One of the top 5 most downloaded apps in the world with over 1 billion active users.
The most beautiful Telegram client I think I've come across. Windows-only, and for good reason. Embraces the Windows 11 UI in a very nice way.
🏆 The best archive compressor and decompressor out there. Loads of file support and features.
Analyze disk space usage with in-depth insights and interactive visualizations across local and network drives, including mobile devices.
Best way to look for what's taking up space on your system.
Software that makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.
My personal favorite blue light filter.
Locate files and folders by filename on Windows instantly, displaying all items on NTFS volumes and mapped network drives. Supports 19 languages.
Really advanced and fast file search for Windows.
Qalculate! is a multi-purpose cross-platform desktop calculator. It is simple to use but provides power and versatility normally reserved for complicated math packages, as well as useful tools for everyday needs (such as currency conversion and percent calculation).
My Windows calculator of choice. This makes much more sense over something like the built-in calculator because of its keyboard-focused design.
Free, extensible code editor with Git integration, AI-driven IntelliCode, and 30,000+ extensions, supporting various languages like Python, Java.
🏆 Best code/text editor out there. Microsoft knocked it out the park with this one.
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...
🏆 Wii and GameCube emulator, and possibly the best emulator ever made. Still in active development and has a massive community and tons of features. Even works well on Android phones and tablets.
RPCS3 is an experimental open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger written in C++ for Windows, Mac and Linux. RPCS3 began development in May of 2011 by its founders, DH and Hykem.
🏆 Seriously impressive PlayStation 3 emulator. The PS3 has a notoriously complex architecture, yet the devs of RPCS3 have got over 60% of the games on it fully playable from start to end on this thing. I get 120fps at 1440p in Skate 3 on my PC.
🏆 THE Nintendo Wii U emulator. This is the best possible way to experience Breath of the Wild. Recently went open source.
It is a Nintendo Switch Emulator programmed in C#; unlike most emulators that are created with C++ or C. This emulator aims to offer good performance, a friendly interface, and consistent builds. Ryujinx is created by user gdkchan over at the GBAtemp forums.
🏆 Nintendo Switch emulator that has played every game I've thrown at it at 1440p 60fps. Can't go wrong with either this or Yuzu; both are very good.
yuzu is an experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.
🏆 Nintendo Switch emulator that has played every game I've thrown at it at 1440p 60fps. Can't go wrong with either this or Ryujinx; both are very good.
🏆 Gold standard of PlayStation 2 emulation.
Fast and simple Nintendo DS emulator. Not as many features as I'd wish, but still in active development.
Moonlight allows you to stream your collection of games from your GameStream-compatible PC to any supported device and play them remotely. Moonlight is perfect for gameplay on the go without sacrificing the graphics quality of your gaming computer.
🏆 The absolute best way to play the games you have installed on your PC on another device (if you have an Nvidia GPU). I admittedly played too much RDR2 at school on my phone this way.
Disguising itself as regular traffic, this service hides your IP, encrypts data, supports 10 devices at once, and offers global server locations.
Really fast VPN from the people behind AdGuard, and also integrates very well with AdGuard. Windows version used to be pretty buggy, but the 2.0 update seems to have gotten rid of them.
Professional Windows diagnostic tool offering real-time hardware monitoring and comprehensive device information, ideal for experts and integrators.
🏆 If you want to know anything about your computer's hardware, you should get this.
Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.
🏆 I don't know how they did it, but the fact that you can have multiple bootable ISOs on a flash drive, all selectable from the boot menu, is just amazing.
Comprehensive codec collection with DirectShow filters enables playback of popular and rare audio and video formats, configurable installation and regular updates.
Codec pack. I recommend getting the version that comes with madVR if your GPU is beefy enough. Use with PotPlayer.
The Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools. This file contains the individual troubleshooting tools and help files. It does not contain non-troubleshooting tools like the BSOD Screen Saver or NotMyFault.
🏆 A collection of amazing system management and IT tools for Windows. Has been around for 20+ years and still gets updated to this day.
Simple tool to configure Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) which can configure network activity on your computer.
🏆 Tiny and extremely powerful firewall for Windows. Recommended more for advanced users who know what they're doing.
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.