Curated list of Windows utilities

Fast and simple, it works well for quickly editing text files. It includes syntax highlighting for dozens of programming languages and many features, such as macros and the ability to search recursively inside the contents of files in a directory. Do not try to open large files with it, though, as it can freeze (for large files, see the glogg alternative below). By default, it adds an entry to the Explorer context menu during installation, but that can be deselected (or removed later with ShellExView). A diff plugin is available for it.

For an alternative to Notepad++ more similar to Windows Notepad (lighter, simpler), see Notepad3 or other maintained Notepad2 forks (all of them open-source and running the same engine, Scintilla). Sublime Text (see below) is a good cross-platform, shareware alternative. Visual Studio Code is a more powerful cross-platform alternative, also open-source, but I find it too heavy and unresponsive, possibly because it's an Electron-based app, although the ecosystem is great. The open-source Lapce is promising and may hopefully be able to compete with Sublime Text someday (not yet). Zed is another open-source, cross-platform editor written in Rust and notably fast, with built-in collaboration features, though it is still maturing. On Linux (KDE), Kate works remarkably well. On Android, the best code editor is probably Acode editor, also open-source.

I use it as a secondary browser with the following extensions: uBlock Origin (with lists to avoid cookie banners and other annoyances), Bypass Paywalls, LanguageTool, Wayback Machine, Push to Kindle, and Checker Plus for Gmail. Other useful extensions are Greasemonkey and Wappalyzer. I always change the settings to allow the right-click mouse menu on websites that hijack it. A developer edition is also available.

Firefox also has an Android version with support for these same extensions, which I use as my secondary mobile browser (actually, I now use Fennec F-Droid for better extension support).

It can open the most common image formats, and it is extremely fast. Its GUI is minimal but allows for adjusting typical parameters. Slower but good alternatives include IrfanView (freeware, very capable), Honeyview and ImageGlass. For another more powerful (and much heavier) alternative that also includes an image browser, see XnViewMP below in the freeware section.

For Linux, a good alternative is feh. Oculante, an open-source cross-platform alternative written in Rust, looks promising. On Android, Aves is arguably the best viewer/browser, and on macOS I recommend PicView (also available for Windows).

It bundles its library of codecs (mostly based on the FFMPEG project), supports hardware acceleration, subtitles, and most features you would expect from a video player, including conversion from/to multiple audio, video, and subtitle file formats.

mpv (successor to MPlayer/MPlayer2) is a more modern, open-source, and cross-platform alternative that is faster and plays UHD content better than VLC. However, the UI lacks features like automatic subtitle downloading, and I'm still not used to it. Good GUIs for mpv exist, though, such as SMPlayer (cross-platform) and IINA for Mac. For another open-source (windows-only) alternative, see MPC-BE below on this page.

VLC is also okay on its Android version, but not as good as MX Player (shareware).

It can open many formats, including ISO images. Years ago, I used the shareware application WinRAR, which in my opinion still has a slightly better UI (the interface in 7-zip is basic but robust). The only other advantage of WinRAR is the possibility of compressing RAR files, but compressing files with open formats such as .7z or .tar.xz is nowadays preferred, and WinRAR cannot do that. By default, 7-zip adds a cascaded menu in the Explorer context menu for compressing and decompressing files, and a separate menu for calculating hashes (all of them can be disabled and tuned in the preferences). Includes a command-line tool (7za.exe) and now can also decompress Zstandard files (.zst). There is a fork called 7-Zip-zstd which supports more formats, including compression and decompression of Zstandard, Brotli, LZ4, Lizard, Fast LZMA2 and decompression of lzip.

Mac and Linux now also have an official command-line version (previously, a port named p7zip was used on these platforms). As for GUI applications on these platforms, the best for Mac is probably the open-source Keka (which can compress files too, not like The Unarchiver), and Linux has good default applications in both KDE (Ark) and GNOME (File Roller). On Android, the best is ZArchiver (freeware), but file managers such as the open-source Material Files (see later) may be enough most of the time.

It has many capture methods (region, window, scrolling, OCR, etc.), a few upload destinations are supported, and it can be highly customized. Also, it includes additional tools such as a color picker, a hash checker (therefore, tools such as HashCheck are no longer needed), or a tool to change the DNS servers. Also, it adds an entry in the Windows Explorer's context menu to upload files to the supported services (that I always disable in the settings, because the same functionality is already available by default inside the "Send to" submenu).

ShareX is a quicker, more powerful alternative to the open-source tool Greenshot, which is also very good (and has a better image editor, and may be easier to use). ShareX's screen recording functionality is very basic and can't replace the more specialized open-source tool OBS.

On Linux, the best screenshot tool is probably Flameshot (open-source). On Mac, shottr (freeware) works OK for screenshots, and Kap (open-source) for screen capturing.

It is the SFTP/FTP client that has the best GUI I have used (much better than FileZilla). Remote editing works without issues, and it can store sites and credentials using a master password. The stored sites can be used to connect with Putty if it is installed (by default, it searches for the 32-bit version of Putty), and it has an option to "remember session password and pass it to Putty" in Preferences -> Integration -> Applications. Additionally, the different sites may be marked with different colors, which can be very handy.

On Mac, Cyberduck (open-source, originally a Mac app, also available for Windows) is a popular alternative that additionally supports S3, Azure, Google Cloud Storage, and other cloud backends.

It has support for other protocols, such as telnet and rlogin, and can even be configured as a Cygwin terminal (I never tried that, though). Multiple enhanced forks exist, such as Kitty (this one works well). I haven't tried Superputty, but it looks good. Windows now has native OpenSSH client and server implementations, but I've had no reason to try them yet (and I imagine I would miss putty's ability to store bookmarks). Tabby (open-source, cross-platform) is a more modern alternative that combines a terminal emulator with SSH client functionality and a much nicer UI, though it is Electron-based.

It is more stable, performs better, and has more features than Meld (also open-source and cross-platform). KDiff3 (also open-source, cross-platform) is a robust but limited alternative that now looks dated. Both Meld and kdiff3 were originally made for Linux and do not work very well on Windows and Mac. The paid, closed-source alternatives Beyond Compare (cross-platform, see below) and the Professional version of Araxis Merge (very expensive, available for Mac and Windows, but not Linux) are comparable and more polished. For Linux (KDE) there is also Kompare.

It supports all popular databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MS Access, and Amazon Redshift), has many features, and its UI is intuitive.

HeidiSQL is also good but has less database support and is Windows-only. Good shareware alternatives are Navicat and DataGrip. Other open-source apps that I haven't tried but that may be OK are SQL Workbench/J and SQuirreL.

Deluge and Transmission are also good open-source BitTorrent clients, and they are cross-platform too, but I have found that on Windows, qBittorrent is better. The freeware μTorrent used to be very good (until v2.2.1 I recall). Some people recommend using Tixati, but with so many open-source clients available, I don't see why a freeware alternative should be considered.

On Android, probably the paid app Fluid is the best BitTorrent client available (LibreTorrent, which is open-source, may be enough). I used to use KTorrent in the past, when I used KDE, and it worked well.

It can open huge files very fast in read-only mode. Klogg is a maintained fork of the original glogg project with additional features and improvements. For logs, I need to try the commercial alternative LogViewerPlus.

It can find duplicate files, large files, empty folders, temporary files, similar image/music files, and more. For duplicate video files, see Video Duplicate Finder on this page.

I still like it if what I want is a local password database and a small app that does not get in the way.

For cross-platform compatible alternatives, see the KeePassXC port. Bitwarden is another open-source, cross-platform alternative with built-in sync (self-hostable), which many people prefer for its ease of use across devices. On Android, there is a clone called KeePassDX.

It can also open DjVu, EPUB, XPS, CHM, CBR, CBZ, and MOBI files.

It is less bloated than Foxit Reader (which now installs ads and other software by default, including a banner that must be disabled in the preferences) and is especially lighter than Adobe Acrobat Reader. Nowadays, PDF support is bundled in Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and these are usually fast enough at opening PDFs, but I still prefer using Sumatra.

On Linux, Okular from KDE project is probably the best alternative.

On Android, the open-source Librera and KOReader apps are good PDF/eBook readers.

Microsoft has finally released a good terminal application, and made it open-source. It supports the Command Prompt (cmd.exe), Windows PowerShell, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). This makes ConEmu and probably Cmder obsolete.

For other platforms, good open-source options are iTerm2 (for Mac) and the newer Ghostty (Mac and Linux, open-source, written in Zig, with a native UI on each platform), KDE's Konsole and Gnome Terminal.

Inspired by the PowerToys project for Windows 95, this is available for Windows 10 and newer. It currently includes FancyZones (window manager), PowerRename (a Windows Shell Extension for advanced bulk renaming using search and replace or regular expressions), Always On Top (for always-on-top functionality, that is, to pin windows above other windows), PowerToys Run (a Keypirinha/Wox alternative), a convenient Screen ruler, Peek (a utility for quickly previewing files without the need to open multiple applications or interrupt your workflow), Paste as Plain Text, Quick Accent (for quickly typing accented characters, such as WizKey does), preview handlers for SVG and Markdown (that can be used with Directory Opus and Total Commander, for example), Shortcut Guide (a Windows key shortcut guide), Keyboard Manager (a tool to redefine keyboard keys), Image Resizer (a Windows Shell Extension for resizing images), Awake (designed to keep your computer awake without having to manage the power & sleep settings), GUIs for managing the environment variables and the hosts file, File Locksmith (a shell extension for checking which files are in use and by which processes), a Color Picker, a tool to mute the microphone, Registry Preview, and many others.

On an unrelated note, I haven't tried Windows 11 yet, but if I do it, I should probably also use ExplorerPatcher and the new Advanced Page with it.

Calibre is especially useful for converting books between multiple e-book formats (it used to be a must for Kindle owners). Unfortunately the UI is not great.

It can securely delete files, folders, program history, cache, and temporary files. It can be an alternative to the problematic freeware/shareware CCleaner.

Although it supports multiple protocols (VNC, SSH, etc.), I mostly use it when I need to connect to Windows machines via the RDP protocol ("Terminal Server").

A good alternative to TeamViewer and AnyDesk (both freeware). RustDesk is self-hostable.

It can be buggy, but I use it as an alternative to VMware. Hyper-V could also be a free alternative for Windows Pro users, but VirtualBox allows sharing machines between Windows/Linux/Mac hosts.

This cross-platform tool helps download websites for offline browsing (equivalent to wget on Linux/Mac).

Greenflare works well for finding broken links (e.g., 403 and 404) on a website. I used to use the old Xenu's Link Sleuth, which is freeware, but is now abandoned.

Other SEO-oriented, more powerful alternatives exist, such as the expensive Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Java-based).

youtube-dl (and its successor yt-dlp) is a CLI tool to download videos from YouTube and hundreds of other sites. It can download video and audio-only files in multiple formats, using FFmpeg automatically if needed. Tartube is a graphical interface that installs the cli application and can update it automatically. If you find the UI confusing, you can use the classic tab to emulate the old, abandoned, youtube-dl-gui alternative.

Other alternatives to consider: Stacher (closed-source, Electron-based, cross-platform), Varia (open-source, cross-platform), Media Downloader (open-source, cross-platform), and maybe JDownloader (see later in this page).

FreeTube is also an interesting open-source YouTube client with many advanced features.

For Android, I recommend Seal and checking YouTube clients NewPipe (with support for Android Auto), Tubular (a fork of NewPipe with built-in SponsorBlock), and PipePipe (also with Sponsorblock).

It is not perfect, but LibreOffice Writer and Calc can be decent alternatives to Microsoft Word and Excel. For example, LibreOffice Calc handles standard CSV files much better by default. OnlyOffice Community Edition (open-source AGPL, cross-platform) is sometimes cited for better compatibility with Microsoft Office formats and has a ribbon-style UI closer to modern Microsoft Office, though being Chromium Embedded Framework-based.

An open-source and better alternative to Revo Uninstaller Free. It allows you to uninstall multiple programs in bulk, as well as force-uninstall, residue file detection, and others.

Unfortunately Zenmap hasn't been updated much in years, and its interface feels outdated and clunky.

HandBrake is a simple video converter that works well. It is designed to be a video transcoder, and so it wasn't designed to allow passthrough. To be able to remux (that is: change the container format) or just re-encode the audio, for example, see the alternatives Avidemux and XMedia Recode below. Nowadays I tend to use ffmpeg cli alone, with the help of ChatGPT and sometimes on WSL. VLC can also convert between most audio and video file formats, although its user interface is not great and the process does not always work. For video ripping/compressing, the open-source MKVToolNix and closed-source MakeMKV are also applications to have in mind, especially if MKV can be the output format.

Compresses many file formats (documents, images, archives, sound files, executables, etc.) without quality loss.

Early access builds are available on GitHub. GoldenDict supports many offline formats (DSL, dictzip, Babylon, etc.) and has a closed-source Android version too.

It is an excellent app for working with subtitles. It has many features, including subtitle generation (using Whisper) and automatic translation. Many file formats are supported.

Windows Calculator is probably OK too, and it is now open-source.

On Android, the open-source OpenCalc is good.

balenaEtcher is a cross-platform alternative, also open-source, but unfortunately based on Electron (I still use it for Raspberry SD images, though).

This Linux/Windows tool can be very handy: it creates a partition on the USB drive, and you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to it to boot from them directly. Many (but not all) operating systems are supported, and they can be combined on a single drive.

SSD-Z used to be a good (proprietary) alternative, but is no longer updated.

This is not a GUI tool, but it is often used alongside GUI apps to automate tasks.

I still need to check AutoIt, it's supposedly less buggy than AutoHotkey.

Not related, but for automating tasks, I may use Node.js too.

The browser is based on the open-source Chromium project, but it cannot be considered open-source itself. Some extensions I use are: uBlock Origin (with lists to avoid cookie banners and other annoyances), Cookie Remover, ModHeader, Google Mail Checker, Send to Kindle/Push to Kindle, Wayback Machine/Save to the Wayback Machine, LanguageTool and Grammarly. Unfortunately, its mobile version does not support extensions, and therefore I use Firefox on Android (see above). Chrome Canary is also good to have.

Using an index, it can locate files and folders by filename instantly. Other more advanced alternatives that do not use an index include Agent Ransack (shareware), FileSeek (freeware), and PowerGREP (shareware, probably the most complete GUI option for regex-heavy searches, but expensive for occasional use). (WizFile also looks similar). Other open-source alternatives for searching content in files are dnGrep, AstroGrep, grepWin, and the (non-GUI) ripgrep. DocFetcher and the non-GUI ripgrep-all are open-source alternatives apps that are able to search content within files of multiple rich formats, such as DOCX, PDF or EPUB. Also, note that advanced file managers such Total Commander and Directory Opus have advanced file search functionality.

For Linux, an alternative to Everything is fsearch.

A very good audio player for Windows with a simple yet customizable user interface. It supports gapless playback, ReplayGain, and has advanced tagging capabilities. It can also rip CDs and transcode files (e.g., from FLAC to MP3).

I also like the open-source Clementine. For ripping, I used to use the open-source apps cdex (which has included bundleware and potentially unwanted software since 2013 - avoid downloading), CUETools, and fr:eac, and the freeware alternative Exact Audio Copy. However, since foobar2000 can also rip discs with the free encoder pack (and perhaps because I don't rip discs as often now), I no longer install them. For similar reasons, I haven't tried FlacSquisher yet, although it might still be useful for mass-converting FLAC to MP3/Opus while preserving the directory structure. Other freeware multimedia players worth checking include MusicBee; I still prefer foobar2000 for customization and tagging workflows. Note that VLC can also convert between multiple audio files.

On Linux, I use DeadBeef, which now has a Windows version I haven't tried. Freeware Android versions of foobar2000 and DeadBeef also exist, but they can't be compared to Poweramp (paid) and Musicolet or Oto Music (both free). For Android, I also recommend the freeware player AIMP.

I still use GIMP and Photoshop (see both and more alternatives below), which are heavier and more powerful, but Paint.NET is great for quick image editing.

It is now free for non-commercial use. It includes an excellent visual Git diff tool with in-place editing.

It could also be used as a simple file manager, especially for browsing images and videos.

There are a few good freeware alternatives such as IrfanView (which may be slightly faster and offer more basic editing functionality) and FastStone Image Viewer, but I choose XnViewMP for its user interface (the older XnView Classic may still be slightly more stable). I need to check out its sister project XnConvert, which looks like it might be a good image converter (in the absence of a decent GUI for ImageMagick). The commercial app ACDSee has a nice GUI, but I don't think it's worth its price nowadays.

It could be replaced with PowerToys (see above), but the last time I tried it, I preferred this one. I haven't investigated ueli, which looks good and is open-source, but unfortunately is built with Electron.

It is very fast on NTFS drives and works well when I just want to see where the space went.

The open-source WinDirStat is the most popular tool of its kind, but it is much slower on NTFS drives. SpaceSniffer has a nicer treemap but is also slower. TreeSize Free is another freeware alternative that is okay.

There are good open-source alternatives for Linux (Baobab, Filelight, QDirStat, and ncdu (for the CLI)) and Mac (GrandPerspective), but in comparison, most of these are more limited.

WizTree adds an entry in the Windows Explorer context menu, but that can be disabled in the preferences. The developers of this software, Antibody Software, also produce other quality tools.

It is feature-rich and stable, like all other Sysinternals solutions. Among other things, I use it to verify image signatures and to identify processes from their opened windows. In the past, I also used it to identify processes with opened/locked files (Find => Find Handle or DLL), replacing the need for other tools like Lockhunter, although this is now possible with a convenient PowerToys extension (see above).

Also from Sysinternals. It includes a command-line version.

Many freeware apps by Sysinternals (now Microsoft). Apart from Process Explorer and Autoruns (described above), the tools I use are Process Monitor, DiskMon, TCPView, ShellRunas, and PsTools. See the full list.

This site contains a massive collection of small freeware utilities, all developed by Nir Sofer. Most of the tools can be called from the command line and export data to files. Apps worth checking are CurrPorts, WirelessNetView, LANIPScanner, Wireless Network Watcher, NetRouteView, AdapterWatch, DNSDataView, WhoisThisDomain, PingInfoView, IPNetInfo, NetResView, DomainHostingView, NirCmd, HashMyFiles, UninstallView, WakeMeOnLan, WifiHistoryView, WifiInfoView, SearchMyFiles, FileTypesMan, ProduKey, ShellExView, ShellMenuView, DriverView, USBDeview, BluetoothView, DevManView, PropertySystemView, CountryTraceRoute, NetworkLatencyView, SmartSniff, AppNetworkCounter, FolderChangesView, FileActivityWatch, MultiMonitorTool, TurnedOnTimesView, AdvancedRun, AppCompatibilityView, BlueScreenView, AppCrashView, WinCrashReport, WhatIsHang, RunAsDate, ProcessActivityView, OpenedFilesView, OpenWithView, RegScanner, RegFromApp, TaskSchedulerView, AppAudioConfig, SoundVolumeView, DriveLetterView, URLProtocolView, IconsExtract, ResourcesExtract and its password recovery utilities. See the full list. Note that antivirus software may flag utilities from this site as malicious, but these are generally false positives.

It is prettier than the Java-based Angry IP Scanner open-source alternative and has a few more features. It is also much easier to use than Zenmap/nmap, and can be useful to quickly discover devices in the same network. Like most apps in this list, it can also be used as a portable app. Fing is a freeware alternative for both mobile and desktop that I don't recommend.

For the device discoverability, nowadays I guess this can be replaced with Nirsoft's LANIPScanner.

Among other features, it can be used to minimize any application to the tray, to set windows "always on top", or to make windows transparent. I find the freeware edition of this program good enough (I don't use it often, though). For just the always-on-top functionality, there are also the open-source DeskPins, and PowerToys (see above). Minimizing apps to the system tray is still one of the most requested features for PowerToys, and is available in the open-source RBTray too.

For my needs, this has replaced the freeware siw.exe (now abandoned), Speccy, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, and HWMonitor. The shareware Aida64 (previously called Everest) is not worth its price, in my opinion. Core Temp is a smaller alternative for displaying CPU temperatures, utilization, RAM utilization, etc., right in the system tray.

For Linux, there is hardinfo2 and the CPU-Z clone CPU-X.

I find Mp3tag easier to use than other alternatives, such as MusicBrainz Picard (open-source). By default, the installation process adds an entry in the Windows Explorer context menu. EasyTag is also an acceptable open-source, cross-platform alternative.

The open-source Frhed was a good simple alternative but has been discontinued. I need to check ImHex (open-source, cross-platform), which looks promising.

It has been discontinued, but is still the best tool to burn images. It now includes bundleware (the BetaNews download does not). In the past, I was a Nero Burning ROM user (and Alcohol 120%, CloneCD, CDRWIN, CloneDVD, AnyDVD, BlindWrite, DiscJuggler, etc.), but I also used the open-source InfraRecorder to burn CDs, which worked reasonably well. I never tried the freeware CDBurnerXP.

It identifies file types from their binary signatures. It is the GUI version of TrID, the equivalent of the file UNIX command.

It will not replace IDEs such as IntelliJ IDEA or PhpStorm, but as a code editor, it is better than Notepad++ and any other text editor I have tried. For open-source alternatives, see the Notepad++ entry above.

It is still not perfect (e.g., it lacks SFTP support), but in my opinion, it is better than any other file manager, free or paid, on any operating system. I usually install it alongside some additional preview handlers, such as the ones included in SumatraPDF (for PDF and EPUB) and in PowerToys (for Markdown) - see more of them in Directory Opus official forums.

However, Directory Opus is expensive. I have reviewed a few other Windows Explorer alternatives, including the shareware XYplorer and xplorer², and they are okay, but I don't think they can be compared to Directory Opus. See Total Commander alternative below.

On Mac, I sometimes use QSpace Pro and Forklift as Finder alternatives. Unfortunately they are not as good as Directory Opus. On Linux, I usually use the limited Nautilus (when on Gnome) and KDE's powerful (but sometimes buggy) Dolphin.

I usually install Total Commander. Some plugins I may install are xz, Exif, id3, and maybe imagine, SFTP, ISO, Cloud, and 7zip (7-zip unpacking-only functionality is already bundled). Most plugins can be downloaded for free.

I checked other alternatives to Total Commander such as the open-source/cross-platform Double Commander and muCommander, and the freeware FreeCommander, Altap Salamander, and Multi Commander, but they are not as powerful and customizable. fman is a promising cross-platform shareware dual-pane file manager but is still very limited.

On Mac, there are also interesting shareware alternatives: Marta and Nimble Commander. On Linux, probably the best option is to use Krusader (if on KDE) or to stick to Double Commander.

Total Commander has a freeware version for Android that works well, but that is not as good as Material Files (open-source), nor Solid Explorer and MiXplorer (both shareware).

It stands out in its category due to its extensive feature set, efficient performance, and a well-designed, stable user interface. While it's cross-platform, the user experience is particularly refined on Windows, where it boasts a more comprehensive feature set (the Linux version is missing some features, and the Mac version is less robust and does not feel native). WinMerge (see above) is a comparable open-source, Windows-only alternative. Araxis Merge is also a comparable alternative (see WinMerge entry above for details).

Usually, I use the official git command line tool instead, but this can be handy. It's one of the best GUI Git tools I've used, though unlike Beyond Compare and WebStorm, its visual diff lacks in-place editing. It is published by the same developers of Sublime Text. The evaluation version is fully functional, and can serve as a limited, standard diff tool. SourceTree is a freeware alternative that can be OK (in comparison, the open-source GitAhead (which is now forked in Gittyup) is much slower). I have tried Tower briefly and I like it but I don't think it is worth the money (it requires a subscription). Git Extensions and SmartGit do not have a great UX. Fork is another shareware alternative that works well on Windows/Mac.

This open-source tool is similar to the default volume mixer in Windows, but has additional features and settings.

For most video formats, it works better and faster than VLC. The GUI feels outdated but is still better than what mpv offers (see VLC entry above for more on mpv). Some people use MPC in combination with MadVR and LAV filters. MPC-HC maintained fork by clsid2 is a very similar alternative.

This previews many different kinds of files when highlighted in the file manager and pressing the spacebar. By default, it works great with both Windows Explorer and Directory Opus. It could be considered a successor to the now outdated Universal Viewer. Hopefully, this functionality is nowadays provided by the Peek utility of PowerToys (see above).

I used it in the past, and while it worked, it was a bit frustrating to use. There is also draw.io, which is open-source too, and which is more intuitive and easier to use (but web-based/Electron-based, unfortunately). I've been told about yED recently, but I haven't looked into it yet.

It isn't great (it is very unstable), but it is simple and can work for simple tasks such as splitting videos or changing audio tracks. For just splitting media files though, LosslessCut (see below) should be considered.

On Mac, the bundled QuickTime player works reasonably well for splitting videos into shorter clips.

Apparently better than VidCutter, which is another alternative. Unfortunately Electron-based. See also the description of Audacity in this page for audio-only alternatives.

It can be a more versatile alternative to HandBrake, and is more stable than Avidemux. Additionally, it has basic editing abilities and can also remux videos and re-encode only the audio from files.

It is useful if you want to inspect the codecs of a media file. The installation process displays some advertisements, but only during the installation.

Based on Python, it works well, but its UI feels a bit dated.

Nowadays, Windows Calculator also allows doing conversions between the most common units.

For a good and modern web-based alternative, see Converter NOW. It is also available on Android.

Sigil is probably the best EPUB editor.

Veracrypt is the successor to TrueCrypt. If using Windows Professional, Microsoft's alternative BitLocker is available for free.

I don't usually record or create sounds, but this works well for cutting and splitting tracks into shorter audio files. The smaller tools mp3DirectCut, Mp3splt and m4acut can do that losslessly, but I haven't tried them yet.

For Android, I sometimes use Audio Recorder (open-source) to record sound.

Can create, edit, secure and scan PDF documents. Has recently been renamed to Foxit PDF Editor. I find it easier to use than Nitro PDF and Adobe Acrobat Professional. I still use Acrobat Pro from a virtual machine sometimes, and I need to try Master PDF Editor which is paid but cross-platform (for Linux too). PDF4QT is a notable open-source, cross-platform PDF editor (open-source PDF editors with editing capabilities are rare). Some limited, online tools to work with PDF are: PDFCreator Online, ILovePDF and PDF24.

It supports Gettext (PO) and a few other files. In my opinion, it has a much better UI than OmegaT, a Java-based alternative that is also open-source and probably more popular in the translation sector. Unfortunately, Poedit does not support the LanguageTool spell-checker and does not provide integration with automatic open-source translators such as Apertium. The open-source version is nowadays quite limited compared to the PRO (paid) version.

GIMP cannot be compared to Photoshop, but it works well. I've also tried Krita, another open-source, cross-platform image editor, but I find its UI is not well-suited for photo editing (I think Krita is targeted at digital painting), and it is less stable than GIMP on Windows/Mac (on KDE, Krita works well). Photopea is a solid web-based alternative that is free but includes ads. Another online option is ILoveIMG, which is simpler and more limited in functionality compared to Photopea.

Good enough alternative (for my limited needs, at least) to Adobe Illustrator. For UI/UX design and prototyping (a different use case, closer to Figma), Penpot is an open-source, web-based alternative that is self-hostable and also has a hosted free tier.

I rarely use IRC nowadays. Despite its age (I believe it's now an abandoned project), HexChat remains an acceptable IRC client for Windows (the best may still be mIRC, which is shareware). HexChat is much lighter than Quassel IRC, which is also open-source and cross-platform.

On Linux, I used both HexChat and Quassel IRC successfully, and Konversation too in KDE 3.5 days.

On Mac, I had used the open-source LimeChat, which was OK.

TODO: check Halloy alternative.

It provides an interface with a real-time preview, and can process multiple images at the same time. This and perhaps Imagine may be the best alternatives to the Mac-only ImageOptim and ImageAlpha, but perhaps not as good as them. I haven't tried the freeware alternative pingo. Nowadays, I mostly use Google's Squoosh (I also used TinyPNG in the past). For lossless compression of images, also consider FileOptimizer (see above).

Apparently better than Postman (proprietary) and SoapUI (Open-source, Java-based) and Insomnia (Open-source, Electron-based). Unfortunately, Bruno also uses Electron.

I've used it to create maps from WMS services, so I can use them later in LocusMap on my phone.

Another Windows-only alternative is OpenMPT.

For a WYSIWYG alternative more comparable to Finale and Sibelius, see MuseScore.

The also open-source, cross-platform darktable looks good as well.

My first impression was that the UI was not intuitive. OpenShot and Shotcut may also be worth trying. For a much more powerful option, DaVinci Resolve is freeware and is arguably the most capable free video editor available.

The user interface of FileZilla for Windows used to be better in 2.x versions. Now I may use it sometimes, but rarely on Windows, as I consider WinSCP a better option. Note that the default download link may include adware.

I have used it with SilverAzide/Gadgets. I have also considered Sidebar Diagnostics as a simpler alternative, and I may just use Core Temp instead for displaying basic information (CPU temperature and load) in the system tray.

A good open-source alternative for Mac is Stats. For Linux, there is a comparable GNOME extension called system-monitor-next that I haven't tried yet.

It can accelerate downloads by splitting files into sections and downloading them simultaneously. I have found it to be too invasive, though.

Internet Download Manager commercial alternative is supposedly better (I haven't tried it). A long time ago, I used the shareware Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) and Getright, now abandoned. Sometimes I just use aria2 (cli).

It doesn't work very well, but it's still the best app for downloading music in MP3 and FLAC.

I have also used Nicotine+ occasionally; not sure which of them is more unstable. On Android, the open-source Seeker works well.

Used to be the best, it has now become very old and doesn't work very well. It is not discontinued, but stable versions are not released often. Still, it can be used to find and download some of the rarest files. The cross-platform fork aMule is not better.

I don't love this app, but it is still the most complete for downloading stuff from websites and file-hosting sites. Note that some steps need to be done in order to disable the annoying advertisements.

Open-source alternative to Bittorrent Sync.

It works well for organizing and renaming movies and fetching subtitles and artwork, and it can be used from the command line. Unfortunately, it has become a paid app. I usually don't use file renamers because Directory Opus and Total Commander work well for my needs, so I haven't properly tested other tools such as Bulk Rename Utility (reportedly very good), ReNamer, Ant Renamer and Advanced Renamer. And there is PowerToys PowerRename too (see above).

This can detect duplicates that may have a different resolution, frame rate and even be watermarked. It uses FFmpeg under the hood.

I don't scan, but I have been told this is one of the best scanner software applications available. NAPS2 (open-source, cross-platform) is apparently very good for scanning to PDF and other formats.

With Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows 10, this has become less relevant.

It is not currently actively maintained.

This is a great alternative to the shareware DAEMON Tools. Nowadays, Windows supports mounting ISO images natively, so I don't usually need this software anymore. But it is still useful for mounting other image formats (CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, IMG).

Probably the best software to work with disc images.

Utility to recover data from damaged discs. Can also open (read-only) many image formats.

Instead, I use the default Task Manager or Process Explorer (see above).

This can be used to extract and edit resources in executables (e.g., *.exe, *.dll, *.scr).

Probably the best app to create and modify icons. It can be used as a trial for 30 days. Originally this used to be freeware, the older freeware version can still be downloaded in places such as filehippo.

I have used this to simulate a webcam using a video file or a static image.

The best program you can use to open and convert dBase files, if you ever have to do that. The trial version is very limited (for example, cannot export more than 50 rows). On archive.org there is a much older trial version that can be used without this limitation.

I have never used a clipboard manager. I tried both Ditto and CopyQ once and didn't like them, but they are probably the best free/open-source apps on Windows for that (I am not sure if there are any commercial alternatives worth trying). As of Windows 10 (version 1809), clipboard managers may no longer be necessary. PureText was also an interesting app: it allows pasting plain text by pressing a keyboard shortcut (such as Windows+V), nowadays this can be done with PowerToys.

I used it once to debug clipboard issues with RTF content. It was simple and worked.

Because I usually store text notes in the cloud, I haven't checked this tool out yet. I should probably check Joplin, Zim, Simplenote, and OneNote as well. I've tried Google Keep and Evernote in the cloud, but I am not a fan.

This freeware tool from HeiDoc.net allows you to download legal ISO images of Windows and Office from Microsoft's servers.

FreeCAD is a free, open-source parametric 3D modeling application designed for creating real-life objects. Other open-source cross-platform alternatives worth considering are SolveSpace and the newer Dune3D. For PCB design specifically, the cross-platform KiCad is the go-to open-source tool.

LibreCAD is a free, open-source computer-aided design (CAD) application for 2D design.

It may be the best of its kind, but with free websites such as regexr.com, purchasing this might not be justified.