Free Lunch
This is a list of free Windows software for normal users. It will be updated from time to time.
Please note the following points:
- This list contains the great built-in apps in Windows.
- Strikethrough text is used to show that something is not recommended. These apps aren't private or reliable enough compared to similar apps, although they are cool!
- Some apps could possibly infringe copyright or other laws.
- Microsoft Store Apps may not have all the features of Desktop Apps.
– Microsoft Store
– Repository
– Open Source license compliant
Mirrors
- Github: https://github.com/auctors/free-lunch
- Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/auctor/free-lunch
- Qua: https://qua.name/auctor/free-lunch
Contents
- Audio
- Backup and Sync
- Browsers and Extensions
- Communication
- Development
- Downloaders
- Education
- File Management
- File Sharing
- Games and Tools
- Graphics
- Health and Fitness
- Network and Admin
- News and Books
- Online Services
- Personal Finance
- Personalization
- Privacy and Security
- Productivity
- Utilities
- Video
Audio
Audio Editors
- Audacity – An easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder.
- AudioMass – Free full-featured web-based audio & waveform editing tool.
- Tenacity – An easy-to-use, privacy-friendly, FLOSS, cross-platform multi-track audio editor/recorder.
- fre:ac – A free audio converter and CD ripper with support for various popular formats and encoders.
Audio Players
- AIMP – A full-featured music player.
- DeaDBeeF – A modular cross-platform audio player.
- Dopamine – An elegant audio player which tries to make organizing and listening to music as simple and pretty as possible.
- foobar2000 – An advanced freeware audio player.
- Harmonoid – Elegant music app to play & manage music library.
- Museeks – A simple, clean and cross-platform music player.
- MusicBee – A music manager and player.
- Strawberry Music Player – A music player and music collection organizer.
- Tauon Music Box – The desktop music player from the future!
- CPOD – A simple, beautiful podcast app.
Music Production
- AudioStellar – Open source data-driven musical instrument for latent sound structure discovery and music experimentation.
- BeepBox – An online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental melodies.
- Bespoke Synth – Bespoke is a software modular synthesizer.
- Helio Workstation – One music sequencer for all major platforms, desktop and mobile.
- Jamulus – A networked music performance software allowing musicians to rehearse, perform and play in real-time.
- LMMS – Cross-platform music production software.
- Mixxx – Free DJ software that gives you everything you need to perform live mixes.
- MuseScore – Create, playback, and print sheet music for free.
- OpenMPT (ModPlug Tracker) – Sample-based music production program in the style of trackers such as Impulse Tracker and FastTracker.
- Sonic Pi – A code-based music creation and performance tool.
Music Streaming
- Cider – An open source and community oriented Apple Music client.
- Lofi – A mini Spotify player with WebGL visualizations.
- muffon – Music streaming browser.
- nuclear – Streaming music player that finds free music for you.
- Spotube – A lightweight free Spotify crossplatform-client which handles playback manually, streams music using Youtube & no Spotify premium account is needed.
- YouTube Music Desktop App – A Desktop App for YouTube Music.
Music Tag Editors
- Kid3 – An open-source cross-platform audio tag editor for many audio file formats.
- Mp3tag – A powerful and easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of audio files.
- MusicBrainz Picard – An open-source cross-platform music tagger.
- OneTagger – The ultimate music tagger for DJs.
Sound Equalizers
- Equalizer APO – A system-wide equalizer.
- Peace Equalizer – A Windows PC interface for Equalizer APO.
Volume Control
- EarTrumpet – A powerful volume control app for Windows.
- SoundSwitch – SoundSwitch offers you the opportunity to switch your playback and recording devices using simple hotkeys.
- Volumey – Volume mixer that allows you to set up global hotkeys to control your Windows audio system.
- WinMute – WinMute can automatically mute all sound devices on your PC.
Others
- AirConnect – Use AirPlay to stream to UPnP/Sonos & Chromecast devices.
- AirPodsDesktop – AirPods desktop user experience enhancement program.
- Audio Band – Display and control songs from the Windows taskbar.
- AudioPlaybackConnector – Bluetooth audio playback (A2DP Sink) connector for Windows 10 2004+.
- Buzz – Transcribe and translate audio offline on your personal computer.
- Carla – A fully-featured audio plugin host, with support for many audio drivers and plugin formats.
- Figaro – Real-time open-source voice modification program & sound board.
- Friture – An application to visualize and analyze live audio data in real-time.
- Mechvibes – Adds sound feedback any keyboard.
- MicMute – Control your microphone using keyboard and mouse hotkeys.
- Neothesia – Flashy Synthesia Like Software For Linux, Windows and macOS.
- Piano Trainer – A music practice program w/ MIDI support.
- projectM – The most advanced open-source music visualizer.
- Real-time Noise Suppression Plugin – Noise suppression plugin based on Xiph's RNNoise.
- Sonic Visualiser – Visualisation, analysis, and annotation of music audio recordings.
- SonoBus – A real-time network audio streaming collaboration tool.
- Soundux – A cross-platform soundboard that features a simple user interface.
- Spek – Free Acoustic Spectrum Analyser.
- SpleeterGUI – Music source separation desktop app.
- Sunamu – Show your currently playing song in a stylish way!
- swyh-rs – Stream What You Hear written in rust, inspired by SWYH.
- VB-CABLE – VB-CABLE is a virtual audio device working as virtual audio cable.
Backup and Sync
Cloud Storage
- Nextcloud – A suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services.
- MEGA – A secure, user-controlled end-to-end encrypted cloud storage and communications service with 20 GB free storage space.
- Sync – A file storage and document collaboration platform.
- Tresorit – Tresorit is the ultra-secure place in the cloud to store, sync, and share files within your organization and with external partners.
Internxt Drive – A zero-knowledge cloud storage service based on best-in-class privacy and security.
Others
- Cyberduck – A libre FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3, Backblaze B2, Azure & OpenStack Swift browser.
- Duplicacy – A new generation cloud backup tool.
- Duplicati – Store securely encrypted backups in the cloud!
- FreeFileSync – Folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files.
- Kopia – A simple, cross-platform tool for managing encrypted backups in the cloud.
- Rclone – A command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers.
- restic – Fast, secure, efficient backup program.
- Syncthing – A continuous file synchronization program.
- ChoEazyCopy – Simple and powerful RoboCopy GUI.
- Ultracopier – Ultracopier acts as a replacement for files copy dialogs.
- Ludusavi – A tool for backing up your PC video game save data.
Browsers and Extensions
Browsers
- Brave – A fast, private and secure web browser.
- Chromium – The free and open-source project behind Google Chrome.
- Firefox – Get the browser that protects what’s important.
- LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom.
- Tor Browser – A web broswer that anonymizes your web traffic using the Tor network.
Min – A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy.
Extensions
New Tab Page
- Mue – Fast, open and free-to-use new tab page for modern browsers.
- nightTab – A neutral new tab page accented with a chosen colour.
- Tabliss – A beautiful, customisable New Tab page for Firefox and Chrome.
Privacy Extensions
- AdNauseam – Fight back against advertising surveillance.
- ClearURLs – This extension will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browsing the Internet.
- FastForward – FastForward automatically skips annoying link shorteners.
- LibRedirect – A web extension that redirects popular sites to alternative privacy-friendly frontends and backends.
- LocalCDN – A web browser extension that emulates Content Delivery Networks to improve your online privacy.
- Mailvelope – Browser extension for OpenPGP encryption with Webmail.
- uBlock Origin – An efficient blocker for Chromium and Firefox. Fast and lean.
Sync Bookmarks
- Floccus – Sync your bookmarks privately across browsers.
- xBrowserSync – Free and open source tool for syncing your browser data between browsers and devices whilst maintaining your privacy and anonymity.
Others
- Automa – A chrome extension for automating your browser by connecting blocks.
- BetterViewer – A replacement for the image viewing mode built into Firefox and Chrome-based web browsers.
- Bypass Paywalls – A web browser extension to help bypass paywalls for selected sites.
- Dark Reader – Dark Reader analyzes web pages and aims to reduce eyestrain while browsing the web.
- Gesturefy – A customizable Firefox mouse gesture add-on with a variety of different commands.
- Marinara – A time management assistant for Chrome that follows the Pomodoro Technique.
- Omni – The all-in-one tool to supercharge your productivity keyboard.
- Read Aloud – A Text to Speech Voice Reader extension for your browser!
- Screenity – The most powerful screen recorder & annotation tool for Chrome.
- Search by Image – A browser extension that makes effortless reverse image searches possible, and comes with support for more than 30 search engines.
- Translate Web Pages – Translate your page in real time using Google or Yandex.
- uBlacklist – Blocks specific sites from appearing in Google search results.
- Unclutter – A modern reader mode and article library for your browser.
- Violentmonkey – An open source userscript manager.
- Web Scrobbler – Web Scrobbler helps online music listeners to scrobble their playback history.
Communication
Email Clients
- Delta Chat – Chat over e-mail.
- Mailspring – A beautiful, fast and fully open source mail client.
- Thunderbird – A free email application that’s easy to set up and customize.
Email Forwarding Services
- AnonAddy – Anonymous Email Forwarding.
- SimpleLogin – Receive and send emails anonymously.
Email Providers
- Protonmail – An email provider/service that respects privacy and puts people first.
- Tutanota – A secure email service.
Temporary Email Services
- Burner.kiwi – No bullshit temporary mail service written in Go.
- Guerrilla Mail – A disposable email.
- MailDrop – A quick, disposable email.
IM
- Element – Secure and independent communication, connected via Matrix.
- Session – An end-to-end encrypted messenger.
- Signal – A messaging app with an unexpected focus on privacy, combined with all the features expected from a modern IM app.
- Ferdium – A desktop app that helps you organize how you use your favourite apps by combining them into one application.
- Hamsket – Free messaging and emailing app that combines common web applications into one.
- Jitsi Meet – Free Jitsi Meet instance, provising state-of-the-art video conferencing.
- Revolt – User-first chat platform built with modern web technologies.
Social Media
- Glimesh – A next generation live streaming platform built by the community, for the community.
- LBRY – A decentralized video sharing network.
- PeerTube – A free, decentralized and federated video platform.
- Lemmy – A link aggregator / Reddit clone for the fediverse.
- Mastodon – Globally interconnected microblogging community.
- WriteFreely – A clean, simple publishing platform made for writers.
Development
Statistical Analysis
- GNU PSPP – A program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a free as in freedom replacement for the proprietary program SPSS.
- gretl – A cross-platform software package for econometric analysis, written in the C programming language.
- jamovi – A free and open statistics package, which is easy to use, and designed to be familiar to users of SPSS.
- JASP – JASP is an open-source statistics program that is free, friendly, and flexible.
- RStudio – RStudio provides open source and enterprise-ready professional software for data science.
Terminal Emulators
- Fluent Terminal – A Terminal Emulator based on UWP and web technologies.
- PowerShell – A task-based command-line shell and scripting language built on .NET.
- Tabby – A highly configurable terminal emulator, SSH and serial client.
- WezTerm – GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal emulator and multiplexer made with Rust.
- WindTerm – A professional cross-platform SSH/Sftp/Shell/Telnet/Serial terminal.
- Windows Terminal – A modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive terminal application for users of command-line tools and shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and WSL.
Text Editors
- Brackets – Brackets is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.
- GNU Emacs – An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more.
- Kate – A multi-document text editor.
- Lapce – Lightning-fast and Powerful Code Editor written in Rust.
- Lite XL – A lightweight text editor written in Lua.
- Notepad++ – A free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.
- Notepads – A modern, lightweight text editor with a minimalist design.
- Visual Studio Code – A free, lightweight, and extensible code editor.
- VSCodium – A community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VS Code.
Others
- adb – A programming tool used for the debugging of Android-based devices.
- DevToys – A Swiss Army knife for developers.
- massCode – A free and open source code snippets manager for developers.
- WinMerge – An Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows.
- freeCodeCamp.org – Learn to code for free with millions of other people around the world.
- The Odin Project – An open-source curriculum for learning full-stack web development.
Downloaders
Download Managers
- AriaNg-Native – A better aria2 desktop frontend than AriaNg, containing all features of AriaNg and more features for desktop.
- Free Download Manager – A powerful modern download accelerator and organizer.
- JDownloader – A free, open-source download management tool.
- Motrix – A full-featured download manager.
- Persepolis – A download manager & a GUI for Aria2.
- XDM – Powerfull download accelerator and video downloader.
Media Downloaders
- Streamlink – A CLI utility which pipes video streams from various services into a video player.
- Lux – A fast and simple video downloader built with Go.
- You-Get – A tiny command-line utility to download media contents (videos, audios, images) from the Web.
- youtube-dl – Command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and other video sites.
- YT-DLP – A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes.
- Hitomi Downloader – Desktop utility to download images/videos/music/text from various websites, and more.
- Media Downloader – A Qt/C++ front end to youtube-dl.
- Open Video Downloader – A cross-platform GUI for youtube-dl made in Electron and node.js.
- Tartube – A GUI front-end for youtube-dl.
- Video Downloader – A video and channel downloader that supports 110 websites.
- YoutubeDownloader – An application that lets you download videos from YouTube.
- HakuNeko – A cross-platform downloader for manga and anime from various websites.
- N_m3u8DL-CLI – A command line tool for downloading m3u8.
- SCrawler – Media downloader from any sites, including Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, PornHub, XHamster, XVIDEOS etc.
- SpotiFlyer – Kotlin Multiplatform Music Downloader ,supports Spotify, Youtube, Gaana, Jio-Saavn and SoundCloud.
- Twitch Leecher – An extremely fast and easy to use Twitch VOD downloader.
- Ytmdl – A simple app to get songs from YouTube in mp3 format with artist name, album name etc from sources like iTunes, Spotify, LastFM, Deezer, Gaana etc.
- gallery-dl – Command-line program to download image galleries and collections from several image hosting sites.
Torrent Clients
- Instant.io – Streaming file transfer over WebTorrent (torrents on the web).
- PicoTorrent – A tiny and minimal BitTorrent client.
- qBittorrent – qBittorrent aims to be a good alternative to all other bittorrent clients out there.
- Transmission – A fast, easy, and free BitTorrent client.
- WebTorrent – The streaming torrent app.
Education
Online Education Services
- Coursera – Free and paid courses on a wide variety of subjects from scholastic to technical and more.
- edX – Free online courses by Harvard, MIT.
- Khan Academy – A personalized learning resource for all ages.
Reference Management
- JabRef – An open-source, cross-platform citation and reference management tool.
- Qiqqa – A free research and reference manager.
- ZoteroBib – ZoteroBib helps you build a bibliography instantly from any computer or device.
- Zotero – A free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.
Translators
- Crow Translate – A simple and lightweight translator.
- DeepL Translator – A neural machine translation service.
- Lingva Translate – Alternative front-end for Google Translate.
Others
- Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards.
- Avogadro – An advanced molecular editor designed for cross-platform use in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, bioinformatics, materials science, and related areas.
- BOINC – Open-source software for volunteer computing and grid computing.
- Converter NOW – A flexible unit converter.
- GCompris – A high quality educational software suite.
- GNU Octave – A programming language for scientific computing.
- GeoGebra – Free digital tools for class activities, graphing, geometry, collaborative whiteboard and more.
- Gramps – Research, organize and share your family tree with Gramps.
- LanguageTool – Checks your writing in more than 20 languages.
- Orange Data Mining – A data mining and visualization toolbox for novice and expert alike.
- Qalculate! – A multi-purpose cross-platform desktop calculator.
- Scilab – Open source software for numerical computation.
- Scratch – With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations.
- Tabby– Simple timetable desktop app to track your school schedule.
File Management
Duplicate File Finders
- Czkawka – Multi functional app to find duplicates, empty folders, similar images etc.
- dupeGuru – A cross-platform GUI tool to find duplicate files in a system.
- Video Duplicate Finder – A cross-platform software to find duplicated video (and image) files on hard disk based on similiarity.
File Archivers
- 7-Zip – A file archiver with a high compression ratio.
- NanaZip – The 7-Zip derivative intended for the modern Windows experience.
- PeaZip – A free file manager and file archiver.
File Converters
- Convertio – Easy tool to convert files online.
- Dangerzone – Take potentially dangerous PDFs, office documents, or images and convert them to a safe PDF.
- File Converter – A very simple tool which allows you to convert and compress one or several file(s) using the context menu of windows explorer.
- Pandoc – Universal markup converter.
File Managers
- Double Commander – A free cross platform open source file manager with two panels side by side.
- Far Manager – A program for managing files and archives in Windows operating systems.
- Files – A modern file manager.
- Sigma File Manager – A free, open-source, quickly evolving, modern file manager app.
- Xplorer – A customizable, modern and cross-platform File Explorer.
File Renamers
- Ant Renamer – A free program that makes easier the renaming of lots of files and folders by using specified settings.
- File Renamer Diff – A File Renamer App featuring a difference display before and after the change for Windows.
- Szyszka – A simple but powerful and fast bulk file renamer.
File Sharing
File Sharing Web Apps
- FileSend – Simple, encrypted file sharing.
- Lufi – Anonymous file sharing services with temporary storage.
- Send – Simple, private file sharing.
- Tresorit Send – Send big files up to 5 GB securely.
- Wormhole – Simple, private file sharing.
- SwissTransfer – Send files up to 50 GB free of charge.
- pic.infini – A free and anonymous image hosting service.
- Blaze – A P2P file sharing web app.
- FilePizza – Peer-to-peer file transfers in your browser.
- ShareDrop – Easy P2P file transfer powered by WebRTC.
- Snapdrop – A Progressive Web App for local file sharing.
- libcimbar – Optimized implementation for color-icon-matrix barcodes.
LAN File Sharing
- OpenSSH – Windows Optional Features. OpenSSH is a complete implementation of the SSH protocol (version 2) for secure remote login, command execution and file transfer.
- Flying Carpet – Wireless, encrypted file transfer over automatically configured ad hoc networking.
- LANDrop – A cross-platform tool that you can use to conveniently transfer photos, videos, and other types of files to other devices on the same local network.
- LocalSend – An open source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop.
- SFTPGo – Fully featured and highly configurable SFTP server with optional HTTP/S, FTP/S and WebDAV support.
- Sharik – An open-source, cross-platform solution for sharing files via Wi-Fi or Mobile Hotspot.
- WinSCP – A popular free SFTP and FTP client for Windows.
- Winpinator – Send and receive files across a local network.
- miniserve – A CLI tool to serve files and dirs over HTTP.
Others
- Magic Wormhole – Get things from one computer to another, safely.
- OnionShare – An open source tool that lets you securely and anonymously share files, host websites, and chat with friends using the Tor network.
- RiftShare – Easy, Secure, and Free file sharing for everyone.
- Rymdport – A GUI for the Magic Wormhole.
- croc – A CLI file-transfer tool.
Games and Tools
Game Launchers
- Heroic Games Launcher – A Native GOG and Epic Games Launcher for Linux, Windows and Mac.
- Nostlan – Nostlan is a game launcher for emulators!
- Pegasus – A cross platform, customizable graphical frontend for launching emulators and managing your game collection.
- Playnite – An open source video game library manager and launcher with support for 3rd party libraries like Steam, GOG, Origin, Battle.net and Uplay.
- RetroArch – A frontend for emulators, game engines and media players.
Game Stores
- GOG GALAXY – Truly gamer friendly, DRM-free online gaming platform.
- Game Jolt – Game Jolt is one of the largest communities in existence for video games and the millions of people around the world who love them.
- itch.io – An online game marketplace and community.
Games
- 0 A.D. – A free, open-source game of ancient warfare.
- Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead – A turn-based survival game set in a post-apocalyptic world.
- Cockatrice – A cross-platform virtual tabletop for multiplayer card games.
- Endless Sky – A space exploration and combat game similar to Escape Velocity.
- FlightGear – An open-source flight simulator.
- Lichess – The complete chess experience, play and compete with friends and others around the world.
- Mindustry – A sandbox tower defense game written in Java.
- Minetest – An open source voxel game engine.
- OpenDuelyst – A digital collectible card game.
- OpenTDD – OpenTTD is a business simulation game in which players try to earn money by transporting passengers and freight via road, rail, water and air.
- Rigs of Rods – An open-source soft-body vehicle simulator.
- SuperTuxKart – A free kart racing game.
- Thrive – A free, open-source game about the evolution of life.
- Unciv – Open-source Android/Desktop remake of Civ V.
- Warzone 2100 – A ground-breaking and innovative 3D real-time strategy game.
- Wesnoth – An open source, turn-based strategy game with a high fantasy theme.
- Widelands – A free, open source real-time strategy game with singleplayer campaigns and a multiplayer mode.
- Xonotic – An addictive, arena-style first person shooter with crisp movement and a wide array of weapons.
- osu! – A free-to-win rhythm game. Rhythm is just a click away!
Gaming Utilities
- AntiMicroX – Graphical program used to map keyboard buttons and mouse controls to a gamepad.
- CrossOver – A Crosshair Overlay for any screen.
- Moonlight – An open source implementation of NVIDIA's GameStream.
- Sunshine – Host for Moonlight Streaming Client.
Graphics
2D and 3D
- Enve – Open-source 2D animation software.
- OpenToonz – An open-source full-featured 2D animation creation software.
- Pencil2D – An easy, intuitive tool to make 2D hand-drawn animations.
- Seamly2D – Open source patternmaking software.
- Synfig Studio – A free and open-source 2D animation software.
- Wick Editor – A free and open-source tool for creating games, animations and everything in-between!
- Blender – Free and Open Source 3D creation suite.
- Blockbench – A low poly 3D model editor.
- F3D – A fast and minimalist 3D viewer.
- FreeCAD – An open-source parametric 3D modeler made primarily to design real-life objects of any size.
- MeshLab – The open source mesh processing system.
- OpenSCAD – The Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller.
- Sweet Home 3D – A free interior design application which helps you draw the plan of your house, arrange furniture on it and visit the results in 3D.
Design Tools
- Design Editor – An open source graphic editor.
- Motionity – The web-based motion graphics editor for everyone.
- Penpot – The Open-Source design & prototyping platform.
- Polotno Studio – Free online design editor.
- Screenshot.rocks – An online tool which allows you to create beautiful mobile & browser mockups from screenshots.
Digital Painting
- AutoDraw – An intuitive drawing tool for everyone.
- Drawpile – A collaborative drawing program.
- FotoSketcher – Turn your photos into beautiful paintings, sketches or drawings in seconds.
- Inkscape – A free and open-source vector graphics editor.
- Krita – A free and open source digital painting application.
- Milton – A free and open-source infinite canvas paint program.
- Pinta – A free, open source program for drawing and image editing.
- tldraw – A tiny little drawing app.
Image Editors
- Converseen – A batch image converter and resizer.
- GIMP – A cross-platform image editor.
- PhotoGIMP – A patch for optimizing GIMP 2.10+ for Adobe Photoshop users.
- ImageMagick – A software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images.
- Paint.NET – Free image and photo editing software.
- PhotoDemon – A portable photo editor.
- Pixelitor – A desktop image editor.
- miniPaint – Online image editor lets you create, edit images using HTML5 technologies.
- Photopea – Online photo editor.
- darktable – An open source photography workflow application and raw developer.
- digiKam – An advanced digital photo management application.
- Filmulator – Simplified raw editing with the power of film.
- RawTherapee – A powerful cross-platform raw photo processing program.
Image Optimizers
- Caesium Image Compressor – An image compression web app.
- Caesium – A cross-platform image compression software.
- Imagine – A desktop app for compression of PNG and JPEG, with a modern and friendly UI.
- Squoosh – An image compression web app that reduces image sizes through numerous formats.
Image Viewers
- FastStone Image Viewer – A fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor.
- ImageGlass – A lightweight, versatile image viewer.
- IrfanView – A very fast, compact and innovative FREEWARE image viewer/converter.
- JPEGView – A lean, fast and highly configurable viewer/editor for JPEG, BMP, PNG, WEBP, TGA, GIF and TIFF images with a minimal GUI.
- NeeView – A Free and Open Source, modern and powerful image viewer and a manga/comic reader.
- nomacs – A free, open source image viewer.
- qimgv – Image viewer. Fast, easy to use.
- Quick Picture Viewer – Lightweight, versatile desktop image viewer.
- qView – Practical and minimal image viewer.
OCR
- Capture2Text – Quickly OCR part of the screen and save resulting text to clipboard.
- gImageReader – A simple Gtk/Qt front-end to tesseract-ocr.
- NormCap – OCR powered screen-capture tool to capture information instead of images.
- Paperwork – Paperwork is a personal document manager. It manages scanned documents and PDFs.
- Text Grab – A quick app to grab any on screen text using the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) built into Windows 10.
Pixel Editors
- LibreSprite – A free and open source program for creating and animating your sprites.
- Piskel – A simple web-based tool for Spriting and Pixel art.
- Pixelorama – A free & open-source 2D sprite editor.
- PixiEditor – A lightweight pixel art editor.
- Shape Shifter – A web-app that simplifies the creation of icon animations for Android, iOS, and the web.
Remove Image Background
- BackgroundRemover – A free web application that lets you Remove Background from images and video.
- BgSub – A website that uses AI technology to automatically remove or replace image backgrounds.
- Cleanup.Picture – A free web application that lets you quickly cleanup or remove objects in any image.
- Lama Cleaner – Image inpainting tool powered by SOTA AI Model.
- Rembg – A command line tool to remove images background.
Remove.bg – Remove background from images 100% automatically in 5 seconds without a single click.
Screen Annotation Tools
- gInk – An easy to use on-screen annotation software inspired by Epic Pen.
- LiveDraw – A tool allows you to draw on screen real-time.
- Pensela – The Swiss Army Knife of Screen Annotation Tools.
Screen Recorders
- Captura – Capture Screen, Audio, Cursor, Mouse Clicks and Keystrokes.
- Fluent Screen Recorder – A simple screen recorder built with UWP and featuring Fluent Design.
- OBS Studio – Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording.
- ScreenREC – A really simple web screen recorder.
- ScreenToGif – Screen, webcam, and board recorder with an integrated editor.
- ShareX – A free and open source program that lets you capture or record any area of your screen and share it with a single press of a key.
- Streamlabs – Free and open source streaming software built on OBS and Electron.
Screenshot
- Flameshot – Powerful yet simple to use screenshot software.
- Greenshot – A light-weight screenshot software tool.
- Ksnip – A Qt-based cross-platform screenshot tool that provides many annotation features for your screenshots.
- Snipaste – A simple but powerful snipping tool.
- gifcap – Capture your screen to a GIF in your browser.
- LICEcap – LICEcap simple animated screen capture tool for Windows (gif recorder).
VTuber
- Kalidoface 3D – A web app that brings support for 3D Vtuber avatars.
- Kalidoface – Become a virtual character with just your webcam!
- SysMocap – A real-time motion capture system for 3D virtual character animating.
- Vignette – The open source VTuber software.
Webcam Recorders
- Mini Video Me – A small webcam player focused on providing an easy way to add and control your webcam during recordings.
- Webcamoid – A full featured and multiplatform webcam suite.
Whiteboards
- Excalidraw – Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams.
- OpenBoard – A cross-platform interactive whiteboard application intended for use in a classroom setting.
- WBO – Online collaborative Whiteboard that is simple, free, easy to use and to deploy.
Others
- Anime4KCPP – A high performance anime upscaler.
- Stable Diffusion UI – Provides a browser UI for generating images from text prompts and images.
- Upscayl – Free and Open Source AI Image Upscaler.
- Allusion – A free and open source desktop application for managing your visual library.
- AndreaMosaic – With AndreaMosaic you can create your own photographic mosaics made with your own pictures.
- Celestia – Real-time 3D visualization of space.
- Colorpicker – A mininal but complete colorpicker desktop app.
- Gephi – Gephi is the leading visualization and exploration software for all kinds of graphs and networks.
- Graphviz – Open source graph visualization software.
- Stellarium – A free open source planetarium for your computer.
- Storyboarder – Storyboarder makes it easy to visualize a story as fast you can draw stick figures.
- Tropy – Research photo management.
- Avataaars generator – Simple generator React app for avataaars.
- Personas by Draftbit – A delightful avatar generator by the folks at Draftbit.
- macOS Big Sur – Replacements Icons – Replacement icons for popular apps in the style of macOS Big Sur.
Health and Fitness
- Ambie – The best white noise app on Windows.
- UBPM – Manage your blood pressure data on Windows/Linux/macOS.
- Eyes Guard – A Windows application for protecting your eyes when you are working with your PC or Laptop.
- Pomatez – An open-source Pomodoro timer application aimed for simplicity and productivity.
- Pomotroid – Simple and visually-pleasing Pomodoro timer.
- Stretchly – The break time reminder app.
- Workrave – A free program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI).
- OpenStreetMap – A collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world.
- QMapShack – An intuitive and efficient tool for route planning and GPS recordings visualization.
Network and Admin
Network Monitors
- Angry IP Scanner – Fast and friendly network scanner.
- Fiddler – A Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet.
- GlassWire – A network security monitoring tool and analyzer.
- NETworkManager – A powerful tool for managing networks and troubleshoot network problems.
- Wireshark – The world’s foremost and widely-used network protocol analyzer.
- OpenNetMeter – A simple program to monitor your network/data usage.
- TrafficMonitor – A network monitoring suspension window software on Windows platform.
Remote Desktop
- Chrome Remote Desktop – The easy way to remotely connect with your home or work computer, or share your screen with others.
- DWService – Remotely access your devices from a Web browser.
- Microsoft Remote Desktop – Use the Microsoft Remote Desktop app to connect to a remote PC or virtual apps and desktops made available by your admin.
- QtScrcpy – Android real-time display control software.
- RustDesk – Yet another remote desktop software.
- scrcpy – Display and control your Android device.
- TigerVNC – A free remote desktop software server and client application.
- TightVNC – A free remote desktop application.
- Quick Assist – A new app in Windows 10 that enables you to receive or provide assistance over a remote connection.
- Tailscale – A mesh VPN alternative that makes it easy to connect your devices.
- ZeroTier – A smart programmable Ethernet switch for planet Earth.
- mRemoteNG – An open source, multi-protocol, tabbed remote connections manager.
- PRemoteM – A modern personal remote session manager and launcher.
- Veyon – Cross-platform computer monitoring and classroom management.
- Weylus – Use your tablet as graphic tablet/touch screen on your computer.
Screen Sharing
- Deskreen – A desktop app that turns any device with a web browser into a secondary screen for your computer over WiFi.
- Screego – Screego allows you to share your screen with good quality and low latency.
- ScreenTask – Share your screen across local devices without internet.
Virtualization
- Docker – Enterprise-focused container platform for building, sharing, and running any application.
- Hyper-V – Hyper-V is Microsoft's hardware virtualization product.
- VirtualBox – A powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.
- WSL – Windows Subsystem for Linux.
- WSA – Windows Subsystem for Android.
- wsa_pacman – A GUI package manager and package installer for Windows Subsystem for Android.
- Sandboxie – A sandbox-based isolation software for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows NT-based operating systems.
- Windows Sandbox – Windows Sandbox provides a lightweight desktop environment to safely run applications in isolation.
Others
- LibreSpeed – This is a very lightweight Speedtest implemented in Javascript, using XMLHttpRequest and Web Workers.
- SwitchHosts – An App for managing hosts file.
- Wifinian – A Windows desktop tool to enable user to actively control Wi-Fi connections.
News and Books
Books
- Okular – A universal document viewer.
- Sumatra PDF – A free PDF, eBook (ePub, Mobi), XPS, DjVu, CHM, Comic Book (CBZ and CBR) viewer.
- Sioyek – A PDF viewer designed for reading research papers and technical books.
- calibre – An e-book manager.
- Koodo Reader – A modern ebook manager and reader.
- Thorium Reader – The best free reading application for EPUB, PDF and DAISY 3 ebooks, audiobooks and digital comics.
- YACReader – Yet another comic reader.
- AudiobookSuite – A WPF application with the goal of providing an easy to use local audiobook library and player for modern Windows systems.
- Libation – Audible audiobook manager.
- Sigil – A multi-platform EPUB ebook editor.
- Kiwix – An offline reader for online content like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, or TED Talks.
- Internet Archive – A non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
- Library Genesis – A file-sharing based shadow library website.
- Open Library – An open, editable library catalog.
- Project Gutenberg – A library of over 60,000 free eBooks.
- Sci-Hub – A shadow library website that provides free access to millions of research papers and books.
- ZLibrary – The world's largest ebook library.
- Books – Awesome Book Lists.
- Mind Expanding Books – Books everyone should read!
News
- Fluent Reader – Modern desktop RSS reader.
- QuiteRSS – Free news feeds reader.
- Raven Reader – A open source desktop news reader with flexible settings to optimize your experience.
- RSS Guard – Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
Online Services
App Discovery Services
- AlternativeTo – A website which lists alternatives to web-based software, desktop computer software, and mobile apps.
- Product Hunt – A website that lets users share and discover new products.
- Slant – A product recommendation community with the goal of making it effortless to find the best product, app or game for you.
Privacy and Security Guides
- Anonymous Planet – The comprehensive guide for online anonymity and OpSec.
- Awesome Privacy – A curated list of privacy & security-focused software and services.
- Awesome Privacy – List of free, open source and privacy respecting services and alternatives to privative services.
- EFF – The leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.
- Personal Security Checklist – A curated checklist of 300+ tips for protecting digital security and privacy.
- PRISM Break – Privacy/security-oriented software recommendations.
- Privacy Guides – Protect your data against global mass surveillance programs.
Search Engines
- Brave Search – The user-first and privacy-focused search engine that uses its own index making it an independent search engine.
- DuckDuckGo – The search engine that doesn't track you.
- SearXNG – Privacy-respecting metasearch engine.
- Whoogle Search – A self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine.
Secret Sharing
- One-Time Secret – Keep sensitive info out of your email & chat logs.
- Password Pusher – A dead-simple application to securely communicate passwords over the web.
- PrivateBin – A minimalist, open source online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of pasted data.
- Yopass – Secure sharing of secrets, passwords and files.
Survey Tools
- Framadate – Schedule a meeting or create an opinion poll.
- Framaforms – Design your online surveys easily while respecting your audience.
- LimeSurvey – The most popular FOSS online survey tool on the web.
URL Shorteners
- anon.to – An anonymous URL redirector and shortener.
- Kutt – A modern URL shortener with support for custom domains.
- Lstu – A nice and open source url shortener.
- MagLit – Privacy Respecting Encrypted Link Shortener with Password Protection and Torrent Magnet Links support.
- Reduced.to – Free Modern URL Reducer.
- ZWS – Shorten URLs using invisible spaces.
Others
- Disroot – A platform providing online services based on principles of freedom, privacy, federation and decentralization.
- Framasoft – A not-for-profit popular educational organization.
- Awesome Windows – An awesome & curated list of best applications and tools for Windows.
- switching.software – Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software.
- Opensource.Builders – A website to find and request open-source alternatives to popular software you already use.
- Mostly Free Resources for Almost Everyone – A list of mostly free resources for almost anyone.
- Awesome Piracy – A curated list of awesome warez and piracy links.
- Piracy Index – This website is a collection of the best digital piracy resources.
- degoogle – A huge list of alternatives to Google products.
- Awesome Fediverse – A curated, collaborative list of awesome Fediverse resources.
- Awesome-Selfhosted – A list of Free Software network services and web applications which can be hosted on your own servers.
Personal Finance
- Budget Badger – A simple Personal Budgeting cross-platform app built on top of Xamarin.Forms.
- Denaro – A personal finance manager.
- GnuCash – A personal and small-business finance manager.
- HomeBank – Free personal finance software, money management for everyone.
- KMyMoney – A cross-platform personal finance manager.
- Money Manager Ex – A free, open-source, cross-platform, easy-to-use personal finance software.
- Money – Personal Expense Manager.
- My Budget – Free, open source offline cross-platform budgeting solution built with Electron.
- Frappe Books – Free Desktop book-keeping software for small businesses and freelancers.
- grocy – A web-based self-hosted groceries & household management solution for your home.
- CryptoTracker – Simple yet powerful cryptocurrency portfolio tracker designed with simplicity and functionality in mind.
- rotki – A portfolio tracking, analytics, accounting and tax reporting application that protects your privacy.
Personalization
Desktop Mascot
- Desktop Pet (eSheep) – This project gives you the possibility to add a pet to your desktop.
- RunCatforwindows – A cute running cat animation on your windows taskbar.
- Spirit – A modern and hackable desktop mascot.
Taskbar Tweakers
- RoundedTB – Add margins, rounded corners and segments to your taskbars!
- TaskbarXI – An application written in C++ to modify the Windows 11 Taskbar.
- TaskbarX – TaskbarX gives you control over the position of your taskbar icons.
- TranslucentTB – TranslucentTB offers you control over the appearance of your taskbar.
Wallpaper Management
- Aerial – Apple TV screen saver for Windows.
- AlbumPaper – An app for Windows that will change your desktop wallpaper to the album art of the song you are listening to.
- AutoWall – Live wallpapers on Windows 10/11 using open-source wallpaper engine.
- Lively Wallpaper – Free and open-source software that allows users to set animated desktop wallpapers and screensavers.
- ScreenPlay – Modern, Cross Plattform, Live Wallpaper, Widgets and AppDrawer!
- SpaceEye – Make live satellite imagery your desktop background with SpaceEye.
- Superpaper – A cross-platform multi monitor wallpaper manager.
- WinDynamicDesktop – WinDynamicDesktop ports the Dynamic Desktop feature from macOS Mojave to Windows 10.
Others
- BeautySearch – Windows 10+ Search Window appearance tweaker.
- Bibata Cursor – Opensource, compact, and material-designed cursor set.
- ElevenClock – Have a customizable clock on your Windows 11 displays.
- ExplorerPatcher – This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows.
- Mica for Everyone – A tool to enable backdrop effect on titlebar of win32 apps on Windows 11.
- ModernFlyouts – A modern Fluent Design replacement for the old Metro themed flyouts present in Windows.
- Open-Shell-Menu – Classic Shell Reborn.
- Rainmeter – Desktop customization tool for Windows.
- Taskbar Groups – Lightweight utility for organizing the taskbar through groups.
- TileIconifier – Creates tiles for most Windows 8.1 and 10 start menu icons.
- Windows Auto Dark Mode – Switches between the dark and light theme of Windows at scheduled times.
Privacy and Security
Antivirus
- VirusTotal – Free online malware detection service for analyzing suspicious files and URLs.
- Windows Security – Windows 10 and 11 include Windows Security, which provides the latest antivirus protection.
Decentralized Networks
- Freenet – A peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant and privacy-respecting publishing and communication.
- I2P – The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is a fully encrypted private network layer.
- IPFS – A peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol to make the web faster, safer, and more open.
Encryption Tools
Disk Encryption Tools
- Bitlocker – A Microsoft Windows security and encryption feature.
- VeraCrypt – Disk encryption with strong security based on TrueCrypt.
Steganography Tools
- OpenStego – An open-source steganography tool.
- StegCloak – Hide secrets with invisible characters in plain text securely using passwords.
Others
- Age – A simple, modern and secure encryption tool.
- cppcryptfs – An implementation of the gocryptfs encrypted overlay filesystem in C++ for Windows.
- Cryptomator – Multi-platform transparent client-side encryption of your files in the cloud.
- Gnupg – A complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by PGP.
- Hat.sh – Encrypt and Decrypt files securely in your browser.
- Horcrux – Split your file into encrypted horcruxes so that you don't need to remember a passcode.
- Kryptor – A simple, modern, and secure encryption and signing tool that aims to be a better version of age and Minisign.
- Minisign – A dead simple tool to sign files and verify digital signatures.
- Picocrypt – A very small, very simple, yet very secure encryption tool.
- SiriKali – A Qt/C++ GUI front end to sshfs, ecryptfs-simple, cryfs, gocryptfs, securefs, fscrypt and encfs.
Firewalls
- Portmaster – Monitor all network activity.
- Simplewall – Simple tool to configure Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) which can configure network activity on your computer.
- Windows Defender Firewall – A stateful host firewall.
Password Managers
- Bitwarden – An open source password manager.
- KeePassXC – A modern, secure, and open-source password manager that stores and manages your most sensitive information.
- KeeWeb – This webapp is a browser and desktop password manager compatible with KeePass databases.
- Diceware Passphrase Generator – A tool for generating strong Diceware passwords, with entropy and crack time estimates.
LessPass – A stateless password manager.
Remove EXIF Data
- ExifCleaner – Cross-platform desktop GUI app to clean image metadata.
- ExifTool – ExifTool is a platform-independent Perl library plus a command-line application for reading, writing and editing meta information in a wide variety of files.
- jExifToolGUI – Graphical frontend for the excellent command-line ExifTool by Phil Harvey.
System Tweakers
- O&O ShutUp10++ – Free antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11.
- Optimizer – The finest Windows Optimizer.
- Privatezilla – Performs a privacy & security check of Windows 10.
- ThisIsWin11 – ThisIsWin11 lets you customize Windows 11 all in one place.
VPN
- ProtonVPN – High-speed Swiss VPN that safeguards your privacy.
- Windscribe – Free VPN and Ad Blocker.
Others
- Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector.
- Image Scrubber – This is a tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests.
Productivity
Automation
- Alpha Clicker – Windows Autoclicker with a modern ui.
- Auto Screen Capture – Automated screen capture utility.
- AutoActions – Application-based actions to change Windows settings (display, audio) or run any program or action.
- AutoHotkey – A free, open source macro-creation and automation software utility that allows users to automate repetitive tasks.
- Beeftext – A text snippet tool for Windows.
- espanso – A cross-platform Text Expander written in Rust.
- Macro Deck – A open source software to use your smartphone, tablet or almost any touch screen device with a internet browser as a simple macro pad or even as an powerful automation solution for streaming, gaming, content creation and more.
- Mouse Jiggler – A very simple piece of software whose sole function is to “fake” mouse input to Windows, and jiggle the mouse pointer back and forth.
- Power Automate – Power Automate allows you to automate web and desktop applications on your Windows desktop by mimicking the user interface actions like clicks, and keyboard input.
- Shutdown Timer Classic – Pick a time and let your computer shutdown itself.
- SikuliX – SikuliX automates anything you see on the screen of your desktop computer running Windows, Mac or some Linux/Unix.
Clipboard Managers
- Clipboard Canvas – A tool that helps you be productive, preview multiple files on Infinite Canvas, save storage space with smart Reference Files, and work uninterruptibly with Autopaste.
- CopyQ – An advanced clipboard manager with powerful editing and scripting features.
- Ditto – An extension to the standard windows clipboard.
- XClipper – A clipboard manager for Windows & Android which helps to track clipboard activities and makes it easier to interact with them.
File Search
- Everything – Locate files and folders by name instantly.
- EverythingToolbar – Everything integration for the Windows taskbar.
- Orange – A cross-platform desktop application for searching local files.
- Spyglass – A personal search engine, crawl & index websites/files you want with a simple set of rules.
- Cerebro – Open-source productivity booster with a brain.
- Flow launcher – Quick file search & app launcher for Windows with community-made plugins.
- LaunchyQt – LaunchyQt is a fork of the keystroke launcher program Launchy but modernized.
- Pinpoint – Keystroke launcher and productivity tool.
- SystemTrayMenu – Browse and open your files easily.
- Tabame – Tabame is an alternative to Windows Taskbar.
- ueli – A keystroke launcher for Windows and macOS.
- dnGrep – dnGrep allows you to search across files with easy-to-read results.
- grepWin – A powerful and fast search tool using regular expressions.
Journaling
- linked – Daily journaling without distraction.
- Mini Diary – Simple and secure journal app.
- RedNotebook – A modern desktop journal.
Markdown Editors
- Abricotine – Markdown editor with inline preview.
- Dillinger – A cloud-enabled, mobile-ready, offline-storage compatible.
- MarkText – A simple and elegant markdown editor.
- PanWriter – Markdown editor with pandoc integration and paginated preview.
- StackEdit – In-browser Markdown editor.
AngularJS-powered HTML5 Markdown editor.
Mind Mapping
- ASCIIFlow – A client-side only web based application for drawing ASCII diagrams.
- draw.io – Free online diagram software.
- drawio-desktop – An open source technology stack for building diagramming applications.
- Gaphor – A UML and SysML modeling application written in Python.
- Heimer – A simple cross-platform mind map, diagram, and note-taking tool written in Qt.
- mindmaps – An open source, offline capable, mind mapping application leveraging HTML5 technologies.
- My Mind – A web application for creating and managing Mind maps.
- Wireflow – Flow chart collaboration app.
Note Taking
- Cryptee – A privacy focused, encrypted and secure documents, notes, files and photos service.
- Joplin – A free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks.
- Notesnook – A fully end-to-end encrypted note taking alternative to Evernote.
- SilentNotes – A simple note taking app which respects your privacy.
- Standard Notes – A free, open-source, and completely encrypted notes app.
- Simplenote – The simplest way to keep notes.
- AppFlowy – An open-source alternative to Notion.
- Athens – An open-source knowledge graph that helps individuals and organizations solve complex problems by enabling them to capture, compose, and recombine ideas.
- Foam – A personal knowledge management and sharing system for VSCode.
- Logseq – A privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management and collaboration.
- Notes – An open source and cross-platform note-taking app that is both beautiful and powerful.
- Obsidian – A powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
- QOwnNotes – A plain-text file notepad and todo-list manager with markdown support and Nextcloud / ownCloud integration.
- Trilium Notes – A hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases.
- Zettlr – A Markdown Editor for the 21st century.
- Butterfly – Powerful, minimalistic, cross-platform, opensource note-taking app.
- Leaflet – POSP official notes application, written in flutter, beautiful, fast and secure.
- Lorien – An infinite canvas drawing/note-taking app that is focused on performance, small savefiles and simplicity.
- Microsoft Journal – A notetaking application that focuses on the inking experience.
- Xournal++ – A handwriting notetaking software with PDF annotation support.
Office
- CryptPad – A collaboration suite that is end-to-end-encrypted and open-source.
- Grist – A modern relational spreadsheet.
- LibreOffice – A free and powerful office suite.
- Sozi – A presentation tool for SVG documents.
Google Docs – Free online document editor.Microsoft Office Online – Collaborate for free with online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote.
Task Management
- Focalboard – An open source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana.
- Kanban Tasker – A simple personal kanban board.
- sleek – A todo app based on todo.txt.
- Super Productivity – To-do list & time tracker for programmers & designers.
- WeekToDo – A free minimalist weekly planner app focused on privacy.
Time Tracking
- ActivityWatch – The best free and open-source automated time tracker.
- Nomie – Open-source mood and life tracking.
- Strategr – No-Fuss Time Management App.
- Tockler – An application that tracks your time by monitoring your active window title and idle time.
- ididit! – The procrastination friendly habit tracker.
Habitica – A habit tracker app which treats your goals like a Role Playing Game.
Writing Tools
- bibisco – An open source application for writing novels.
- ghostwriter – A cross-platform, aesthetic, distraction-free Markdown editor.
- KIT Scenarist – Simple and powerful application for writing screenplays.
- Manuskript – A open-source tool for writers.
- novelWriter – An open source plain text editor designed for writing novels.
Others
- PDF Arranger – Small python-gtk application, which helps the user to merge or split pdf documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive graphical interface.
- PDFsam – A desktop application to extract pages, split, merge, mix and rotate PDF files.
- PdfScribe – A PDF virtual printer for 64-bit Windows / .NET 4.8 or later.
- Scribus – An open source desktop publishing software.
- TeXstudio – A fully featured LaTeX editor.
- Knowledge – Knowledge is a tool for saving, searching, accessing, and exploring all of your favorite websites, documents and files.
- TagSpaces – An offline, open source, document manager with tagging support.
- Datawrapper – An open source tool helping everyone to create simple, correct and embeddable charts in minutes.
- RAWGraphs – An open web tool to create custom vector-based visualizations on top of the amazing d3.js library.
- Reactive Resume – A free and open source resume builder.
- Resumake – A website for automatically generating elegant LaTeX resumes.
- KDE Connect – Enabling communication between all your devices.
- Phone Link – Link your Android phone and PC to view and reply to text messages, make and receive calls, view your notifications, and more.
- ClickPaste – Windows 10 notification area app in C# that can paste clipboard contents as keystrokes to whatever location you click.
- DropPoint – Make drag-and-drop easier using DropPoint.
- QuickLook – Bring macOS “Quick Look” feature to Windows.
Utilities
Context Menu Managers
- ContextMenuManager – A program to manage the Windows right-click context menu.
- Custom Context Menu – Add Custom Context Menu For Windows11.
- Shell – Powerful context menu manager for Windows File Explorer.
Disk Imaging
- Macrium Reflect Free – The complete backup solution for personal use.
- UrBackup – An easy to setup Open Source client/server backup system.
- Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows Free & Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition – The free backup software to protect virtual, physical and cloud workloads.
- Etcher – A powerful OS image flasher.
- Rufus – A utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives.
- UNetbootin – UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions without burning a CD.
- USBImager – A very minimal GUI app that can write compressed disk images to USB drives.
- Ventoy – A Multiboot Bootable USB Creation Tool.
- UUP dump – Download UUP files from Windows Update servers with ease.
- UUP Media Creator – An utility to convert Unified Update Platform file sets into Windows Media files.
Disk Usage Analyzers
- Filelight – An application to visualize the disk usage on your computer.
- TreeSize Free – The disk space manager TreeSize Free tells you where precious disk space has gone.
- WizTree – The fastest disk space analyzer.
File Recovery
- DMDE – A powerful tool for data searching, editing, and recovery on disks.
- TestDisk – A powerful free data recovery software.
- Windows File Recovery – A command-line software utility from Microsoft to recover deleted files.
File Shredders
- BleachBit – BleachBit cleans files to free disk space and to maintain privacy.
- Eraser – A secure data removal tool for Windows.
- Permadelete – An easy to use and beautiful app for shredding files and folders permanently.
- Turbo Delete – A blazing fast alternative to the default Windows delete.
Hardware Monitoring
Fan Control
- Fan Control – A focused, highly customizable fan controlling software for Windows.
- FanCtrl – FanCtrl is a software that allows you to automatically control the fan speed on your PC.
- NBFC – A cross-platform fan control service for notebooks.
RGB Lighting Control
- Artemis – Provides advanced unified lighting across many different brands RGB peripherals.
- OpenRGB – Open source RGB lighting control that doesn't depend on manufacturer software.
Others
- CrystalDiskInfo – A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB, Intel RAID and NVMe.
- CrystalDiskMark – A simple storage benchmark.
- GSmartControl – Hard disk drive and SSD health inspection tool.
- HWiNFO – Comprehensive Hardware Analysis, Monitoring and Reporting for Windows and DOS.
- Libre Hardware Monitor – A fork of Open Hardware Monitor.
- Open Hardware Monitor – A free open source software that monitors temperature sensors, fan speeds, voltages, load and clock speeds of a computer.
- Radiograph – Universal tool for managing your computer.
- Sidebar Diagnostics – A simple sidebar for Windows desktop that displays hardware diagnostic information.
- Winfetch – A command-line system information utility written in PowerShell.
Package Managers
- Chocolatey GUI – A delicious GUI for Chocolatey.
- Chocolatey – The package manager for Windows.
- Scoop – A command-line installer for Windows.
- Fluent Store – A unifying frontend for Windows app stores and package managers.
- WingetUI – A graphical user interface for Winget and Scoop.
- winget – Microsoft's open-source CLI packager manager for Windows.
- winstall – A web app for browsing and installing Windows Package Manager apps.
- PortableApps.com – A website offering many free, commonly used Windows applications that have been specially packaged for portability.
- BCUninstaller – A free program uninstaller.
- GeekUninstaller – A portable software uninstaller.
Screen Dimmers
- f.lux – f.lux warms up your screen at night to help you relax and wind down before bed.
- LightBulb – An application that reduces eyestrain produced by staring at a computer screen when working late hours.
- Monitorian – A Windows desktop tool to adjust the brightness of multiple monitors with ease.
- Twinkle Tray – Easily manage the brightness of your monitors in Windows from the system tray.
System Administration
- Sysinternals Suite – A bundle of the Sysinternals utilities including Process Explorer, Process Monitor, Sysmon, Autoruns, ProcDump, all of the PsTools, and many more.
- System Informer – A free, powerful, multi-purpose tool that helps you monitor system resources, debug software and detect malware.
Window Managers
- AltSnap – Easily drag windows when pressing the alt key.
- Amethyst Windows – Automatic tiling window manager for Windows 10/11.
- PowerToys – Windows system utilities to maximize productivity.
- RBTray – RBTray allows almost any program to be minimized to the system tray by right clicking its minimize button.
- SmartSystemMenu – SmartSystemMenu extends system menu of all windows in the system.
- workspacer – A tiling window manager for Windows.
Others
- AltStore – An alternative app store for non-jailbroken iOS devices.
- Barrier – Open-source KVM software.
- CompactGUI – Visual Interface for the Windows 10 Compact Function.
- Driver Store Explorer – Driver Store Explorer [RAPR] makes it easier to deal with Windows driver store.
- FontForge – Free (libre) font editor for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU+Linux.
- GestureSign – A gesture recognition software for Windows tablet.
- Html5-QRCode – A cross platform HTML5 QR code reader.
- Key'n'Stroke – Displays Keystrokes in an overlay window and visualize mouse clicks.
- Keyviz – A free and open-source tool to visualize your keystrokes keyboard in real-time.
- NVDA – The free and open source Screen Reader for Microsoft Windows.
- Nyrna – Suspend games and applications.
- Plover – Open source stenotype engine.
- Scanner – An all-in-one scanner app built for the Universal Windows Platform.
- Screen Ruler – A lightweight and configurable ruler tool for Windows Desktop.
- SharpKeys – A utility that manages a Registry key that allows Windows to remap one key to any other key.
- Ten Hands – Simplest way to organize and run command-line tasks.
- Universal Android Debloater GUI – Cross-platform GUI written in Rust using ADB to debloat non-rooted android devices.
- WinCompose – A compose key for Windows.
- X-Mouse Controls – Windows utility to enable or disable active window tracking, raising and also the delay in milliseconds.
Video
Media Servers
- Go2TV – Cast media files to UPnP/DLNA Media Renderers and Smart TVs.
- Jellyfin – A personal media server and client.
- Kodi – An award-winning free and open source software media player and entertainment hub for digital media for HTPCs (Home theater PCs).
- Macast – A menu bar application using mpv as DLNA Media Renderer.
- Universal Media Server – A DLNA, UPnP and HTTP(S) Media Server.
Subtitles Tools
- pyTranscriber – An application that can be used to generate automatic transcription / automatic subtitles for audio/video files through a friendly graphical user interface.
- Subliminal – A command line tool to search and download subtitles.
- SubSync – An automatic movie subtitle synchronization tool.
- Subtitle Edit – A free editor for video subtitles.
Video Converters
- av-converter – Convert audio/video files to another format.
- FFmpeg – A collection of libraries and tools to process multimedia content such as audio, video, subtitles and related metadata.
- HandBrake – An open-source video transcoder.
- LosslessCut – The swiss army knife of lossless video/audio editing.
- VidCoder – An open-source DVD/Blu-ray ripping and video transcoding application.
Video Editors
- Auto-Editor – Auto-Editor is a command line application for automatically editing video and audio by analyzing a variety of methods, most notably audio loudness.
- DaVinci Resolve – A color grading and non-linear video editing application.
- Hitfilm Express – Free video editing software with professional-grade VFX tools and everything you need to make awesome content, films or gaming videos.
- Kdenlive – Free and open source video editor.
- Olive – Free open-source non-linear video editor.
- OpenShot – An award-winning free and open-source video editor.
- Shotcut – A free, open source, cross-platform video editor.
- StaxRip – Video encoding GUI for Windows.
- Kinovea – A video annotation tool designed for motion analysis.
- MKVToolNix – A set of tools to create, alter and inspect Matroska files under Linux, other Unices and Windows.
- Natron – Open-source video compositing software.
- Astrofox – A motion graphics program that lets turn audio into amazing videos.
- Mediabits.io – Mediabits.io lets anyone create engaging videos for their audio, perfect for sharing on social media.
Clipchamp – Free online video editor.
Video Players
- Media Player – Media Player is designed to make listening to and watching your multimedia content more enjoyable.
- Rise Media Player – One media player for everything you own or stream.
- MPC-BE – A free and open source audio and video player.
- MPC-HC – A free and open-source video and audio player.
- mpv.net – A modern media player for Windows based on the popular mpv player.
- mpv – A free, open source, and cross-platform media player.
- SMPlayer – Free Media Player with built-in codecs.
- VLC – A cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project.
- GridPlayer – Simple VLC-based media player that can play multiple videos at the same time.
- Kawaii-Player – Multimedia player, media library manager and portable media server with PC-To-PC casting feature.
- QMPlay2 – A video and audio player which can play most formats and codecs.
- IPTVnator – A video player application that provides support for the playback of IPTV playlists (m3u, m3u8).
- Vodon Pro – A video player designed for esports coaches to review footage of players.
- Pennywise – Cross-platform application to open any website or media in a floating window.
Video Streaming
- FreeTube – An Open Source YouTube app for privacy.
- Invidious – An alternative front-end to YouTube.
- Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube frontend which is efficient by design.
- Streamlink Twitch GUI – A multi platform Twitch.tv browser for Streamlink.
- MotionMonkey – A semantic video player designed to stream Internet videos from a single query.
- Popcorn Time – A free BitTorrent client that includes an integrated media player.
Watch Videos Together
- Metastream – Watch streaming media with friends.
- OpenTogetherTube – The easy way to watch videos with your friends.
- Syncplay – Syncplay synchronises the position and play state of multiple media players so that the viewers can watch the same thing at the same time.
- WatchParty – A website for watching videos together.
Others
- DVDStyler – A cross-platform free DVD authoring application.
- IPTV – Collection of publicly available IPTV channels from all over the world.
- MediaInfo – MediaInfo is a convenient unified display of the most relevant technical and tag data for video and audio files.
- Mediarepo – A tool for managing media files.
- QPrompt – Personal teleprompter software for all video creators.
- Radarr – A movie collection manager for Usenet and BitTorrent users.
- Stash – An organizer for your porn, written in Go.
References & Acknowledgements
⬆️back to top⬆️
- GitHub
- AlternativeTo
- Product Hunt
- Privacy Guides
- PRISM Break
- Awesome Privacy
- Personal Security Checklist
- Awesome Windows
- switching.software
- Opensource.Builders
- Mostly Free Resources for Almost Everyone
- Awesome Piracy
- Piracy Index
- degoogle
- Awesome Web Apps – Curated list of awesome web apps that work without requesting you to create an account.
- Alternative frontends – This is a list of privacy-respecting frontends to popular services like social media.
- Awesome Humane Tech – Promoting Solutions that Improve Wellbeing, Freedom and Society.
- ethical.net – A not-for-profit project building a collaborative, online directory of ethical companies of all kinds.
LICENSE
- This article is under the CC0-1.0 license.