The best Windows software for every use case
💽 Software I use
The below is the software I use (mostly) daily on my local machine, expanding on my previous post.
Terminal
Text editing
Notepad++ with various plugins. In fact I’m writing this with Notepad++ right now. MarkdownViewer++ and a few others. I just discovered NotepadNext, a cross-platform fork, so if you’re not on Windows, check it out (obligatory news.ycombinator article). Sublime Text is an alternative more sophisticated IDE
Music/audio/video player
VLC for pretty much everything media related. Or the old greats, Foobar or for some llama-inspired goodness, AIMP or the community inspired version.
PDF Viewer
File extraction
Clipboard manager
Ditto or just use the more basic Windows shortcut (Windows + V) clipboard history tool built right into Windows
Windows Scripting
PDF manipulation
NAPS2, easy scan, and split/merge/… PDFs
Debloat
O&O Shut Up, to disable all the telemetry and onedrive in one click, there are plenty alternatives but I sort of like this one, it’s just a single executable File
Screen capture
ShareX, screenshotting and screen capture with annotations and autosave
Video editing
Simple, but OpenShot video editor for basic needs
Disk space analyser
Windows Package managers
Ninite, Winget, which is straight from Microsoft or Chocolatey
Image Viewer
Image modification
Process explorer
bTop4Win (reminds me of Linux)
Finance research
OpenBB Terminal, awesome insights into the Financial Markets using a text interface
Universal Windows search
Everything (awesome search tool - works with Samba shares too!). Add Fluent Search for an alternative, better intregrated option that uses Everything as a backend. dnGrep as a great alternative
Windows Explorer replacement
FreeCommander, who remembers Norton Commander?
Video download
yt-dlp, download Youtube videos for offline viewing and if you’re so inclined, nice GUI
Hardware information
CPU-Z, GPU-Z and HW Monitor (or Open Hardware Monitor) for information about your system. Fan control for customizing your fans.
Media
Media Info for scanning and details on all media types
Networking
Angry IP Scanner (legacy version 2.21) for quick and easy IP scanning. Single executable.
Note: portable versions available either via the website or portablesapps.com.