Windows, Preferably free
AutoHotKey AHK for short. Allows automation of nearly anything in Windows, and is better than most alternatives. The downside is it’s VBScript, which I believe is going he way of the dodo, and it has quite a few gotchyas.
However, on day one you can start assigning keys and combos to do common tasks.
Don’t like Caps Lock? Reassign it to open Chrome. Hate that you can’t lock the screen with your left hand? Make Win+S a command that locks the screen.
It’s free, has a huge community, and is truly amazing.
Try Power Toys. It’s made by Microsoft and the Power Toys community and it’s free. It has a module to rebind keys just like AHK and it works really well with no admin access. It has a bunch of other nifty tools. I love it.
Agreed! I was trying to figure out how to remind the default screen shot button in flame shot, but it wouldn’t let me. I just used power toys to remap a different key melted to the print screen button. Works flawlessly.
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Ever since that article about VSCode collecting data yesterday, I don’t think I’m going to be learning anything new from Microsoft.
Do people think they make vscode out of the goodness of their own hearts or something?
It’s not VBScript, AHK is a whole separate thing. It’s similar in “philosophy” and syntax to some degree though.
If you use a Mac, Keyboard Maestro is similar with features and stuff. It just uses an interface similar to Automator.
The downside is it’s VBScript, which I believe is going he way of the dodo,
VB will be around forever IMO. A similar variant (VBA) is in Microsoft Office and there’s so many macros (and people that rely on macros) out there that I don’t think Microsoft would ever dare to break them. It’s effectively a lighter-weight variant of VB6 that was released maybe 25 years ago now. VBA has only had fairly minimal changes since then, the obky manor change being the addition of 64-bit support.
Microsoft has deprecated vbscript and it will not be shipped with future versions of windows.
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The fact that Windows needs an external program (with administrator access?) to remap hotkeys is completely bizarre to me.
You can edit the registry directly, but it’s not exactly user friendly.
Huh? A Windows environment, like e.g. Linux, has thousands of different potential sources where “hotkeys” might come from. Some are easy to remap, some aren’t. That is all down to how that particular application implemented that particular hotkey and its configurability. I know, I know, Windass Bad.
What do you mean by “thousands of different sources”? Afaik the hotkeys for e.g. the desktop environment are managed by KDE (or whatever you’re using). When I wanted to stop Windows from inserting “µ” whenever I pressed “Ctrl+M” I had to do some serious AHK trickery.
Microsoft Power Toys
Absolute gamechanger.
What do you use it for that has made it a game changer?
SysAdmin. The OCR Feature is a blessing to get masses of text from sended in screenshots, or Webinterfaces of devices that try to fight the user when they try to copy some text from it ^^
The Always on Top Feature… fuck where do I start.
When shit gets stressful and you are just trying to fix a thing asap but your view is bloated with the applications from your previous task, it can be unbelievable practical to use the always on top feature.
Mostly use it on windows that i want to have as a small but always on top space where i can interact with application xyz or even a small fresh notepad to type down what the customer is blubbering into my phone while I try to get as many information possible and troubleshoot the problems at the same time.
Sorry for the absolute shitty written text. I’m in a hurry.
Powerrename with optional Regex (Regex only with support of chatGPT. Noone can tell me they actually understand regex ^^) Though PowerRename i use more often as a Pirate.
Paste Text only - OMFG this feature… without it i would quit my job and search for anotherone where i can deploy it on my maschine. It stripes out every non-text from the text you have copied. So formatting and all that bullshit is gone. Its’s bliss. As a regular office worker this should also be a gamechanger. Noone ever wants to copy the formatting from one document to another. You mostly just want the plain damn text.
Maybe the cut and resize feature will be also soon on my favourites list but i havent tested it that much so far.
Oh and another app i love:
ShareX.
It has never been easier to show someone what they have to click or where error xyz occurs. Just create a border that you want to record in .mp4 format, do your stuff there, klick stop and send a very nice and small videofile to your opponent. Absolutely everyone that got a video from me was thankful for not having to read 4 paragraphes of text but instead was able to just watch a 30secs video and understand everything. I sometimes even use it in documentation for other sysadmins. Very helpful if the task is complex and would take up lots of text to explain. Create a short clip and everyone understands you.
I have two monitors, and I like one rotated portrait mode. FancyZones makes so I can split my screen in ways that make sense. If I didn’t have PowerToys’s FancyZones, then I’d be extremely limited with how my windows show up.
Like…splitting windows in half horizontally is not a thing. You have to make it a quarter first then drag it over. With fancy zones I can split my screen into three equi-sized windows. I use this for studying all the time!
I’m a designer, so: copy text from image, color picker on anything, resize multiple images, paste without formatting in any program.
- 7zip (archive tool) People still use Winrar for whatever reason.
- Firefox (web browser) - It’s well known but still under-used. Stop using chrome. Chrome will be the end of the free internet.
- windirstat (visualise used disk space) - I use this to clear free space
- musicbee (music player) - replaced VLC with this because VLC has had a bug that makes it not playback FLAC files properly for like… A year?
- Screen2Gif (gif recorder & editor)
- ShareX (screenshot/video tool)
- Open Video Downloader (GUI tool to rip YouTube etc.)
- uBlock Origin (ad-blocker) addon
- Sponsorblock (sponsorship skipper) addon
Wiztree is a good upgrade over windirstat.
Good upgrade is underselling it. It’s several orders of magnitude faster.
I will have to take a look, thanks.
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Everyone loves VLC but it has this weird bug where it will play a random half-second silence like one minute in in the song. Some songs only, but it’s completely repeatable albeit not at the exact sime time. Mp3, wav, whatever, still happens.
Had it 10 years ago on another PC/OS (both windows though) had it last year …
It’s like the Chinese water drop torture, you know the silence will come, but not exactly where… it drives me crazy so I also switched away :-/
Two alternatives: Stacher.io for YouTube ripping and TreeSizeFree for visualizing disk space.
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DaVinci resolve is an extremely powerful video editing software, and the non professional version is free. It feels like an extremely expensive program, powerful, quick and really well designed.
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I mean, your question wasn’t about pirating. It asked for free good software.
Just go pirate everything and don’t waste my time replying to you…
Doesn’t need to be a good free software if you’re just going to pirate it.
Why post the question in the first place?
to get suggestions of software that don’t have a paid superior version you can pirate
I use davinci for editing and find it far more enjoyable than premiere. If davinci’s vfx tab was more powerful, then I wouldn’t leave the program at all
Assuming you also weren’t able to pirate Acrobat, a crack of Foxit PDF editor is a great replacement
just use Xournal++, it’s better.
Currently I just have have sumatraPDF so I’ll look into that
Evolution is the only free (as in beer and speech) email client that can integrate with Microsoft Exchange servers instead of just downloading the mail via IMAP.
SoGo wants a word.
I just use the Gmail website for email
Why did you ask for app suggestions if a bunch of your replies are just “I use a website for that”?
Because I don’t see the point in downloading a software if there exists a website version of something that’s easy to load
That makes sense and I agree with you, but the post is asking for apps, so replying to app suggestions with “I use a website for that” isn’t productive.
fair
Google botnet at that. Smells like paid advertising…
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Nobody has mentioned Everything by Void Tools. Find any file in your computer blazingly fast. Make shortcuts to only search certain folder (e.g., search for “notes: python” to find file “python” in your notes folder. Also works for network drives. Some functionality needs admin privileges but most work fine without (hellooo work computer!).
Combine this with Run (Power Toys) or Keypirinha or some other launcher and you can find all files and start all programs with a quick shortcut + short text.
More supercharging by using Fanzy Zones by Power Toys and combining it with AHK for easily controlling virtual desktops and having all windows open where you want them.
It’s the first thing I install. I dont understand how windows search bar can suck that much, while this little software can find anything in a second.
You can enable indexing and it works a lot better, but somehow still is way inferior to Everything.
Q: what does combining with Powertoys Run give you? I used to use Everything but dropped it this year for Powertoys Run as it seemed good enough at this point and meant one less program (although I’m sure Everything is very efficient.)
Just the ability to search all files and start all programs via shortcut + text. I feel like they complement each other nicely. I feel like Run is more about starting applications, and not about finding a particular file, whereas Everything is for finding stuff.
I use it with Flow Launcher, which is open source (MIT License) and actually maintained. I abandoned Keypirinha a couple years ago.
Ohh interesting! I’ll take a look. Open source is a nice plus, though to be fair so it Power Toys.
Yeah I used Keypirinha for quite a while too (and something else before that but can’t remember), then when I found out about Run (Power Toys) then I started using it as it did everything I needed and I already use Power Toys anyway.
Many people know WinDirStat, but I think SpaceSniffer is better. It shows results in real time, unlike WinDirStat where you have to wait for it all to finish. And I think its interface is more intuitive. And it’s free.
Here’s SpaceSniffer’s website, and the download link is in the last paragraph of text.
Thank you! I spent a good chunk of the weekend getting annoyed at windirstat.
I like WizTree. It’s so fast.
Freeplane is such an amazing mind mapping program, as long as you have some patience for learning it. I had never heard of it until maybe a year ago when I downloaded it. It’s FOSS!
There are so many ways you can relate ideas to each other and lay out details. Plus it lets you embed internal or external links, images, and probably other types of media; I haven’t gotten around to exploring all the features yet. And it also supports add-ons made by the community to extend its already broad functionality.
I’m currently using it to plan my dream video game, and it has been a priceless source of continued inspiration. I have pretty bad ADHD, but using this software has helped me stay motivated and ambitious. I used to get overwhelmed and turned off while navigating my huge plaintext thought-vomit notes. I swear this isn’t an ad, as much as it sounds like one 😂
Yed is another good graphing alternative to this.
Sumatra pdf viewer. Much faster than adobe ,and free.
I’ve been using Okular and so far it’s great. I’ll have to take a look at Sumatra as well. To hell with Adobe!
I can’t edit or add signatures etc correct?
It is a v i e w e r not a writer.
There are ways to do it, you can add a library for it, but it’s inconsistent as hell
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Firefox now has a great PDF viewer and editor.
Well, time for my usual trinity of software mentions :D Preface: All paid, commercial, all windows only
- DirectoryOpus By far the best explorer replacement. I only use a fraction of its features, and it’s still more powerful than all alternatives I’ve seen.
- EmEditor stupidly expensive, but if you either care a lot about very quickly opening files, opening multi-GB files, or have to look into way too many CSV files, it’s the best text-editor. Nothing like formatting and only barebones syntax highlighting, so certainly not a VS Code replacement ;)
- MediaMonkey 4 I’m not actually sure if you can still buy 4 outside the lifetime license, maybe the 5 key works? Anyway, 4 is native, 5 is electron crap. Best music management app that happens to also allow playback ;) (edit: Screenshot because the site only shows v5)
edit2: Thought of one more, FOSS this time:
- EarTrumpet far better volume changer than what windows now has.
I’ve been using musicbee for years, is monkey really better?
It’s been many years since I tried it last, but back then MM simply had far more management features. If you don’t have any pain points with musicbee, I don’t think there’s a reason to switch, though.
But IME most tools for example don’t have something as simple as “tagging issues”:
Filebot comes in clutch a lot
You can match “legal” media files with media databases so things like Plex or Jellyfin can see all the files with the correct seasons and titles. I’ve also set it up to move the stuff where it needs to go at the same time. Might seem minor, but was what pushed the convenience factor up above streaming services for me. Unfortunately not free
Also Usenet
Using Filebot to move files and create folders saves so much time!
Not free, but I swear by Scrivener as a word processor - I’ve been using it for both my novel and Uni essays for years and it is just a total lifesaver, as it makes document management so much easier. Strongly recommend
I wish it was available on Linux.
Been a few years now, but I got it to run quite nicely in WINE.
Keypirinha - keystroke launcher. I can’t use PC without it, and I also stopped using desktop shortcuts since I started using it. It’s extremely lightweight and fast, and it can do a lot of different stuff using plugins…Open programs, open websites, use it as a calculator, convert currency, convert units, kill processes, list your public/local IP, integrate with Everything search, color picker, search timezones…
Huge fan of Obsidian for note taking. Really love the backlinking system.
Nice…I use Logseq, quite similar.
- W10Privacy (works on both win 10 and 11)
- I never connect with M$, only a local account. When installing Win11 type Shift+F10 to get a console then type
cd oobebypassNRO.cmdIt’ll give you access to a local account option. - NextDNS for a system wide ads and tracker filtering
- I’ve recently switched my mp3 player from AIMP to Dopamine
- WinCDEmu (outdated but still useful)
- OnlyOffice Desktop Editors for my clients who can’t understand any UI different from MS Office…
- Firefox/Thunderbird
- ImageGlass
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