Curated list of Windows utilities

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

For an alternative to Notepad++ more similar to Windows Notepad (lighter, simpler), see Notepad2 or some of its maintained Notepad2 forks. Notepad2 is also open-source and runs the same engine: Scintilla. Visual Studio Code is a more powerful alternative, also open-source, but I find it too heavy and unresponsive (maybe because it's an Electron-based app). Sublime Text (see below) is a good shareware alternative.

I use it as a secondary browser with the following extensions: uBlock Origin (with lists to avoid cookie banners and other annoyances), Bypass Paywalls, Cookie Remover, Disable JavaScript, 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. 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). A developer edition is also available.

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

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. VLC is also good on its Android version. For a more modern and probably overall better alternative, see mpv below.

Uses lower resources, is faster, and plays UHD (4k/8k) content better than VLC. Unfortunately, it lacks some features (I still need to try this script) and I'm still not used to its UI, so I still combine it with VLC. For another open-source alternative, see MPC-BE below on this page.

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 works). The only other advantage of WinRAR is the possibility of compressing RAR files, but compressing files with open formats like .7z or .tar.xz is nowadays preferred, and WinRAR cannot do that. 7-zip by default adds a cascaded menu in the Explorer context menu for compressing and decompressing, and a separate menu for calculating hashes (all of them can be disabled and tunned in the preferences). Includes a command-line tool (7za.exe). There is a fork called 7-Zip-zstd which supports more formats: Zstandard, Brotli, LZ4, Lizard, Fast LZMA2 and decompression of lzip. Mac/Linux now also have a command-line version (before, p7zip was used in these platforms).

It has many capture methods (region, window, scrolling, OCR...), a few upload destinations are supported, and can be very 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, has a better image editor and may be easier to use. ShareX's screen recording functionality is very basic and probably can't replace the open-source tools OBS and Captura yet.

This previews many different kind of files when highlighted in the file manager and pressing space. By default, it works great with both Windows Explorer and Directory Opus. It is a better successor to the now outdated Universal Viewer.

It is the SFTP/FTP client that has the best GUI (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.

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 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).

It has better performance than meld. I have to say that I don't have experience using other tools such as kdiff3 (cross-platform) or Beyond Compare (shareware), but with WinMerge I have never needed to use anything else.

Supports all popular databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MS Access, 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 that are cross-platform too, but I have found that on Windows qBittorrent works 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 out there I don't see why a freeware alternative should be considered.

It can open huge files very fast in read-only mode. For logs, I need to try the commercial alternative LogViewerPlus.

Can find duplicate files, big files, empty folders, temporary files, similar images/music files, and others. For duplicate video files, see Video Duplicate Finder on this page.

For cross-platform compatible alternatives, see KeePassXC clone.

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 preferences) and especially lighter than Adobe Acrobat Reader. There is also CDisplay Ex, but that comes with bundleware too. Nowadays, PDF support is bundled in Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and these are usually fast enough at opening PDFs, so I don't always need to install Sumatra.

Finally, Microsoft published a better console, and made it open-source. It supports the Command Prompt (cmd.exe), Windows PowerShell, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and it has tabs. This makes ConEmu and probably Cmder obsolete.

Inspired by the PowerToys project for Windows 95, this is for Windows 10 only. It currently includes FancyZones (window manager), Shortcut Guide (Windows key shortcut guide), PowerRename (a Windows Shell Extension for advanced bulk renaming using search and replace or regular expressions), preview handlers for SVG and Markdown (that can be used with Directory Opus and Total Commander, for example), PowerToys Run (Keypirinha/Wox alternative), Keyboard Manager (a tool to redefine keyboard keys), Image Resizer (a Windows Shell Extension for resizing images), a Color Picker and a tool to mute the microphone.

Calibre is especially useful to convert books between multiple e-book formats. If you own an Amazon Kindle, this app is a must.

This is probably the best EPUB editor.

It can secure-delete files, folders, program's 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 this when I need to connect to Windows machines via RDP protocol ("Terminal Server").

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

TrueCrypt successor. 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.

Unfortunately, Poedit does not support LanguageTool spell-checker, and does not provide integration with automatic open-source translators such as Apertium. In my opinion, it has an UI that is much better than the one in OmegaT, a Java-based alternative that is also open-source and probably more popular in the translation sector. There is a paid version of Poedit that offers more features.

GIMP cannot be compared to Photoshop, but it works well. I've tried Krita too, which is another open-source, cross-platform image editor, but I find its UI more confusing, and less stable than GIMP. In contrast, Photopea is an adware and web-based alternative which is surprisingly good.

Good enough alternative (for me) to Adobe Illustrator.

I rarely use IRC nowadays, but this is probably the best IRC client for Windows. It is much lighter than Quassel IRC, for example.

youtube-dl 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, making use of FFmpeg if needed. Tartube is a graphical interface that installs the youtube-dl cli application (or its updated fork yt-dlp) and can update it automatically. If you find the UI confusing, use the classic tab to emulate the old, abandoned, youtube-dl-gui alternative.

I have found this better than Postman (propietary) and Soap UI (Open-source, Java-based). It is a shame it uses Electron.

I use it to create maps from WMS services to be used on LocusMap.

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.

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.

Zenmap is as powerful as nmap, but does not have a very good user interface.

HandBrake is a simple video converter that just works. 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. Note that HandBrake 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. VLC can also convert between most audio and video file formats, although it has a very limited user interface.

It provides an interface with a real-time preview, and can process multiple images at the same time. For lossless compression there is a separate app: CaesiumPH. This and maybe Imagine may be the best alternative to the mac-only ImageOptim and ImageAlpha, but not as good. I haven't tried the freeware alternative pingo. Good online alternatives are Google Squoosh and TinyPNG. For lossless compression of images, also consider FileOptimizer (see below).

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

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

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

Current versions of Windows Calculator also allows doing conversions between the most common units.

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 in 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 (not all) Operating Systems are supported, and they can be combined in a single drive.

This is not a GUI tool and should probably not be on this list, but I use this often to automate tasks with other GUI apps. For automating tasks, I may use Nodejs and Python as well. I still need to check AutoIt, it's supposedly less buggy than AutoHotkey.

The browser is based on the open-source Chromium project, but can't 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. I haven't needed to try other alternatives (such as the freeware/shareware Agent Ransack or FileSeek) that may be more advanced (WizFile also looks really 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 that are able to search content within files of multiple rich formats, such as DOCX, PDF o EPUB. For Linux, an alterntative to Everything is fsearch.

A very good audio player for Windows with a simple but 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, which now may be discontinued. On Linux, I use DeadBeef, which now has a Windows version that I haven't tried. For ripping, I used to use the open-source apps cdex (that recently started to include bundleware), CUETools and fr:eac, and the freeware alternative Exact Audio Copy, but because Foobar2000 can also rip discs with the free encoder pack (and maybe because now I don't rip discs that often) I don't install them anymore. For similar reasons, I haven't tried FlacSquisher yet, although that may still be useful to mass-convert FLAC to mp3/opus while keeping the directory structure intact. Other freeware multimedia players that I haven't tried are AIMP and MusicBee. And note that VLC can also convert between multiple audio files.

I still use GIMP and Photoshop (see below), which are heavier and more powerful, but Paint.NET is great for quick 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 (that may be slightly faster) 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 its sister project XnConvert which looks that 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.

Maybe it could be replaced with PowerToys (see above), but that's what I currently use. I haven't investigated ueli, which looks good, is open-source but unfortunately is built with electron.

The open-source WinDirStat is the most popular alternative, but it is much slower on NTFS drives. SpaceSniffer has a nicer treemap but is also slower. TreeSize Free may also work well. There are good open-source alternatives for Linux (baobab) and mac (GrandPerspective). A good command-line alternative that is cross-platform is ncdu. Note: WixTree 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 identify processes with opened/locked files (Find => Find Handle or DLL), replacing the need for other tools such as Lockhunter, to verify image signatures, and to identify processes from their opened windows.

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 of them 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, 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 usually flag software from this site as malicious, but it is not.

It is prettier than the Java-based Angry IP Scanner open-source alternative, and has a few more features. Advanced IP Scanner is 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.

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 is also the open-source DeskPins.

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

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.

Very old (abandoned?) software that still works great for finding broken links in websites. I haven't bothered trying other open-source alternatives such as LinkChecker or DRKSpiderJava.

Usually, I use the official git command line tool instead, but this may come in handy. It's the best GUI git tool I've used (although I have to say that I haven't tested many alternatives, especially the ones that cost money). In comparison, the open-source GitAhead alternative is much slower.

Unfortunately, the open-source Frhed has been discontinued. ImHex (open-source, cross-platform) is a new promising alternative.

A better TeamViewer alternative.

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

It will not replace IDEs such as IntelliJ IDEA, PhpStorm or WebStorm, but as a code editor, it is better than Notepad++ and any other text editor I have seen. The new Lapce editor is promising and may replace it someday.

It is still not perfect (it has its bugs, and SFTP support and dark mode are not included by default), but in my opinion, it is better than everything else, free or paid, on any operating system. After installation, I always install some preview handlers, such as the ones included in SumatraPDF (for PDF) and in PowerToys (for markdown) - see more of them in Directory Opus official forums.

I have reviewed many free Windows Explorer alternatives (Directory Opus is expensive), including the open-source and cross-platform Double Commander and muCommander, the freeware FreeCommander, Altap Salamander and Multi Commander, and the shareware XYplorer and xplorer². They are all OK, but I don't think they can be compared to Opus Directory or even Total Commander (see below). fman is a promising cross-platform shareware alternative but is still very limited.

Usually, I also install Total Commander. I always install a few plugins (BZIP2, xz, ISO, Cloud, Exif, id3 and maybe imagine, SFTP, fileinfo and 7zip (7-zip unpacking-only functionality is already bundled)). Most plugins can be downloaded for free.

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). Some online tools to work with PDF are: https://tools.pdfforge.org/, https://www.ilovepdf.com/ and https://www.pdf24.org/

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 has. Some people use MPC in combination with MadVR and LAV filters. MPC-HC maintained fork by clsid2 is a very similar alternative.

I used it in the past and it worked, but it was a bit frustrating to use. There is also draw.io, which is open-source too, and that it 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 is published by the same developers of Sublime Text. The evalutation version is fully functional, and can serve as a standard diff tool.

It isn't great (it is very unstable), but it is simple and can work OK for simple tasks such as splitting videos or changing audio tracks. For just splitting media files though, LosslessCut (see below) should be considered. (For comparison, on Mac, the bundled QuickTime player works reasonably well for spliting 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 an alternative to HandBrake. Additionally, it has basic editing abilities and can also remux videos and reencode only the audio from files. It is more stable than Avidemux. Note that VLC can also convert most audio amd video file formats.

This is useful if you want to inspect the formats of a media file. It used to incorporate bundleware, but the current sourceforge.net version is clean as far as I can see.

Another windows-only alternative is OpenMPT.

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

I haven't tried it yet. 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.

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.

It can accelerate downloads by splitting files into sections and then 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.

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 below).

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 available.

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

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 to mount 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 am using the default Task Manager or Process Explorer (see above).

This can be used to extract and edit resources in executables (*.exe; *.dll; *.scr; etc).

Probably, this is 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.

It may be the best app to work with subtitles, and it supports lots of file formats. Note that VLC can also convert some subtitle file formats.

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). In 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 I didn't like them, but they must be 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 is also an interesting app: it allows pasting plain text by pressing a keyboard shortcut (such as Windows+V).

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

It is shareware but has an unlimited trial period.

Because I usually store text notes in the cloud, I haven't checked this tool 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 downloading legal ISO images of Windows and Office from Microsoft servers.

FreeCAD is a free, open-source parametric 3D modeling application designed for creating real-life objects.

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