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 features, such as macros, and the ability to search recursively inside the contents of files in a directory. Do not try to open big files with it 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). A diff plugin is available for it and works fine.

For an alternative to Notepad++ more similar to Windows Notepad (lighter, simpler), see Notepad3 or other maintained Notepad2 forks (all of them open-source and running the same engine, Scintilla). Sublime Text (see below) is a good cross-platform, shareware alternative. Visual Studio Code is a more powerful cross-platform alternative, also open-source, but I find it too heavy and unresponsive, possibly because it's an Electron-based app, although the ecosystem is great. On Linux (KDE), Kate works remarkably well. On Android, the best code editor is probably Acode editor, also open-source.

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

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

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

For Linux, a good alternative is feh. Oculante, an open-source cross-platform alternative written in Rust, looks promising. On Android, Aves is maybe the best image browser/viewer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 is better. The freeware μTorrent used to be very good (until v2.2.1 I recall). Some people recommend using Tixati, but with so many open-source clients out there I don't see why a freeware alternative should be considered. On Android, probably the paid app Fluid is the best BitTorrent client available (LibreTorrent, open-source, and may be enough). I used to use KTorrent in the past, when I used KDE more, and it worked well.

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 port. There is also an Android clone called KeePassDX.

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

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

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

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

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.

For other platforms, good open-source alternatives are iTerm2 (for Mac), KDE's Konsole and Gnome Terminal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

youtube-dl 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.

For Android, there is Seal.

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

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

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

It is the best app to work with subtitles. It has many features, including subtitle generation (using Whisper) and automatic translation. Many file formats are supported.

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

On Android, the open-source OpenCalc is good.

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

This Linux/Windows tool can be very handy: it creates a partition 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 exactly a GUI tool, but it is often used alongside GUI apps, to automate tasks.

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

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

The browser is based on the open-source Chromium project, but 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. Other more advanced alternatives that do not use an index are Agent Ransack (shareware) and FileSeek (freeware). (WizFile also looks similar). Other open-source alternatives for searching content in files are dnGrep, AstroGrep, grepWin, and the (non-GUI) ripgrep. DocFetcher and the non-GUI ripgrep-all are open-source alternatives apps that are able to search content within files of multiple rich formats, such as DOCX, PDF o EPUB. Also, note that advanced file managers such Total Commander and Directory Opus have advanced file search functionality.

For Linux, an alternative to Everything is fsearch.

A very good audio player for Windows with a simple 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. For ripping, I used to use the open-source apps cdex (which 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.

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

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

It 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 provide a bit more simple editing functionality) and FastStone Image Viewer, but I choose XnViewMP for its user interface (the older XnView Classic may still be slightly more stable). I need to check its sister project XnConvert, which looks like it might be a good image converter (in the absence of a decent GUI for ImageMagick). The commercial app ACDSee has a nice GUI, but I don't think it's worth its price nowadays.

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

The open-source WinDirStat is the most popular tool of this kind, but it is much slower on NTFS drives. SpaceSniffer has a nicer treemap but is also slower. TreeSize Free is another freeware alternative that is OK. There are good open-source alternatives for Linux (Baobab, Filelight, QDirStat and ncdu (for the CLI) and Mac (GrandPerspective), but in comparison most of these are more limited.

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

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

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

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

This site contains a massive collection of small freeware utilities, all developed by Nir Sofer. Most of the tools can be called from the command line and export data to files. Apps worth checking are CurrPorts, WirelessNetView, 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, and PowerToys (see above). Minimizing apps to the system tray is still one of the most requested features for PowerToys, and is available in the open-source RBTray too.

For my needs, 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. EasyTag is also an acceptable open-source cross-platform alternative.

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

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.

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

It will not replace IDEs such as IntelliJ IDEA, PhpStorm or WebStorm, but as a code editor, it is better than Notepad++ and any other text editor I have seen. The new open-source editor Lapce is promising and hopefully may be able to compete with Sublime Text someday (not yet). Nowadays, people tend to use Visual Studio Code (open-source, cross-platform) but I find it too heavy (it is based on Electron).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This previews many different 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 could be considered a successor to the now outdated Universal Viewer. Hopefully, this functionality is nowadays provided by the Peek utility of PowerToys (see above).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Based on Python, it works well, but its UI feels a bit dated. For a good and modern web-based alternative (also open-source, and available for Android, too), see Converter NOW. Nowadays, Windows Calculator also allows doing conversions between the most common units.

Sigil is probably the best EPUB editor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good enough alternative (for my limited needs, at least) to Adobe Illustrator.

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

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

On Mac, I have used the open-source LimeChat, which is OK.

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 maybe not as good as these. I haven't tried the freeware alternative pingo. Nowadays, I mostly use Google's Squoosh (I also used TinyPNG in the past). For lossless compression of images, also consider FileOptimizer (see below).

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

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

Another windows-only alternative is OpenMPT.

For a 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 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 above).

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

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

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

Currently not actively maintained.

This is a great alternative to the shareware DAEMON Tools. Nowadays, Windows supports mounting ISO images natively, so I don't usually need this software anymore. But it is still useful 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 use the default Task Manager or Process Explorer (see above).

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

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

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

The best program you can use to open and convert dBase files, if you ever have to do that. The trial version is very limited (for example, cannot export more than 50 rows). 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 was also an interesting app: it allows pasting plain text by pressing a keyboard shortcut (such as Windows+V), nowadays this can be done with PowerToys.

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

Because I usually store text notes in the cloud, I haven't checked this tool 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.

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