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🪟 Windows - essential software & tools you recommend ☑️

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driver8
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Recently had to reinstall Windows from scratch, including all my apps. (Thankfully, many of my settings were in Windows.Old).

Apart from my subs of Office 365 (family, with 1TB cloud storage per person) and Adobe CC (for Lightroom and Photoshop) here are the free apps I feel lost without >

4k video downloader - youtube
7-zip
'ruler for windows' - onscreen measuring
DaVinci Resolve - video editor
DriverEasy/pro
Everything - rapid file search
FileZilla - FTP
Firefox
Google Earth/pro
Google Picasa v3.9.141 from FileHippo - still the best for photo viewing, quick edits, collages.
Greenshot - screenshots, easily save or upload to imgur
HandBrake - video reconverter
Inkscape - SVG editor
InstantEyedropper - onscreen color picker
Kodi - media library
Malwarebytes (pro from bank)
MS Powertoys (image resizer, etc)
NitroReader 5 - pdf
Notepad++
qBittorrent
SketchUp 2017 - Google's CAD
SyncBack - backup to external, better than the defunct SyncToy. Pro version backs up to cloud.
TeraCopy - copy/move large amounts of files
Treesize free - check your HDD space
VeraCrypt - continued from TrueCrypt
VLC - video player
VPN - Proton, Ivacy


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(@chrisjlocke)
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Joined: 3 years ago

The first thing to install is chocolatey.  Fabulous package manager.  WinGet?  Nah.  hxttps://chocolatey.org/install
You can then just do choco install notepadplusplus paint.net   (etc)

For youtube downloading I use ant download manager (hxttps://antdownloadmanager.com/)  Its also handy for other large downloads and bittorrent links.
7zip- definitely.
For video editing I use Tuneskit AceMovi, as that is quite noddy for my beginner level. Isn't Resolve several thousand GB in size?! 😉
Instead of DriverEasy I use Snappy Driver Installer (hxttps://sdi-tool.org/).  It does group drivers together though, so you can end up downloading a lot...
Everything- definitely.
Instead of FileZilla I use WinSCP (hxttps://winscp.net/eng/)
Hang on - why am I pasting in URLs?  That's the point of chocolatey! 😉
Also, pasting in URLs pastes in the long description - not the URL.  Annoying...
Instead of Greenshot (which I used to use a lot) I've moved to ShareX.  Has a lot more features.  I do tend to switch the default around though so printScrn copies a region, not the whole screen.  
Handbrake- definitely.
For PDFs, I just open them in a browser.  99.99999986% of the time I have a browser open anyway...
INstead of Treesize, I use WizTree.  It scans the file index, so a disk scan takes seconds.  You have to watch it though, as the program can get bored and start chewing up CPU.  
Instead of VLC, which sometimes gets flaky, I use Media Player Classic.  

Some additional programs.  get_iplayer for downloading BBC programs. 
TightVNC to connect to my laptop from my work PC, so I can work on both.
DB Browser for SQLite, as I do a lot of database work.  SQLite is great.
Visual Studio in both the full application and in VSCode.
xplorer2 (free version) as a file explorer alternative.  Has split pane and multiple tabs, so you can overload with windows.
Agent Ransack (hxttps://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/) for finding files (mainly content in files)
Oracle VirtualBox for VM stuff, but I have switched to VMWare.  On Linux you can use KVM which uses the hardware directly, so if you do play with VMs a lot, I suggest that route instead.
Macrium Reflect for disk imaging.  Always ensure you have a backup of your system.  A Windows update can so easily knobble your system.
Duplicati 2 (hxttps://www.duplicati.com/).  Backup to Google Drive (so 15 GB online storage) but it allows different accounts per backup, so multiple cloud locations.  Not only that, but it backs up at a block level and deduplicates, so if you backup (for example) a wodge of virtual machines, they take up little space compared to backing them up individually.  Free too.
And finally BitWarden for password manager.  Open source.  Integrates into browsers (obviously) but also on Android, so works in many apps.  Not all, but you can get around that by just copying and pasting.  

 

Edit: Had to break the links as the screen was full of website previews.


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driver8
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Wow ! Thanks Chris - some great suggestions there - I will take some time to go through your list. ?


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driver8
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Simple non-tech method to restore the day of the week to the taskbar - I was really hoping MS would have re-added all the missing taskbar features from Win10 to Win11 by now.

https://github.com/martinet101/ElevenClock/releases

There's loads of functionality and customisation, but the simple wizard holds your hand to give good results (so far, at least) >


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driver8
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Yay! We've waited 25 years for this !

Windows 11 now lets you find out which processes are using the file


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shteve
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driver8
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hehe ... thanks @shteve, I do seem to remember doing that, back in the day, but it never really worked for some reason (still not tried this new feature).

Another decades-long wait ... file explorer tabs are finally here, out of the box!


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driver8
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Top 11 apps every Windows 11 user should have

Twinkle Tray - manage your monitor's brightness

NanaZIP - fork of the popular 7Zip archiver

Files App - what the stock File Explorer should be

EarTrumpet - quick and easy-to-use volume mixer

QuickLook - press spacebar to preview any file (copies macOS)


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driver8
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VidCutter - pretty much does only the 1 thing, but it's very fast and does not re-encode (so audio/video quality remains identical).

Add your video file, set start/end point, or multiple points, then go. EG: for a TV show, start after opening credits, end at ad break, start after ad break, end before end credits. You end up with your original file, plus a new trimmed version. That's it (the discarded sections are deleted, but can be saved if you wish).

The app works best on SSD rather than HDD, and may well seem to freeze for a few mins. Just let it do its thing and it will let you know when it's done.

EDIT for a pro tip: Enable SmartCut Mode in settings isn't really needed and is much slower.


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driver8
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Just spent 10 mins trying to find this again - very useful - create a text list of the contents of a folder (customisable).

https://www.sttmedia.com/filelistcreator-screenshot


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