Here are some free applications that enhance Windows by a lot
7+ Taskbar Tweaker
Lots of options to tweak the behavior of how the taskbar works. Want to have the volume change when using the mousewheel on the notification area? Want to change what happens when you click a group of applications? Want to open the Task Manager when clicking on empty taskbar space? Lots of other stuff.
Ditto
You copy something to the clipboard, then you copy another thing, now you want to use the previous thing you copied, so now you have to go back and copy it again and maybe you can’t even find it anymore. What do you do to avoid this? Use a clipboard manager. With a keyboard shortcut a popup appears with the last stuff you copied, which you can search, select, and reuse to put it in your clipboard again.
or
ShareX
Want to take a screenshot of a portion of the screen and have it automatically uploaded to Imgur or to a host of your choice? Want to do the same with videos, or gifs? Want to upload a file to Dropbox with a single keyboard shortcut? Want to auto capture a portion of the screen every X seconds? ShareX is what you need. It packs lots of options and features, truly a Swiss knife.
or
or
ImageGlass
Very nice image viewer, with a nice interface and options.
HandBrake
Tired of converting your videos manually with ffmpeg commands? Or maybe using a video editor to re-render it to lower its file size. HandBrake offers a way to quickly convert videos with a nice interface which is a frontend to libav.
Caesium
Same as HandBrake but for images. Want to convert that 5MB .png to a 250kb .jpg?
GIMP
A powerful image editor for image manipulations. Maybe not as powerful as Photoshop, but it’s a fine replacement for the image editor that ships with Windows.
Audacity
If you deal with audio at all, you might want to record or edit some at some point. Audacity is a simple but very handy tool for this. It features a multi track editor with different kinds of editing tools, effects, rendering and capture options.
Foobar2000
Simply put, a great music player. And not only it is a player, it can do lots of other things like playing/ripping cds, tagging, converting. Very powerful and customizable.
Nice addition: https://github.com/madhex/soundcloud-fb2k-waveform-seekbar
Ruler
Want to measure how much apart A is from B in your screen? Want to check if some items are vertically or horizontally aligned? There should be a tool for that, and there is.
Instant Eyedropper
Ever wanted to just know what exact color something in your screen is? With Instant Eyedropper, which lives in your tray, you simply click-and-drag and release at the place you want to know the color and it automatically copies it to the clipboard. There are different options like having the colors in hex or rgb format.
Cmder
If you use the terminal at all, you might want a fine one. Cmder is a powerful terminal emulator based on ConEmu. It’s very customizable and packs a lot of options.
Here’s showing how I managed to get the 4 pane layout:
Visual Studio Code
Great open source code editor developed by Microsoft and the community. It packs a lot of powerful features and extensibility. If you code at all, you want to get yourself a decent code editor, and this one definitely is.
OBS Studio
If you want to stream or capture video, this should be the tool for you. Popular option among streamers, and even though ShareX, which was mentioned here, can capture video too, currently it can be a bit unstable with video and audio syncing, so this is a more solid tool for that.
Rainmeter
Add useful information to your desktop with widgets. Not only display information but perform useful information with simple clicks, like emptying the Recycle Bin or show the Task Manager.
FileZilla
Great FTP client. Basically used to transfer files, usually from your computer to a server and vice versa.
SCN2 (Scanner)
You’re running out of space, you can’t install that new game, something needs to go, but where could all those files taking most of the space be? Enter Scanner. It provides a very convenient storage analysis shown in easy to navigate pie charts.
MultiCommander
The Window’s file explorer is pretty good. But there might be some things that you might need to do that are missing, and MultiCommander might help you on that. It’s a file explorer replacement which packs a lot useful features.
Chrome
Arguably the best browser right now. If you’re not too concerned about using software by big companies (I mean you’re probably using Windows), this is a fine choice for a browser. It has a fresh interface, its V8 javascript engine is becoming the standard nowdays, and it’s made even more relevant by projects like Electron using it as the driver of its applications. Settings and information like passwords can be synced to your Google account, if you choose to do that. And most importantly, it’s very extensible, with lots of available extensions to pick from.
Recommended extensions:
WSL
If you’re familiar with Linux and its tools at all, you probably find a lot of it useful, and sometimes even get the urge to try a new distro once in a while, for nostalgia reasons, or feel limited by not having some of those features on Windows. Worry no more. Microsoft has been doing a lot of good things lately, and one of those is the Windows Subsystem For Linux. Which is not actually Linux at all, it doesn’t use the Linux kernel at least. But it allows systems like Ubuntu to be installed in your Windows, which can communicate perfectly with Windows. Yes you can apt install stuff. And yes you can use GUI applications, but only if you use an X Server. A nice thing is that it integrates with the Windows filesystem perfectly. So you can go to your Documents directory and manipulate the files using Unix tools, awesome.
Recommended X Server: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/
AutoHotkey
To really get the most out of your keyboard, useful shortcuts are a must. Want to instantly shutdown your computer with Win+F4? Want to remap LeftAlt+Tab to RightWin+RightShift? Want to remap CapsLock to Escape but only on a certain application? Want to map your midi controller keys to do some actions? That and many more things are possible with AutoHotkey.
