Useful Software

[ErykYT3]

Does anyone use any software that is helpful and would like to share on the forum?

It could be the smallest thing, sometimes it turns out to be the solution for someone else's problem.

 

 For instance, Flux is a program I used to use which adjusts the brightness and colour of your monitor to reduce strain on your eyes. I don't use it anymore since Windows 10 has it built in but it could be useful for those using an older OS.

[Speakerator]

Ditto - a multi-item clipboard. Pretty much saves the last thousand things you copy-pasted, with the last 10 accessible via hotkey. Time-to-forget and number of things to remember can be customized. Copies and saves everything from text to files to excel columns. Just remember not to copy passwords ;-) It awseome at work and I wouldn't miss it.

 

TabManager for Chrome. Another thing I discovered at work. I organize things I work on or research stuff for in Chrome windows and usually only hibernate my work laptop, so I usually have ~10 Chrom windows with 70 - 100 tabs open. Working on something and face a blocker? Just leave it open, don't bother with bookmarks, just leave it open. Bonus: if you improperly close a window, it also acts as a history. Face a similar issue again after a few weeks? Just scroll up a few pages, click on the entire window or single tab and boom, it's all there again.

 

And, even though most people already probably know it - F.lux to dim down your monitors. I'm so used to that orange glow that I really can't stand bright white screens for properly doing some serious (paper) work or programming. Protect those precious eyes kids ;-) 

 

 

[ItsMitch]

ShareX for all the clipboard and screenshotting needs, open source and it's got an active support base if you need help with it. Easy to configure. 

[minibois]

Inkscape. Open Source vector editing program.

Helpful for creating some (simple) clip art like stuff that you can scale indefinitely or just making a high resolution raster image from the .svg you got from the internet.

 

Da Vinci Resolve - Good video editor with a free version.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

VLC - Open source video player that can play most if not all types of video formats.

[tikker]

F.lux for brightness control and AltDrag since I'm so used to that feature on linux  

[Canada EH]

2 hours ago, ErykYT3 said:

Does anyone use any software that is helpful and would like to share on the forum?

It could be the smallest thing, sometimes it turns out to be the solution for someone else's problem.

 

 For instance, Flux is a program I used to use which adjusts the brightness and colour of your monitor to reduce strain on your eyes. I don't use it anymore since Windows 10 has it built in but it could be useful for those using an older OS.

O/S

Office

 

[Virus__]

DropBox & iCloud for me. Means I can sync everything between both my Windows PC's, my MacBook Air & my iPhone & I pay a whole $1.50 a month for 50GB of iCloud storage. I was using DropBox well before I got an iCloud account, very handy for me to store stuff like my resume, generic cover letter & other important things I don't wish to lose like some photos of my pets & a few websites i've done over the years.

[Anghammarad]

Speedtest

Pingplotter

Audacity

Free youtube to mp3 converter

Sysinternals Toolkit

InSSIDer

Windbg

Speccy

[Shreyas1]

For some reason I sleep better without flux or other dimming programs

[marten.aap2.0]

if you're doing anything with servers or other things where you want to remote control computers: putty, a simple program to SSH to other computers

[WiiManic]

15 hours ago, tikker said:

F.lux for brightness control and AltDrag since I'm so used to that feature on linux  

If you use Windows 10, a blue light filter has been built in by default under the "Night Light setting", which saves you from installing something new.

 

I'll try and give some stuff that is maybe less known?

 

I use RClone daily and love it. Its a command-line tool that lets you sync to and from Dropbox/Google Drive/Amazon Drive/....(big long list of online storage providers). I've got a big list of scheduled tasks that backs up my PCs files to my Drive, backs up my Dropbox to my Drive and so on. There is options for versioned history, so I get a big long list of every change I've made to a file if I so wish. Never had any issues with it.

 

I'm using Oni as my daily editor currently. Its a (neo)vim front end, with a great UI which is much closer to something like VS Code than your normal Vim UI, but still retains everything about vim, plug-ins, vimrc, splits, tabs etcetc all whilst being hooked into Windows / MacOS so you can edit files more easily with a double click and so on. If you've used Vim and wanted a prettier or more integrated experience for Explorers, I'd 100% recommend it.

 

Last one isn't really a program and most people know about it, but the Bash subsystem on Windows 10 is great. Lets you use bash wherever in Windows 10 and is easy as going and clicking 2 things to install.

[ErykYT3]

Thanks for all of the replies, There's some great info here!

[HunterAP]

Chocolatey -> Is like apt-get on Linux systems, but for Windows. Basically lets you look up any programs that you would normally find and have chocolatey manage the installation and updates. If you've ever used Ninite, this is the more advanced command-line version with an infinitely larger program repository to look at.

 

youtube-dl -> Download youtube videos using some command line stuff, also allows you to download whole playlists without much effort and has a lot of options. I use this for videos that I want to reference (like coding tutorials, Unreal Engine tutorials, etc.) without having to look up the video again or constantly abuse my internet connection.

 

unchecky -> Automatically unchecks those pesky "would you like to install x" when you install new programs, especially when those included software is either garbage or a known virus.

 

WinDirStat -> Gives you an extremely detailed view of what is taking up the most space on your drives. 

 

everything -> Basically the best replacement for Windows' file indexing features used for Windows Search (where Windows Search and Superfetch services are huge performance bottlenecks, which you can disable if you get this program). It indexes all the files on your system and allows you to quickly search for what you're looking for by name, extension, file type, path, etc., and it comes with a Context Menu thing that's very helpful.

[TAHIRMIA]

AutoHotKey - Perfect for setting macros and scripts, very easy to learn and can be used for many things.