What Windows apps do you use every day?

JonathanRyan

JonathanRyan

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Jonathan
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Not the big stuff like Adobe and Office, but the little helpers.

I've been using a Mac desktop for years and years and have several little apps I use (Alfred, Hazel, Default Folder X, Typinator etc).

What do you use on Windows? Either direct replacements for those apps or just stuff you always install when you get a new machine.
 
WinDirStat, Notepad++, Aida 64 & the Snipping tool I wouldn't be without. Had a quick look at the apps you mentioned because I've never heard of them and they're not something I'd find useful I think - apart from default folder x. That looks handy.
 
Harlequin565 said:
WinDirStat, Notepad++, Aida 64 & the Snipping tool I wouldn't be without. Had a quick look at the apps you mentioned because I've never heard of them and they're not something I'd find useful I think - apart from default folder x. That looks handy.
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Interesting list. Yes Notepad++ FTW. the others look a bit tech for me :)

Given the hardcore nature of your list, I'm surprised Hazel doesn't look useful to you. It's one of those apps that looks dull until you start to use it.
 
Irfanview as my default image viewer / cropper.

Ccleaner (but not every day).

These are the two which spring to mind apart from work related stuff.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Given the hardcore nature of your list,
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Hah! It's laziness! Windows file menus have a "favourites" column which allows you to navigate to specific regularly used places pretty quickly. I rarely browse for files - it's more a case of looking for specific ones and I usually know where I put them. If I'm "doing PC work" I'm generally working from a single location/folder and have that open on a second screen. The majority of my 'hardcore' stuff is game modding which is mostly done in Notepad++, Audacity (sound files) & Photoshop (image files).

Aida is so that I can put a [more useful to me] Rainmeter style hud on a second screen. The screenshot below shows the banner I have on my 2nd screen (it takes up about 1/5 of it). Those drives are clickable and open file explorer for that location. Rainmeter is a pretty cool app too if you don't need the depth that Aida goes to. I like having CPU, GPU & Memory on screen because when my games [and Lightroom!] slow down I like to know what the problem is.

grqerggrqe-3.jpg
 
Irfan view, VLC, Firefox, opera and brave. Libreoffice for document forays not handled by older versions of office. Calibre book reader. GIMP for colour channel swapping.
 
Chrome, Windows Snip, Flux (red light filter app) and TeamViewer (when they are not incorrectly labelling me as a commercial user) or AnyDesk. Hopefully will find some new and useful apps in this thread.
 
Calibre, Directory Opus, Beyond Compare, Quick Access Popup
 
Thunderbird, Firefox, Printer's Apprentice, Acrobat, Quark, Bridge, LibreOffice, Google Earth, AIMP (for tunes!), Visual Studio Code, Notepad++ (for web coding), WinSCP (for ftp), SyncBack (for backups) ...
 
FasStone has to be the best
 
Synctoy - got scheduled jobs running for file copies in conjunction with OneDrive - mainly to get round the limitations of the latter......
 
Home and work:
Notepad ++ or PSPad as the mood takes me, been experimenting with Atom as well.
Putty (a lot)
WinSCP (a lot)
vSphere client

work things:
Visual studio (every day)
Wireshark (formerly ethereal) and procmon a bit less often, but often enough their absence would be a nuisance. Not much used at home but knowing how to can be helpful in diagnosing strange problems.
Windbg or kd situationally

Your needs are probably different from mine.
 
Maxthon Browser
irfan view for cropping images for web viewing
double commander file browser
contacam ip cam recorder
foobar 2000 for music
airdroid - android remote desktop
mighty text - send messages , calls from phone to pc
xmouse button control to configure the side buttons on my mouse
notepad ++
teracopy - replacement for windows copy
winrar

other stuff is the usual image / video editing software
 
Vim
Classic Shell (for the Classic Start Menu)
7-Zip
VLC
Foobar 2000
Pale Moon (as well as the obvious browsers)
Filezilla
Foxit Reader, now that Acrobat is so annoying.
VirtualBox (mostly for Linux VMs)
MobaXterm (ssh and scp clients, X-server and local Cygwin shell all in one app, for systems where I can't use a Linux VM).
Strawberry Perl
R / RStudio
Exact Audio Copy, together with Player from vuplayer.com
Handbrake
Audacity
Calibre

Ninite is an excellent way to install many common freeware Windows apps in one go without bundled adware: https://ninite.com/
 
Retune said:
Vim
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Woah - a real techie just entered the game :)

Retune said:
Vim
Ninite is an excellent way to install many common freeware Windows apps in one go without bundled adware: https://ninite.com/
Click to expand...

Ah perfect - I heard of this site years ago and completely forgot its name.

The really interesting thing is how many of these app names I recognise. Haven't used Irfanview in maybe 20 years but it's still up there with the greats.
 
Chrome
Google Calendar
Google Maps
Picasa ... for levelling & cropping pics
Gimp
Paint.Net
LibreOffice
RapidTables
Snipping Tool
Skype
 
Couple of specific requirements....
  1. Renaming files - anything better than this? https://www.advancedrenamer.com/ I generally rename files based on (1) sequences (2) time shot (from exif) and (3) what folder they are in. Anything else I should look at?
  2. Some of my business clients have firewalls that block pretty much everything. The reliable way to get files to them is FTP to my own server so I need an easy to use FTP client. Is there anything you'd recommend that's better than https://winscp.net/eng/index.php ?
  3. I need a LIGHTWEIGHT program launcher to replace Alfred (and also Spotlight). Will I be happy with Launchy or is it worth paying for Listary?
 
JonathanRyan said:
I need a LIGHTWEIGHT program launcher to replace Alfred (and also Spotlight). Will I be happy with Launchy or is it worth paying for Listary?
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Do you use a LOT of programs? Why not just keep all the shortcuts pinned to the taskbar, and if you need even more then clear the stupid stuff from the productivity panel of Start and add them there?
 
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Apps that I frequently use:
Notepad++
Xmedia Recode
Bulk rename utility
Treesize
Filezilla
Putty
VNC
Snipping Tool
Powershell
Youtube-dl
WinRAR
Easy RoboCopy
HWInfo
 
FastStone Image Viewer
 
ancient_mariner said:
Do you use a LOT of programs? Why not just keep all the shortcuts pinned to the taskbar, and if you need even more then clear the stupid stuff from the productivity panel of Start and add them there?
Click to expand...

That's a really good point. A week or so in, I've got into the habit of hitting the Windows key and starting to type what I want - just like I did with Alfred. Tried Launchy briefly but didn't find it any more useful than the Windows key.

Surprised by how much I like Visual Studio Code. It's like Notepad++ with a bigger budget behind it :)
 
Notepad++
mRemoteNG (if you use PuTTY, VNC & RDP, give it a go)
WinSCP
7-zip
 
Apart from the MS Office and Adobe stuff, according to statistics, one of the most frequently used applications on my PC is a password manager. Not surprising in this day and age. Also CCleaner to keep things nice and tidy.
 
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R.G.Simmons said:
Apart from the MS Office and Adobe stuff, according to statistics, one of the most frequently used applications on my PC is a password manager. Not surprising in this day and age. Also CCleaner to keep things nice and tidy.
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Yes - I use 1Password many times a day :) It made the move from Mac far less painless than it could have been.
 
Waterfox - Browser
XSubst - set up Virtual Drives (e.g. P: for Photographs)
MusicBee - Music player
Format Factory, Mp3tag, VbfixGui, MP3 Diags - manipulate MP3 files
Q-Dir - replacement for File Manager
Notepad++ - editor
Agent Ransack - Find files
KeePass - Password manager
AirDroid, APowerMirror - talk to my Android handset
SUMo - check for updated versions of my programmes
 
Flexible Renamer
Faststone (didn't need it till I changed my camera to one that produces CR3)
Exif Pilot
I've no need for a program launcher as I expanded START to full page and added small icons for all the programs I use often and have the ones I use all the time pinned to the taskbar. 57 icons on the start page with room for at least 100 in total.
 
Contax said:
Waterfox - Browser
XSubst - set up Virtual Drives (e.g. P: for Photographs)
MusicBee - Music player
Format Factory, Mp3tag, VbfixGui, MP3 Diags - manipulate MP3 files
Q-Dir - replacement for File Manager
Notepad++ - editor
Agent Ransack - Find files
KeePass - Password manager
AirDroid, APowerMirror - talk to my Android handset
SUMo - check for updated versions of my programmes
Click to expand...


Ooo Agent Ransack is a good shout - I know some hard core techies who use this a lot.

BTW if you like Notepad++ (and I do) then maybe give Visual Studio Code a try. Microsoft did something good.
 
gimp
combinezp . (only just installed)
snipping tool
chrome
github
atom
 
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