CREATIVITY
1
PHOTO EDITING POLARR http://polarr.co
Polarr has crept up on us over the past few years, but since it made the jump from mobile to PC app, it’s proved to be one of the coolest and most capable photo-tweaking tools available, paid or not.
Alternately: Adobe Photoshop Express
2
IMAGE EDITING GIMP http://gimp.org
Stupid name aside, we’ve known for about a decade that Gimp’s Photoshopesque toolset and laundry list of filters make it an essential desktop tool. Save often, because it can decide to be flaky at a moment’s notice. Alternately: Pixlr
3
DIGITAL PAINTING KRITA http://krita.org
Best enjoyed with a pressure-sensitive tablet, but viable for anyone who wants to create art with a mouse, Krita is an surprisingly accomplished paintbox as perfectly suited to illustrators as it is to any budding Bob Ross. Alternately: MyPaint
4
VECTOR ART INKSCAPE http://inkscape.org
Pixels be damned: With Inkscape, you can create entirely scalable graphics and tweak text to your heart’s content, making it perfect for generating logos
and such. Inkscape is analogous to Adobe Illustrator (although it’s a whole lot more free), and it’s also fully SVG compliant. Alternately: Gravit Designer
5
MUSIC MAKING CAKEWALK http://bandlab.com
Back from the dead somewhat, Cakewalk recently came under new ownership – and those owners decided that the app was best given to the world for free. Pro-level recording, all the tools you need to mix and master tracks, not to mention a host of software instruments and effects. Alternately: Ardour
6
WRITING FOCUSWRITER http://gottcode.org/focuswriter
A beautiful, serene background image. The clickety-clack of a typewriter accompanying your keystrokes. You, your words, and no ugly distractions. If there’s something you need to get written, you should forget big clumsy office apps: Keep it simple. Alternately: Typora
7
GAME CREATION GODOT http://godotengine.org
While there are plenty of game engine options out there, they’re often pretty demanding when it comes to eventual royalties; Godot is completely free and rapidly maturing, with Vulkan support on the way, and a huge swathe of documentation to get you started. Alternately: Amazon Lumberyard
8
3D MODELING BLENDER http://blender.org
Blender recently ditched its game engine portion in order to focus on the features it really excels at: every step of the 3D pipeline. So, whether you’re creating, sculpting, rendering, or animating, there’s a tool here to help – and 17 years of maturity to back them up.
Alternately: 3D Crafter
9
DTP SCRIBUS http://scribus.net
There is no sense in trying to lay out complex documents in Microsoft Word, given its propensity to tear a hole in space-time whenever you slightly resize a text box. Scribus is a much more sensible option for desktop publishing, with a powerful text engine and strong image options. Alternately: Lucidpress
10
ANIMATION SYNFIG http://synfig.org
Whether your 2D animation needs consist of tweening vectors or skeletally animating a collection of bitmaps, Synfig gives you the necessary tools. It’s adept enough to produce some professional results – although the quality of your work is down to you…. Alternately: OpenToonz
11
MOVIES VLC http://videolan.org
Other apps periodically vie for the crown, but we’ve never found another free player compatible with so many codecs and ready to cope with so many potential rendering glitches. Dig under the surface, and VLC can do a whole lot more – it’s great for latching on to streaming services, too.
Alternately: MPC-HC
12
AUDIO MUSICBEE http://getmusicbee.com
Yes, iTunes is free. Yes, you can use iTunes if you like. But if you care about your system resources and want to organize your entire music library away from Apple’s sticky
grasp, MusicBee is a great (and skinnable) choice. Alternately: Winamp
13
LIBRARY MANAGEMENT PLEX http://plex.tv
For a large video collection, a large audio collection, or even a huge photo library, keeping everything easily accessible is vital. Luckily, Plex can deal with streaming all your media, and makes getting to it from outside your network an absolute breeze. Alternately: Kodi
14
TRANSCODING HANDBRAKE http://handbrake.fr
HandBrake is a miserably ugly program. It’s not easy to get started with. But once you’ve done the work, it’s just about the most powerful video conversion tool there is – perfect for transcoding individual files or even large batches to the format you need. Alternately: Freemake Video Converter
15
VIDEO EDITING SHOTCUT http://shotcut.org
Shotcut has been carving out its own niche in the video-editing world, and while it’s still catching up to the big boys, it’s also entirely free – no surprises, no restrictions.
Unless you look on the Microsoft Store, where it’s inexplicably paid-for. Don’t do that.
Alternately: OpenShot
16
VIDEO GRADING DAVINCI RESOLVE http://blackmagicdesign.com
You can just as easily use Resolve for editing, but its grading and postproduction effects are its real strength. It’s a professional tool that’s seen use in numerous Hollywood productions, and the free version is perfect for color correction, too. Alternately: Color Fixer Pro
17
AUDIO EDITING AUDACITY http://audacity team.org
Audacity almost annoys us: We’re kind of desperate to recommend something different in this slot, but there’s still nothing else that can hold a candle to it for audio cutting or tweaking. It’s a tool that everyone should have installed at all times.
Alternately: Ocenaudio
18
PODCASTS GROVER Via Windows Store
Styled to look a little like Groove Music
(which, we’re sure, everyone is using at all times), Grover is a good way to manage podcasts if you’re still doing it on your desktop. It’s probably better than doing it through iTunes, at least. Alternately: Juice
19
AUDIO STREAMING SPOTIFY http://spotify.com
You are spoiled for choice in the streaming market, but (despite its oppressive ads) Spotify’s massive library and straightforward interface makes it our top choice – though the free tier forces you to listen to your playlists on shuffle. Alternately: Deezer
20
ORGANISATION THE RENAMER http://therenamer.com
You’ve got lots of files. Videos, music, all from legitimate sources – but there’s no consistency in naming or storage. Sort them out without the effort using The Renamer, which does exactly what you think it does. Alternately: Bulk Rename Utility
21
OFFICE LIBREOFFICE http://libreoffice.org
Pretty much a free equivalent to Microsoft Office, and compatible with the same file formats, LibreOffice is a non-paid essential. It even does more: There’s a full database and a complex formula editor included. Alternately: Apache OpenOffice
22
PDF VIEWER FOXIT READER http://foxit software.com
Foxit’s big selling points are its connected features, which tell you when a PDF has been scribbled on or tweaked, but we’re backing it for its ability to open PDFs quickly without eating all of our system resources. That’s not a big ask. Alternately: Adobe Reader
23
EMAIL EM CLIENT http://emclient.com
While many of us manage our mail on the web these days, eM Client’s free tier allows you to take desktop control of two accounts. It’s fully compatible with the more complex features of Outlook and Gmail accounts, and super-easy to use. Alternately: Thunderbird
24
SOCIAL HOOTSUITE http://hootsuite.com
Dig through the pricey corporate options and find Hootsuite’s threeaccount free plan: You can schedule posts, manage multiple social services, and see your searches in their own live-updating columns. It’s social taken to the next level. Alternately: TweetDeck
25
COMMUNICATING FRANZ http://meetfranz.com
It’s tough being connected. There’s the family WhatsApp, the work Slack, the gaming Discord, that one guy who won’t stop using ICQ for some reason. No problem: Mash them all together using Franz. You can even take your combined account between computers. Alternately: Pidgin
26
TO-DO MICROSOFT TO-DO Via Windows Store
Microsoft’s app is a superb way to list the things you’re procrastinating on, the things you haven’t quite done yet, and the things you won’t do in a million years. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to check one off. Alternately: Wunderlist
27
VPN PROTONVPN http://protonvpn.com
VPNs are essential. Problem is, the free VPN market is hampered by bandwidth restrictions. Not so with ProtonVPN – you can use its free version as much as you like; the annoyance is transferred to a speed limit instead. Alternately: Hotspot Shield
28
REMOTE DESKTOP TEAMVIEWER http://teamviewer.com
How often have you tried to diagnose a technical problem over the phone and ended up bashing your head on your keyboard? No more. TeamViewer is easy to set up, super-secure, and can give you direct access to your desktop (or an elderly relative’s) via a browser. Alternately: TightVNC
29
NOTES NOTEPAD++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org
There’s a whole lot of contextual formatting in Notepad++ (it is, after all, made for sketching code in all manner of languages), but it’s just as much a straightforward and capable alternative to Microsoft’s Notepad. And that’s a good thing. Alternately: Atom
30
PLANNING TRELLO http://trello.com
Got a big project coming up? Put it on virtual notecards, pin it up on a virtual board, and spread those tasks out between everyone who you’ve roped in to help. Hopefully, they’ll actually chip in, rather than just being virtually present. Alternately: Evernote
31
UNDELETING RECUVA http://ccleaner. com/recuva
No guarantees, but if there’s a file that’s gone to the big data graveyard in the sky, you may be able to convince it back to life with Recuva. Generally, deleting only removes the reference to the file, not the file itself: Recuva finds what’s left behind. Alternately: Undelete 360
32
DISK RESCUE TESTDISK http://cgsecurity.org
Whole drive letting you down? Mechanical disk giving you the click of death? TestDisk can ignore all the usual safeguards and filesystems in order to wade through the raw data, sector by sector, giving you one last chance to rescue your files. Alternately: Paragon Rescue Kit
33
DESTRUCTION ERASER http://eraser.heidi.ie
As Recuva and TestDisk prove, deleting something won’t keep it from the determined data sniffer. Eraser is the equivalent of a cross-cut shredder, securely overwriting files (or an entire drive) with your choice of destruction standard.
Alternately: BleachBit
34
MOVEMENT TERACOPY http://codesector.com
Windows’ copying procedures can leave a lot to be desired; if you’re shuffling files from place to place, TeraCopy (which uses advanced buffering techniques) can do the job a lot faster and much more reliably. Alternately: Ultracopier
35
MANAGEMENT MULTI COMMANDER http://multi commander.com
Whether you come from the era when it was popular or not, the Norton Commander-style two-pane file management of Multi Commander is a natural and highly efficient way to move files and folders from one place to the other.
Alternately: FreeCommander
36
ARCHIVING 7-ZIP http://7-zip.org
Do away with that 2,000-day expired shareware version of WinRar: 7-Zip supports way more than just .7z archives, and it’s free. Whether compressing or decompressing files, it’s an essential component of any good Windows install. Alternately: IZArc
37
PREVIEWING XNVIEW MP http://xnview.com
XnView MP is a great way to preview images, taking you beyond the “extra large icons” school of picture glimpsing to a quickly browsable and logical graphical interface – you can use it for batch processing or conversion, too. Alternately: IrfanView
38
EXPLORING TABLACUS http://tablacus.github.io
Quite why Windows Explorer doesn’t have tabs in 2019 we don’t know, but Tablacus solves that problem: It’s a file manager that, yes, includes tabs. It also lets you tile folders in panes, and disable any components you don’t need. Alternately: XYplorer
39
CLOUD STORAGE ONEDRIVE http://onedrive.com
The integration of Microsoft’s cloud platform with Windows makes it a top choice merely for ease of use – there’s basically nothing to set up. It may not have the largest capacity, but where other integrations falter,
OneDrive will be standing tall. Alternately: Mega
40
UNINSTALLING IOBIT UNINSTALLER http://iobit.com
Oh, sure, Windows can uninstall software. But how thorough is it? Does it hunt through your drive to find every associated file? Does it fully scrape that space clean? IObit’s neat program ensures that removed apps are actually removed the right way. Alternately: Geek Uninstaller
41
BACKUP COBIAN BACKUP http://cobiansoft.com
Cobian Backup is one of the most capable free backup packages there is. Send your files off to an external drive, send them to a network location, send them to an FTP server: whatever works. Alternately: EaseUS Todo Backup
42
PASSWORD MANAGEMENT LASTPASS http://lastpass.com
There are plenty of solutions for managing your precious passwords, but LastPass wins points for the generosity of
its free offering – there are a few desirable features as part of its paid offering, but nothing essential. Alternately: Dashlane
43
SYSTEM CLEAN-UP CCLEANER http://ccleaner.com
CCleaner does all those long, laborious clean-up tasks in one place. You can either run a selective scrubbing job, or set up a batch job to deal with everything at once. Just be wary of the pop-ups.
Alternately: Advanced
System Optimizer
44
ANTIVIRUS BITDEFENDER FREE EDITION http://bitdefender.com
Many free antivirus packages are not worth the drive space they’re written on. Bitdefender is: It’s not too heavy on the hassle, includes a quality AV engine with frequent updates, and a slick interface.
Alternately: Windows Defender
45
POST-INFECTION SPYBOT SEARCH & DESTROY http://safer-networking.org
Install pre-emptively: If you suspect something untoward is on your system, Spybot is likely to be able to hunt it down and exterminate it. Alternately: Malwarebytes
46
ENCRYPTION BOXCRYPTOR http://boxcryptor.com
Do you trust your cloud storage provider? Enough to store your most personal files online without obfuscation? Probably not. But with Boxcryptor, you can construct an encrypted storage area – and if the provider encrypts, it’s double safe. Alternately: VeraCrypt
47
INTERNET PRIVACY TOR BROWSER http://torproject.org
Routing your Internet traffic via Tor makes you very difficult to track, and helps you resist online fingerprinting. The Tor browser makes doing so incredibly easy. Alternately: Iridium Browser
48
NETWORK MONITORING AXENCE NETTOOLS http://axence.net
A full suite of 10 network tools, from monitoring to scanning to tracing routes. There’s even a little cheeky internal Windows tomfoolery, all spun off from Axence’s pro-level IT management suite. Alternately: PRTG Network Monitor
49
NETWORK TROUBLESHOOTING WIRESHARK http://wireshark.org
A bit heavyweight, but Wireshark does its job so well that we have to recommend it. If you want to know what’s going on with your network and why a function won’t play ball, it’s the most accomplished protocol analyser around. Alternately: Colasoft Capsa
50
FIREWALL TINYWALL http://tinywall.pados.hu
Don’t rely on your router, or even Windows, to do the job of batting back misbehaving packets, or stopping snoopers from probing your ports. TinyWall is super-lightweight and makes for a useful additional line of defense.
Alternately: ZoneAlarm Free