Programs I use

This section is under construction

Everything

Everything is a fantastic search program. Its indexing is super fast and it's easy to use, works on old computers (2000+), and easily beats out Windows' file search. You can sort to find the largest files on your drive, and filter for duplicates. Choose Search > Match Path, type in any part of the filepath you're looking for, and bam, there it is in seconds or less. Powerful program.

It really is the center of my workflow a lot of the time, and I highly recommend it.

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Xfader - Seamless texture generator from Pegtop

From a recommendation, this program was used for a good chunk of backgrounds on this site.

ShareX - Screenshot software

I use this program when I need to make precise screen grabs or quick screencasts. I also use its screen color picker and image thumbnailer rather often.

Anydesk - Remote desktop software

If I were to describe it, it's like a nicer, slightly lighter TeamViewer. The download size is small and attended setup is convenient. Unattended setup requires setting a password, but an account is not necessary. Connections, once established are secure and direct wherever possible unless you are behind a firewall.

Parsec - Remote desktop and game streaming software

Parsec is like Anydesk in that you can remote connect to your machines over LAN or WAN. An account is required and used for unattended access. However, it's also more optimized for game streaming, and if your internet is really fast you can join what other people are playing as a pseudo-local multiplayer experience in the Arcade. Both Anydesk and Parsec do require active Internet to facilitate connections, so if you're only on LAN or are dealing with older OSes you may want to steer more towards VNC and the like.

Microsoft Remote Desktop

Speaking of! Plain old RDP is so great. I can remote into my modern machines from my XP-running netbooks and Web-pc, and you'd hardly be able to tell the difference for general, non-media centric tasks.

Snappy Driver Installer Origin - Driver install utility

I like using this program by downloading the indexes and the packages of Wi-Fi/networking drivers and keeping them on a USB stick for whenever I need to install, or reinstall drivers on any of my machines. It brings together any of them that can be installed or updated with little fuss. No shady registrations or trial versions either--although it can look dubious on the surface, it's open source (so long as you get it from the right spot) and a massive time-saver.

MediBang Paint Pro - Painting, drawing program

Getting to more general applications than system utilities, this is the program I use for digital art and image editing. Apart from the ads on startup it is free and fully featured. There is also FireAlpaca, which I discovered earlier, that came from the same kinda codebase. The two programs are really similiar, letting you interchange their formats and see whatever works best.

DaVinci Resolve - Advanced video editor from Blackmagic Design

I tend to use Windows Live Movie Maker when I want to put small videos together, but when I need something more sophisticated Resolve seals the deal. It's a very full-featured and free alternative to Premiere Pro. The company behind it, Blackmagic Design manufactures cameras and equipment and they also sell a professional version. Standard Resolve though, is so good for the price.
That said as my friend Carrot put it while using it for the first time, the price you pay is not monetary. It's a beefy program that needs a fast CPU and free RAM to run smoothly. My Phenom ii workstation can use it comfortably with 9GB RAM, but your results will likely vary especially on laptops or processors that are less equipped.

Obsidian - Note-taking and knowledge base

I began using Obsidian in December 2020 and I really like its daily notes feature. Dubbed a "second brain", it lets me remember a lot of stuff I come across. I store my vault on Dropbox and sync it with my laptop. They're all plain Markdown files, so if I need to jump ship or I can't use their Electron version I can just use my own text editor like Notepad++.

QuiteRSS - RSS reader

I store a portable version of this app in my Dropbox for my RSS reading pleasure. I'm a large proponent for offline viewing and syncing, so having my feeds everywhere pleases me.

Syncthing - Folder synchronization

Syncthing is what I use to sync large quantities of files between my machines. Sometimes something hiccups and I need to go in and fix the conflict, but for the most part it's been wonderful. No arbitrary storage limits, and no using up valuable internet bandwidth. I've been using it since 2017.

File Converter - Quick file converter from Adrien Allard

I use this mainly for when I need to convert images and media quickly. It throws itself in your Windows context menu for maximum convenience.

PNGGauntlet - Image optimizer

This is great for really getting the most out of your PNG images. It shaves off quite a bit of cruft depending on how bulky your encoder was and the size of the image.

RadioSure - Internet radio player

I found this program a long time ago, and coming back to it now, it's among my favorite ways to listen to Internet radio. RadioSure keeps track of recently played songs, and even has recording support. Try Jamendo Lounge.

RetroZilla - Internet suite

A fork of the classic Mozilla internet suite. I use Composer for updating my pages when I'm not relying on SharePoint Designer's featureset. It's very nice.

Barrier - Virtual KVM switch

Barrier is a fork of Synergy 1.x before it went commercial. I had some issues with auto-setup, but when you've got it configured it works well. It's very helpful when you want to work on two machines on your desk at once with one keyboard and mouse.