You know the drill, [M]Lemmings…
I want to share TypingMasterPro cuz it is the program that helped me learn to type 2x over (QWERTY than DVORAK)
Off you go!
I will forever recommend VoidTools’ Everything ever since someone first introduced it to me some few years ago.
It indexes your entire filesystem and allows you to search for files by name (and by content for text files!) and even allowing RegEx searching for file names, and filters for certain file types and the like.
How is it different than switching to Enhanced search in Windows settings?
It uses an index that really works and doesn’t take ages.
It’s what search should have been if the windows indexer was written correctly
Everything is a godsend, I install it on every Windows machine I use. But it always makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn’t integrate such search features in their own OS.
I don’t know who down voted you, because Everything is really really good.
Quick as a nimble, it instantly finds anything on your drives.
My dear colleague bashed my ears for more than a year about this VoidTools soft before I begrudgingly installed it, lo and behold it’s seriously one of the best tools I have ever stumbled upon.
At one point the software stopped working on my computer at work. I couldn’t believe how many times I used it throughout the day without realizing it. My only issue is that it can’t search network shares properly.
I’ve tried this a bunch of times but I don’t really get it tbh.
What sorts of things do you search for?
Everything I need is in an organised structure.
If your shit is organized you probably don’t need to search it. I can see this being useful for finding specific files on an unorganized file system
- Autohotkey
- Powertoys
- winget, choco and that other one
- Faststone
- advanced Renamer
- croc
- shareX
- one photo viewer (sadly only on window store)
- everything
I wouldn’t consider them hidden gems for the tech savvy community, but for the general community pretty much is.
Ninite may fit here, to
I was thinking of adding it to my list but I’m trying not to download any software on a browser if I can try because I might click on one of those fake look-a-like site that give you malware like what happened to gimp with google ads a while back.
Another reason for why I didn’t added it to my list is that it doesn’t have apps that I perfer like ungoogled chromium, brave, Librewolf, MPV, neovim, rustdesk, croc, rust, Gog, vscodium, prism launcher, signal, simplex, tor browser, yt-dlp, and Obsidian.
Package mangers are way better for updating than using ninite so I won’t have to deel with an app just sending me to download the newest verson.
I do like using ninite for when a friend or family asking for some help with a file so I send them a ninite with Libreoffice, VLC, and 7-Zip (but now win 11 has native support for winrar and 7z so it isn’t need for most users)
And yes I know that ninite is very defferent from a package manager, all i’m try to say is that I would rather sepnd a little more time setting up choco then use ninite.
winget, choco and that other one
Scoop? If so, highly recommend to fellow developers!
Yes, scoop. I still can’t remember why I don’t like it. I might give it a try when I reinstall windows.
Not sure if it can really be considered hidden, but many people don’t seem to know about TreeSize. It’s an incredibly useful tool to find out what takes up space on your drives.
WinDirStat is a great alternative, and it’s FOSS.
Also gives you a nice view illustrating the folder and file sizes
Unfortunately, WinDirStat is essentially abandoned… The latest version 1.1.2 was released in 2005. Wiztree is my favourite alternative, but it’s not open-source.
WinDirStat is good, but it’s really slow compared to its alternatives.
I’m personally a fan of WizTree
I sincerely hate that shaking “donate” button though. It’s already annoying to have a button for that, but a shaking one? Come on…
There’s an easy solution to that. If you donate, it’ll remove the button.
It’s a good deal. The money saved from not having to buy new drives / not having to manually calculate usage yourself would be far greater than any donation.
TreeSize has saved me a lot of bytes over the years. Performant and visually slick. I would prefer a FOSS utility, though. Apparently, reading other comments here, there isn’t an actively maintained one that isn’t garbage. Oh well.
Procmon has gotten me out of a couple binds. Task Manager can only do so much for you. I’ve always been dubious of people who deify Task Manager as some ultimate authority of the OS that kicks ass and takes no prisoners, as I’ve run into several problems it couldn’t solve for me. Procmon feels like the real version of that mythic Task Manager. The main thing it can do which Task Manager (to my knowledge) cannot do that I’ve needed several times is detect which running processes have a lock on a given file, so I can kill them.
KeePassXC is KeePass2, but not sinfully ugly. It’s FOSS and equally functional as the program it aims to supplant, but it’s also multiplatform (so I can use it on Linux without Mono!) and it looks like it actually has a design philosophy developed by someone who knows a thing or two about UX design. Also, it lets you auto bulk download favicons for all of your key entries. With KeePass2 I had to do that manually one by one. I was happy to do it then thinking the program was worth it, but now that I know there’s a better way I feel like an idiot for putting up with it for as long as I did.
Also, just a short rant: I am so glad Windows finally has a native OpenSSH implementation that ships with the OS. Because that means good fucking riddance to PuTTY and WinSPC. I appreciate them having been there to be our secure and stable options for SSH and FTP/SFTP clients on Windows over the years. But now that I can finally do those things in the terminal with standard cross-platform tools, I no longer have to use their ugly, clumsy GUIs, their stupid .ppk key format, or WinSCP’s cryptic command line args ever again, and I couldn’t be happier.
Power toys.
Made by Microsoft… For Microsoft Windows… To give you Microsoft Windows on crack.
Balena Etcher, so that you can make a boot able Linux drive 😉 Jokes aside, Windirstat was one of my gems.
MobaXTerm.
Makes dealing with lots of servers, be them Linux or Windows, much easier.
Honourable mention to Right PDF reader for helping me with previous study too. It’s had a name change but it includes enough features in its free version that makes it very good for reading and marking up longwinded academic studies.
the Ditto clipboard manager
It lets me keep track of all my clipboard history without having to use microsoft’s
only thing is I have to remember to go back and delete a password after I copy it, but luckily bitwarden can autofill most of the time
FancyWM
If I absolutely have to use windows it works pretty well in letting me keep my workflow from Linux along with some hotkeys for cycling virtual desktops
Foobar2000, it is the only windows app that I miss.
Deadbeef is close but it is missing several features, it can’t even encode using more than 1 cpu core lol.
The speed at which new users can download Rufus and have linux installed over that shit is truly amazing.
Chocolatey, a command line driven package installer for Windows that works like apt-get for Linux. Replaces thousands of bloated installers with simple commands. My first step with an updated Windows install is to install Chocolatey, open command prompt, and do something like
choco install firefox notepadplusplus gimp zoom windirstat winrarto install them all silently.Sharex
I recently found out about PeaZip, it’s a Foss compression tool that can compress and uncompress a wide variety of compression formats. For some formats, like 7z, it also has some pretty advanced options to help maximize compression ratios, if you know what you are doing of course.
AtlasOS, easily. Makes my slightly-older PC run like new.
Sure, as long as you’re never going to connect it to the internet
I’m hearing about Atlas for the first time. It seems great! Is there a particular reason it shouldn’t be connected to the internet?
I honestly had only just heard about it myself so I looked into it. It removes both Windows Defender and Windows update, as well as a bunch of other services that have flow on effects for security.
