Software packages that are usually free shouldn't be posted as deals. This wiki page is used to organise a list of useful free software that users recommend.
Free as in beer rather than speech, i.e. $0 cost, rather than free/liberal/open source software.
It must be usually free. The software must not cost user anything to download and use, legally. Trial software does not count. Nor is software package that is only free for a limited time.
Cobian Backup is a freeware application for data backups. Cobian Backup and Cobian Reflector are completely free and can be used freely even in commercial environments. It is however, no longer under development.
Kopia is an open-source backup software that works on Windows, Mac, Linux.
Bitwarden is a free and open source password manager. While it has paid plans, the most useful core functions are perpetually free. It also offers a self hosting option; it can be run, using Docker, on Linux and Windows machines.
Everything file indexer - A fast, lightweight but powerful replacement for the Windows desktop search, Everything supports most versions of Windows.
Ventoy - Flash multiple OS images to USB drives, and create USB installation media from bootable ISO images. Rufus is also a well known alternative.
7-Zip - Unpacks a host of archive formats, including RAR, ZIP, TAR, GZ, and its own 7z format. Integrates with Windows Explorer. Peazip is also another open source alternative.
h2testw - Analyse your USB Drive and check if it's counterfeit. Validrive is also a good alternative.
Greenshot - Simple app for taking screenshots, making quick edits to them including annotations. Allows for quick and easily uploading to the Imgur image sharing website. It is no longer under development.
Flameshot similar to Greenshot. Works on Windows, Mac, Linux.
ShareX - is more powerful than Greenshot with more features for editing, screen recording to a GIF file, and a better interface.
Stacher - A frontend to the popular youtube-dl command line tool, that allows you to download Youtube videos for offline viewing.
Microsoft PowerToys for Windows - Is a swiss army knife of useful tools that includes File Explorer add-ons, a File unlocker, Image resizer, Keyboard button remapper, bulk file renamer, Screen ruler, Color picker, Text Extractor (text recognition) and a window manager.
Shell - Allows you to customize the right click context menu
Wiztree Disk Analyzer - Find the files and folders using the most space on your hard drive by providing a graphical representation of the size of your files that occupy a disk.
Winmerge WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.
Notepad++ a fast and powerful alternative to the default Windows Notepad program. It is intended as a code editor, and has developer friendly features such as syntax highlighting, macros, autocompletion, scripting and more.
AutoHotkey is a free, open-source scripting language for Windows that allows users to easily create small to complex scripts for all kinds of tasks. Macros, shortcuts, keyboard remapping and automation being the primary use for this software.
X-Mouse a free tool for Windows that allows you to re-configure and remap mouse buttons to expand the capabilities of your mouse. Useful if you are using a mouse that does not include any driver software for button remapping.
Files is a free and open source File manager replacement for Windows with customisable appearance settings, keyboard shortcuts, cloud file syncing support and a tabbed interface.
Sandboxie Plus - Don't trust a program? Want to browse the web safely? Running a program in a sandbox prevents them from making changes that may be harmful to your computer.
Kaspersky Rescue disk A burnable ISO image containing Kaspersky anti-virus utilities, also featuring ransom-ware removal. Trend Micro Rescue Disk also offers the same features.
RogueKiller As the name suggests, RogueKiller removes malware that has been disguised as a antivirus or anti-malware program.
Norton Power Eraser free virus removal tool that can be downloaded and run to remove malware and threats from your computer. Does not require installation.
Emsisoft Emergency Kit is a second opinion malware scanner that does not require installation.
VirusTotal is an online tool (web app) that allows you to upload a file that you suspect is malicious and have it analyzed by a range of malware and antivirus detection algorithms. Note: It cannot analyze password protected .zip or .rar archives
CutePDF Writer - Adds a virtual printer so you can create PDFs of anything.
doPDF - Adds a virtual printer so you can create PDFs of anything.
PDFCandy is a simple online or offline PDF editor. Only Office is an alternative.
Nitro PDF readerPDF reader that allows you to edit interactive fields, attach notes, type directly on the document and convert imgs/docs into PDF format. (26 mb)
Tinywow PDF tools hosts a collection of useful PDF editing tools. Web-based and runs within your browser, no installation required. PDF Fux is an alternative.
Sumatra PDF Reader a very lightweight program for viewing of PDF's only. Has a portable version that requires no installation or admin access.
PDFsam - Open source software that allow Merge, split, rotate the PDF.
Shotcut Shotcut is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor that is beginner friendly.
Kdenlive A powerful free and open source cross-platform video editing program made by the KDE community. Slightly more advanced than Shotcut and has a steeper learning curve.
Da Vinci Resolve powerful video editing program used by many professional editors, colorists, VFX artists, and sound engineers in Hollywood. It has a paid Studio upgrade, but the core program is perpetually free for home use.
Open Broadcaster Software also known as OBS. Useful for offline video recording, but is usually used for live streaming.
Inksape Vector Graphics An open source clone of Adobe Illustrator that imports and exports many different graphics formats. Windows, Mac, Linux.
PixiEditor An all-in-one open source software that can handle pixel art, animations, procedural art, image editing, drawing and vector art. Runs on Windows, Mac, Linux.
Paint.NET Bitmap Graphics Free image and photo editing software with a friendly interface. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. Windows only.
GIMP Bitmap Graphics An open source clone of Adobe Photoshop. A slightly complicated interface. Can support Photoshop plugins. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Photodemon Open-source portable photo editor. As it is a portable application, it never needs to be installed, and it does not require administrator access to run.
Blender 3D Graphics An open source 3D graphics creation suite. Can do still images, animation, and also games. Very capable and widely used but has a reputation of having a slightly steep learning curve. Recent versions have been trying to make it more user friendly. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Ardour cross platform audio software to record, edit, mix and master audio and MIDI projects.
Scribus Desktop Publishing An open source Microsoft Publisher or Quark Express clone. Supports professional publishing features, such as color separations, CMYK and Spot Color support, ICC color management, and professional level PDF creation. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Audacity Audio Editor Open source software for recording and editing sounds. You can use Audacity to record live audio, convert tapes and records, edit sound files, change the speed or pitch of a recording and much more. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Synfig Studio 2D Animation Synfig Studio is a free and open-source 2D animation software, designed as powerful industrial-strength solution for creating film-quality animation using a vector and bitmap artwork. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Krita is an open source / free raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and animation purpose.
LibreCad LibreCAD is a free Open Source computer aided design application for Windows, Apple and Linux.
Pencil 2D Animation Pencil is an animation/drawing software package that lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Handbrake A useful tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs. Advanced users may prefer Staxrip for it's more powerful feature set, but it is more difficult to use.
Irfanview is a fast and compact (6MB) image viewer with Windows shell integration. It can read a large variety of file formats, including some videos. Notable features includes bulk image converting, and bulk editing functions such as resizing, cropping, and color depth editing.
FXsound is a free open-source software to boost sound quality, volume, and bass, with EQ adjustment and presets for customized audio.
Caesium Image compressor is an efficient image compression tool with minimal image quality loss. Works on Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Ninite A web app that provides an automated installer for applications you want, giving you an easy way to install multiple software without having to sit down and click through installation procedures.
Patch My PC (Home Updater) An application that sifts through your program list and checks version numbers. It then allows you to pick which ones you wish to update and install them all at once. Also provides similar functionality to Ninite.
Super F4 Instantly end unresponsive applications and games without needing to bring up the Task Manager. Reviewed by TekZilla.
DBAN Securely wipes and deletes data off your hard drive or removable drives.
Shred OS securely wipes hard drives, just like DBAN, but with a nicer GUI.
TeraCopy An improvement on the Windows default file copying dialog, allowing faster copying speeds, advanced file queuing and interactive file list management.
Gopeed is an open source, lightweight download manager with magnet / torrent support.
AB Download Manager Open source / free download manager which runs on Windows, Linux or MacOS, with Chrome and Firefox browser integration.
Libre Office is a fork of the original Open Office, which was discontinued in 2014. Main components include word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases.
OCTAVE GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations.
KidLogger Software for PC, Mac, and Android designed to monitor user’s usage of computers or devices and upload it to your Kidlogger online account (or to your web mail). Some online services are not free, but the software itself is free and open source.
Betterbird is a fork of Thunderbird, a flexible and highly customisable email client.
Prey Software for Pc, Mac, Linux and Android. Prey lets you keep track of your phone or laptop at all times, and will help you find it if it ever gets lost or stolen. It's lightweight, open source software, and free for anyone to use.
Hiren's Boot CD An emergency diagnostic boot disk. Hiren's BootCD PE provides a way for you to find out what is wrong with your PC from a safe environment. It may require advanced knowledge of Windows to use.
HWinfo Provides information about your system's hardware, including real-time monitoring of temperature sensors, and power draw. Can also draw information over full-screen applications such as games.
Signal RGB and OpenRGB are both free software that allows you to control the RGB lighting of your hardware, regardless of the brand or make of the RGB lighting.
Rustdesk is a free and open source remote desktop app, and is compatible with Windows, Android, Mac, or Linux. It includes a self-hosting option for enhanced privacy and security.
Moonlight allows you to play your PC games remotely on almost any device. It should be used in conjunction with Sunshine which is a self-hosted game stream host (server) for Moonlight, which is the client.
Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time. Works on macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OpenBSD.
Obsidian is a an offline note-taking app, but supports multi-device syncing. It uses Markdown syntax for formatting. Available for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android.
Playnite is an open source video game library manager which provides a unified interface for PC games. It allows the adding and linking games from Steam, Epic, Origin, GOG, Battle.net, Ubisoft Connect and others.
CompactGUI “transparently compresses your games and programs reducing the space they use without affecting their functionality.”
Czkawka is a tool that aids in finding and removing unnecessary files from your computer. It can search for duplicate files, similar looking videos and images, music files with the same tags, broken, empty or corrupt files, and more.
Mumble is an open source low latency voice chat application, intended for gamers.
Anki is smart spaced repetition flashcard program for education purposes. (Works for all platforms including mobile)
LocalSend allows you to transfer files privately between devices on the same local network. Runs in a web browser or installed locally on PC / Mac / smartphone.