55 Most Useful FREE SOFTWARE Everyone Should Know!

over the last several years we've tested more than 100 free programs and offered recommendations that we thought could be helpful to people in their lives after the release of our super sized useful websites video many of you suggested that we do the same for software so coming up in this compilation I'll show you more than 50 free software along with other free programs in alphabetical order that we think are the most useful many of which are available for Windows Mac and Linux let's get started [Music] audacity is a well-known free and open source audio editor and recorder it's used by many professionals including those that produce podcasts and it's also easy to use for beginners in addition to the standard recording and editing options it features multi-track mixing with sample rates up to 96 kilohertz with 32 bits per sample and plugins can be added to enhance its functionality don't let its outdated interface fool you it's still a powerful program you'll find the primary tools here at the top to edit your audio if you're a Windows user that stays away from high risk online activity the built-in Windows Defender virus and threat protection should be all that you need but if you require more advanced security software the best free solution is the new and improved bitdefender antivirus free for both Windows and Mac OS it includes real-time threat protection its light on system resources and does a great job of protecting your PC from viruses and malware with all the security breaches over the past few years with passwords being compromised having a password manager's must-have bit Warden is what I use it's free for personal use to easily keep your passwords and sensitive information private it's open source and your passwords are fully encrypted and stored on the bitmorden servers no one on the bit Warden team has access to see or read your real data and their Cloud syncing feature makes it easy to access your passwords on just about any device at any time you may have heard a while back last past one of its competitors made a big change it's free plan now only allows access to one device type bit Warden on the other hand still allows unlimited passwords on unlimited devices for free next up bleachbit is the absolute best open source cleaner you can get to free up disk space and optimize your system while you could do most of this on your own manually do yourself a favor and just run this program to save your time and possible headaches it's feature packed to help your computer run more smoothly and to maintain your privacy it deletes cookies deletes logs removes temporary files and clears cache and internet history in addition it also cleans dozens of programs including Google Chrome Firefox Skype VLC media player and many others prior to running bleach bit or any other system cleaner it's best practice to back up your system you'll notice when you open the program there are two panes if you click on any category in the left pane it will show you a description in the right pane what happens if you select any item in that category don't check any option you don't fully understand what it does if you select an option that might take a long time or delete passwords that are stored you'll get a warning it's your choice you can either select ok to carry on or select cancel to uncheck that option and I'll cancel all these out for this example I'll check a few more categories let's go with Firefox if you don't want it deleting your saved passwords click cancel let's go down here to Google Chrome check that one and of course I get that save password warning so I'll cancel that one out scroll down here a bit to Microsoft Edge same warning about the passwords click cancel when you're ready first select preview you're in the upper left when it finishes you'll now see a report showing you the number of files to be deleted and the disk space to be recovered to delete those files to the right of preview click on clean depending on what you selected this could take a while to complete blender is an open source Graphics tool set that's been used to create animated films 3D printed models visual effects video games and so much more some of its teachers include 3D modeling sculpting tools rigging and skinning and also includes a built-in video editor for most people at first they'll find the user interface to be overwhelming and of all those in this video blender does have the highest learning curve thankfully they do have useful tutorials on their site to help get you started up next is the brave web browser based on chromium it's free in open source and great for those of you that are focused on privacy by default Brave blocks website trackers along with advertising related tracking scripts and resources using various filters including those from the ublock origin project the Tor function is also built in to prevent sites from knowing your IP address and allows you to browse the net with the protections of the Tor Network when you open a new tab in Brave you'll see their dashboard in the upper left it'll show you stats about your browsing along with the website to visit most often over here on the right they have cards which would be of interest to those of you enrolled in the rewards program or interested in cryptocurrency you can modify the dashboard by selecting customize in the lower right to the right of customize let's go into settings and in the left pane select Shields here you can modify the settings for blocking ads trackers scripts and cookies and in the section below it you can choose whether to allow or block Google login buttons on third-party sites or embedded posts from Facebook Twitter and Linkedin CPU Z for Windows only is a great way to find out information about the hardware on your computer it's a system profiling and monitor current program that detects the CPU GPU motherboard chipset RAM and other Hardware with the program Open there are tabs for CPU main board memory SPD which stands for serial presence detect just gives you additional information about your memory and Graphics in the bench tab you can Benchmark your CPU or run a stress test all of this information is useful when wanting to upgrade components on your PC or when deciding if you should upgrade cpu-z is available in both classic and custom versions for most people you'll want to download and install the classic version otherwise select the customized version for your PC here on the right now for a quick one dark table is a free and open source photography workflow application and raw developer this program allows you to develop and enhance raw images this is done non-destructibly your original image is never modified you can also manage your digital negatives in a database by using different metadata attributes DaVinci Resolve is often mentioned as being one of the best free video editors with a ton of professional features the learning curve is high but worth it once you learn how to use it it includes multi-track timeline editing various trimming tools along with cool effects and transitions to make your project stand out also included are Fusion effects to create film quality visual effects and Motion Graphics domain name speed Benchmark is for you Geeks trying to get the best internet speed possible created by legendary software engineer and security researcher Steve Gibson who's the host of the long-running podcast security Now this program will analyze the various DNS servers to find out what works best on your network when searching for files and folders in Windows the experience is atrocious and an outright embarrassment for Microsoft everything is an open source program for Windows only that makes the experience a whole lot better in fact it should be built into all Windows operating systems it's light on system resources and easy to use with the program opened it lists every file and folder on your computer when you start typing in the search box it limits what is displayed to help you find what you're looking for quickly if you use Windows everything is a must-have program developed by the Mozilla Foundation way back in 2002 the open source Firefox browser is still one of the most popular browsers available it has a ton of add-ons and extensions that enhance your browsing experience you can sync between your desktop and mobile devices and includes an excellent manager for bookmarks other browsers that use variants of the Firefox source code include waterfox and the privacy and security focused Tor Browser photo Sketcher is a cool program that will take your photos and easily turn them into artwork with over 20 different styles you can add something as minimalistic as a pencil sketch up to an oil painting and a whole lot more after importing your photo into the program click the paint icon here at the top click the drop down for drawing style then select the style that you want I'll go down to painting effects and select painting 6 oil painting I'll leave these other parameters alone for now when you're ready click on draw depending on what you choose it could take a while for it to finish and when it's done you'll see the final result here on the right photo Sketcher is fully available for Windows there's an experimental version in development for Mac OS and Linux users can run it using wine one of the oldest programs in this video is released in 1996 this image editor is one of the best free alternatives to photoshop supports working with layers and includes tools for retouching your photos or creating brand new images from scratch over the past few years has received several updates making it more useful including cosmetic changes that make it look better I personally prefer the Dark theme but if you don't here's how you can change the theme go to edit and select preferences go down to the interface section and select theme your choices are dark which is what I'm using right now Gray light and system which is way too bright up next is glary utilities which may be the most suggested utility software mentioned in the comments of the previous videos it's only available on Windows computers and offers an excellent set of tools to clean your system and boost your PC performance now I'll give you a brief overview of the software when you launch glare utilities you have three tabs one for overview one-click maintenance and advanced tools on the overview screen it will show your boot time another great feature is the one-click maintenance by selecting scan for issues that will run a Registry Cleaner shortcuts fixer along with other options you've selected in the advanced tools tab you have several more tools for cleanup and repair optimize and improve privacy and security files and folders and additional system tools there are so many features with the software I could spend 15-20 minutes going over all the features but to save you some time I'd recommend checking them out for yourself they do offer a pro version with additional features that may be worthwhile for some of you but for most the free version will be all that you need Google Earth Pro is a virtual Globe program up until a few years ago it used to cost 399 dollars but now it's completely free the software is a lot like using Google Maps but with more powerful features when you launch Google Earth you should be zoomed out to navigate on the right there are controls to look around move around and zoom in and out just like Google Maps you'll find the keyboard and mouse controls to be more user friendly to zoom in and out use the page up and page down keys on your keyboard or you could use the scroll wheel on your mouse if you have one I'll zoom in here a little bit wherever you see the hand on the globe if you zoom in it'll zoom into that location so I'll go here somewhere in Central Texas so I'll zoom in now the left right up down keys on your keyboard will move you around or you can just left click and drag and that will move you around too there's a search bar here on the left and you can do a search in various ways including address business name and coordinates I'll now do a search for the Magic Kingdom at Disney World and there it is Magic Kingdom park so I'll select that one and then select search and it will fly you to that location I'll now zoom in on an area of that Park and I'll just zoom in all the way here there we go and you can look around with your arrow keys and move forward or backwards in the park and they call this street view which is also available on Google Maps here in the left pane you'll see a layers area here you can make changes to the layers to view more or less details I've already spent too much time on this program so I'll leave the rest of this for you to discover on your own now I'll show you a green shot which is a free and open source screenshot program greenshot allows you to capture a full screen an open window or even capture a region of your screen and once it takes a screenshot gives you a ton of options let me demonstrate here are the keyboard hotkeys which I use that can also be changed holding down the control key and the print screen key at the same time allows you to capture the full screen the ALT key and print screen key allow you to capture a selected open window and to capture just a region of the screen all you need to hold down is the print screen key on your keyboard which I will do right now now I'll click and drag an area for the screenshot and then let go now I have several options including saving you can have it open directly into the screenshot editor or one of the several programs including Microsoft Paint you can also upload to imager I prefer to open in the greenshot image editor so I'll do that right now in this screen along the top you still have the options for saving opening and uploading along the left side you have several options for marking up your screenshot when done you can save directly to your PC and you can save in several formats including JPEG and PNG if you ever need to convert any video format from one type to another it doesn't get any better than the free and open source transcoder handbrake it's great for converting a large video file into a smaller format ripping DVDs and Blu-rays and it will take those unusual lesser used video types and convert them into a format that's more recognized for this example I'll convert an MKV file into an mp4 which is a more widely supported file type you have the choice to open a single file or choose more than one from a folder you can also drag a file or folder from your computer in this case I'll drag an MKV file from off screen into the main window it will automatically detect the file's information including that video's resolution for the preset I usually leave it on the default which is fast 1080p 30. go to the video tab set the video Codec to h.264 and use the one that's first in the list for frame rate I'll leave it at 30. below that do not leave it on Peak frame rate which in other words is the variable frame rate this has been known to cause issues change it to constant frame rate go to the audio tab make sure the codec selected is AAC in the lower right click on browse choose the location for your saved file and give it a name click on Save when you're ready you're at the top click starting code and wait for it to finish if you need to do an analysis of the hardware on your computer HW info is what I recommend it provides extensive information about your hardware and includes real-time system monitoring depending on how you have it set up you'll have a separate window with your system summary of your key components if you don't need this window you can close it out or move it along the left selecting any component will give you additional information to the right HW info is only available for Windows with the standard installer and two portable options including one for dos if you've ever used Microsoft's built-in photos app then you already know it's terrible image glass is a great lightweight alternative that's not bloated and sloppily coded like the aforementioned program it's free and open source and supports more than 70 image formats like PNG jpeg SVG and many others it loads images quickly with an easy to use interface you'll find all the necessary tools on the bar at the top with additional tools located in the menu on the right theme packs could also be installed to change the look image glass is available for Windows only because quite frankly most Linux and Mac users already have a decent image viewer built in inkscape is a fantastic free and open source alternative to Adobe Illustrator this vector graphics editor is feature packed to create scalable icons illustrations and logos there's a huge assortment of tools for object creation and manipulation you can edit and create compliant SVG formatted files and allows for exporting into other formats including PNG user layout is not too difficult to figure out most of the primary tools are located along the left or the color bar at the bottom of the window when getting started there is a high learning curve so it's best to check out the tutorials before diving in also their forum is a great place to get answers to your questions from their community Caden live is a powerful non-linear video editor that's very user friendly and easier to use than most of the video editors that you can get it has multi-track video editing and it supports just about any audio or video format it also has tons of effects and transitions that can improve the quality of your project if Caden live looks similar to shotcut another video editor I've shown you in the past there's a good reason for that cadenlight is based on the same MLT framework as shotcut to get you more familiar with the software in the user manual section on their site I'd recommend checking out their quick start guide to get you started next up is Cody which is a free and open source media player software you can use Kodi to view media directly on your computer or if you have a supported Smart TV or streaming device that also has a Kodi app it allows your PC to behave like a media server to be able to stream your movies TV shows music and other media to those devices what brings a lot of people to Cody is the add-ons there are several categories of add-ons for video or audio to stream internet content they also have add-ons for skins to change the look and feel of Kodi at odds for weather and so many more which are all completely free after you install Kodi and first launch it you may get overwhelmed there are all these categories along the left hand side that are empty which you have to link to before it'll show up in the main window you'll also want to go to the settings menu which will have several categories for you to set up your preferences if Cody is something that interests you there are hundreds of tutorials on YouTube for you to check out krita is a raster graphics editor that is designed primarily for sketching and painting for digital artists the software has a ton of features some of those include drawing assistance layer management layer masks and PSD file support in the resources section you can also import brush and texture packs from other artists to increase your tool set when you first open krita you'll notice that it has a clean looking user interface that can be customized to fit your needs in the default view all the tools are on the left just like most of the other Graphics editing software on creda's documentation page to learn how to use the software they provide a user manual tutorials a getting started guide along with other resources to help you out labor office released in 2011 is an office suite that makes for a great alternative to Microsoft Office their Microsoft Word and Excel Alternatives have improved quite a bit over the years when opening and converting those file formats included with LibreOffice is Rider which has many of the same features as Microsoft Word calc is similar to excel impress can be used instead of PowerPoint draw is a vector graphics editor and math can be used to create and edit mathematical formulas the most important software on your computer is the operating system and if you're looking for the best free alternative to Windows and Mac OS you'd want to go with one of the many Linux distros the big advantages to using Linux is there are no upfront or built-in costs to use it no forced updates invasion of your privacy and you have less of a chance of getting a virus or malware if you are brand new to Linux those I'd recommend for beginners include Linux Mint Ubuntu zorin OS and Elementary OS many Linux distros will ask for a donation on their home page to support development which is not necessary but appreciated for example with Elementary OS you want to kick the tires first go to pay what you want and in custom type 0.00 and then click on download Elementary OS and you can get it for free this one's not for everyone it's made specifically for musicians lmms is a free and open source digital audio workstation for creating music it comes bundled with an assortment of instrument and effect plugins you can produce music by creating Melodies and beats synthesizing and mixing sounds and so much more when you're working on a project this is what the overall layout will look like and this is what the layout looks like when you're editing your music if this is something that interests you I'd recommend checking out their documentation section that has a lot of resources including video tutorials for additional security Malwarebytes is great for those times you need to use another scanner it's also available for both Windows and Mac and it will give you a 14 day free trial of the premium version with real-time protection after the trial ends it reverts to the free edition that doesn't run in the background to interfere with your other antivirus software but you do still have access to the on-demand scanner to possibly find problems your other scanner might have missed this will be a quick one media player classic Black Edition for Windows only is a fork of the original media player classic it's free and open source light on system resources and is great for those of you that have issues with VLC media player or don't like the built-in media player in Windows unlike the original media player classic the discontinued development years ago the black edition is still updated on a regular basis it's easy to use with all the controls located here at the bottom mix is a DJ audio mixing program with a full range of mixing programming and effects which you can use for recordings or live presentations it has full integration with your songs and playlists from iTunes and supports most of the common music file formats it contains many of the features you would find in expensive DJ mixing software some of those key features include Time Stretch beat looping Master Sync along with equalizer and crossfader control mix also makes it easy to organize your music library if you still own CDs you can load those tunes into your library as well if you've never used DJ mixing software when you first open mix the user interface can be overwhelming thankfully in their support section they provide links to their Wiki user manual and Community forums where you can get additional help nomax is an image viewer that is known for having amazing features that are typically not found in the standard photo viewers on most operating systems it supports just about every common image format including raw you can even resize and crop your images within nomax without the need to open image editing software like Photoshop or it contains the standard features found in most image viewers including slideshow and being able to cycle through your images with the left or right arrow keys on your keyboard if you want to make any changes to your photos the editing options can be found in the toolbar at the top by selecting adjustments selecting some of these will instantly make changes to your photo While others will open a pane on the right side where you can make additional changes also in adjustments you have the ability to resize or crop an image next up OBS studio is a free and open source screen recorder that's great for recording instructional videos video game footage or anything else on your monitor it's also popular for streaming video games to Twitch YouTube and other services there are no forced watermarks or time limits and you can have an unlimited number of scenes just be aware that on computers with low system specs you may encounter lag here's what the user interface looks like some people are troubled with the infinity effect if it bothers you just minimize it once you start recording there's a slight learning curve to get it set up our beginner's guide will walk you through the process I'll put a link to that in the description of this video the problem with free and open source video editing software like shortcut and kid in live is that they lack many of the high-end features most professionals need Olive is looking to change all that it's a new non-linear free and open source video editor with the goal of becoming a fully featured alternative to the big hitters like Vegas Pro Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro at this time Olive is still in early development with new features being added every month over the past few weeks in testing I've encountered bugs and have wished that certain features were available at that moment with that being said even in its current state Olive is already one of the best open source video editors I've used and could potentially be a game changer for those people that don't want to Shell out the big bucks for an expensive program only office is an office suite I mentioned a couple years ago in our free software series and since then has improved quite a bit now it's a strong Contender to Libra office as the best free and open source office suite and is an excellent alternative to Microsoft Office included with their desktop editors is an alternative to Microsoft Word Excel and PowerPoint their compatibility with Microsoft Word and Excel is nearly Flawless but their PowerPoint alternative still needs work so if compatibility is important to you I'd only recommend using their Word and Excel Alternatives at this time when you open any of the three editors you'll notice the familiar looking ribbon at the top document is what they call their word alternative spreadsheet is their Excel alternative and for PowerPoint they call theirs presentation up next is the free and open source video editing software open shot it's been around since 2008 and over the past couple of years has improved quite a bit it's easy to use with a load learning curve and it's packed full of features it allows you to work with multiple layers with support for many video audio and image formats 400 transitions are included you seamlessly move from clip to clip it lets you add animations and includes audio editing features built in as you can see the interface is very user friendly when compared with most video editing software I'll now show you quickly how to add a transition between two clips to add a video file just simply drag and drop it from your desktop or folder onto any track in the timeline we'll move this to the left let's add another clip in the toolbar above the timeline click on transitions if you have a lot to choose from find the one you want and drag it down to the timeline in between both clips to shorten the length of the transition look for the double arrows left click and drag to make it shorter now take that transition and drag it over the end of the first clip then take that second clip to the right and drag it over the transition let's take a look at a preview on their site there's a handy user guide that will teach you how to use it this is one of my personal favorites and it's really useful when streaming media from your computer to a device like a Roku Smart TV gaming console smartphone or any other device that has the Plex app available which is nearly any streaming device that has ever been made setup is easy there are tutorials all over the internet once installed when you've added your media into the corresponding folders on your computer they show up in this nice looking easy to use interface I have different categories which include movies TV shows and music once we've watched the TV show or movie I usually remove the program from the corresponding folder most people don't do it this way they usually leave the programs on their computer you can even edit the data you can change the general information tags you can even change the poster if you want to next up is pop player which is a multimedia player that is similar to VLC and km player in fact it was created by the same team that created km player pop Player supports just about every audio and video format that you can think of it will also optimize your media for seamless playback when you first launch pop player to play any of your media you'll notice it has a minimalistic style without a lot of clutter along the bottom it has all the typical playback options to the far right selecting the settings icon will bring up the control panel where you can quickly change the audio video subtitle and Playback settings if you want to access even more features just right click anywhere inside the window to easily get to the settings that you want to change I've tested several vpns over the years and proton VPN is one of only a few I've used with a free tier of service that doesn't suck it's actually really good some of you may be familiar with or using the Swiss based encrypted email service protonmail which has been gaining popularity over the last couple of years proton VPN is from those same people unlike most free vpns that have data caps with the free tier proton VPN you get unlimited bandwidth so you can use it as much as you want for security reasons I can't show you the interface but if you'd like to try it out it's available for the three major operating systems with mobile apps for both IOS and Android there are many BitTorrent clients available cubitt torrent is the only one that I recommend using it's free and open source and unlike many Alternatives like uTorrent lightweight on system resources there are no ads and you don't have to pay extra for add-ons while torrents have a bad reputation for the downloading of unauthorized content there are many legal reasons to use it as well a couple examples sharing free software with others and being able to share large files you already own fast and reliably the user interface is similar to others your uploads and downloads will appear here in the primary window if you ever experience internet issues when uploading or downloading tying up the bandwidth in your home you can adjust the speeds by going to tools here at the top and selecting options in the left pane select speed and adjust the speeds for your uploads and downloads and Global rate limits in addition in the BitTorrent tab you can limit the number of Maximum active downloads uploads or the overall number of active torrents read the uninstaller free does what you'd expect it removes programs from your computer you no longer need along with the jump that sometimes gets left behind by a program's own uninstaller to remove a program select it from the list and click on uninstall it will create a system restore point and proceed with the uninstall process I'll check the box to delete the user data then click on uninstall I'll ignore this window and click on uninstall and then yes and when that's done you can have it scan your system to look for leftover files folders and registry items Rufus is a free and open source utility for Windows 7 or newer that will turn an ISO into a bootable USB drive if your system crashes it lets you perform a system rescue recover data and even lets you work on a computer with no operating system installed there are other programs with similar features over the years Rufus is the best I've used for Speed and reliability in addition to the isos for Windows Rufus also works with several isos for Linux including Ubuntu Debian Fedora and many others here's how to use it go to the folder where you downloaded Rufus there's no need to install it just right click and select run as administrator to provide ample space I recommend plugging in a drive with at least eight gigabytes if you're working with a Windows 10 ISO if you're working with another ISO file you could probably get away with two or four gigabytes leave it on disk or ISO image click on select find the iso image on your computer select it and click on open find the partition scheme for your drive go to the search bar and type partition select create and format hard disk partitions the disk I used to install my operating system on is disk one so I'll right click on it and go to properties click the volumes tab here at the top in disk information you'll see the partition style is GPT go back to Rufus and select the appropriate partition scheme in this case that would be GPT should have no need to change anything else click on start to begin you'll get this warning that pops up just be aware that moving forward with this process will reformat your USB drive any data you have on this drive will be destroyed after you click OK the process will begin there is nothing more that you need to do I'll mention this one briefly scrivas is a free and open source desktop publishing program to create great looking documents newsletters brochures and posters it's a fantastic alternative to the pricey Adobe InDesign program it does have a steep learning curve if you're interested in learning how to use it there are a ton of excellent tutorials on the internet and on YouTube here's an oldie but goodie 7-Zip is a free and open source file archiver that's used to place groups of files but then compressed containers known as archives it's more useful than the file archivers built into all operating systems because it supports more file formats with a higher compression ratio reducing the space used on your disk and reduces the size of attachments you email to others to use 7-Zip there's no program you need to open just find the folder you want to compress and right click go down to 7-Zip you have several choices you could use the 7z file format or zip I prefer using the zip file type which is more recognized in this example this is the only choice I've had a need for selecting add to name the file dot zip will create a new zip folder a must-have program I can't live without is share X it's free and open source screenshot utility makes the Snipping tool for Microsoft look like Child's Play it's packed full of tools and features making it quick and easy to capture any part of your screen the various capture methods include full screen and active window or monitor scroll and capture a screen recorder or you could select region to capture any part of your screen after taking your screenshot you have the choice to upload it directly from sharex to dozens of services including Google photos Dropbox Twitter OneDrive and many others when you open share X you take a screenshot you could use one of the keyboard shortcuts listed in the main window or go to capture here on the left and select your preferred method from the menu if you go into tools you'll find other useful tools including a Color Picker an image editor video converter and a whole lot more shortcut is a great video editor for new users it was initially released in 2004 and is updated on a regular basis it includes a ton of features that are often locked behind a paywall with most free video editors including support for 4K resolutions and allows for multiple tracks on the same timeline if you've tried out other video editors shortcuts user interface may not be what you're used to for example when adding tracks to the timeline you have to click on the menu icon in the lower left then select add video track and go back in and add audio track before adding your clips up next SM players for those of you looking for an alternative to VLC media player you've used VLC you belong to one of two camps you either love it or you think it's total garbage as some players should be less divisive because it simply works with less bloat it supports most of the well-known file formats and codecs so it'll play just about anything you throw at it other features include the ability to change the playback speed subtitle support and you can change the look of the player with skin and icon themes if you've ever used a media player before it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the interface the future I find to be the most useful is the auto bookmark especially when watching a TV show or movie here's an example of how it works if you've not finished playing your media and you close the player you'll remember where you left off so when you reopen the media it will continue to play from the spot that was Auto bookmarked stellarium is a free and open source Planetarium since only a few of you would be interested in something like this we'll keep this really short unlike its competitors stellarium uses less of your system resources when it's running it's used at planetariums and has cataloged more than six hundred thousand stars this is not the easiest of software to use thankfully they offer a user's guide on their side which is 322 pages long if you're familiar with brackets Sublime Text is another text editor for use when coding and it's definitely a step up from notepad plus plus some of the key features include simultaneous editing to multiple selected areas there are 22 visual themes and there are customizable key bindings which allows users to assign hotkeys the dark background gives the text a nice contrast the minimap in the right column gives a good indication for where you are in the text editor as many of you know it can be easy to get lost when dealing with thousands of lines of code it will also auto save your work which is useful if your computer crashes or you lose power one downside with Sublime Text is it will nag you to purchase a license for seventy dollars you can just ignore those and you can continue to use it for free without losing your work Sumatra PDF is a free and open source document viewer that supports many document formats including PDF ePub chm and many others it's lightweight and extremely fast making it a great alternative to Adobe Reader the design is minimalistic with no clutter one of the first things I do when buying a new Appliance or vehicle is download the owner's manual the files open quickly and for PDFs with bookmarks makes it a breeze jumping to each category with ease Thunderbird is a free and open source email client to manage all of your email accounts in one place it was developed by Mozilla the creators of the Firefox browser and it's quite a bit better than most of the paid for competitors making it a great alternative to Microsoft Outlook it's highly secure and they make it easy to connect your email accounts from just about any service in addition you can also sync your calendar address book and connect to multiple instant messaging services with support for various platforms just like most web browsers Thunderbird lets you load your emails and separate tabs giving you quicker access to those emails when you need them for added convenience their search tools and quick filter toolbar are quite handy it's also highly customizable extensions are available to enhance its functionality along with themes to change the way it looks after you install Thunderbird setting it up couldn't be any easier for example when setting up your existing email addresses click on email then enter the required information while there are browsers that do a good job of protecting your privacy like Brave and others the Tor Browser goes a few steps further to give you the maximum privacy and security while browsing the internet using more than 6 000 Tor relays this open source browser encrypts your web traffic within the tour Network to help keep you Anonymous while you're online the trade-off to all this privacy protection is that your browsing will be slower in addition it blocks third-party trackers removes privacy sensitive data such as cookies and browsing history it also lets you access the dark web which is a collective of sites not indexed by mainstream search engines when you first launched the Tor Browser you'll get the screen to connect to Tor check the box next to always connect automatically to bypass the screen in the future then click on connect to browse anonymously if you have sensitive data on your computer and it ever gets lost or stolen veracrypt helps to encrypt that data making it unreadable unless they know the secret key it lets you encrypt your entire disk or you can just encrypt the partition where your sensitive files are stored to demonstrate this program in a video like this but if you're interested in learning how to set it up I'll put a link to the tutorial from how to geek in the description of this video next is virtualbox it's free and open source program lets you install and run other operating systems on your computer in a guest virtual machine it's a great way to try out other operating systems it's available to download on all the major operating systems if you're installing virtualbox on an older computer you may need to enable virtualization in your bios many users find it confusing to set up and just like many of the programs already mentioned we created a beginner's guide on this channel to help you get it set up here's one for my fellow programmers Visual Studio code is a code editor for Microsoft that's completely free for personal and commercial use it's built on open source under an MIT license with the source code freely available on GitHub for the community to explore and contribute to features include support for debugging code refactoring and intelligent code completion it's also highly customizable with extensions to add languages debuggers and other tools to help with your development workflow you can also change the theme and keyboard shortcuts it has a great looking uncluttered layout what's cool is if you're working with thousands of lines of code you'll appreciate the preview pane on the right that lets you quickly jump to different parts of your code to add any extensions head over to the left Pane and select the extensions tab you'll see those that you have installed and others that are recommended or you just do a search in their Marketplace to see what you're looking for is available let's do a search here for Ruby if it's available click install earlier I mentioned the brave browser which is one of the best for privacy Vivaldi also has privacy features but is better for those of you focused on productivity with a ton of useful features not only does it have ad blocking and tracking protection but because it's built on chromium just like Brave mentioned earlier along with other browsers and include support for Chrome extensions there's also a simple to use screenshot tool built in the web panel sidebar makes it easy to access your favorite sites quickly and the tab tiling feature is useful to view two websites side by side which comes in handy if your computer only has one monitor or you're using a laptop on the start page for Vivaldi there's a speed dial of your favorite sites with quick access to your bookmarks history notes and calendar here at the top let's open up a site add a tab and open up another site on the lower bar on the right you'll find the screenshot tool to capture a full page or an area you selected to the right of that is their page tiling it lets you tab your tiles vertically horizontally or to a grid let's tile these vertically on the sidebar on the left you can access your downloads email calendar and all sorts of other stuff you can also add websites to the sidebar as well for quick access the DLC media player has been around since 2001 and will play just about any audio or video file format it's available on all major platforms including apps for both Android and iOS its user interface has been described by many people as being clunky when compared to other media players but at least it's ad-free has no spyware and just works great once you get used to it While most browsers are now based on chromium including Google Chrome Vivaldi Microsoft Edge and the brave browser waterfox takes a different approach and is based on Firefox while Firefox does send Telemetry data to its developer Mozilla waterfox does not the only information they collect is your operating system and browser version to check for updates you also get full access to Firefox add-ons with thousands of extensions and themes to choose from when you launch waterfox the look is similar to Firefox with many of the same features there's a search bar and a handy speed dial to quickly access your favorite websites waterfox also includes the Firefox screenshot tool which is quite useful use it on any web page click the three dot menu icon to the right of the address bar and select take a screenshot your choices are say full page save what's visible or you just click and drag to select a region after which you'll have the option to copy it to your clipboard or download it to your computer xn view MP is not your standard image viewer it supports more than 500 file formats and includes tons of useful features it has flexible batch processing tools to keep your photos organized and its photo editor allows you to easily resize and crop provide simple adjustments to contrast and brightness and you can also apply effects and filters to improve your image in the main window when you double click on any image it will open up in a new tab this is where you can edit your photo there's a bar at the top with the primary tools with additional tools in the various menus we've reached the end here's a recap of all the free programs mentioned in this video just a reminder when possible it's always best to download software directly from the developer's website and to stay away from third-party sites you're not familiar with [Music] thanks for watching if this video is useful for you give it a thumbs up and share with others if you know of any free software that could help people in their lives let us know about it in the comments and if you're new to our Channel subscribe and click the bell for more free software videos and other Tech related stuff right here on tecumvo

Channel: Brett In Tech

Views: 681,319

Keywords: Most Useful Free Software that Everyone Should Know, Useful Free Software You Wish You Knew Earlier, Free Programs That Are Actually Great, Free Software, Best Useful Free Software, Most Useful Free Programs, Cool Free Software, Top Free Software, Best Free Software Programs, Best Cool Free Programs, Free Editing Software, Audacity, Blender, GIMP, OBS Studio, VLC, LibreOffice, Windows, Mac, Linux, Free, Software, Programs, TechGumbo

Id: ocqvRdcM_pk

Length: 48min 30sec (2910 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023