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 Don't let its outdated interface fool you; it's still a powerful program.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, it's 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. Bitwarden 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 Bitwarden servers. No one on the Bitwarden 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 LastPass, 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 BleachBit 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 saved 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 toolset that's been used to create animated

films, 3D printed models, visual effects, video games, and so much more. Some of its features include 3D modeling, sculpting tools, rigging, and skinning. It also includes a built-in video editor. For most people, at first, they'll find the user interface to be overwhelming. 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 and 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 websites you 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, Darktable 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. It supports working with layers and includes tools for retouching your photos or creating brand new images from scratch. Over the past few years, it 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 Glary 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 Greenshot, 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, it 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 Imgur. 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 start encoding 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. Caden Live 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, add-ons 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 Krita 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 Krita'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. LibreOffice, 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, if 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.

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. 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 of years ago in our free software series, and since then has improved quite a bit. Now it's a strong contender to LibreOffice 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, OpenShot. 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 low 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 ProtonVPN 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. ProtonVPN is from those same people. Unlike most free VPNs that have data caps, with the free tier ProtonVPN, 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. qBittorrent 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 junk 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. Scribus 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 ShareX. 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 ShareX, 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, Shortcut's 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 an audio track before adding your clips. Up next, SM Player is for those of you looking for an alternative to VLC media player. If you've used VLC, you belong to one of two camps: you either love it or you think it's total garbage. SM Player 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 feature 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 site, 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 in 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 Tor 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 collection of sites not indexed by mainstream search engines. When you first launch 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 a free and open-source program that 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 VLC 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: save 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. XnView 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.

55 Most Useful FREE SOFTWARE Everyone Should Know!

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