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Comment by doublepg23 | Hacker News Reader

Any other essential Windows tools in 2023?

ShareX [1] is my other "must install" app. I never would have guessed how much my branch of engineering consists of "take a screenshot and draw lines, arrows and circles on it." Being able to customize my workflow to do all of that is really great.

Also, Notepad++ [2] is one of those unseen programs that really stands out.

[1] https://getsharex.com/

[2] https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Notepad++ has probably been one of my most used programs for over a decade now.

Love Notepad++, I've run into a few people who use it for moderate programming even.

On my work laptop the company installed "Snagit" which seems to do the same thing - it's extremely useful!

I use AutoHotkey only for “paste by typing” to paste passwords at a controlled typing rate into paste-disabled password fields like bank websites.

ProcessExplorer is indispensable for me as well.

I use Sublime a lot for the multi cursor support (just highlight a repeating element and press Ctrl-D … there are more advanced controls but that covers 80% of what you need.

Meld is my favorite cross platform diff tool. I use it for git merge conflicts, but also just for so many general purposes tasks in life.

010 editor is amazing for editing very very large documents/files. Only app I know that can gracefully work with multi GB text files.

AgentRansack / FileLocator Pro I paid for a technicians license I loved it so much. Not sure if Everything is a complete standin, it might be.

* Run, Peek, and Video Conference Mute from Powertoys https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

* Bvckup for replicating data across different drives, not free but one of the best designed Windows tools and very worth the price https://bvckup2.com/

I recently replaced Powertoys Run with ueli: https://ueli.app/

Basically the same thing, but Powertoys Run was always slowish while ueli is very snappy. It also integrates with Everything.

Thanks, Everything integration is huge. I'll check it out.

Keypirinha for me

https://keypirinha.com

It's been a while since it was updated last, but since it works, does that matter?

Nice. I had used fluent search for this until now. But recently I have been looking for an alternative.

This one's part of windows, but in case you're not aware of win+v for clipboard history I'd probably put that at number one. (There are also some third-party alternatives with more options).

Aside from that:

PowerToys (I mostly use fancy zones and file locksmith, others are useful too).

Anything for getting recursive folder statistics (I use TreeSize, WinDirStat is also popular).

ClickMonitorDDC if you need to change on-board monitor settings a lot or want to automate it. Sadly seems to have been abandoned.

I use vscode for anything plaintext related (text editing, file/folder diffs, git history). It works decently as a terminal too.

WSL

A nice CAS calculator. wxMaxima is the closest I've found to what I want.

You could use Monitorian for changing screen brightness via ddc.

https://github.com/emoacht/Monitorian

Maybe too obvious but PowerToys adds a lot of things I wish Windows shipped with.

Directory Opus. Friends don't let friends use File Explorer.

f.lux

I think that functionality is now default features in my windows, MacOS, iOS, and android phones.

It has other niceties, like set everything greyscale or red (darkroom mode), exclude some monitors and other stuff. For me it is a must-have.

Together with Autohotkey and StrokeIt. StrokeIt lets me navigate back and forth with left/right mouse gesture (right mouse button), close tab/window (depending on application category) by gesturing up, minimize by gesturing down. I couldn't live without it.

In Windows it won't do sunrise/sunset times if you don't enable location access. F.lux doesn't need location access, you set it manually.

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