Windows Desktop Software - Editors Choice Selection

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Select a category of our Editors Choice of Windows desktop software, search all Windows software by category or user likes, and support this community site by donating.

 

Windows Desktop Software - Editors Choice Selection Index

To read brief descriptions of the applications, select a Category Group or view all items in one massive list.

 

New and Updated Software

Check out what's new:

New Comodo Backup | New FreeCommander XE | New PrivateFirewall | New HWiNFO | New Locate32 | New Launchy | ToolWiz Care | SearchMyFiles | Axcrypt | Fairstars CD Ripper

 

About

Gizmo's Freeware Top PickThis is the Gizmo's Freeware editors' choice list where you'll find a collection of the very best desktop freeware for Windows from our site. The list now includes 103 applications in various categories.

It's really a "best of the best" list for free Windows desktop applications. Most of the products in this list have been awarded the coveted "Gizmo's Freeware Top Pick" award signifying they are the best free product in their class. We've also included some other outstanding products that have impressed our editors with their usefulness and professionalism.

We suggest you browse the whole list at your leisure as you may be surprised what freeware gems you will discover. The pathologically impatient can use the Category Index above.

Caution: Some of these recommendations involve advanced system tasks like cleaning the Windows registry so be sure to backup or image your system first.

 

This list covers Windows desktop or legacy programs. If you're looking for Windows apps or Metro apps, check out below.

 

Related Links

 

Editor

This software category is maintained by MidnightCowboy. Registered members can contact the editor with any comments or questions they might have by clicking here.

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Comments

Wow, this is such a great place for.....everything really! Thank you for it. I'm going to tell my PC friend's all about it. Keep up the good work. Have a great and successful New Year.

Your link to Comodo Backup, at the top of this page, seems to have been hijacked. Both times I clicked that link, it took me to a browser warning about app.cloud.XXX instead of to a Comodo website.

Thanks for letting us know. This was due to an internal change on the Comodo website. The link has now been changed. MC - Site Manager.

"... Tiat is a simple and powerful image organizer, build for designers, photographers and magpies. Tiat can handle millions of images with high performance and smooth user experence ..."
http://www.chthollystudio.com/tiat/

"... Our goal with Umbrella Note has been to build a beautiful and extremely simple application for taking notes and keeping journals ...":

https://umbrellanote.com/

Another year almost gone ! I have learnt a lot from techsupportalert.com
Here are some new Windows freeware that I found useful this year, 2016
They can be found on reputable freeware sites. Many have portable versions
I currently use Windows 7
1. Restore Point Creator - an excellent System restore utility
2. SwiftSearch - extremely fast file search - faster and more reliable than the well known utility "Everything"
(alternative is MasterSeeker - another fast excellent instant file finder)
3. Photo on Desktop-7 - simple utility to have one photo on your screen as you work
4. ScreenHunter free portable - one of many screenshot programs, but lets you copy a screenshot just to the clipboard
5. Hot Corners - simple customizable launcher, which opens a program if you point your mouse of one of the corners of the screen
6. F.lux - modifies the screen colour to minimise eye fatigue
7. Antirun - simple USB drive utility - plug in a USB drive, and this program will block any autorun viruses, and also lets you eject the drive quickly
8. Clavier Plus - excellent hotkey utility, which acts globally, with low system resources. Launch a program, or insert autotext
9. Shutter Lite - customisable utility which can launch programs, or shutdown, depending on low battery status, or other parameters
10. Easy Pro Shutdown - the fastest way I have found to shut down Windows, or timed shutdown. Simple yet effective utility
11. DS Clock - free black and white digital clock for your screen
12. Volumouse - simple utility to quickly control system volume
13. BattStat - simple utility which shows you battery status in numerical format at all times
14. KeyFreeze - excellent portable utility, locks keyboard and mouse for those with children, also great as a screen lock
15. PangoBright ie excellent screen dimmer, portable utility - great for quickly adjusting screen brightness
16. PrivaZer ie portable utility, a file cleaner like CCleaner, but only for experienced users, as can create problems if not used wisely
Prior to cleaning/deleting files, this program lists exactly what information has been left on your system eg browsing history website addresses

Happy New Year 2017 !

Many thanks for sharing your finds. :) MC - Site Manager.

Sadly the link to Lightbox editor takes you somewhere else and the program is not free anymore, it is inexpensive just the same.

"... Postleaf - first open source publishing platform to feature a true WYSIWYG editor ...":
https://www.postleaf.org/

"... DaVinci Resolve has a familiar, editor friendly interface with that features virtually every imaginable editing and trimming tool available ...": https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/davinciresolve/edit "... Windscribe is a desktop application and browser extension that work together to block ads and trackers, restore access to blocked content and help you safeguard your privacy online ...": https://windscribe.com/
"... LANTorrent is not a torrent application. It is actually a wrapper for you existing torrent application that adds a layer of protection to stop you corrupting your torrent setup, and recovering when it does ...": http://www.homedev.com.au/Free/LANTorrent

This is a great site, PERIOD!
It has really helped me out at times and I look forward to investigating new and interesting software.

WITH THAT BEING SAID,
I'm looking for an antivirus program that does not require me to install it....! Windows defender is great BUT it does not allow me to scan a single downloaded file, etc. Malware Bytes is great but it isn't for virus'
or trojan's. ANYONE GOT ANY IDEAS?
THANKS

FontForge is a free and open source font editor:

http://fontforge.github.io/en-US/

This is an amazing web-site. Thank you!
Have you been collecting freeware that facilitates the downloading of data from iPhones or iPads to Windows 7 PCs? There seem to be problems every time iOS is updated!
Comprehensible articles for connecting iOS and Windows would also be helpful: existing articles and instructions elsewhere on the 'net often state, for example, that "all photos will be deleted from all your devices" without making it at all clear whether or not a Windows PC is considered to be a "device" for these purposes. If so, we have a recipe for disaster; if not, what does the statement mean in the real world?
There is also confusion in such articles about iCloud and PhotoStream, with obscure references to the reduced quality of saved photos. Apple also says that in certain circumstances we have only 30 days within which to download and save photos to a Windows PC, without indicating exactly how those photos can be transferred and saved. (The difficulties are reserved mainly for PCs that do not use an Apple OS. Apple-orientated web-sites are generally unhelpful to users of Windows!)
Problems also arise because it is absolutely unclear whether files are going to be synchronised from an Apple device to a Windows PC - or from a Windows PC to the Apple device.
I, for one, want only to be able to manage my photos, music and data within Windows, and I am sure most of your readers will, like me, want to save all their iPhone and iPad data on their Windows PC... so a simple "recipe" for saving photos, music and other data on a Windows PC without having to purchase additional iCloud storage space would be welcome. A "backup" that cannot be accessed directly from within Windows simply doesn't cut the mustard!

I just wanted to say many thanks for this website and for the invaluable information. I come here all the time for the advice. Again, thank you.

The malware included product is Free make video conversion. I found the other software but its misleading I will partially take that back. It says Review to see the others what??? It should say other products or something other than making the user think its a review of that software. It makes itsound like you are downloading or reviewing what is listed like WOT or Kasperaky TDS Killer.

Thank you for responding to my contact. There is no malware in Freemake Video Converter. It does however contain non-malicious adware. This is made clear in both the review text and product details. We even provide a link to a dedicated page for this.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/controversial-advertising-progra...

We have also published other related material.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/what-else-have-you-just-download...

MC - Site Manager.

It would appear that WPS Office has changed from from to a subscription model as of December, 2014. The free version is still available at ksoft.com

What Is The Name Of The Site That Tells You How To CONfig Facebook Tweeter A bunch Of Sites It was On The Site But A Can Not Find it Plus It Has A Download To That will tell you why your on them sites tells you what you need to config please help?

This is not a comment on any other person's submissions, but a point of information -- even if one takes special care not to install any of the "free software" via the "obvious options" in custom installs, several antimalware programs - Malwarebytes, herdProtect, AdwCleaner, for example, will still identify many of these apps as having adware "in them" --- in particular, some of the "editor's choices" -- like Freemake converter, Pazera free audio extractor, not to mention the "huge" problem with Freecorder -- good program, but it comes with adware in the browser extensions, possibly even in the main program -- NOTHING is ever free, and software makers aren't interested in restricting their advertising revenues -- even if one purchases the Freecorder "ad-free" version, rather than just the free version. Clearly, we've reached the stage where such adware checkers are "compulsory" utilities.

Page 4, 'Best Free File Encryption Utility for Windows' mentions Axcrypt as the pick, but it talks about Sophos Free Encryption. Is that right? or am I missing something?

Thank you for pointing this out. The description for AxCrypt has now been corrected. MC - Site Manager.

Avast. The latest update requires you to allow Avast to gather any information it wants about you, including but not limited to the websites you visit and the games you play. It seems that if you don't update, you don't get the virus definition updates any more.

I declined and will look for an alternative.

Great, wonderful feedback

I was wondering if anyone has used any of the recent versions of Puran Utilities, especially Puran Defrag since they all became free for personal and non-commercial use? Now,it does bundle with an opt-out version of the Babylon Toolbar but then so do many free utilities these days, or at least some toolbar such as Bing or Google. The free version does include boot-time defragmentation of the MFT, Pagefile, and systems files. I'm testing it today, it seems like the site has a lot of useful utilities and I watched it carefully with a file monitoring program during install, didn't seem to bring anything unwanted in.

Edit: I also wanted to thank you and your team for this very useful website, it's allowed me to feel comfortable directing some of my less tech-savy, but curious to learn, friends and clients to a site that I know will give a thorough peer review before giving any piece of software the okay. I've found quite a few here myself, including ones I now own a small business license for, Teamviewer alone allowed me to expand my still small but growing tech service company.

S.I.W. isn't free any longer.

The portable version our link provides is free.

Can you please update this page and the pages "2 - 8" in a dynamic way, because i find differences in the best choices between those pages and the original page which have the review of the software, and in some reviews as "Best Free Antivirus for Windows" and "Best Free Firewall for Windows" i found that the best choices doesn't have the highest rate by the person who updated the reviews, so please i need a clear view to know what is the best choice in every category.

I rely on your website to get the best freewares for my PCs, and i am completely sure that other millions of users did too, so please keep all the reviews up to date and clear in the best choices.

By the way if you need a help in updating those pages i can do it for you, i noticed that the last update was in 8 of July and we are in 12 of September, it is a long distance, so if i can help i am ready for that.

And thank you so much for your reviews.

Thank you again for pointing out the issues. As the new editor for this category I reviewed all the pages and Best Of entries finding a total of 6 issues. These will be resolved asap. Also thank you for offering to help. If you would like to be an editor, please see the link titled Become a Reviewer in the left hand sidebar menu.

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