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List of software I often install on new setups
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software.md

List of software

This is a list of "usually installed" software that I always (or almost always) have installed on any personal computer I use.

It's generally meant to be an overview for myself, but maybe someone else will find some use for this. Please do not take this as a "must-have" list. I just like to have some place to keep track of this.

This is primarily a Windows-only list. While the majority of these programs have a Linux version, it's intended for Windows installations.

Icons

Some software have been 'marked' with an emoji to signify something.

Emoji Meaning
✔️ Personal recommendation for anyone to use, regardless of technical ability or experience.
🔷 Software available through Ninite for easy installation.
💵 Software that typically costs money, or that I specifically have an upgraded license for.
🍫 Available via the Chocolatey package manager.

Other notes

  • If you "live in the terminal", I highly recommend checking out Chocolatey or alternatively Scoop. Essentially package managers for Windows.
  • Updates as of April 8th, 2021:
    • I have started adding Chocolatey package names for new software. I have yet to update the rest of the list to include all package names.
    • There's also a changelog at the bottom of this document that will include all changes from this day onwards.

The list

Web browsers

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
Mozilla Firefox N/A ✔️ 🔷 🍫 firefox
Google Chrome N/A 🔷 🍫 googlechrome

Communication

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
Mozilla Thunderbird Email client 🔷🍫 thunderbird
TeamSpeak Voice communications. TS is mainly used as a backup in case Discord has an outage or something. 🍫 teamspeak
Discord My primary voice and text communications - Canary version 🍫 discord
Slack For work-related communication 🍫 slack
Chatty IRC client designed for Twitch - Requires Java 🔷, but there is a "standalone version" for Windows that has Java bundled with it, so you don't have to install Java on the system. 🍫 chatty
ProtonMail Bridge Client for bridging ProtonMail to a local mail client. Bridge requires a paid ProtonMail account (affiliate link) 💵 🍫 protonmailbridge

Media Players

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
VLC Media Player N/A ✔️ 🔷
mpv
Spotify Music streaming and offline sync. 🔷 💵 🍫 spotify
foobar2000 Music player for local files and it's great 🍫 foobar2000
Plex desktop app Desktop client for direct-streaming from my Plex server 💵 (Plex Pass). Not to be confused with the "media server", or the "media player". The latter being an alternative type of client, intended for home theater PCs. 🍫 plex

File management

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
7-Zip Archive (de-)compression ✔️ 🔷 🍫 7zip
WizTree Disk usage viewer (WinDirStat alternative, seems to be much quicker than WDS)

Development

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
Notepad++ Great text editor that is a great replacement for the standard Windows Notepad ✔️ 🔷 🍫 notepadplusplus
Visual Studio Code My go-to editor for anything code-related 🍫 vscode
Sublime Text 4 Text editor 💵 🍫 sublimetext4
Sublime Merge Git GUI client 💵 🍫 sublimemerge
WinSCP Windows client for SFTP/FTP 🔷 🍫 winscp
PuTTY I don't really use PuTTY directly anymore, but I find PuTTY Pageant and PuTTYGen still useful on Windows. 🔷 🍫 putty
cmder Console emulator package - Replaced this with Windows Terminal, though I still have it installed.
Windows Terminal Microsoft actually made a proper terminal app. Windows Terminal settings (personal). 🍫 microsoft-windows-terminal
PHP PHP for Windows 🍫 php
composer PHP package manager 🍫 composer
Node.js & npm JavaScript development 🍫 nodejs
DB Browser for SQLite For the rare times I need an SQLite browser 🍫 sqlitebrowser
CSVFileView For the times I need to look at CSV files 🍫 csvfileview
MobaXterm - Portable version 🔥 SSH/RDP client with tabs, folders/categories etc. 💵
Python Both 2.x and 3.x (for various different open-source tools and software). Chocolatey: Might wanna install specific Python versions, as installing python will just pick the latest one. 🍫 python
Git It's Git 🍫 git
JetBrains DataGrip Database management 💵 🍫 datagrip
HeidiSQL MySQL/PostgreSQL/MSSQL client, used as a fallback when I don't wanna activate my DataGrip license (e.g. Windows test VMs) 🍫 heidisql

Media Management

Recording, editing etc.

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
GIMP Image editing 🔷 🍫 gimp
Avidemux Basic video editor. Intended for losslessly cutting out parts from a video, without the need of re-encoding. Can also combine parts of different videos, assuming they are pretty much identical (e.g. recorded with same settings). See also: Lossless Cut 🍫 avidemux
Lossless Cut A more modern alternative to Avidemux. Has a "smart cut" feature, but I have personally not had much luck with it. 🍫 lossless-cut
Tenacity Audio editor, forked from Audacity. 🍫 tenacity
Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) - aka OBS Studio Video recording and livestreaming. 🍫 obs-studio
Handbrake Video conversion 🍫 handbrake
Bandicam Video recording software I also help translate 😃 💵
ffmpeg Open-software CLI software for managing video, audio or streams 🍫 ffmpeg
yt-dlp CLI software for media downloading/archiving. Supports a large list of services - Based on youtube-dl 🍫 yt-dlp
Mp3tag Used for when I need/want to modify the metadata of audio files. Such as setting correct title/artist/album or modify artwork 🍫 mp3tag

Sync/cloud

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
Nextcloud Self-hosted cloud storage 🍫 nextcloud-client
Google Drive Google Drive for Google Workspace. From what I understand, they merged both the Workspace and "regular" Google Drive for individuals 🔷 🍫 googledrive
Proton Drive ProtonMail's storage solution. Used as an extra backup for piece of mind, since I already have a paid plan. 💵 🍫 protondrive

Authentication & credentials

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
KeePass 2 Password manager 🔷 🍫 keepass
Bitwarden Password manager - Desktop application for Bitwarden ✔️ 💵 🍫 bitwarden
YubiKey Manager For managing my YubiKeys 🍫 yubikey-manager

Gaming

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
Steam Games 🔷 🍫 steam
Origin Electronic Arts games 🍫 ea-app
Ubisoft Connect Ubisoft games - Replaces Uplay 🍫 ubisoft-connect
Playnite Game library manager that integrates with a variety of different game storefronts (including the ones listed above). ✔️ 🍫 playnite

Utilities

Name/Link Notes Marks Chocolatey name
ShareX Screenshots, quick file uploading and tons of other useful tools. Probably one of the best Windows apps. ✔️ 🔷 🍫 sharex
qBitTorrent Torrent client - For when I need to download Linux ISOs. 🔷 🍫 qbittorrent
VirtualBox Type 2 hypervisor for virtual machines (development/testing). 🍫 virtualbox
ProtonVPN Client for ProtonVPN (affiliate link) 💵 🍫 protonvpn
Mullvad VPN Client Client app for Mullvad 💵 🍫 mullvad-app
WireGuard So that I can VPN to my personal servers 🍫 wireguard
Logitech Onboard Memory Manager Fairly lightweight software for configuring my Logitech mouse
Glorious Core For my peripherals by Glorious
Open Shell Menu Up-to-date version of Classic Shell 🍫 open-shell
WhatPulse Stat-tracking for computer usage. Uptime, keyboard heatmaps, mouse usage, bandwidth etc.
Rufus Great tool for creating bootable USB drives 🍫 rufus
Joplin Notes app with support for encryption, links up to my Nextcloud installation 🍫 joplin
GPG4Win GPG management 🍫 gpg4win
Not Another PDF Scanner 2 Document scanning 🍫 naps2
Microsoft PowerToys Makes using Windows better for power users. 🍫 powertoys
Sumatra PDF Reader PDF reader. Open source 🔷 🍫 sumatrapdf
EarTrumpet Alternative volume mixer for Windows 10 ✔️ 🍫 eartrumpet
ModernFlyouts Alternative media popout thing ✔️ 🍫 modernflyouts

Changelog

Changelog was started on April 8th, 2021. Any changes prior to that date are available via the diffs in the GitHub Gists Revisions tab.

2024-12-16

Haven't really touched this page for a while, but figured I should finally update it :)

  • Media players
    • Added mpv
  • Media management
    • Replaced Audacity with Tenacity.
    • Added Lossless Cut
  • Sync/cloud
    • Merged "Google Backup and Sync" and "Google Drive File Stream" into their latest "Google Drive" app.
    • Added Proton Drive
  • Utilities
    • Replaced "Logitech Gaming Software" with "Logitech Onboard Memory Manager"
  • General removals - Removed some software as I no longer actively use them:
    • Mailbird
    • Bandizip
    • Keybase
    • JetBrains PhpStorm
    • Dropbox
    • Keeweb
    • Authy Desktop (Desktop client has been deprecated)
    • GOG Galaxy
    • Vagrant
    • OpenVPN client
    • Vagrant
    • ActivityWatch
    • Deluge
    • XSplit VCam

2021-12-22

  • Media management
    • Added yt-dlp, replaces youtube-dl as youtube-dl is no longer being actively maintained.
    • Removed youtube-dl-gui
  • Development
    • Updated Sublime Text 3 to 4.
    • Added Sublime Merge
  • Media players
    • Removed spicetify-cli as I no longer use it.

2021-05-14

2021-04-08

  • Started changelog
  • New column to all tables for listing each software's Chocolatey package name.
    • TODO: Software may still have Chocolatey packages available, but they're just not listed because I'm too lazy to go through the list and update everything. Soon™️
  • New "icon" for indicating (🍫) that something is available on Chocolatey.
  • Added:
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