Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software (You’ll Really Want)

Table of Contents

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software (You’ll Really Want)

We’ve got a bunch of cool free Windows Software I think you’re going to like. All of them are at least Windows compatible, but some of them should have versions for mac as well. You may have heard of some of them, but I’m sure there are at least a few new ones that you’ll be excited to hear about. Now before we begin I want to give a big thanks to the sponsor of this video, Lastpass, which I’ve actually been using myself for years.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-LastPass

LastPass (Password manager)

If you’re not familiar, Lastpass is a password manager that securely stores all your passwords for you, so you only have to remember one master password. You’ll never have to go through the trouble of looking for forgotten passwords or worry about being locked out of your accounts. And because it has a built-in password generator, you don’t even have to spend time coming up with strong passwords yourself. Lastpass basically puts everything on autopilot.

So you don’t have to write, remember or reset your passwords. It keeps track of everything, so you can stay sane. Plus, it fills in the passwords on websites for you, so you don’t have to type them in. And like I said, this is the password manager I’ve always used anyway, so you might consider this a bonus-free program, and of course, I’ll put a link in the description so be sure to check it out. Let’s begin our list of the other 10 free programs.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-Recuva

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software (You’ll Really Want)

Recuva (Recover deleted Files)

Starting with the program called “Recuva” (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software) which allows you to recover files on your hard drive that you’ve deleted, even if you emptied the recycle bin. So the name is like a Recuva Recover. The reason this works is when you “delete” a file on your hard drive, solid state drive, thumb drive, or whatever, the file isn’t necessarily gone immediately. What actually happens is that block of space the file was taking up has been “labeled” by the file system as free space.

So it can be used for something else. This means that even after a file has been “permanently deleted”, a program like Recuva can still look to see if the file is still there and potentially restore it. Obviously the longer it’s been since the file was deleted, the more likely that something has partially or fully overwritten it, so there’s no guarantee the file isn’t partially corrupted. But still, there’s no reason not to try, and this one has saved me some trouble more than once.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-Davinci Resolve

Davinci Resolve (Video Editing)

Davinci Resolve this one is great (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software) for anyone who wants a Top Notch professional video editor, which is also free of course. And that is “Davinci Resolve”, by the company Blackmagic. For a long time, this program has been one of the best color grading software out there, even being used on films like X-Men and Tomorrowland. Though it was exclusively used for just color grading, not editing. But now, they’ve completely revamped it and made it into a full-fledged editor as well.

There is a paid “studio” version in addition to the free version, but it just has extra features most people won’t care about anyway. Now as you can imagine, a powerful editor like this has a pretty steep learning curve, but I don’t think it’s any more difficult than any other professional editor out there. It’s no Windows Movie Maker for sure. But like I said, if you want something you can eventually use for more complicated projects, this might be the best free option out there.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-speccy

Speccy (Computer Specs)

Speccy this one is very straightforward (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software). It’s called “Speccy”, and it simply shows you all your computer’s “specs”, it’s another pun, see? Anyway, the thing I like about this one compared to other similar programs, is I think it just looks nicer. It has a nice simple layout and the information is well organized. The summary page just shows basic info about your main components, or you can dive deeper into each on the left, and it will give you more information about your computer than you will ever need.

But maybe you might also find it interesting you can just poke around and check your hard drive health status for example or whatever. There’s a lot of information to compile in there just look at it yourself.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-Libre Office

LibreOffice (free Microsoft Office alternative)

we have LibreOffice (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software) which is technically a suite of a few programs, but who cares. Actually, I shouldn’t say that, because there is definitely someone out there who is very upset I’m counting all these as one. But anyway, LibreOffice is essentially a free alternative to Microsoft Office. which of course includes Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and so on. I can’t imagine it’s quite as Features Rich as Microsoft office but if you’re someone like me who only uses the basic features anyway.

LibreOffice is more than capable. Plus, if you need to you can open and save the same file formats that Microsoft Office uses. So the word processor, called “Writer” can open and save .docx files, and the spreadsheet program, called “Calc” can open and save .xlsx files. The other programs it includes are “Impress” which is like PowerPoint “Base” which is like Access for databases then it also has a Drawing program and one for writing out math formulas.

This is all Cross Platform and if you’ve ever used Ubuntu you know this is what comes pre-loaded as the editors. So yea, definitely worth checking out if you don’t want to pay Microsoft’s subscription now, or pay a whole bunch of money if you don’t even use it that much.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-Bulk_Rename_Utility

Bulk Rename Utility

“Bulk Rename Utility” (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software) and if you can’t figure out what it does base on its name, well, I think you need to back to school and finish first grade. But yea, it basically just allows you to rename a bunch of files at once in different ways. And you probably won’t appreciate how useful this program is until you need it. Now when you open up this program, you’re definitely going to be overwhelmed, thinking what the heck am I looking at, because it sure ain’t pretty.

But it’s really not so bad, because it simply has all your options laid out in front of you, and clearly, there are a lot of options. Say you have a whole bunch of files, all with different names, and you just want to add a prefix to the beginning of them. Well, there’s a section where you can do just that. Or maybe you need to change all the files from upper to lower case, or even just make the first letter of every word upper case.

Or maybe you need to number all the files starting at 37 and remove 3 characters from the center of every file name, while moving the first 5 letters to the end, and changing the file extension. I never thought renaming files could be so complicated right?

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-discord

Discord (Voice over IP) VOIP

Discord (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software) it’s a VOIP program where you can talk with others using text chat, voice, and video. But its features extend way beyond that. The main idea is you can set up Discord “servers” that are either private or public and within each server, you can set up separate “channels” or rooms. So one use would be to set up a server for you and all your friends, and maybe they want to do voice chat and play different video games. Those who want to play one game can go to one channel.

And another game to the other. It also lets you share files like images right in line with the chat. And yes it’s free to set up servers, and you can customize them quite a bit. You can have different permissions for moderators, and set them for different people, make some channels restricted, add custom emoticons, and a whole bunch of stuff.

Plus, it has an overlay that supports basically any game, so you don’t have to alt+tab out of the full screen to chat. Obviously, there’s way more to it, but you can check the rest out yourself.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-Rainmeter

Rainmeter (Desktop Customization)

We have Rainmeter. (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software) This is a classic. It’s an awesome program for customizing your computer’s desktop. You download different plugins and “skins” which are kinda like widgets, that just sit on your desktop and, do stuff. They can do anything from showing the current system volume to current RAM usage, or the weather, act as links to programs and sites, and really anything you can think of. There are thousands of plugins with all sorts of designs out there made by all sorts of different people.

And there are a few sites that aggregate Rainmeter skins like DeviantArt, so you’ll just have to search through them yourself. There’s no way I can even scratch the surface right now, but it shouldn’t take long to find a few things you like. Or even make up your own skins.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-Media Info

Media Info (shows info about media files)

From the list of top 10 cool free windows software “Media Info“, and well, it shows you all sorts of info about media files, particularly audio and video. For example, you can right-click a video file, hit Media Info, and it will bring up a window with all sorts of stats about that file. The bitrate of the video, what kind of video codec it uses, what audio streams it has, the resolution, framerate, and even what chroma subsampling it uses, for those of you who know what that is. It’s not something you’ll probably use every day.

but it can be useful. Like if you download some videos you want to convert to smaller files, it might help to know what the current bitrate is, so you know how much to change it to reduce the size. Or maybe you’re watching a movie and it looks choppy, you can see if maybe whoever encoded it set the framerate too low, or it just has a huge bitrate that your computer isn’t able to handle. I’m sure those of you who can actually use this one probably get the idea by now. Coming near the end.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-Mp3Tag

Mp3Tag (Fix metadata for media files)

Mp3Tag. (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software) You can kind of think of this one as similar to the Bulk Rename Utility, except mp3tag is specifically designed for changing and fixing the metadata for music files. I’m sure everyone has experienced a time when they import a bunch of music into iTunes or whatever music program, and some stuff is either completely missing info, whether it’s the titles, artists, or albums, or it’s all just wrong. With this, you can go in and change any of the tags for however many files at once.

You can also do cool stuff like setting the tags based on the file names. Maybe all the info is in the file name, but there are no metadata tags so the music programs don’t know. Here you can tell the program what part of the filenames to use as the title, artist, and so on. Or you can do it in the reverse, and change the filename based on the tags to standardize everything to your liking. Maybe not something that everyone will need, but for those that do.

Top 10 Cool Free Windows Software-F.lux

F.lux (Automatic Monitor Colour adjustment)

F.lux, (from the list of top 10 cool free windows software) Maybe you’ve heard me talk about this before, but F.lux automatically adjusts your computer monitor’s colors and brightness at night in such a way that it’s less likely to mess up your sleep. I think by now everyone knows that looking at computer screens, phones, and televisions can make it harder to fall asleep. This is because these devices produce lots of light in the blue-wavelength part of the spectrum, which your brain thinks is sunlight, which is the same color.

What F.lux does is remove this blue light from the screen and make it look a bit more orange. And interestingly a couple of minutes after the screen changes colors. you’ll probably not even notice the difference because your eyes adjust. And if you’ve been using it for a while and then disable it. you feel like you’re getting blinded by the screen it’s kinda funny no wonder you couldn’t sleep before it’s pretty crazy you’ll see immediately. This is definitely one I think literally everyone should use and check out.