Top 5 Open Source Apps for Windows

Love or hate it, Windows is by far the most popular Desktop OS and it will continue to be for this decade. Despite being a closed source OS, there a lot of nice open source applications available for Windows that you must try out.

Here is my list that I find myself using on daily basis. The list is in no particular order.

1. Firefox:

Firefox has been serving as my primary browser for the past 5+ years. I jumped the ship as Chrome was eating too much of memory, whereas FF had a relatively lower usage. Firefox is the only real alternative to Chromium-based Browsers (Chrome, brave, Edge, Vivaldi etc) too.

It has Multi Account Containers, which allow you separate your digital life into multi color-coded tabs. Each container will have a different cookie too. So, you can have different account logged in different containers. It also much better default privacy protection and Chrome out of the box. Enhanced tracking Protection, Cookie Isolation and others improve your privacy but could break some sites, so lookout for it.

You can set it up to sync with your other devices (Android/etc), which allows you to push tabs to other devices, sync bookmarks, etc.

Check it out here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

2. BitWarden

BitWarden is my favourite password manager. It’s simple and easy to set up, fully cross platform, vast import options and a good free plan. Once you have set it up, it’s will easily integrate well with your workflow. The Android app can act as the default auto-fill service too. It can sync between multiple devices, has password history, notes and more.

My only complaint is with the Firefox extension, which suffers a lot in functionality under Private Browsing. Lets hope it gets fixed with Manifest V3.

Checkout the app here: https://bitwarden.com/

3. ShareX

ShareX is a nifty and lightweight tool for Windows which specializes in all forms of Screen Capture. The app has is feature packed with the ability to customize different capture modes and after capture tasks. You can create separate workflows for your needs and associate them with a keyboard shortcut to trigger the workflow. It can set it up with auto-save on capture with the ability to customize the directory & file name. Heck, you can even just record a section of your screen as gif too.

I have never looked back after adopting ShareX for all my screen capture tasks. It has completely replaced Snipping Tool/Snip & Sketch for me.

Check it out: https://getsharex.com/

4. CopyQ

The default Windows Clipboard just sucks.. It’s slow, history size is limited, and it loses history upon restart. You may find yourself in many situations where you might need a lot of textual data to be always available at a click of a button. I often need Email Templates, personal details, etc on my clipboard so that I can quickly paste them when required, as often browsers miss those fields in auto-fill.

CopyQ has been the perfect answer for my needs. It’s a cross-platform clipboard with custom history size, sync, FakeVim, custom keyboard shortcuts and more.

You can completely replace Windows Clipboard by disabling it and then change registry to disable the shortcut. After which you can assign Win + V shortcut to CopyQ.

Check it out: https://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/

5. ImageGlass

Have you felt that Photos app sometimes takes a while to load an image? Well, I have felt it multiple times and always missed the good old days of Office 2010 Image Viewer on my Win7. After some research, I stumbled across ImageGlass.

ImageGlass is a simple and lightweight utility to view your photos on the go. It supports over 70+ image formats with a Minimal UI. The app focuses on browsing images instead of manipulating & organizing them, so it may seem barebones. But this simplicity provides the app to be launched quickly. The app features flexible zoom options and windows modes. It also features a relatively modern UI which fits well in W10.

Note: The developer is currently rewriting the entire app for v9. Major changes are to migrate the app to .NET 6 and supporting hardware acceleration. Check out the app here: https://imageglass.org/

Notable Mentions:

1. VLC Media Player has been a de facto Media Player for me as long as I remember. It is simple, fast and feature rich. It supports a vast array of formats for Videos/Audios/Subs, can handle playlists and directly stream videos from the internet. Project: https://www.videolan.org/
2. Flow Launcher: Search everything from applications, files, bookmarks, YouTube, Twitter and more. It has lot of customizations to play around with to suit your needs. If you need something like KRunner/Spotlight, then this app will come as close as you can get. Project: https://github.com/Flow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher
3. QuickLook: An clone of QuickLook of MacOS. Helps to quickly fully preview files by without opening them in their dedicated apps. Awesome utility when you just want to quickly glance through the files. Project: https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook
4. ActivityWatch: Cross platform app that automatically tracks your time spent on each app/website. Nice visualizations of stats are also available. Project: https://github.com/ActivityWatch/activitywatch

If you feel I have missed some app, please do comment down the app, will definitely try them out.