Been awhile since I saw a thread like this and they’re always good for at least one or two things I’ve never heard of before. Bonus points if the software is open source and cross platform. Extra bonus points if you link to where we can see it/get it.
My contribution: Destiny which is an anonymous, P2P, E2EE file sharing app - its basically a GUI for a Magic Wormhole implementation. Works on Linux (tarball or appimage), Win, Mac, Android (inc f-droid) and iOS. Only downside is it’s not been updated for 2 years.
QuickLook for Windows. Coming from a Mac this thing is super useful to replicate that functionality on Windows.
I’m surprised how many people don’t know about a Linux utility called “fuck”. When you make a mistake on the command line and get an error, you just type “fuck” and it looks at what happened and suggests a fix. If this looks correct - and it almost always is - you just hit Enter and it types that in for you. Best thing ever!
For Windows users, I want to recommend PowerToys: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/
The “toys” that I use a lot are: PowerToys Awake: to keep my laptop awake even if I’m away from keyboard for a while.
Fancy Zones: to create my own layout of windows, especially on the ultra-wide monitor I have at work, it’s easy to have 3 smaller windows next to each other according to my layout.
Mouse Utilities, I often can’t find my mouse cursor, just pressing a hotkey will literally spotlight the cursor.
Quick Accent, especially for multi-lingual people this is really handy, though it takes a bit to get used to its working.
OmniDiskSweeper. Forget apps that help manage disk space with some ugly graph that’s difficult to understand. This just lists files and directories with the heaviest / most space used from top to bottom in a file tree. Essential. Here’s what it looks like:
ClickBook - dunno if it’s even available anymore, but like 20 years ago it was either a standalone or add-on that formatted Word docs for printing. I think it cost $35. You could lay out say a tri-fold brochure or a folded-in-half and stapled booklet and it would rotate, combine and print the pages in the correct order. My wife and I used it endlessly to produce publications for our kids’ school. If your printer could only print on one side, there was a quick setup procedure that would would figure out how you should rotate or flip the stack of pages to do the second side. I haven’t used Word in years so for all I know it might have these capabilities natively now, but in its time ClickBook was probably the most worth-it program I ever bought.
LocalSend is open-source and great for file transfer (or even just sending text) between my devices.
Bulk Rename Utility for Windows:
A windows app that shows you the space things are taking up on your computer so you can easily delete them. Usually helps me clear out a ton of space.
Wiztree and Treesize are both much faster.
Windirstat is still relevant… But slow.
I prefer WizTree. It’ll show you space usage, but you can also search for files, and it’s incredibly fast.
SimpleX has file sharing too now, it’s great :)
Sadly limited to 1gb afaik
Use PeaZip (which is better than 7-ZIP because it’s cross-platform) to split large files into as many smaller chunks as you’d like.
I never realized 7zip was Windows only :-(
Thanks for sharing
but yea, anyways, native support for bigger files would be better. Not easy to split files on mobile
It isn’t natively but there are plenty of apps out there for all OSs that will decompress 7z, even on iOS.
7-zip is now cross platform. There used to be a linux implementation called p7-zip but its not necessary any more.
Qalculate is a fancy calculator available for Linux, MacOS and Windows. I use it for calculations that involve unit conversions, but it can do much more.
I acutally use Qalculate as well when I have to use my Windows laptop
Fuck Microsoft for not bothering to improve on the calculator app for decades.
They have improved. You can do unit conversions, great binary/hex/oct calculation/visualization, do graphing, calculate dates. It honestly is very good.
