What are the best power user tools for Windows?

Question

80

Options
Considered

614

User
Recs.

Sep 21, 2023

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 72 OptionsWhy?

Best power user tools for Windows	Price	Platforms	License
94 Everything	free	Windows	Proprietary
86 Chocolatey	-	-	-
85 VirtualBox	-	-	-
84 7-zip	free	Windows, Linux, BSD, ReactOS	LGPL-2.1-or-later
81 f.lux	free	-	-

See Full List

71 Other Options Considered

Chocolatey

Top Pro

Large number of applications/utilities available

Chocolatey has a massive repository of installs (more than 1700 packages), and its open nature allows everyone to contribute more as needed. See More

Top Con

Unable to easily change your install directory in the free version

In the free version you must know the native installer switches and pass them through with install args. In the paid versions you have a ubiquitous install directory option where Chocolatey determines how to properly pass that to the underlying native installer. Details on the differences - http://stackoverflow.com/a/19777121 See More

jmjohnson85's Experience

Ansible+Chocolatey is amazing and extremely powerful. See More

Top Pro

Manages the entire software lifecycle

From install to upgrade to uninstall, Chocolatey manages the whole process. See More

Top Con

Complete list of available installs not easily findable

Ben Hart's Experience

life changer. gives an ubuntu install experience in windows. best used with powershell or cmder See More

Top Pro

No crapware

Installs silently without crapware. See More

Top Con

Newtonsoft JSON missing

Top Pro

Straightforward install process

To install Chocolatey simply copy the text from their site and paste it into either cmd.exe or powershell. See More

Top Con

Some package installs aren't good or polished or don't install well

Macrium downloads the online installer, 7-zip doesn't associate files, PotPlayer is outdated, etc. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Just open powershell and type "choco install firefox" to install Firefox, or "choco install java" to install Java. That's it. See More

Top Con

Hard to know which package to install

The repository contains multiple packages with similar names, making it hard to know which one to install. See More

Top Pro

Scriptable

You can put Chocolatey install commands into your powershell scripts. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

It's licensed under Apache License 2.0 with source code available on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Downloaded files are verified by checksums

Chocolatey requires checksums by default for files downloaded over non-secure locations and highly recommends it for HTTPS/SSL locations. It is moving towards requiring checkums by default for downloading from secure locations. See More

Top Pro

Upgrade all software with one command

choco upgrade all is like Windows Update for all of your 3rd party software. See More

Top Pro

Builds on technologies you know

Unattended installation and PowerShell. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with almost every configuration management / infrastructure automation / RMM tool

Chocolatey integrates with almost every infrastructure automation tool out there. See More

Top Pro

GUI available

There's a package called ChocolateyGUI that can be installed and lets you use Chocolatey with a UI frontend. See More

Top Pro

Support and features available for organizations

There is a business edition available for organizations that need more support. The business edition also includes a Package Synchronizer, Package Internalizer, Package Builder, and a host of other features. See More

Top Pro

Can be extended with PowerShell

Chocolatey allows installing extension packages that add PowerShell functions to your package automation scripts. See More

Top Pro

Decentralized package sources

Packages can be installed from multiple sources, including private sources. See More

Top Pro

More Selection

It has programs that can't be found in scoop or ninite. See More

See All

7-zip

Top Pro

Supports many formats

7-Zip supports: Packing and Unpacking for 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM and unpacking only for AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z. See More

Top Con

7-Zip's native packaging (.7z) isn't widely openable

Many computers don't have support for opening .7z files as opposed to the much more common .zip and .rar files. Nevertheless, you can use 7-Zip to create .zip and .rar files as a way of avoiding this issue. See More

bustozoni's Experience

The best option available, so fast, no naggy 1 2 3 screen, no ads, does exactly what it's requiered to do. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, BSD, ReactOS

License:LGPL-2.1-or-later

Top Pro

Industry leading compression algorithms

7-Zip's website states that it has 2-10% better compression than that provided by PKZip or WinZip. See More

Top Con

XZ/LZMA2 format inadequate for long-term archiving

LZMA2 is unsafe and less efficient than the original LZMA. Use: 7Z LZMA Non-Solid, RAR 5 LZSS/PPMd Non-Solid, or ZIP Deflate. See here. See More

CromulentHunor's Experience

This is one of the first apps I install on all my systems when configuring a fresh Operating System install, It's so deceptively simple. I can't recall 7-Zip ever causing me problems. See More

Top Pro

Has integration into right-click menu

7-Zip has context-menu integration for quickly adding files to archives, encrypting files, and other useful features of the application. See More

Top Con

Not very popular on macOS or Linux

ResoluteBelisama's Experience

Free; Fast; Open Source; Active development; Easy to use; Does everything See More

Top Pro

Totally free

Top Pro

Sleek interface

Top Pro

Lightweight

Works smoothly with all the formats. See More

Top Pro

Localizations for 87 languages

Most popular languages are English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. They most likely have whatever language is native to you. See More

See All

f.lux

Top Pro

Automatically adjusts the brightness to make for more comfortable viewing

f.lux automatically turns down the brightness when the sun goes down, which helps reduce eye strain at night and make it more comfortable to use late at night. See More

Top Con

On multi-monitor setups, each monitor can have a different color result

Depending on multi-monitor setups' configurations and color options, f.lux can take a color-corrected setup and make it more orange/yellow on one monitor and less on another. See More

Martenzi's Experience

Very reliable and lightweight. It has enough options and a quite nice interface. Can also be integrated with Alfred 3 and such to control settings via launchers. The actual white level effect is very powerful and also has a smooth transition into the darker hours. See More

Top Pro

Eases eye strain

Decreases color temperature at night, changing the normally fluorescent blue of an LCD monitor to a soft orange. Much easier on the eyes, especially in a low-light environment. See More

Top Con

One must be reminded to turn it off when working/viewing visual media or dealing with theme configs to avoid white balance mistakes

The subtle transition at early mornings or late nights can make you forget to plan for correct white balance perception. See More

Pixel's Experience

I often stay up late at night on my computer working on various projects. F.lux has been such a great tool to have on my computer, since it turns down the brightness and blocks out some of the blue light which keeps you up! See More

Top Pro

Subtle transition

The transition from daytime to nighttime color modes takes an hour by default and will detect your current timezone, meaning that it will happen in the background at sunset, often without you noticing. See More

Top Con

May be made irrelevant on Windows 10 as the functionality will be integrated directly into the OS

Windows 10 will introduce a feature on April 11 that will allow you to reduce how much blue light the screen emits. See More

OrganizedTelesphorus's Experience

Great See More

Top Pro

Has a temporary off button for color-sensitive work

In the application's dock icon, you can have it turn off for a set amount of time in case you're doing art, design, or some other job that requires you to see correct colors. See More

Top Con

Takes a while to get used to

After installing F.lux, the screen will look a lot more yellow. This takes about a week to fully get used to. You can ease into it by setting the color temps higher than the recommended defaults. See More

Top Pro

Convenient sometimes

Top Pro

Can help sleep better

Helps provide better sleep for more energy during the day. See More

Top Pro

Multiple modes

Supports multiple modes for adjusting the screen. See More

Top Pro

The "Disable for (x) time" options can also be used as timer for productivity without being distracted by alarms, visual noise or need for extra app

See All

cmder | Console Emulator

Top Pro

Tabs

Top Con

Slower than ConEmu

LoyalHahanu's Experience

batch files doesn't close automatically, I ddidn't find these option to disable it See More

Specs

License:MIT

Top Pro

Works nicely with command line applications

Such applications include CMD, Powershell, and MinTTY. See More

Top Con

Not as portable as advertised

Even though cmder is advertised as a "portable terminal emulator for Windows", it's not adequately minimalistic to be considered truly portable. In fact, one of the dependencies required to use it is the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015. See More

Top Pro

Extends the powerful ConEmu

Cmder builds on ConEmu console emulator, by adding enhancements from clink (such as bash-style completion in cmd.exe and PowerTab in powershell.exe) and optionally extending it with msysgit, that brings Unix tools to Windows. See More

Top Pro

Works with VS Code, Hyper and IDEs

Cmder can be used with popular editors such as VS Code, which delivers aliases and clink as well as its color scheme to VS Code. It can also be used without ConEmu and Hyper as an alternative terminal emulator, which makes customizing the UI through NPM plugins much easier. See More

Top Pro

Minimal and portable version available

There is a portable version of cmder available which is just 10 MB in size. It can be put on an external device, like a USB stick, and run off it. There's no installation required. See More

Top Pro

Portability

Carry it with you on USB stick or in Cloud. So your settings, aliases and history can go anywhere you go. You will not see that ugly Windows prompt ever again. See More

Top Pro

Multiple themes

Top Pro

Has built-in Quake style drop-down mode

This is an extremely useful mode whereby the console hides and shows on ctrl+~ similarly to a gaming console. This feature is inherited from ConEmu. See More

Top Pro

Highly flexible

Integrates with: cygwin mintty powershell msysgit See More

Top Pro

Works with WSL bash.exe

CMDer works great with the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Just change your startup task to point to the bash.exe file. See More

Top Pro

File explorer integration

Cmder can be added to the right-click menu, allowing the user to start a terminal session from the selected directory with a "Cmder Here" command. The functionality can be enabled by opening up a terminal with administrator privileges, navigating to the Cmder folder and executing .\cmder.exe /REGISTER ALL. See More

See All

AutoHotkey

Top Pro

Open source

Can view source code on GitHub. See More

Top Con

Programming language is primitive

The base syntax, inherited from the first version of AutoIt, is primitive (a bit like an improved batch syntax). But once used to it, it remains flexible and powerful. See More

Lino Coscia's Experience

turing complete programming language. Endless possibilities and a great community to help you out. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

Technology:C++

Top Pro

Can send keystrokes and mouse clicks

Can send keystrokes and mouse clicks to other Windows programs. See More

Top Con

Custom scripting language

Which is a bit weird. See More

FONZACUS's Experience

really noob friendly scripting, sure it isnt pretty, but just about anyone can jump in and learn without too much effort for basic tasks. for more advanced tasks, the forum is often friendly and will give out tips and tricks. See More

Top Pro

Compile to a standalone executable file

Can compile script into executable to run on other computers. See More

David Siller's Experience

The sky is the limit. See More

Top Pro

Automate everything

ResoluteBelisama's Experience

Versatile and Powerful. Good documentation. See More

Top Pro

Fully programmable

With a full programming language powering the hotkeys, including GUIs, it is powerful and flexible See More

Top Pro

Create GUI

More easily create GUIs on the Windows OS. See More

Top Pro

Powerful

Can interact with any Windows program / dialog / form, filling fields, submitting data, etc., without dependency on the window placement. See More

Top Pro

Remap keys, buttons, joysticks, mouse

Top Pro

Expand abbreviations / macros

Top Pro

Helpful forum

AutoHotkey users have greater tendency to help each other on their forums versus other comparable scripting languages. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn but extremely powerful

Basic Stuff is very easy and even advanced programming is possible, as the language is now able to use objects and classes and has a ton of free libraries and one of the most helpful and friendly communities on the Internet. See More

Top Pro

Create hotkeys for arbitrary functions

Top Pro

Scripting of common procedures

AHK allows full scripts to be created and used. It is very flexible. See More

Top Pro

Python bindings available

There are a few available Python bindings, which can be found here, here, and here. See More

Top Pro

Good help documentation

Top Pro

Allows for extremely easy remapping keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse

You can reprogram any key combination, including the Windows key with a syntax like this one: h::msgbox true that automatically remaps the H key to show a message box. See More

Top Pro

Retrieve and change clipboard content

See All

ConEmu

Top Pro

Resizeable window

ConEmu is resizeable whereas the default Windows Command Prompt isn't as smooth and clean as ConEmu is. See More

CaffeinatedKopala's Experience

Fast and theme-able. Supports powershell. See More

Top Pro

Supports tabs

Unlike the default Windows command Prompt, ConEmu can create tabs that can be dragged and dropped, as well as used for different editors, viewers, panels, and consoles. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed

ConEmu is under active development. Updates roll out almost daily with bugfixes and new features. See More

Top Pro

Can tile prompts

You can have multiple prompts on display in one tab, as seen in the first screenshot. See More

Top Pro

Has theming support

Theming support includes alpha transparency and 256-bit color display. See More

Top Pro

Can open INSIDE a Windows Explorer window

ConEmu can open up inside a Windows Explorer window, as if it was a file preview, making it unecessary to have the full application open. This tool is accessed using the right-click context menu. See More

Top Pro

Can run simple GUI apps

ConEmu can run simple GUI apps such as PuTTY, notepad, FAR, and others. See More

See All

Process Hacker

Top Pro

See programs with active network connections

Top Con

It might be a little intimidating for some users

ResoluteBelisama's Experience

Free; Lightweight; Powerful See More

Top Pro

Real-time information on disk access

Top Pro

10x more detail and information about usage of PC resources and processes

Top Pro

Can be set as your default task manager

Top Pro

Detailed overview of system activity with highlighting

Top Pro

Can create, edit and control services

Top Pro

Can track which processes are using a file

Top Pro

Open source

You can find the code here. See More

Top Pro

View detailed stack traces with kernel-mode

Supports WOW64 and .NET. See More

Top Pro

Graphs and statistics to quickly track down resource hogs and runaway processes

See All

Directory Opus

Top Pro

Customizable UI

Allows customizing toolbars and keyboard hotkeys. Has a full scripting interface that allows in-depth customization options. See More

Top Con

Complicated if one pursues mastery on the most advanced features

Takes a long time to become efficient with it. Mastering all the features can be rather exhausting. See More

Eric Tellefsen's Experience

Flexible, customizable can be as simple or as advanced as you need. Multiple directory views, etc. It's everything that you wish Windows Explorer could be- on steroids See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

License:Per-Machine (plus personal laptop)

Portable:No

32 or 64 bit:Both

See All Specs

Top Pro

Can be set to replace Windows Explorer

Unique Explorer Replacement mode provides a full replacement for Windows Explorer. See More

Top Con

Expensive

Compared to the other options, Directory Opus is quite expensive. Prices are $35 for the Lite version and $89for Pro (price changes based on the AUD to US exchange rate). Upgrading from light to pro costs about $30. See More

Top Pro

Powerful, expandable viewer

The viewer in Directory Opus supports a huge array of file extensions (more can be added as plugins). It is even able to show webpages in the viewer, when you select .url or .html files. See More

Top Pro

Supports different archive formats

Supports archive formats like Zip, 7Zip and RAR. See More

Top Pro

Powerful image viewer

Directory Opus includes a powerful independent image viewer with configurable toolbar, menus and hotkeys. See More

Top Pro

Tabs

Directory Opus has tabs for each view, which are customizable in size, appearance, functionality, etc. See More

Top Pro

Extensive column availability

Directory Opus includes over 150 standard columns in various groups, ranging from "Name and Path" to "Metadata." In addition, users can create custom columns using a script. See More

Top Pro

Supports TeraCopy

Directory Opus supports TeraCopy. See More

Top Pro

FTP support

Directory Opus supports SFTP (Secure FTP via SSH, port 22), along with FTP via SSL (port 990), and FTP over TLS. See More

Top Pro

Customizable and downloadable themes

The Directory Opus community has created everything from dark themes to themes emulating other applications. See More

Top Pro

File Status Symbols

Directory Opus offers an extension of standard color labeling in the form of status graphics that can be shown as an additional column in the file display. Standard graphics include "Checked" and "Flagged." Users can also create and use customized status labels. See More

Top Pro

Relative size and date graphs

Directory Opus has an option to include relative size and date graphs. These can be displayed independently, in their own columns, or nested behind the size and date columns respectively. They can also be toggled on and off with a simple button as needed. See More

Top Pro

Double-click on desktop to open a new file browser window

Top Pro

Searchable preferences

Directory Opus offers thousands of user preferences. To help users find the preference they want, Directory Opus offers a search function within the Preferences dialog that identifies and highlights specific preferences associated with the user's search term. See More

Top Pro

Single or dual independent trees

Directory Opus allows the user to use a single tree or dual independent trees with the dual file display. See More

Top Pro

Allows color-coding and assigning star ratings to files and folders

This is done with Directory Opus' inbuilt label and its Status system. See More

Top Pro

Backup and restore configuration

Directory Opus includes a comprehensive configuration backup and restore feature. Users can backup their customized configuration at any time and restore a previous configuration as needed. See More

Top Pro

Tools for synchronizing files and finding duplicates

Can easily synchronize files and helps the user in finding and deleting duplicates. See More

Top Pro

Works with Everything

Directory Opus works with the Everything search program. A custom-built script allows users to conduct searches and view results within the Directory Opus file display. See More

Top Pro

Good customer support

The customer support is very good. See More

Top Pro

Manual sorting

Directory Opus allows users to sort files as they want in manual sorting mode. See More

Top Pro

Gets updated often

Directory Opus gets updates all the time -- fixes, significant improvements and often new features are released multiple times a month. Improvement and feature requests by users are taken in consideration and you can often find your bug report resolved or improvement request fulfilled in one of the beta versions that follow soon. See More

Top Pro

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux Support)

Script functions can be written in WSL Script, DOS Batch Mode, VBScript, JScript or directly calling Opus or External applications. /mnt/c paths understood by path fields. WSL mode in Find As You Type (FAYT). Copy path names in WSL format or Windows format. See More

Top Pro

Flickr support

Directory Opus is able to sync your photos with Flickr. You can customize which file collections to sync, and the save location for each file collection. See More

Top Pro

Standard and customized layouts/styles

Directory Opus includes 8 standard layouts, including Commander, Dual Horizontal, Dual Vertical, Explorer, Filmstrip, Images, Metadata and Single. In addition, users can create and save their own layouts to suit specific needs and file processes. See More

Top Pro

Integrated image conversion

Directory Opus includes integrated image conversion functionality, allowing users to convert images to different formats, rotate and flip images, and resize images. Functionality can be used on a single image or large batch of images. See More

Top Pro

Stable & reliable when dealing with huge (100k+) file sets

This applies to both local and network drives. See More

Top Pro

Works with Listary

Directory Opus has native support for Listary, allowing users to move even more quickly between directories and perform searches. See More

Top Pro

Customized filters

Directory Opus allows users to create custom filters that can be saved and recalled as needed. See More

Top Pro

Supports high-DPI monitors

Directory Opus supports both 4K and 5K monitors. See More

Top Pro

Vertical folder tabs

Directory Opus users can use vertical tabs instead of horizontal tabs, if desired. See More

Top Pro

Customizable status bar

Directory Opus allows users to customize the status bar to display helpful information based on several different factors, including file counts, types, disk space, and others. The status bar can also be customized separately for dual displays. See More

Top Pro

Very powerful and easy to use batch rename dialog/feature

Top Pro

Extended scripting API

The scripting capabilities of DirectoryOpus extend from version to version. You can do a whole lot of unheard stuff with that. Custom columns, custom commands, handling events etc. just to name a few things. It even has a GUI editor to allow for custom interfaces for your file management and scripting tasks. Even though mastering it is not easy in the beginning, it's worth it in the long run. See More

Top Pro

Easy to sort photos

Image marking adds the images you select to a different file, making it easy to sort through a large number of them. See More

Top Pro

Integrates seamlessly as a launcher for other programs

You can launch via a toolbar button or user definable custom context menu items. See More

Top Pro

Batch-options

Allows batch renaming, viewing and editing file metadata. See More

Top Pro

Available for different architectures

Available in both 32 and 64 bit versions. See More

See All

Greenshot

Top Pro

Can be quickly invoked with the print screen button

Pressing the print screen button will allow you to select the captured area. See More

TruthfulChalchiuhtotolin's Experience

I also use SnagIT pro for the video capture option, but Greenshot is very capable and really easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Greenshot is licensed under GPL with source code available on BitBucket. See More

Top Pro

Selecting custom rectangle is the default

Easy to use selection tool with a magnifier to select only the part of the screen that you need. See More

Top Pro

Classic UI design makes it easy to use

Top Pro

Allows annotating, highlighting and obfuscating screenshots

Top Pro

Freezes screen when you capture

When you enter a capture mode, the screen content is preserved as it was when you started capturing. See More

Top Pro

Can capture an entire webpage

Instead of just capturing the visible portion of the page, this tool can capture all of the page in one image by scrolling through the page, taking images at set points and then stitching the images together. See More

See All

Windows Sysinternals

Top Pro

Great for scripting thanks to the command line nature for most of the apps

Top Con

Can be demanding

Especially Process Explorer can be demanding on older PC's and interfere when monitoring heavy applications. See More

RickZeeland's Experience

Process Explorer is probably the best known tool from this suite of utilities, but there are dozens of other useful tools, e.g. Autoruns to show you what starts automatically on Windows start. See More

Top Pro

Free

Eric Tellefsen's Experience

Free from a Microsoft Developer, it contains both command-line and windows GUI tools to observe processes, network connections, user permissions amongst others. My go-to toolset for development and troubleshooting windows problems. Latest version available from github & chocolatey See More

Top Pro

Detailed process information

Makes it easy to find and kill processes by pid. See More

Top Pro

Reliable

Top Pro

Includes 60+ command line tool

Top Pro

Disk2vhd

Disk2vhd can create images of hard disks for use with Hyper-V. See More

See All

VLC

Top Pro

Free and open source

Licensed under GNU Public License (some icons - under the CC-SA v3.0+ license), with source code available here. See More

Top Con

Absence of personalization

VLC Player has only one basic interface in white or black, and overall personalization opportunities are quite narrow. Unfortunately, you're pretty much stuck to the default look. See More

ResoluteBelisama's Experience

Been a long user. Never disappointed! A non-open source alternative would be PotPlayer, which is just as good and has a good bookmarking system that is missing in VLC. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows/MacOS/Linux/Android/iOS/ChromeOS/AppleTV

Release Date:August 19, 2019

Top Pro

Cross-platform

VLC is available on Windows, OSX, and Linux. See More

Top Con

Lacks libraries and advanced music player features

VLC is a media player first and foremost. There is no library management (aside from playlists), limited usage of tags, and no rating system. VLC is best at playing a file directly from a folder, but falls behind when it comes to helping you manage or find good songs in your music library. See More

Top Pro

Simple to setup and use

VLC is an incredibly robust application but very simple on the surface. It makes playing music simple, yet still manages to give the user all the tools he/she wants in a music player. See More

Top Con

Not really meant to be a music player

VLC is made to be a video player. Therefore, it won't carry out actions such as managing your music library. See More

Top Pro

Tons of advanced settings

Besides basic configurations, video player has an extensive amount of adjustable settings. See More

Top Con

Bad at playing 4k video and spotty x265 support

Try PotPlayer by Daum - does everything VLC does, but better and with more features (is also freeware). See More

Top Pro

Doesn't require additional codecs

Everything VLC needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed. This makes it one of the most hassle-free music players as it can play virtually anything as soon as it's installed. See More

Top Pro

Can play every video format available (as of 2017)

Top Pro

Supported on Unified Remote and has VLC specific remote apps on Android

Top Pro

Large amount of extensions

VLC has a large amount of extensions. See More

See All

WinDirStat

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Con

Relatively slow

David Siller's Experience

Best overview of where your space has gone. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

Top Pro

Free / Open Source

GNU Public License (GPLv2). See More

Top Con

Very limited reporting

Top Pro

Color codes by file type

You can sort the list in the extension column (file type) globally or from parent folder selected. This is very helpful in case there are files of a specific type that you may not be aware of that are taking up too much space. Also, the colors correspond to the visual section. See More

Top Con

Classic UI

Interface is old and cluttered. See More

Top Pro

PacMan Progress Bars

Top Con

Slow

There are faster programs. See More

Top Con

Treemaps can be confusing to some

See All

Ditto

Top Pro

Auto-deletes paste db after specified amount of days

Top Con

Copied passwords remain accessible

FlexibleAshnan's Experience

I've been using Ditto for over 4 years, and it's one of the first installs I do on a new computer that I'll be using. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10/11

Initial release:2003-08-11

Approximate size:15 MiB

Top Pro

It's reliable, fast and quick

It just works...always. It's fast and quick, which can save you thousands of hours. See More

Top Pro

Multiple copy/paste is amazing

Being able to copy multiple items to the clipboard, and then recall them and search them is just amazing. Total time saver and one of my essential productivity tools. See More

See All

Wox

Top Con

Requires additional programs

Like 'find everything' and Python. See More

Top Pro

Supports plugins and themes

Wox's website has a link where you can download themes and plugins to further expand the capabilities. See More

ChillZ's Experience

Very similar from what you might know from MacOS under the name of Spotlight. See More

Top Con

Many plugins had stopped working

Top Pro

Open-source

Wox is available open-sourced on GitHub See More

Top Con

Buggy, many crashes

The application crashes often. Many plugins are not tested very well and even the default version crashes many times without knowing why and when. See More

Top Pro

Allows for user customization

There are themes available for the app as well as plugins both of which allow the user to customize the launcher to their liking. See More

Top Pro

Searches web and files

Wox can search google instead of your files by prefixing a search term with "g <term>". See More

Top Pro

Easily search the web

There is a built in web search function in the Wox launcher that allows users to easily search sites like IMDB or Wikipedia by prefixing their searches with keywords such as "wiki". See More

Top Pro

Extensible with addons

Addons such as choclatey and Clipboard are some of the more popular ones, but it stands to reason that just about anything will be extensible if someone writes a plugin in order to perform that specific function. See More

Top Pro

Really fast

Faster than most other launchers. See More

Top Pro

Great community

Top Pro

Run cmd or Powershell commands directly

Top Pro

Can fully adapt Windows 10 theme and accent color

Top Pro

Now bundled with Microsoft PowerToys

See here for multiple installation methods See More

See All

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Everything

Top Pro

Quick file indexing

Top Con

Starts with UAC popup on Windows 10

There is a trick to avoid this, but initial it starts up with the UAC pop up, which is a kind of annoying. See More

FONZACUS's Experience

best local file search utility, if only the devs could port to linux. theres nothing like this here. it does its job well and by doing it minimal impact, only a few databases which wont lag anyones system. remote search is a hit and miss, and prolly out of the scope of what search everything is all about See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

License:Proprietary

Top Pro

Real-time updating of indexes

Everything monitors system file changes in order to maintain its searchable database up to date and keep giving out accurate, quick search results. See More

Top Con

Cannot search file content (by design)

It can search file content if you want but will be slow as file content is not indexed. See More

David Siller's Experience

If you are just searchfing for filenames on NTFS, there is no comparison. See More

Top Pro

Clean and simple UI

Looks like a native Windows application, and using it makes you look snazzy. See More

ResoluteBelisama's Experience

Super Light and Fast. Toggle Shortcut Key for quick access See More

Top Pro

Minimal resource usage

HarmoniousMammetun's Experience

Love it...small footprint and updates quickly....like right now. Has ability to filter to avoid folders/drive you don't wish to search. Sits in the tray for easy access. See More

Top Pro

CLI support

AgreeablePhobetor's Experience

There no hiding place in my hard disk, everything is shown and quickly indexed. All my 4TB fully scanned totaling more a million files from my adult data. See More

Top Pro

Quick startup

Starts up easily within 1/4 of a second. First startup or startup after system crush (BSOD) takes several minutes. See More

AssertiveHaurvatat's Experience

easy fast and reliable See More

Top Pro

Allows complex searches

Supports boolean operators, wildcards, optionals, path matching, modifiers (including regex), file attributes... See More

SophisticatedAnicetus's Experience

Best of best of productivity tools See More

Top Pro

Database-based file searching

Upon installation, Everything creates a database of all the files and documents on your computer in order to give you instant search results for most queries, showing results even as the query is being typed. See More

PopularCacoch's Experience

Indispensable search utility. See More

Top Pro

Small installation file

The Best 1 of 72 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for Everything

My Recommendation for Everything

Quick file indexing

Starts with UAC popup on Windows 10

Real-time updating of indexes

Cannot search file content (by design)

Clean and simple UI

Minimal resource usage

CLI support

Quick startup

Allows complex searches

Database-based file searching

Small installation file

Quick searching

Real-time updating

Can search file content

Share files with others easily

71 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for Chocolatey

My Recommendation for Chocolatey

Large number of applications/utilities available

Unable to easily change your install directory in the free version

Manages the entire software lifecycle

Complete list of available installs not easily findable

No crapware

Newtonsoft JSON missing

Straightforward install process

Some package installs aren't good or polished or don't install well

Easy to use

Hard to know which package to install

Scriptable

Free and open source

Downloaded files are verified by checksums

Upgrade all software with one command

Builds on technologies you know

Integrates with almost every configuration management / infrastructure automation / RMM tool

GUI available

Support and features available for organizations

Can be extended with PowerShell

Decentralized package sources

More Selection

My Recommendation for VirtualBox

My Recommendation for VirtualBox

Free

Some features require accepting a non-commercial use license

Supports snapshots

Free and mostly open source

Easy to use

My Recommendation for 7-zip

My Recommendation for 7-zip

Supports many formats

7-Zip's native packaging (.7z) isn't widely openable

Industry leading compression algorithms

XZ/LZMA2 format inadequate for long-term archiving

Has integration into right-click menu

Not very popular on macOS or Linux

Totally free

Sleek interface

Lightweight

Localizations for 87 languages

My Recommendation for f.lux

My Recommendation for f.lux

Automatically adjusts the brightness to make for more comfortable viewing

On multi-monitor setups, each monitor can have a different color result

Eases eye strain

One must be reminded to turn it off when working/viewing visual media or dealing with theme configs to avoid white balance mistakes

Subtle transition

May be made irrelevant on Windows 10 as the functionality will be integrated directly into the OS

Has a temporary off button for color-sensitive work

Takes a while to get used to

Convenient sometimes

Can help sleep better

Multiple modes

The "Disable for (x) time" options can also be used as timer for productivity without being distracted by alarms, visual noise or need for extra app

My Recommendation for cmder | Console Emulator

My Recommendation for cmder | Console Emulator

Tabs

Slower than ConEmu

Works nicely with command line applications