SC's free software directory

This page contains links to many useful free programs for all devices! You can tell what operating systems they run on by the icons next to each link (see the legend right below this paragraph). All of these programs are free in one way or another.

LEGEND
ICON MEANING
Free, but has a premium (paid) version
(or it has microtransactions for additional features)
Source available
(click on it in the list to get to it)
works on Windows-based OSes
(just assume it works on anything above Vista)
works on macOS
works on Linux
(assume it works with Ubuntu/Debian/Mint)
works on Android phones
(assume it doesn't work on anything below 4.4 KitKat)
works on Google Chrome
(and its derivatives, e.g. Vivaldi, Opera, Edge)
works on Mozilla Firefox
(don't assume it works on Pale Moon or Basilisk)
works on the old Microsoft Edge
(don't assume it works on IE)
works on Safari
(assume desktop Safari only)

Note to Opera users: Unless your extension is on the Opera addon store, you're going to need the Install Chrome Extensions extension before you can install stuff from the Chrome Web store onto Opera.


Jump to:
Productivity | Chat and Messaging | Editors and Code | Internet and Browsers | Creative Tools
Music and Sounds | Gaming Tools | Malware Scanners & Prevention | PC Customization | Misc. Utilities
Browser Extensions | Other Sites for Free Programs

Productivity

AutoHotkey
A good and simple coding utility that allows you to easily create macros for your computing experience.

f.lux
Automatically makes your computer screen warmer (in tone) after the sun sets. It's a lot better on your eyes, trust me.

LibreOffice
A free alternative to Microsoft Office, although it has a UI similar to Google Docs. I recommend turning off that sidebar when you first download it though, you aren't going to need it.

One Commander
A modern lightweight, dual-paned File Explorer alternative for Windows. Has favorite groups, easy navigation, and more.

Phrase Express
A really good phrase expanding tool for your computer. Can expand phrases through key combos and text commands and can do a whole lot more. Free for non-commercial use.

Spark
Good mail app that works well with Apple devices and iPhones. Has a smart inbox and a nice design.

Stickies
A sticky note app for Windows that's better than the default sticky notes app. Has so many more features and theme support.

SumatraPDF
A good, light alternative to Adobe Reader for Windows. And, since it isn't Adobe, it means most exploit kits and viruses can't exploit it!

XYplorer Free
A cool free File Explorer alternative for Windows. Has filter views, better searching, tabs, and more.


Chat and Messaging

Discord
The best chat program I've ever used. Has support for small chats, big chats, chatbots, voice chat, and much more coming soon. Great for gaming.

Franz
It's basically a modern-day Trillian or Miranda, as in it's a program that can load multiple modern IM services (such as Facebook or Discord) at once. The downside it that it's basically a glorified tabbed web browser, but whatever. It's still something.

Jami
An upcoming private chat system that has private text, video, and voice calls. Good if you're looking to overthrow the government.

Telegram
Another reasonably private chat system that works on all devices. The best part is that you can add your own sticker packs and send them to your friends!! (A lot of furries use it because of that feature alone, you know.)

HexChat
A free IRC client for all OSes. Based off of X-Chat. Really nice and good for new users to the IRC platform.

MSN Messenger (via Escargot)
Thought MSN Messenger was dead? Think again, pal, because someone hand-coded a custom server for old versions of MSN that allow you to talk on it again.


Editors and Code

Atom
A free HTML and code editor made by GitHub. A bit sluggish, but has a pretty decent UI.

Brackets
Similar to Atom, except it's more geared towards HTML/CSS and not just any programming language.

MetaPad
A lightweight alternative to Notepad++ that has more features than Notepad itself.

Sublime Text
Same as above, except it isn't technically free--it's nagware, which means it's basically free. Sort of like WinRAR. It's pretty well-optimized, too.

Visual Studio Code
The editor I use when coding the site. Has a built-in addon store and performs slightly better than Atom does, so that's nice!


Internet and Browsers

Cyberduck
Good alternative to FileZilla. Does FTP and SFTP connections, as well as more stuff such as Google Drive and AWS.

Pale Moon
A fork of pre-Australis-based Firefox. If you like Firefox but dislike the Australis/Photon UI (and don't mind not having WebExtensions), this is the browser for you.

SeaMonkey
A browser based on Netscape 7 and the old Mozilla browser. Still works, and works especially well on Windows XP.

qBittorrent
Really good torrent app that doesn't try to install a Bitcoin miner on your pc like SOME torrent apps do.

Vivaldi
A browser for the power user, made by the person who originally made Opera. New features being added all the time. (Based on Chromium / WebKit, though.)

Tor Browser
Want to stay (relatively) hidden on the internet? Use Tor. It's a distributed network that helps websites and other internet ephemera from seeing your real IP. (Note that some services block Tor Browser from using their services, though.) Based on Firefox.

WinSCP
Probably the best FTP client I've ever used on Windows. Has a better UI than FileZilla and CyberDuck and also has built-in PuTTY support.


Creative Tools

Blender
A free 3D modeling program (and video editor / game engine, apparently). Good to start off with if you want to go into 3D.

DaVinci Resolve
A completely free video editor that's much more powerful than Windows Movie Maker. It's similar to Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere in terms of scale. If you want to be a YouTuber on a budget, I heavily recommend grabbing this.

DAZ 3D
A free 3D model posing program. Good for if you want to draw poses from 3D models. (Extra characters cost extra.)

FireAlpaca
A simple art program. I used it before I moved onto Krita.

GifCam
A way to easily record parts of your desktop and turn it into a GIF afterwards. Useful for tech support or demonstrating something.

HitFilm Express
A FREE video editor and compositor that you can use for YouTube and such. Great for people who don't want to pirate Vegas use Windows Movie Maker.

Krita
A free art program that's FOSS and works on all OSes! It has SO MANY BRUSH OPTIONS and it's so easy to make your own customizable brush. I love it.

MagicaVoxel
A cool free art app that allows you to make 3D voxel art images.

MCreator
Allows you to create Minecraft mods without a single lick of programming knowledge!

Milton
"Milton is a free and open-source, inifinte canvas paint program."

OBS Studio
A good XSplit/CamStudio alternative that lets you stream your desktop or video games to Twitch, YouTube, etc, and it does simple desktop recording as well. It takes some tweaking to set it up right, but it runs great when you do.

PabloDraw
A free ANSI/ASCII art creator for modern GUI-based systems.

Paint XP
A copy of the Windows XP version of Paint for later versions of Windows. Incredibly useful. (I think.)

Paint.NET
A free alternative to Paint on Windows. Has layers, rotation, plugin support, and more.

Playscii
A cool ASCII engine that lets you create art and games from ASCII text!

Trelby
Screenplay writer. Useful for films, YouTube videos, and anything else of that nature.

Twine
A neat program that lets you make your very own point-and-click text-based games!

WriteMonkey
It's what i use to write my site articles. It puts you in this zen-zone of writing without distractions, and even lets you put on typewriter sounds. Free but Windows only. (If you're on macOS or Linux, use FocusWriter instead.)


Music and Sounds

AIMP
It's sort of like a mix of Foobar and MusicBee (see below). I like it.

Audacity
The best free audio editor ever made. Can do a lot of basic audio stuff.

foobar2000
A lightweight but extremely customizable music player for desktop and mobile.

Google Play Music Desktop Player
An unofficial desktop player for Google Play Music. Really useful if you have a GPM All-Access subscription.

LameXP
A good UI-based batch audio conversion tool for Windows. (Just make sure you set it to not overwite the metadata when converting albums.)

MP3tag
A good tool to edit the metadata information of multiple media files at once. Great to fix those unsightly "Untitled Artist" tracks, since it can also automatically find metadata for you!

MusicBee
Great and versatile music player. Can do podcasts, internet radio, and so much more.

mute.fm
A utility that automatically mutes your music player when you're playing audio in a browser tab.


Gaming Tools

DOSBox
A free MS-DOS emulator. You can run pretty much any old DOS game on it, like DooM or even Windows 3.1.

LaunchBox
Have a bunch of DRM-free games kicking around? Use this to organize them

Lutris
Like LaunchBox, but only for Linux.

Playnite
A FOSS alternative to LaunchBox that works on Windows.


Malware Scanners & Prevention

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
One of the best malware scanners and removers for Windows and Android. Proven through years of security updates and trust.

Sophos Home
A good free anti-virus for both Windows PCs and macOS PCs. Registration required.


PC Customization

7+ Taskbar Tweaker
Lightweight utility for Windows 7/8.1/10 that makes adds tweaks and new features to your taskbar (e.g. being able to scroll on it for volume control).

BumpTop
Turns your desktop into a 3D space so you can sort your icons as if they were physical objects.

Electric Sheep
A cool screensaver that automatically generates cool desktop art with many other computers over the Internet!

Rainmeter
A Windows utility that allows you to customize your desktop with many widgets, and even allows you to create your own!

Starfish (Windows / Mac)
A really neat application that generates desktop patterns (tiled or not tiled). A neat utility if you want to have custom backgrounds on webpages.

TranslucentTB
A lightweight utility that makes your Windows 10 taskbar completely transparent.


Misc. Utilities

7-Zip
A really good and lightweight archive utility that's better than WinRAR. Or WinZip. Or anything else, really.

Caffeine (Windows / Mac)
Small utility that keeps your computer from going to sleep. Useful for overnight rendering.

CCleaner
A better alternative to Windows's built-in disk cleaner. Allows cleaning of app caches, multiple web browsers, has a built-in uninstaller, and more utilities. (I don't recommend touching the registry cleaner though.)

Cmder
Cmder is a software package created out of pure frustration over the absence of nice console emulators on Windows. It is based on amazing software, and spiced up with the Monokai color scheme and a custom prompt layout, looking [great] from the start.

File & Image Uploader
Allows you to easily upload multiple files to multiple locations. Handy for mirroring things.

File Converter
A REALLY HANDY little Windows tool that allows you to right-click on any file in File Explorer to convert it to a different type of file. Really handy for converting videos and audio.

Honeyview
An alternative to the Windows Photo Viewer (or the Photos app on Windows 10). Shows all your images and allows you to easily scroll through them. Even works on Photoshop files!

ImgBurn
A good program to use if you want to convert files to ISO filess or burn them to discs or whatnot.
May contain 'bundled software offers' in setup. Uncheck those before installing.

Infekt .NFO Viewer
A utility that lets you easily view .nfo files (that often come with completely[COUGH]legal[COUGHCOUGH]software).

KeePassXC
Great, open-source password manager for all OSes. Really secure and doesn't depend on the cloud.

K-Lite Codec Pack
Need help playing video (or editing it through your video editing software)? Download one of these codec packs that can fix it! Also includes a nice media player for Windows that's lightweight and good for playing individual files.

Prey
A good alternative to LoJack that can help you locate lost or stolen devices, such as phones or laptops.

Process Hacker
A fully-featured alternative to Task Manager (or Process Explorer) that allows you to see what exactly your running apps are doing. Also has built-in CPU and memory tray meters.

Rufus
Easily lets you put any ISO on a thumb drive and makes it bootable. Good for testing out Linux distros or reinstalling Windows.

ShareX
A REALLY GOOD screenshot program for Windows that's incredibly versatile and has a lot of features. This program blows Gyazo and Lightshot out of the water. You should give it a shot!

TweetDuck
A desktop app that's a heavily-modified version of TweetDeck. It adds a lot of nice quality-of-life features, and it even has a plugin system and HiDPI support!

WinAuth
A utility that allows you to use the Steam/Google authenticators right on your Windows desktop. Incredibly useful if you don't have your phone on you at all times.

youtube-dl
A REALLY versatile command-line app that allows you to mass download YouTube videos and descriptions and thumbnails! It's really good. Works on all OSes.

youtube-dl-gui
A GUI version of youtube-dl, for those of you that don't know how to work command-lines. Again, a really good YouTube downloader program, but with the GUI involved, it makes for a somewhat lower learning curve.


Browser Extensions

BlockTube NEW!
A browser extension that blocks certain usernames and keywords from appearing on YouTube at all. It's really useful if you have an annoying channel that keeps popping up in your recommendations and you don't want to see it anymore.

Checker Plus for GMail/GCalendar/GDrive/etc
A trio of great extensions for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive that let you easily check your email, schedules, and files right within your Chrome window.

Distill Web Monitor NEW!
Want to be notified when a specific website updates, but said site doesn't have an RSS feed? Distill Web Monitor is the perfect solution to this, allowing your browser to check whether parts of a webpage have updated every so often! You can set it to check full webpages or just parts of webpages, and it even works on sites that require JavaScript, too!

Feedly Notifier
It's a popout notifier for Feedly feeds. Useful if you're following a lot of webcomics via RSS like I am.

Imagus
Allows you to easily hover over image links and thumbnails and see a full size version of the image without having to click anything! Useful for viewing art on Twitter feeds.

Neat URL
Removes those garbage 'utm_' paramaters from website URLs that are usually used to track you, and plus they make the URL way longer than they should anyhow.

Bypass Paywalls
Tired of news websites saying that you can't read any more articles because of their artificial monthly article limit? Just get this extension and you don't have to worry about being ratelimited by the press anymore!!

Simplify for Gmail
Remember Inbox by Google? This is an extension that styles your Gmail UI to look a bit more like Inbox's. (This extension was even made by the co-founder of Google Inbox, so...)

SponsorBlock
You know those baked-in paid promotions that many YouTubers have been putting in their videos as of late? SponsorBlock uses crowd-sourced info from those videos and automatically skips any sponsored segments that are in the video. (Don't worry, you can unskip any false positives and whitelist channels, too.)

Tab Snooze (Chrome / Firefox)
Extension that can "snooze" tabs so that you can get back to them later.

Tampermonkey
Lets you add userscripts to a site to enhance its features, change its layout, and more.

Alternative Player for Twitch.tv (Firefox | Chrome)
Can't block Twitch ads with the HTML5 player in Chrome? Does the Twitch player take FOREVER to load with all the webpage guff in the background? FEAR NO LONGER! Alternate Player for Twitch.tv is a lighter, alternative player to the HTML5 Twitch player, AND it blocks ads! Take THAT, CAPITALISM!!

Twitch Now
Notifies you when your favorite Twitch streamers are online! Useful if you dont want to get emails.

uBlock Origin
Like AdBlock/AdBlock Plus, but without the suck. (did you know AdBlock Plus allows some ads by default?) uBlock blocks more while taking up less space in memory. My ad blocker of choice.

WayBack Machine
Allows you to easily view broken or missing websites on the WayBack Machine, and save pages to it.


Other Sites for Free Programs

DonationCoder.com
Lots of old and new software that programmers have made on their free time here. There's even software competitions on the forums, too!

Kiosk Mode
A HUGE plethora of software and drivers that can be very useful for the power user. (Windows-only, sorry!)


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