I use many tools every day in my life, some of which are amazing and open-source. I’ve wanted to create a list for a while that I can update with new things that I find and share with others to get some use out of as I have.
I mainly use a Windows setup so some of these may be specific to Windows but I’ll try and note where this is the case.
ShareX – Open-Source Screenshot (and more) Tool
ShareX is more than just a screenshot tool. You can easily set up key bindings to take screenshots, upload them to your file host of choice, shorten the links and copy them to the clipboard. The possibilities are endless with this tool and you can easily create your flows for whatever you’d like to do. It seems to be just available for Windows at the moment but hopefully, in future, we will see the project flourish and be cross-platform.
Espanso – Cross-Platform Text Expander
I love Espanso. It’s one of the first things I install on any new PC and for good reason. It’s a nifty little customisable text expander program that makes it super easy to set up shortcuts for things you type regularly. Easy to install, easy to edit (just a YAML file) and stays hidden in the background until you need it. I’d recommend trying it out!
ueli – Keystroke Launcher for Windows and macOS
Another must-include on my list. ueli is a launcher similar to Alfred but available for Windows too. I’ve always struggled to find something decent on Windows to match the power of Alfred but ueli seems to be doing great so far!
It comes with a few built-in features such as currency conversion, translations, bookmark search and even the latest weather – as well as the typical app and file search.
Kopia – Secure, Open-Source Backup
You never can be too prepared for when something goes wrong. However, having Kopia installed and set up can be a good start. It’s a cross-platform backup software that performs well and does its best to ensure that storage space is optimised. You can easily create policies that customise just about every aspect of the backup process.
Natively, it is a command-line tool but I tend to use Kopia-UI which is a very nice frontend. It allows you to manage just about everything you can with the command line but in a nicer way.
And that’s it!
For now. I will be updating this list regularly so be sure to check it out every now and then.
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