Desktop Software that Changed My Life - Tranceam זין חמאס

Updated 2 months ago

Over the years I found apps that truly stood out for their power and ease of use that may not be well known, and they made such an impact on my productivity that I thought to write an article extolling their virtues. I researched everything, and in many cases, I tested alternatives. I use Windows 10.
I passed over the more popular programs, such as VLC (I actually use PotPlayer), Audacity, Libre Office, and also the more niche software.
Most of these are for Windows and all of these are free.

3RVX is a fixed, floating volume bar that is hotkeyable. Extremely helpful if you change your volume a lot. I have mine hotkeyed to Alt Mousewheel Up and Down.

All-in-One Messenger compiles every chat app you have into one on your Desktop. Tried Rambox, Station, Shift, and Franz, and this was the only one that gave me everything you could possibly want.

Dupe Guru is a free app that will easily remove all your duplicate photos. You can easily plow through thousands in minutes while tapping your function keys.

Bitwarden is a little vault on your PC (and accessible by phone) that stores and generates all your 14 digit complicated passwords, and is unlocked with a master password. It’s rated the best out of a crowded field.
I have hundreds of logins across 3 browsers. It took me years to make the leap, and the process took days to get everything working, but the peace of mind and sheer convenience is worth it.

Bulk Rename Utility changes the names of files and folders very robustly and flexibly. It’s insane how well it scales with thousands of files. Small learning curve. Worth it.

ClocX gives you an floating, simple analog clock. Elegance is simplicity.

FxSound makes sound on your computer sound much better, and louder if you want. I have installed it on laptops where before I could barely hear a flat peep and the sound started booming in high fidelity. Trust me, once you try it, you will NEVER go back.

Emby is an excellent personal server so you can watch videos (MP4s, MKVs, AVIs) on other devices

Edge got MUCH better in 2020. Now it’s my main work browser.

Everything is head and shoulders the best way to search for things on your computer. I have it bound to a mouse key and use it every day.

Fastcopy is the fastest possible copier built for Windows 10. Written in machine code by obscure Japanese programmer. One of the README’s is in Japanese LOL.
But it’s the fastest. Written in machine language.

Folder Painter enables you to set custom colors on your folders. I use the former, but the latter does pretty much the same. I make all video folders blue, music green, etc

Glarys is better than CCleaner in every way, in ethics, functionality, and security. We won’t go into 2018 here, but it was horrible. As to my personal experience, a faulty update of CCleaner even prevented my Windows 10 from loading recently and I had to system restore, I found a worthy replacement. “Cleaning” your registry is extremely overrated and potentially has more downsides than upsides. Glarys also keeps your programs updated.
If you use CCleaner, make sure you have a restore point. After carefully narrowing it down with multiple restarts I am 100% confident the last Ccleaner update prevented Windows from starting.
For me, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After Avast acquired it, it has been one unethical privacy disaster after another data hack disaster.
So ironic that Crap Cleaner has become just Crap.
I have used Glarys past few months with zero problems
Why you should stop using CCleaner on Windows right now

Grammarly is amazing. It’s an app that runs on your desktop and works with most desktop applications, using AI to correct grammar and spelling. A technological wonder. I am a great speller but not a super accurate typist. Highly recommended.

John’s Background Switcher turns your background into a customizable slideshow. There is just so much granular control. You can even add external sources like Flickr or now Google Photos.

Key Tweak Every use your capslock? No? Ever turn on your capslock by mistake and looked like a nerdrager? Maybe? Get Key Tweak. You can remap any key.

For Windows users, Malwarebytes Premium, SuperAntiSpyware and Windows Defender are the only antivirus you need. Not getting viruses and spyware is mostly a common-sense issue. You could say viruses are an Old Peoples Internet Tax.

Mixmeister BPM Analyzer will analyze your entire music collection and add a BPM tag to it, all in one click. It can’t get any easier. We all know you’re gonna DJ… someday.

MP3tag will completely clean up and organize your music files. Solid German software. If you have OCD you will find hours of organizing fun, and you can even make your own cover images.

MSI Afterburner will overclock your computer and control fan speed to squeeze the most performance, safely

Open Shell enables Windows 10 users to skin their start menu. The real fun begins when you make your own custom links to things like Power Options and Uninstall, or even your own VLC music category links.
The functionality was so satisfying, this app made me rebind my windows key to default. I will use it til it drops.

Opera – Faster, Safer, Smarter Web Browser – ~~You can access unlimited browsing on New York Times’ site.~~ Opera has a built-in proxy. AFAIK no other browser does this. Alas. it won’t do the same with the Wall Street Journal and the Economist.

Maybe by a Korean, PotPlayer overtook VLC in 2016 for playing music and watching video. It’s smoother, has more codecs, and easier. The UI itself is a godsend because VLC has gotten to be ass.
Took me forever to make the switch as I am always in love with the open-source ideal.
But worth. Just do it.
I still use VLC for its bat commands, but Potplayer probably has support.

Picturereflect is available on the Windows Store and is amazing in its photo manipulation abiltiies, when Photoshop would be overkill.

Rainmeter gives you an onscreen configurable graph for information such as CPU usage, disk space, RAM, recycling bin, etc. It also has a Monstercat sound visualizer.
You can go nuts with it:

But as I use a wallpaper changer, I prefer to just have something very simple with transparent background:

Soulseek for file sharing is the very last survivor of Napster and Limewire, and is amazing is all I can say. Hands down best place to get obscure, hard-to-find music film and bootlegs.

System Scheduler is great if you make a lot of tasks for your Task Scheduler.
Some background. One time I wanted to have church bells ring on the quarter hour (four different chimes per hour, and 12 different on the hour chimes) and have the time said by a beautiful female British voice that I got through Ivona, a Polish company that sells the best, more natural voices, acquired by Amazon. But if you just want the chimes without all the setup there’s a paid app that does that.
Anyway, System Scheduler makes it so much easier than Microsoft’s default app for managing all the tasks, but if you want to run with admin privileges such as to wake your PC to perform a task, (i.e. system backup) you have to get the paid version.

Thunderbird is an open source email client from Mozilla with a large variety of customization. All of your accounts in one place. And contact management is a breeze. Has a chat functionality, too.

VIM is the best text editor, hands down. Month learning curve, but you will never go back. For the more casual user, Notepad++ is a serviceable replacement to Notepad, although its bugs have gotten annoying to me. Honorable mention: Sublime, which does some neat things with text.

Websites

Archive.is caches day-old newspaper headlines from the New York Times, The Economist, Wall Street Journal The Atlantic, and other paywalled news sites.

Boxbe completely eliminates all spam from your email. Anyone who sends you an email that isn’t on your guest list has to fill out a CAPTCHA, and you can review people to manually add them in.

WeTransfer.com – Send files up to 2GB easily to friends with zero hassle. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to google drive, but arguably a little quicker.

YTMP3 offers the cleanest way to convert youtube to MP3s & MP4s and has handled anything i threw at it.

Mega.nz, DC++, and Putlocker or various combinations thereof give you basically any content you’re looking for, almost immediately.
Snahp.it is a site that gives you Mega.nz addresses. The two work in tandem. Excellent collection of Bluray. Mega.nz is run by a fat German Trump supporter. But it’s still world-class. I think a Chinese guy stole it from him LOL
DC++ is hardcore P2P mostly for obscure comics and occasional books and film. But generally, Soulseek is the first choice.
Putlocker is OK, but you really need to have Malwarebytes installed because it will throw popups like crazy at you. I don’t really use it anymore because I prefer to own what I watch.

Controllers

I don’t hardcore game anymore, but the gaming mouse I used has proven invaluable. It has 12 side keys which can be macro’d, and each program I am in can have a different profile. I have created profiles for Chrome, Photoshop, VLC, and pretty much every other program I use. The settings are saved on the cloud so you never lose your macros. I got mine for about $60.

It goes without saying, if you spend any time at a PC, get a backlit mechanical keyboard with programmable macros. Mechanical – because the audio feedback will increase your accuracy in all typing. I use a Razer Black Widow that I got for $125.

A Note on Computer Choice

It used to be the case that you needed Apple for graphics and music production. That is no longer the case.
Do not use Apple products. They are overpriced, poorly made and hellish to repair. Resist getting sucked into their ecosystem.
Stick with PC/Android and Windows/Linux and save yourself a lot of grief.

Appendix 1: Game Emulators

ePSXe – Playstation 1
Dolphin – Gamecube
MAME – Arcade
Mesen – NES and famicon
Project64 – Nintendo 64 Emulator
PSX2 – Playstation 2
RPCS3 – Playstation 3 (In progress, and you need a badass PC)
SNES9x – SNES
Stella – Atari 2600

See also, Best Video Games

Appendix 2: Bat Files

Bat files are old school. In fact, you should probably use the .cmd suffix instead for modern PowerShell compatibility. But in a nutshell, they can do wonders. You basically make a text file, make sure the suffix is bat or cmd, and it will perform operations such as copy or delete. The power comes when you schedule them in Task Scheduler, or using the System Scheduler app described above.
Here are some of my favorite bats. OBVIOUSLY change the folder locations to yours.
This is not for casuals. If you don’t know what you are doing, you can brick your PC. Proceed with caution!

VLC – Play All Music:
@echo off
cd “C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\”
Start vlc.exe –random “B:\Music”
exit

VLC – Play a certain genre/folder:
@echo off
cd “C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\”
Start vlc.exe –random “B:\Music\Classical”
exit

Make folders for every file:
@echo off
for /f %%i in (“B:\Books\E-books\Folders.txt”) do mkdir %%i

Save all your Steam shortcuts
Useful if like me you went ham naming custom banners:
robocopy “C:\Program Files (x86)\a Games\Steam\userdata\ (your userdata number) \config” “A:\Steam shortcuts” shortcuts.vdf /NFL /NDL /NJH /NJS /nc /ns /np /mir

Save all your files to external drives, plus make audio cues.
In this example I save all the important stuff out of C: such as fonts photos, AppData and some folders, my internal drives B: which is media and documents, and E: which is games, to a large external drive, A:
I also do some weird shit with Photoshop, which has a bug that endlessly creates files in AppData.
This isquite a list, but it took a lot of trial and error to get working perfectly and am including it here to help anyone going through a similar process.

:: Runs at 1am every day (if the PC is powered on) & triggered by Save.vbs, which runs it silently
:: Note!! – you can’t just /mir B or E to A witout a subdirectory!! Has to go to a distinct folder or it will erase vast parts of A!!!
:: No quotes needed around drive letters but be sure there is a \
:: Re-add /R:1
powershell -c (New-Object Media.SoundPlayer ‘B:\Music\Misc\Sound FX\Backup VBS Sounds\Backup Initiated.wav’).PlaySync();
robocopy C:\Bat A:\C\Bat /mir
robocopy C:\Windows\Fonts A:\C\Fonts /mir
robocopy “C:\Program Files (x86)\SystemScheduler\Events” “A:\C\System Scheduler Backup” /mir
robocopy “C:\Users\Jeff\Pictures” “A:\C\Pictures” /mir
robocopy B:\ A:\B /mir /R:0 /FFT /A-:SH /XD $RECYCLE.BIN “System Volume Information” MMOs /xf msdia80.dll
robocopy E:\ A:\E /mir /R:0 /FFT /A-:SH /XD $RECYCLE.BIN “System Volume Information” MOBAs
:: change directory to were Adobe temporary directories are being created
CD /D”C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Local\”
:: delete Adobe temporary directories
for /D %%a in (Tempzxpsign*) do rmdir “%%a”
powershell -c (New-Object Media.SoundPlayer ‘B:\Music\Misc\Sound FX\TransferofDataComplete.wav’).PlaySync();

If you want the above to run silently and invisible run this instead:
Set WshShell = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell” )
WshShell.Run chr(34) & “C:\Bat\Save\Save.bat” & Chr(34), 0
Set WshShell = Nothing