My Top Ten Free Open Source Windows Programs I Wouldn’t Live Without

Open source on Windows is no longer something to be skeptical about. It’s not a niche that you need to seek out in some dark corner of the internet, and open-source packages are largely best-in-class.

In addition to the (obviously) unbeatable cost of nothing, these apps also bring transparency, quick iteration, and community-driven reliability. Industry audits, such as those conducted by the firm Synopsys, continue to report that most of today’s software stacks are built from open-source parts following similar patterns — increasingly also for Windows users.

These are the 10 open-source Windows apps I use day-to-day, after years of testing and daily work across various security cameras, laptops, and tablets. They’re quick, reliable, and essential for privacy, productivity, and performance.

PowerToys: essential Windows utilities for productivity

Sponsored by Microsoft and developed as an open-source project, PowerToys provides utilities that give superpowers to Windows. FancyZones snaps complex window layouts into place in seconds, PowerRename batch-renames files using regex, the Color Picker and Text Extractor speed up design and research workflows, and Awake stops your PC from sleeping during long tasks. It’s a Swiss Army knife of time liberation — minutes saved on the hour, every hour.

LibreOffice: full-featured offline office suite for PC

Developed by The Document Foundation, LibreOffice is the heavyweight on this list and runs entirely on your PC. There’s Writer, Calc, Impress, and Base — Writer handles anything from book-length documents to simple notes; Calc for spreadsheets; Impress for presentations; and Base, a database editor. By default it uses the OpenDocument Format but can both open and save files in a way that is highly compatible with Microsoft Office. For privacy-first workers and travelers who work offline, it’s a no-brainer.

7-Zip: powerful compression, encryption, and archiving

Compression is table stakes, but 7-Zip plays it strategically. The 7z format with its high compression ratios is impressive, and it can also handle ZIP, TAR, GZIP, and other formats. It offers strong AES-256 encryption and can be used as a double-archive, ideal for file exchange (especially if the recipient doesn’t have a solution to open RAR files) and long-term data retention. It is the application that IT pros use in silence every day.

ShareX: advanced screenshots, GIFs, and screen recording

When it comes to grabbing screenshots, GIFs, or screen recordings, ShareX sets the bar. It captures areas, scrolling pages, and window contents; features annotations with arrows and blackouts; text extraction through OCR; uploads to services for secure sharing; and post-capture photo manipulation. Instant bug repro GIFs? Product teams love it; security is happy that auto-upload can be disabled for all on-premises users.

Bitwarden: open-source password manager with passkeys

Say goodbye to password fatigue with an open-source vault from Bitwarden. It will create and auto-fill strong passwords, in addition to passphrases; supports passkeys; stores secure notes; and syncs across desktop and mobile devices. With optional self-hosting and audited code, it’s in step with advice from groups like the FIDO Alliance that have been urging industry to nudge users toward safer, phishing-resistant authentication.

Flow Launcher: lightning-fast keyboard launcher for Windows

This quick, keyboard-centric launcher transforms Windows into a command center for your PC. Hit a hotkey, type a few characters, and open apps, files, folders, or web searches without ever touching the mouse. Features like calculator, clipboard history, translation, and more come from a rich plugin ecosystem. If you appreciate speed, Flow Launcher is one of those things that just becomes muscle memory very quickly.

Duplicati: encrypted backups with snapshots and scheduling

Backups are meant to be boring, rock solid, and encrypted — Duplicati hits all three. It supports snapshots of your file system and SCP-style backup, where you can copy from any location to any other, local or remote. It comes with an easy-to-use web dashboard, and restore tests are smooth. This should be standard with on-prem solutions: 3-2-1 backups and regular test restores.

Nextcloud: on-premises file sync and collaboration suite

Nextcloud offers industry-leading on-premises file sync and online collaboration technology.

The Windows desktop client syncs folders, and apps offer document collaboration, tasks, and chat. There’s a strong offering for organizations with strict compliance requirements, with non-public cloud silos that can be federated and self-hosted.

AutoHotkey: automate hotkeys, text expansion, and scripts

If you do a task twice, AutoHotkey can do it for you the third time. Design hotkeys, remap keys, create text expansions, and script a variety of UI actions. Power users might remap Caps Lock to a productivity layer, automate tiling windows, or write a little helper that does the reporting for them. The learning curve pays off in saved hours every week.

File Converter: right-click conversions for media and docs

Right-click, convert, done. File Converter fits in the Windows context menu, making it possible to convert audio, video, image, and text files with minimum effort (simply right-click your file → select the format you want, either from supported file types or target device presets). Batch processing, custom presets, and simple compression mean it’s ideal for whipping up PDFs rapidly, resizing images, or standardizing media for a presentation.

And both thrive because open development is a firehose for criticism, suggestions, and speedy fixes. The answer is exactly what those large enterprise audits conducted by software security firms have said and we see demonstrated every day in the hands of power users: open source on Windows is a practical win, not a compromise. Install a handful of these, and your workflow — not to mention state of mind — will thank you.