Productivity Apps on Windows

Today im going to share some of the productivity apps which have been part of my workflow for years.

These are dependable apps i can swear my words with but seems like not many people are using it. Even better, all of this programs is free / open source software. As a token of appreciation for the developers, heres the list of my productivity apps and why they are so damn good.

 

I work using Windows environment all the time hence all of these are Windows application. Download links are included so you can immediately try it.

Everything – Universal Desktop Search

Theres people in this world who keep their working files neatly in alphabetical folders. That person is definitely not me.  Im the opposite of anything OCD hence looking for a specific file under cluttered folders  can be time consuming. Everything is a silver bullet for this. Desktop searching tools which instantly search files as you type the keyword. Lightweight ( installer is under 1 MB) and blazingly fast, i just cant imagine working without Everything installed at my laptop.

Everything search using file name so you only need to make sure the name is meaningful. Gone are the day where you forgot where did you put that damn files anymore.

Download Everything Search Engine for Windows

Notepad++ – Text Editor On Steroids

Back in my college day, i code in daily basis. Often times i needed to do small changes to the code but to open full blown IDE such as NetBeans or Eclipse will take some time. Thats what Notepad++ comes to the rescue. Its fast and it has formatting options for various programming language which makes code-reading  easier. Some of my friends even do PHP coding using Notepad++ exclusively  on daily basis. It is that good.

Not only for programming, Notepad++ is also great for text manipulation such as making the text all capital or removing white spaces. Its also support regular expression so you can do very flexible search and replace.

Overall, Notepadd++ has hella lot of functionalities which you can add even more of it using plugins. Hands down the most powerful text editor ive ever used.

Download Notepad++ for Windows

Greenshot – Screen Capture Which Just Works

 

In Windows 7 and several earlier version, you can actually do screen capture without any third party software installed by pressing PRTSC button and then paste it in MS Words or Powerpoint. Greenshot enhance the ability of print screen button by adding custom region drawing so you can flexibly choose which parts of the screen you want to capture. This is the main features of Greenshot. Once installed, it will override the Print Screen button to show Greenshot region capturing mode. If you press CTRL+PRTSC, it will capture the whole screen.

I used screen capture a lot for developing reports or presentation and Greenshot contribute to that by being simple and just works everytime.

Download Greenshot Screen Capture

PhotoScape – Simple yet Feature-rich Image Editor

Im terrible when it comes to design and i really really cant use  Photoshop.  The day i found Photoscape is the day i found  confidence that i can make good enough design with less effort. A lot more easier and far ligther than Photoshop, Photoscape is one stop solution for your image manipulation needs. You can edit, combine photos into collage and even create GIFs.

But i think the best feature in PhotoScape  is the Batch Editor mode. You create several edit parameters such as resize or adjust contrast and then you can apply that for multiple photos. This is what i need when i want to upload a whole folder’s of my camera’s SD card to Facebook’s album . Load all the high res files in Photoscape, resize it to for web  and click Convert All. A real time saver.

Download PhotoScape Image Editor

That was my weapon of choice for productivity booster. Do you have your personal picks ? share it in the comment!

 image source