software that just works

Gaagaagiins

Syzygy More power to you but just to say, these sentences actually caused me to twist my face up and whisper aloud “what? no”

IncompatibleKaiser of course not friend, I just use the same PC for 10+ years until I run it into the ground and then buy a new one :)

We have such a beautiful multifaceted community here, don’t we

donrumata

I really love the Unarchiver for Mac OS. Just a simple filetype association for almost all archive types that extracts them and opens them in a new Finder window. In a world where Windows 11 now hides every helpful Explorer context menu item behind a shiny (but useless) newer context menu, it’s a breath of fresh air to have this thing that does what I need it to without being weirdly too much of a pain in the ass.

Also like Transmit a lot. I use (S)FTP a lot for remoting into my seedbox and Steam Deck and stuff and Transmit is the one client for these things that doesn’t feel clunky and dated. It looks nice, it’s fast, and it’s deep in the Mac ecosystem so it fits in with all the other stuff.

Oh, and CotEditor. When I was really deep into accumulating games for the Aquaplus P/ECE, I had a ton of plaintext readme/source code files laying around that were in Japanese. CotEditor actually handles CJK text encodings properly, whereas basically every other thing out there turns them into a steaming pile of mojibake. Probably of interest to a few people on here. Also Mac only.

I guess this is a pretty Mac-heavy list but I kinda use all the big operating systems for various stuff. Transmission is the best torrent client I’ve used. It’s no-nonsense and doesn’t have a particularly bloated UI. It runs on everything and does a good job of fitting into whatever OS you’re using it on. Looks pretty system native.

Also VSCode is great, in spite of it being a Microsoft product. I have not found a (featureful) code editor that does a better job of just-working than this one. I also kinda like the new Windows Terminal application. It doesn’t really do anything special, but the old CMD.exe one sucked real bad.

TracyDMcGrath
One major caveat is that WSL 2 relies on Hyper-V, which makes VMware and Virtualbox agonizingly slow because Hyper-V gets native hypervisor status and adds a lot of overhead to any other hypervisors. Kind of a bummer if you want to use WSL while also using VMware to run old games in a Windows XP box. WSL2 does work pretty well though aside from that one nagging detail.

hellomrkearns

I’m liking this thread.

DVD Decrypter has not been updated in years, but it still works for most of what I’ve thrown at it.

ImgBurn - what I use when I don’t need DVD Decrypter. Works great for reading/writing CDs and DVDs.

Interested to hear if anyone uses anything other than these two for burning. I just haven’t found a reason to use anything else.

SU2MM

I will second WSL2 and VS code. I can certainly understand why many people are vary of the way Microsoft is moving into the open source space, and share some of the concerns. But at the same time these two tools have been great for my workflow. VS code is just a really good editor, incredibly customizable, with good support for multiple programming languages and for example the extension which provides ssh support for managing and editing code located on computational clusters just work out of the box and I love it. As I tend to program in multiple different languages for numerical physics simulations, having one unified program which works well for most of them and which I can easily use on clusters is great.

In combination with WSL2 it allows me to set up my actual programming environments on a (virtual) Linux machine which often has better compatibility than windows, with a lot of heavy numerical libraries being targeted at Unix/Linux (and of course once I need to do the really demanding large-scale calculations they will be run on Linux-based clusters anyways, so a potential slight drop in speed on my local machine when doing small-scale tests due to not using an actual Linux installation is unimportant).

Additionally the integration between windows and WSL2 is pretty good, so while my main point of contact between the two is still VS code, things like simple file transfers between the Linux filesystem and my windows filesystem is nice. I originally started using WSL2 as I only had one PC for a while that I was using as both a personal and work computer and I wanted to have windows to be able to play games (and I just kind of prefer Windows for personal use in general), while I needed Linux for work purposes. I have been very happy with this choice and I probably even prefer this setup for my work compared to an actual Linux install. Although to be clear there are some advantages and disadvantages to both.

Another search utility I really like is listary which searches incredibly fast compared to the standard windows explorer as well.
https://www.listary.com/

Chopemon

For source control, use Perforce. It is super simple to use (with the exception of them them renaming the resolve targets, making resolves confusing until you learn the names) and fits most disciplines as it is very visual. I tried Tortoise and every commit turned into a mess as it is built for poindexters.

tanuki

Chopemon do they offer a Git client or do you need to work in an organization that uses Perforce? I wish I was making the decision of which version control system to use but I just deal with Git because that’s what the projects use.

Here’s a Git client recommendation https://www.git-tower.com and I did used to use SourceTree but it has lost its simplicity of use.

For downloading videos off of websites that don’t want you to: yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

For keeping folders synced across devices including with a friend or family member: Syncthing https://syncthing.net

For consuming RSS feeds that you can check on across multiple devices: Reeder https://www.reederapp.com

Chopemon

tanuki I haven’t used it but it looks like they do have a git client or some kind of integration. Not sure if that means the entire organisation needs to use it or not though.

esper

Greenshot was what made the Twitter clips for the show viable. I have an ergonomic mouse with a button right under my thumb. I click that and drag, and I have a screenshot immediately output to a desktop folder the exact size I want, of just the thing I want.

hellomrkearns

Can we mention browser plug ins as well?
Wayback machine makes it much easier to save pages and outlinks. You can also redirect to an older capture if the current site is down.
Screenshot YouTube Takes a screenshot from YouTube.
uBlock Origin - You know what it does.
Print Friendly & PDF - makes websites nicer to print or save as PDFs.

matt

Windows:

winget

This is built into Windows 11 and is built into Windows 10 if you update it and the store apps.

It’s a package manager for Windows, made by Microsoft, it’s still kinda new so it doesn’t have as many features as third party options like Chocolately or Ninite. However it wins in two key ways, it’s built-in and it doesn’t have a database of installed/not installed. It directly queries the Windows installer and registry to tell what is installed and what needs updating. Basically you don’t have to have installed the software with the package manager initially, if the software is available in the repository it will update it no matter how you first installed it.

It’s nice being able to run a single command to update all the junk installed on your PC (winget upgrade –all). You can even run it remotely through SSH.

You can find packages here: https://winget.run

Windows Terminal

Think Gnome Terminal for Windows basically, a terminal with tabs for Windows. It can open tabs with WSL2, cmd, or PowerShell as the shell. You can set your default shell when it starts up to be one of those too. It’s built into Windows 11 and available for download in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10.

tvOS/iOS/macOS:

Infuse

This is a media player for iOS, macOS and tvOS. It costs about $10 a year and it’s worth every cent. If you are a sometimes pirate or someone who rips their physical media, this program will play anything.

I’m too lazy and cheap to setup a proper PLEX server, so what sets this software apart is that it can simply load videos from an SMB share. So I can just have a tiny little Raspberry Pi with a hard disk in my cupboard instead of a hulking trans-coding monster.

It has a built in scrubber and will organise all your media and download pretty art and descriptions. It keeps track of your watch history and syncs it with iCloud. Even if you are an Android/Windows user, an Apple TV is such a great way of watching stuff if you use a simple SMB server and Infuse.

APOD

Cool little app that shows the Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html). It’s free without any ads and has a number of cool widgets you can add to your homescreen. Don’t be scared off by the in-app purchases, they’re just for donations to the developer :)

ShellFish

A simply lovely SSH client for iOS. Can integrate into the Apple Files app, so you can just transfer anything over SFTP using any application. The SSH client is also good, can do tunneling and keep persistent connections using background location calls (pretends it is a navigation app to keep alive I think) or using tmux sessions if you don’t want to spam your location all the time. Costs a meagre amount of money for such a nice app.

Linux

TestDisk

This app is very handy, can recover deleted files from anything. Even disks with deleted partitions or formatted partitions. So long as you haven’t overwritten anything. It runs on Windows and macOS as well, but I mostly run it in Linux because of its vast file system support.

DavidNoo

This thread is incredible. Folks like tanuki reminding me that I used to use yt-dlp and do neat stuff with it.

I use adobe products but got Inkscape and immediately made something cool I wouldn’t normally do which was a breath of fresh air.

I reinstalled notepad++ and my unsaved documents were sitting there :D
For some reason notepad++ stopped working for me a while back and I thought it was dead. What a pleasant surprise. I used to write stuff in there all the time. What sorta happened was I also use VSCode and its too good not to use for coding. But I hate it for just writing text.

Also intrigued by the PDF printer products. I made a mini web app once with a print feature and it was a pain in the butt to get everything to translate correctly so I’d like to see how these work.

At work someone just showed me Disk Inventory X which allowed us to see that Outlook was using 100 gb on someone’s computer. That was handy.

Gaagaagiins

DavidNoo Also intrigued by the PDF printer products. I made a mini web app once with a print feature and it was a pain in the butt to get everything to translate correctly so I’d like to see how these work.

They honour the thread title, is how I’ll say they work.

You install one and it basically slides right into your existing printer devices. Choose it while using a program’s existing Print functionality, as you’d choose which printer to output a document to normally. Of course, instead of outputting to a connected printer, it just pops up with a Save As window where you choose where to output the document to, and there it is.

There might be more to it in general if you have exacting needs for page size or resolution or whatever, I am not sure if a pdf printer will make up for lack in the program’s print features or the system print dialogue, but if your needs are basic it’s the most straightforward way to get any program with an existing print functionality to spit out a pdf of the document in question.

connrrr

If you are still on PPC Mac OS X, you gotta get Stimpsoft’s Cat-in-the-Dock.

rejj

I’ve held off on replying in here because I can tend to have strong opinions on software, and they are mostly boring outside of the professional contexts I apply them in.

However, a food related post I made just now has reminded me of a piece of software I use daily that I think is appropriate to mention in here: Paprika Recipe Manager. It can parse and import pretty much any written recipe on the web automatically, and the grocery list function is fantastic. I like this thing so much that I bought the version for iOS to use on my phone and iPad, the mac version for my laptop, and the windows version for if I’m on my PC. They all sync together and share the one account/database. I’m not suggesting anyone else should do that – one copy somewhere (probably ios or android so you can use it while in the kitchen) is likely fine – but if you do, it is supported well.

Divvy makes dealing with anything other than purely maximised windows nicer and easier. Using this is so much nicer than grabbing a window corner handle and trying to drag it to just the right spot. It’s available for both mac and windows.

On the mac specific front, there there is one piece of software that I find essential.
Alfred is my main interface with my mac. I don’t ever use Spotlight, launch control, or navigate to the applications folder in Finder. It does so much more than being a Spotlight replacement however, check out the site to see what features it offers.

tomjonjon

rejj Paprika is great!

docky

Mnemogenic notepad2 is an amazing sequel to notepad! https://notepad2.com/ I install it on every PC I use.

@Gaagaagiins I love using Ninite!
tomjonjon I’ve used Paprika for years. I have 359 recipes saved.

docky

https://en.bandisoft.com/honeycam/

Honeycam is terribly named but fantastic.
It sounds weird to spend $26 on a GIF capture and editing tool, but it works amazingly well and I’ve used it almost daily for the last five years.

esper

docky i have been needing something just like this, thanks!!

wickedcestus

Mnemogenic I still write all my rough drafts on Notepad before moving them to fancier editing programs. I love that it just boots right up, there’s no squiggly lines, and you can shuffle everything around super easily without screwing up the formatting. I wrote a whole novel in a single .txt in Notepad before realizing that was probably going a bit too far.

exodus

Apologies if this has been covered, but does anyone have a recommendation for windows audio control? I have to listen to bandcamp with my headphones on my temple because I can’t control the volume independently, and my system volume is at minimum. So I’d like something that lets you independently control volume with greater resolution. thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!

treefroggy

exodus
I have a hardware solution instead of software. The issue is your PC’s amplifier, which is hardware. The windows software is controlling the amplifier.
I recommend routing your PC through a nice cheap entry level desktop d-class amp with headphone output. I’ve used one for every audio setup I’ve had.
Here’s the one I use, just as an example, but the quarter-inch jack is kind of inconvenient, plus it’s not available right now so I don’t recommend it. It was like $60ish and worth every penny though.
Here’s one that appears to have 8th-inch (headphone) input ant output, so will work with whatever you already have. It’s also only $15 dollars. you can mount it under your desk and/or add a nice knob to that potentiometer and make your own enclosure.

Snowdecahedron

exodus https://eartrumpet.app/ pin this on taskbar

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