Most of these are Windows based, but some are cross-platform. They are mainly free tools, but paid ones have been marked accordingly. Freemium tools have a free version but have a full version for a price. Tools are in no particular order
- Windows Sysinternals - the swiss-army knife of Windows tools: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ (Free)
- Listary Pro - a spotlight style search tool for Windows: http://www.listary.com/pro (Freemium)
- Ditto - clipboard management tool: http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/ (Free)
- Cmder/ComEmu - make command prompt suck less: http://cmder.net/ (Free)
- Bvckup 2 - the best backup program I've tried: https://bvckup2.com/ (Paid)
- Veeam Endpoint Backup - an excellent, free, truly enterprise-grade Windows backup tool: https://www.veeam.com/endpoint-backup-free.html (Free)
- Greenshot - Screenshots made easy: http://getgreenshot.org/ (Free)
- Everything - Lightning fast file search: https://www.voidtools.com/ (Free)
- Agent Ransack - Handy search tool that can search inside any file: https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/ (Free)
- WizTree - A modern, fast alternative to WinDirStat: http://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-finds-the-files-and-folders-using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/ (Free)
- mRemoteNG - makes managing remote connections easier: https://mremoteng.org/ (Free)
- MobaXTerm - A fantastic program for managing remote servers and computers, with support for SSH, RDP, SFTP and X11-forwarding: https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ (Freemium)
- Sysnative BSOD apps - designed for collecting BSOD dumps, also collects other useful system information: https://www.sysnative.com/blogs/download/sysnativebsodcollectionapp-exe/ (Free)
- Diskovery - find info about your HDDs and SSDs: https://diskovery.io/ (Free)
- CCSIO Benchmark - a pretty disk benchmarking tool: https://ccsiobench.com/ (Free)
- Typora - Windows markdown editor: https://typora.io/ (Free)
- ExtraPUTTY - PuTTY but with more features: http://www.extraputty.com/ (Free)
- Glogg - Opens huge text files (1GB+) that other programs can't handle: https://glogg.bonnefon.org/ (Free)
- RoyalTS - Manage multiple remote connections https://www.royalapplications.com/ts/win/features (Freemium)
- Active@ Partition Manager - Windows based, completely free partition editor: http://www.lsoft.net/partman.aspx (Free)
- FastStone Image Viewer - Lightweight image viewer and editor: http://faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm (Free)
- GSmartControl - View HDD health and SMART data: https://gsmartcontrol.sourceforge.io/home/index.php/ (Free)
- Sysnative DRT - A database of over 4,000 3rd party drivers with official download URLs: https://www.sysnative.com/drivers/ (Free)
- West Wind WebSurge - Web application load tester: http://websurge.west-wind.com/ (Free)
- RoslynPad - Simple, interactive C# editor. A free alternative to LINQPad: https://roslynpad.net/ (Free)
- NTLite - Windows image and deployment management: https://www.ntlite.com/ (Freemium)
- Etcher - Burns (Linux) ISOs to a USB or SD card: https://etcher.io/ (Free)
- Rufus - Create bootable USB sticks from Windows (and other) ISOs: https://rufus.akeo.ie/ (Free)
- Serva - PxE boot and TFTP server, allowing booting computers from a network: https://www.vercot.com/~serva/default.html (Freemium)
- FOG Project - Open source network computer cloning and management solution: https://fogproject.org/ (Free)
- EventSoundControl - Easy playback of sound clips and jingles for shows and events: https://www.eventsoundcontrol.com/ (Paid)
- TeXStudio - LaTeX editor: https://github.com/texstudio-org/texstudio (Free)
- QueryStorm - Run SQL queries against Excel because why not: https://www.querystorm.com/ (Freemium)
- Adobe Bridge CC - The full version of Bridge, Adobe's photo management software, is free and doesn't need a Creative Could Subscription: https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/bridge.html (Free)
- VSCode - Excellent, electron-based text editor by Microsoft: https://code.visualstudio.com/ (Free)
- Notepad++ - Lightweight text editor that can handle almost any file: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ (Free)
- SQL Operations Studio: Modern, lightweight to SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS): https://github.com/Microsoft/sqlopsstudio (Free)
- WinSCP - A better alternative to FileZilla: https://winscp.net/eng/index.php (Free)
- Zeal - Offline documentation for many popular libraries and APIs: https://zealdocs.org/ (Free)
- JSON Formatter and validator: https://jsonformatter.curiousconcept.com/
- XML Formatter: https://www.freeformatter.com/xml-formatter.html
- XPath Tester - for when you still need to battle with XML: https://codebeautify.org/Xpath-Tester
- ReSharper - Visual Studio isn't the same without it: https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/ (Paid, free for students)
- SourceTree - my favourite git GUI: https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/ (Free)
- Fiddler 4 - the best way to trace and troubleshoot weird website and network issues: https://www.telerik.com/fiddler (Free)
- FiddlerCap - cut-down version of Fiddler for end users: https://www.telerik.com/fiddler/fiddlercap (Free)
- Fish shell - better than bash: https://fishshell.com/ (Free)
- Various programming fonts:
- Hack: http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
- Source Code Pro: https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro
- Hasklig (fork of source code pro with ligatures): https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig
- Nerd fonts: https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts
- Cryptii - Convert between various encodings, encryptions and ciphers: https://cryptii.com/ (Free)
- OzCode - Visual Studio Extension to improve debugging: https://www.oz-code.com/ (Paid)
- DB Browser for SQLite - SQLite DB browser: https://sqlitebrowser.org/ (Free)
- HeidiSQL - Portable MySQL/Postgres/MSSQL database browser: https://www.heidisql.com/ (Free)
- Regexr - Online Regex tester and visualiser: https://regexr.com/ (Free)
- ADWCleaner - quickly remove adware from any computer: https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner/ (Free)
- MalwareBytes Anti-Malware - Powerful and fast malware scanner: https://www.malwarebytes.com/ (Freemium)
- VirusTotal - Analyse suspicious URLs for malware: https://www.virustotal.com/#/home/upload (Free)
- SSLLabs - Test your server's SSL configuration: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ (Free)
- KeePass 2: My favourite password manager due to its flexibility: https://keepass.info/ (Free)
- KeepWeb: web GUI for KeePass with built in cloud storage integration: https://app.keeweb.info/ (Free)
- ZenMap - a GUI for nmap: https://nmap.org/zenmap/ (Free)