You must log in or register to comment.
Wikipedia. Not an app but still deserves a mention.
OBS, and Blender. Two industry shaping software solutions that ere fully open source and free.
uBlock Origin leading the pack by at least a furlong.
The Dialer.
- Comes with every phone
- 10+ digit number instantly connects you with millions of people, services, and institutions
- 3 digits connects you with life-saving emergency support
- Very low-latency voice support
- High quality audio (most of the time)
- No ads
- No obnoxious UI
All kidding aside, I’m routinely astounded at how we have yet to top the ease and utility of old-fashioned phone service.
VLC is a big one for me.
some new weird video format opens windows stock media player because it’s not yet associated with vlc
“Hey… it looks like your going to have to buy a codec…”
manually open in vlc where it runs seemlessly
I’ll take “things that haven’t happened to me in years for a dollar Alex”.
A variation happened to me last week that’s why it came to mind. Was opening an mp4 recorded on a digital camera on a new laptop. So the stock player had a go and gave a message similar to the above. vlc was installed moments later and of course had no issue…
+1 VLC will dutifully try to play even corrupted to hell files that any other media player would just fail with some form of “can’t play, file is corrupt”
VLC just managed to get some newer video files to play for me on a 10 year old tablet that wouldn’t play them with it’s included video player. It was also one of the only apps on the play store that would still work on that old tablet as well. It’s been my go-to video player for years now, terrific software 🥂
VLC is pretty great. I would say IINA is at least a close second on Mac. Haven’t had a problem playing anything in it yet.
VLC runs great on Mac and Android as well
It even runs on iOS. It’s one of the only ways to play videos that aren’t in Apple’s bullshit proprietary format.
Yeah I personally prefer IINA on the Mac because of how native the interface is. Neither VLC or IINA has had trouble paying any video files I have.
Wasn’t there some big thing where they tried to buy it and the person that made it was just like “nah”
I agree that it’s cool and all, but I just really don’t like VLC. It’s ugly, bad UX and misses some major features. I love other similar and also free ones thoigh, like PotPlayer, MPC and MPV.
It won’t keep track of my place in a Playlist to resume so I trashed it.
Wikipedia
Don’t forget to donate!
But then it’s not free anymore /s
That reminds me, I should donate
Wikipedia
app
Reee
To be fair, they have an app
That’s true
I still can’t get used to calling programs apps
Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, OBS (open broadcast software), Linux distros of various sorts, openHAB, LibreOffice, Firefox (and plugins like uBlock), PiHole, VirtualBox, Notepad++, Paint.NET, VLC, 7-Zip, FileZilla…
I’m sure there’s more.
Gimp is a bit of a stretch.
I’ve used it a lot, but unlike most of the others on this list, the commercial product (Photoshop) is so much better that I’m willing to shell out the monthly fee to use it over Gimp.
Back when Photoshop was $300 (600 todays money) It was fine for non-professional work.
It could use a little UI finesse, a content aware fill without plugins, and a regular human usable macroining system.
But for 90% of non-professional work clone, dodge, smudge, burn, masking and curves are perfectly serviceable.
I’ve found a nice workflow in gimp to touch my photos. It works wonderfully
I’m not sure what field you’re in and photoshop certainly is the standard but Affinity has been great for my needs and is pay once if you’re looking to avoid SAAS
https://www.photopea.com has everything I need for daily graphic touch ups.
Yeah, it does all i need and uses a format that will be compatible long into the near future, very useful.
Vectorpea is available too.
Home Assistant, not only an App but it changed the way i look at IoT/Smarthome and in that way it brings me a lot of comfort.
Linux
7zip
I haven’t used windows in about 15 years on my personal machines but see 7zip referenced everywhere…why is it so popular? Can windows 10/11 or whatever we’re on now not compress/extract most things itself or do people prefer it for some reason (nice interface etc)?
I’m always amazed when I’m following a tutorial written for windows and it says “download and install 7zip, then extract the file using 7zip”. I just right click the file and extract it…
Windows only recently got support for 7z and RAR. For the several decades before that, it supported neither.
Recently? Feels like it’s been more than a decade now…I could be wrong though
You are wrong. Until recently Windows did not natively support 7z or unrar.
Looks like just 2 years ago. My bad!
Windows can do that, but opens archives as folders and will run executables by extracting them to a temp folder without dependencies. And the unpack dialogue is cumbersome, with 7zip you get a simple right click -> extract here / to folder dialogue, that somehow still is too much to ask of the main OS.
It’s likely for 'user friendliness’. Most people don’t even know what an archive is and that it should be extracted so a folder is much more intuitive and familiar to them.
7zip is usually faster, as well
WinRAR anyone ? 🤭
deleted by creator
Organic Maps. After switching to graphene, I quickly found plenty of apps replacing the “defaults” I had on stock android, however, a good app for maps was impossible to find until I stumbled over that one. Great UI, local maps, even has a navigation feature. Completely replaces google maps for me.
Get outta here you Hedge Fund Manager! Leave our apps alone!!
Fucking entire Fedivere with No ads.
Organic Maps
Organic maps is great bit I wish it had real time traffic data. For that reason I normally use magic earth instead.
Also on iOS—looks promising
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magic-earth-navigation-maps/id1007331679
Can you provide a bit of info on it? What is it for and how does it stand out among the other apps or programs?
It’s a beautiful, FOSS, offline/local Google maps-like app for Android that uses Open Street Map data.
There are plenty of other offline/local map apps, some paid, some free, but they are nowhere near as polished.
Is open street map data pretty accurate? I don’t expect google mas level of accuracy but I think its important that I can rely on the maps when I don’t know anything about where I’m at
I did a month long trip around western Europe (Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden) and used Organic Maps as my only navigation app. Worked well for everything I used it for. Even the metro data was accurate. Also, in my home country, Estonia, it’s even better than Google Maps, because it has bike navigation integrated.
That’s very promising to hear!
Forgot to add, that it also gets updated faster than Google Maps. A roundabout that was built, took about a week to be added to Organic Maps, on Google Maps it took more than a month.
It’s way more accurate that google map. But it lacks a lot of stores and opening times in less touristy countries.
If you want to contribute check out StreetComplete for an easy way.
Depends on the dedication of local maintainers, but it often is more detailed than Google maps.
Practically all of the free map services use OSM.
Organic maps is so good
there’s been many a time i’ve been out in the middle of nowhere with a friend or family member and google maps stops working on their phone, and i get to pull out OM and save the day :^)
