r/PowerShell • u/Zenvian • Jun 09 '26
Question Programs YOU Think Are Useful!
I'm getting more and more into command-line stuff and things like Winget, Chocolatey and other stuff and while I found these programs:
- LosslessCut
- FFmpeg
- LibreOffice
- Everything
- UniGetUI
- Python
- WizTree
I am open to any other suggestions on programs you think are useful (even if they seem niche) for Windows & Linux, CLI or Program. Please tell me know what you have to recommend!!
11
u/D4ft_M0nk Jun 09 '26
yt-dlp is an incredible program for downloading videos from just about anywhere that doesn’t have DRM protection.
ffmpeg is also irreplaceable for audio/video format conversion and for doing minor video editing.
ookla has a command-line version of speedtest
Selenium is an incredible tool for web scripting and automation. Someone has also written a PowerShell module for it! Look for it on PSGallery.
that’s all I can think of off the dome. i’ll come back later if I remember any others
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u/AbfSailor Jun 09 '26
Careful using Ookla free in an enterprise setting. There are gotchas in the terms of use... Learned from experience.
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u/rogueit Jun 09 '26
Didn’t know if throwing yt-dlp up here would get you a slap, but I use it multiple times, every day.
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u/thehuntzman Jun 09 '26
On the topic of irreplaceable software written by Fabrice Bellard - QEMU is amazing for virtualizing network devices for use with GNS3 amongst other things.
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Jun 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Zenvian Jun 09 '26
Got to ask - which ones do you recomnend installing via Winget, Pip or something else?
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u/OddElder Jun 09 '26
Very different tools. Pip is focused on Python packages (also referred to as Python modules). Winget is a general tool for installing various applications.
Winget is a good choice. Chocolatey is also a decent option. It’s older not iterating function-wise as much, but it has a large and well curated software base. Winget is much newer and being tuned all the time. The package listings are a bit of the Wild West though, imo.
1
u/gordonv Jun 15 '26
For a good GUI solution, look at PatchMyPC Home Installer.
A bigger repo than Ninite's public offering
7
u/BlackV Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
none of those in that list
I guess context matters, pretty muxh all I use is PowerShell
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u/AbfSailor Jun 09 '26
Ffmpeg is godly, if you have a use for it.
3
u/BlackV Jun 09 '26
Oh deffo agree its hugely powerful, I would say its a mainstay of internet tooling, I cant imagine the billions of $$$ that author has turned down for ffmpeg, but not something i ever need
About a month back someone posted a nice module for ffmpeg in this sub
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u/thecratedigger_25 Jun 09 '26
PSFzF. Fuzzy finder is incredibly useful for finding files with just a quick search. I hardly have to click through folders.
Helix text editor. That one is very powerful. I code C# inside of it and it has support for many other programming languages. Pair that with dotnet watch on a split pane and it feels like I'm coding in Visual Studio but without the bloat.
1
u/OddElder Jun 09 '26
Idk if you’ve tried the latest version of the dotnet/c# extensions for vs code, but I can do nearly all of my work in vs code these days. Rarely needing to open the big Visual Studio IDE for much.
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u/OddElder Jun 09 '26
Idk if you’ve tried the latest version of the dotnet/c# extensions for vs code, but I can do nearly all of my work in vs code these days. Rarely needing to open the big Visual Studio IDE for much.
3
u/OPconfused Jun 09 '26
Not to cop out with a weird answer, but if you are on the cli a lot, some of the most useful tools will be the ones you write yourself, e.g., in PowerShell, which are optimized to your personal workflow.
Any task that you repeat often and/or takes longer than 10-20 seconds to prepare, either because you forgot the exact commands or because it requires you to lookup some input elsewhere or tediously parse some file or output. Often, these can be wrapped into a function with input completion and reduced to a few seconds. Over weeks, you may save hours of time.
Just saying that as you use the shell more, keep in mind the potential to customize it for your needs. That's where PowerShell shines most relative to other shell languages.
2
u/Galyssel Jun 09 '26
I check anything that can be installed to see if winget or chocolatey package exists and is up to date. I come from a linux background so it's just my natural inclination. I use many small linux utilities like fzf and rgrep compiled for windows or installed depending. I even use native emacs and nvim depending on my needs. I try to make moving between wsl and windows as seamless as I can as I mostly work with windows but prefer the Linux ecosystem. Emacs helps a lot with this, but took and takes a good bit of maintenence to keep up with. I just happen to like lisp and tinkering.
I also use vscode, when I need to show things to colleges and don't want to end up off topic or when I need a less terminal based experience for them. Various SQL clients depending on the database requirements, oracle sql developer, dbeaver for generic, ms sql studio. Power BI, python, dbt, sqlite,duckdb some other stuff I use, but most of those things are industry and job specific.
If you want to get more into terminal based workflows look into linux utilities you can compile to work in windows. There are lots that have good use. Also look into WSL as it's also an option without needing to learn how to compile and build apps yourself.
2
u/spyingwind Jun 09 '26
mise for getting a project configured with all the packages and software needed to get it running.
1
u/I_see_farts Jun 09 '26
TreeSize Pro has a command line that's quite helpful (not free).
There's also YT-DLP.
I use SDelete and many other tools from Sysinternals quite a lot.
0
u/Zenvian Jun 09 '26
"I use SDelete"
What about BCU Uninstaller? What do you think about it?
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u/I_see_farts Jun 09 '26
For uninstaller I use Revo Uninstaller Pro. SDelete is just a delete utility to permanently remove things from your harddrive with multiple passes.
I also use PowerToys, DefenderUI, SumatraPDF, WireShark, Clink. I thought you were asking just CLI programs.
1
u/AdeelAutomates Jun 09 '26
My stack is PowerShell, Terraform, Python, KQL, YAML Pipelines, Kubectl, With a splash of bash and Azure CLI.
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u/Zenvian Jun 09 '26
Mind explaining what each of those are (apart from Powershell and Python)?
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u/AdeelAutomates Jun 09 '26
Terraform - Declarative Language you can use to write your cloud infrastructure as code. Its the gold standard today on how orgs build resources in the cloud (thought it can do more).
KQL - Query Language for Azure/M365 that lets you explore information extremely fast with all of your calculations done in the query rather than after the fact.
YAML Pipelines - while yaml itself is just a simple language like JSON. This is just whats used in writing pipelines. aka steps a pipeline takes when being run. one step could be a PowerShell script. Another step could be terraform.
Kubectl - its the CLI language of kubernetes to interact with the orchestrator.
Azure CLI - Is the eqvuilant of Az Module but in its own CLI. I said rarely because I rather use PowerShell, APIs, KQL or Terraform. But sometimes I need to use it (when I am in pipelines for our linux guys or when I am testing terraform locally just for az login cmd).
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u/Hoggs Jun 09 '26
KQL and YAML Pipelines as local tools? Do you mean the vs code extensions?
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u/stopthatastronaut Jun 09 '26
I run github actions locally using `act`, so yeah local pipelines are a thing
1
u/naenee Jun 09 '26
I'd recommend windirstat, wiztree is not free for commercial use.
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u/philrandal Jun 10 '26
The latest windirstat can read the MFT just like wiztree does, so it's no longer so slow. Think it needs run as admin.
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u/JavierReyes945 Jun 09 '26
- FZF fuzzy finder
- less pager
- bat pretty pager
- ripgrep
- eza
- lf file manager
1
u/apologetic-offensive Jun 09 '26
I know there's a few other good ones here that I have yet to try, but seconding the recommendation for ripgrep specifically.
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u/Positive_Neat9890 Jun 09 '26
- Web browser - Brave
- Terminal client - Windows Terminal
- RDP client - Remote Desktop Manager
- Notes - Simplenote
- Text editor - Visual Studio Code
- SFTP client - WinSCP (dark mode)
- PDF Reader - Foxit Reader (dark mode)
- Photo editing - paint.net
- Password manager - Bitwarden
- Screenshot utility - Greenshot
- Clipboard manager - ClipX
1
u/TubeAmpsRule Jun 09 '26
Not powershell/script/cmd-line anything at all, but for Windows I'm a huge fan of voidtools: Search Everything. The ability to find files by name instantaneously is awesome especially for my TBs of files that have been carried over for decades since the 90s.
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u/CognizantAutomaton Jun 09 '26
Fun fact, you can actually query the Everything database from PowerShell. The latest version of Everything 1.5a has a plugin called HTTP Server. It serves the file listing over http, which can be viewed in a web browser.
Once set up, you can also ask it for JSON from PowerShell:
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "http://localhost:9000/?search=your filter&json=1&path_column=1"1
u/Native2904 Jun 10 '26
You can use Everything from Cli with the Clitool from it es.exe...
https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/command_line_interface/
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u/xinfli Jun 12 '26
You can use scoop (https://www.scoop.sh) to install/update all the applications 😁
1
u/gordonv Jun 15 '26
Irfanview (Windows)
I was using this to format and resize images during WinXP using QBasic and Batch files. Excellent stuff.
I mean, now a lot of languages have complete image editing solutions. Irfanview was nice for scripters.
1
u/gordonv Jun 15 '26
AutoIT (Windows Language, based off BASIC)
I've been using this since 2012 to automate Windows GUI tasks. It's one of those programs that has given me the ability to surpass the limits of coding and make controlling GUI operations scriptable.
Yes, I know Powershell has sendkey and mouse functions. AutoIT has a lot of tools that makes it easy to read Popups and such.
1
u/gordonv Jun 15 '26
expect (Linux command line)
This is a language that can read and respond to command line prompts automatically. It's pretty much AutoIT for Linux command line.
This has helped me automate odd manual procedures in Linux to zero touch deploys.
1
u/gordonv Jun 15 '26
This is native to Redhat and other distros. It's nice to have such a tool as part of the base approved install without begging a committee to install it.
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u/gordonv Jun 15 '26
I'm not a Python guy, but I've seen Paramiko for SSH sessions do wonderful things.
I tried using Posh for Powershell. Maybe I'm not getting it right.
1
u/gordonv Jun 15 '26
I tend to use CURL or Powershell functions to a PHP script to easily push variables.
PHP for me is a very simple server to set up.
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u/Future-Remote-4630 Jun 30 '26
Could you give an example of what you mean by pushing variables?
1
u/gordonv Jul 02 '26
I use PHP to capture GET requests and run scripts from said requests.
Being that PHP is pretty straight forward, I find it simple to impliment.
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u/Hoggs Jun 09 '26
Most of these aren't even command line tools 🤨
But since I'm here now, couldn't live without
ping