Ultimate Free Stuff Compendium

Sonic Robo Blast 2 — free 3D Sonic the Hedgehog fangame built on the Doom engine. Features a lively 25+ year old community and robust modding support.
Homepage
Source code

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers — self-described technical kart racer built on Sonic Robo Blast 2, with an equally lively and diverse modding scene.
Homepage
Source code

Cave Story — iconic 2D side-scrolling indie platformer. Kept alive by a dedicated community.
Homepage

Cave Story Multiplayer — online multiplayer version of the above game.
Homepage

TETR.IO — modern yet familiar Tetris-esque online stacker game with a strong competitive scene.
Homepage

Toontown Rewritten — fan-made revival of the iconic MMO Toontown Online.
Homepage

Museum of All Things — visualises Wikipedia articles as a 3D museum, with hallways acting as links between articles.
Homepage
Source code

LibreOffice — free suite of office programs, including Writer, Calc, Base, and Impress. Good as an alternative to Microsoft 365 AKA Microsoft Office.
Homepage
Source code

Obsidian — Markdown-based note recording app. Connections between notes and documents can be visualised as a spider diagram. Notes are saved locally, with a syncing service provided for a monthly charge.
Homepage

Claws Mail — lightweight email client with extra functionalities such as RSS aggregation.
Homepage
Sources

Manuskript — open source tool for writers and worldbuilders to manage written creative projects.
Homepage
Source code

Sumatra PDF — lightweight document reader supporting formats such as PDF and EPUB.
Homepage
Sources

ShareX — fast and highly versatile screen capture tool.
Homepage
Source code

Paint.NET — Windows-exclusive image editing program designed with an intuitive yet powerful interface.
Homepage
Microsoft Store

GNU Image Manipulation Program or GIMP — robust image editor suitable for a range of activities. Can be extended through plugins.
Homepage
Source code

Krita — FOSS digital art and 2D animation program. Sports a highly customisable GUI and advanced features such as colour profile management and plugins.
Homepage
Source code

Aseprite — industry standard pixel art and animation tool.
Homepage
Source code

Piskell — web-based pixel art editor that can be downloaded and used offline. Specialised for animation.
Homepage
Source code

Pixelorama — pixel art editor powered by Godot.
Homepage
Source code

Blender — 3D creative software. Covers the entire pipeline: modelling, rigging, animating, physics simulation, etc.
Homepage
Source code (mirror)

FireAlpaca — digital art software with features such as comic panel layout and perspective guidelines.
Homepage

Inkscape — powerful and relatively easy to approach vector image editor.
Homepage
Source code (mirror)

Motion Canvas — TypeScript-based vector animation tool, allowing for animations to be programmed and previewed in an editor.
Homepage
Source code

FontForge — simple vector font editing utility.
Homepage
Source code

OpenMPT — music tracker software for creating music in .MOD and related formats.
Homepage
Source code

Furnace — another music tracker software with support for over 50 sound chips and counting.
Source code

LMMS — FOSS sequencer and composition tool.
Homepage
Source code

Audacity — simple and lightweight audio editor.
Homepage
Source code

VLC — video and audio player with support for a wide range of formats including online radios, digital camcorder, and teletext.
Homepage
Source code

AIMP — versatile music player with a modern UI and advanced tagging feature.
Homepage

foobar2000 — simple music player with support for a range of audio formats.
Homepage

LosslessCut — fast GUI video and audio editor based on FFmpeg.
Source code

HandBrake — convert videos to and from a wide range of codecs.
Homepage
Source code

MusicBrainz Picard — software for organsing and tagging audio in a range of formats.
Homepage
Source code

TagStudio — organise photos, videos, and other files with tag-based libraries.
Source code

nomacs — simple but powerful image viewer with support for a range of image formats and features for analysing and comparing multiple images.
Homepage
Source code

Microsoft PowerToys — free collection of plugins to enhance the Windows 10/11 experience. Targeted towards power users.
Documentation
Source code

yt-dlp — updated version of youtube-dl, a command line program for downloading videos from YouTube and a ton of other sites that has now become inactive.
Source code

NirSoft — a free software compendium in its own right. All developed by one man.
Homepage

Bulk Crap Uninstaller — fully automate the process of uninstalling programs en masse. Minimises required user input.
Homepage
Source code

O&O ShutUp10++ — anti-bloatware and anti-spyware tool for Windows 10 and 11.
Homepage

Rclone — command-line program to sync files with various cloud storage services.
Homepage
Source code

LFTP — command-line file transfer program supporting a range of protocols.
Homepage
Source code

Graphviz — open source graph visualisation software.
Homepage
Source code

KeePassXC — securely store your passwords and auto-fill them into various apps.
Homepage
Source code

Notepad++ — lightweight text and code editor. Can be considered a more feature-complete version of Windows Notepad.
Homepage
Source code

Visual Studio Code — IDE from Microsoft. Supports many languages.
Homepage
Source code

OBS Studio — app for recording and streaming your screen. Widely used by many streamers.
Homepage
Source code

Syncthing — wirelessly synchronise files and folders between devices. Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.
Homepage
Source code

Rainmeter — display highly customisable widgets on your desktop.
Homepage
Source code

OpenStax — collection of free textbooks and learning resources.
Homepage

Neocities — free static website host, reminiscent of Geocities.
Homepage
Source code