25 Must-Have Free PC Programs for All Gamers

(chirpy chime rings) - [Falcon] If you're on PC, you're eventually gonna have to do things other than gaming.

PC's probably the best place to game, but they're not designed explicitly to game, at least not by default.

If it was up to me, none of the stuff that I'm about to talk about would be necessary, but Windows is a big confusing mess

that anyone who uses it is forced to tolerate more than enjoy, you know, unless you've gone full Linux.

But I've tried that and I don't like it for other reasons. Either way, most gaming is done on Windows nowadays anyways, so whatever.

Hi folks, it's Falcon, and today on Gameranx, 25 free PC programs every gamer should have. Now before I get started,

I definitely should make it very clear that this is not sponsored. We're not getting paid for any of this.

We're talking about software that is either interesting, sounds useful, or has proven to be useful to myself or one of my Gameranx compatriots,

or perhaps all of them. You'll never know. (Falcon chuckles)

I should also quickly say to you that the links are in the description to all of them, most of them are straightforward downloads,

some of them are Gits, but most of the time you don't need to use the GitHub software or the command prompt to get a Git.

You just click the code button and hit download archive and that's usually just a straightforward download. So just wanted to say that,

some people are intimidated by GitHub, 'cause they haven't used it before. Don't feel intimidated.

All the software we're listing here is extremely useful. Without any further ado, at number 25 is winstall.app, well, or ninite.com.

In the past years, one of the first things I've been quick to recommend when you build a PC is Ninite, which is basically a website that's a checklist

of the most common software where you can pick the programs you want, the site will compile them into a single file,

where you can download it and it installs all of it with pretty minimal effort. It's great, but if you're a more serious PC user,

Ninite might be missing certain programs, and that's where winstall.app comes in. It's basically a more advanced Ninite.

Rather than having around a hundred apps and the most commonly searched programs, winstall has many, many more.

There's a lot of junk to sift through, but it keeps everything up to date and saves you from having to search through

individual GitHubs and websites to try to download programs or to get sometimes necessary updates. Ninite is still the better site for the more casual user.

You're getting pretty much everything you need there, and it's extremely user friendly. But if that doesn't have what you're looking for,

then winstall.app probably does. And number 24 is Playnite. As far as all in one game launchers go,

Playnite's probably the best there is. It's free, it's open source, and it's very easy to use, highly customizable.

So you can change like how you wanna present your games, you can make it real fancy with lots of real time videos, or make it bare bones and simple.

That's honestly how I prefer it. You can do that, and it's super easy to do, because the program will just scrape screenshots

and video automatically for most games. So everything you need to know about 'em gets filled in with zero input by you, which is very nice.

Like Playnite just cuts out a lot of tedium for searching through your collection. So even if you have games spread out

between multiple launchers, it's easy to keep track of everything. Bar none easily the best

open source game launcher out there. Easy to recommend, too, if you're the type that likes to have a nice organized digital collection.

For emulation related needs, not quite there, but for what most users are gonna do with it, it's powerful and it's frankly pretty easy.

And number 23 is Vortex. Does modding seem a little too hard? It is.

It can be very frustrating and irritating. So I'm just gonna say give Vortex a try if you do that at all, if you mod stuff at all.

It does make modding games a lot easier. It's still not easy per se, but having a program that automatically sorts load orders,

which lets you just turn off and turn on mods with just the press of a button, is great. Being able to purge mods through this app

rather than having to delete the entire game and download it again is also a lifesaver. And the way it's integrated into Nexus Mods

makes the entire process of modding games way easier. Not every mod is compatible with Vortex, obviously, even if you're using the Nexus,

but for everything that does work with it, it makes applying any kind of mod just way, like I know I keep saying way easier,

but like there's no other way to say it. The gulf between not using Vortex and using Vortex is very wide.

I know I'm not really blowing anyone's minds with this revelation. Like anybody who uses Nexus Mods

has at least heard of Vortex, but it's not bloatware. It's super useful. It integrates well with Nexus Mods,

makes the process of modding games so much less painful. Now that doesn't mean that it's, like I said, just flat out easy all the time

and you don't have to do anything ever again. That's not the case. But it simplifies things so much.

I mean, I'm not gonna lie, sometimes it can make things a lot harder, but that's way more rare

than it just making everything way better. And number 22 is the Tiny Nvidia Update Checker. If you have an Nvidia GPU,

and you hate the GeForce Experience, congratulations, you have a brain. GeForce experience is slow, bloated,

it wastes system resources, but if you delete it, you're forced to manually update your GPU through the website,

which is actually more of a pain. So use this tiny update program instead, Tiny Nvidia Update Checker.

It says what it does on the tin and it does it well. It actually does let you customize driver installs, too, and support multiple GPUs.

So it keeps absolutely everything up to date. It's small, it's handy, it doesn't do much. But man, bloatware is a big problem on the PC.

I hate the GeForce Experience, seriously. And number 21 is Discord. Another duh one.

Yes, of course Discord is a must to communicate with friends online or engage with online communities,

but for this list there's one other useful function of Discord you'll eventually need. It's starting to become a requirement

if you want to get into modding. A lot of mods can only, and I mean only, be obtained by going to the Modder's Discord

and getting the link there. It's your main way, and sometimes the only way, to do kind of troubleshooting too.

Also sometimes the way to even find out how to install a mod is through Discord, which is of course annoying if you're not a user,

but it's also not as impenetrable as it sounds. There tend to be separate channels for downloads and FAQs. It only rarely literally just makes you ask people

for things. Usually the Discord only situations are hands off. They're kind of more reliable in a lot of ways.

Not every way of course, but it's usually pretty hands off and works like a webpage but also has a chat component. At least that's how I feel like it works

when I use that stuff. And at number 20 it's ShareX. The many built-in screenshot options suck.

So don't waste your time copying and pasting your screen in MSPaint or whatever. Just grab ShareX.

It's powerful and it's totally free. It's also open source and completely safe to use. So if you're the gamer that likes to take screenshots

of NPCs clipping into each other, or like the ugliest child you can find, or I don't know, like something weird,

or even something not weird, it doesn't matter. Don't waste your time with other crap, just use ShareX. It's very useful for taking screenshots.

I mean it's not useful for anything else though. And number 19 is Borderless Gaming. Games are getting better about having borderless options

these days, but there's still an occasional game that just doesn't wanna play nice with your screen settings, and that's where Borderless Gaming comes in.

It's a program that allows you to force games to run in a borderless mode, and it can be quite effective, but it is only partly free, I must admit.

The most recent releases on GitHub only contain the source code. So if you want to use these versions,

you have to compile the code yourself to make a package to actually use it. Otherwise you just have to buy the program on steam,

which is clearly much easier. Still they do give you a free option, it's just annoying as hell.

I have compiled code before, I don't like doing it. There is an alternative called the Borderless Gaming Tool, does pretty much the same thing.

Also allows you to resize the game into pretty much any size, which is helpful if, for example, you're playing a game on TV and the UI gets cut off.

This lets you fix that real easy, at least when it actually works. It's not a perfect program, but it is totally free.

Either way, both of these programs do essentially the same thing. The one that's not super duper a hundred percent free

for everybody who doesn't know how to compile code is probably the better one, to be frank. But I mean they're both useful.

And number 18 is DLSS Tweaks. If you have an NVIDIA card and use DLSS a lot for your games, there's a program

that lets you fine tune those settings. You can force DLAA on titles that may not have the option, but support DLSS,

and you can override DLSS versions without messing with the actual game files. It's basically a wrapper shader,

similar to something like reshade, but for graphics cards that support AI upscaling. Sometimes built in settings for certain games aren't great

or could just be tweaked to work better with your setup, that's what this program does. It's not something you'll want to use playing online games,

'cause it does modify game files. It'll get recognized as a cheat by certain programs, but offline is perfectly safe to use.

And number 17, Revo Uninstaller is just ideal. I mean seriously get Revo Uninstaller. You know how when you uninstall something,

it doesn't actually get rid of everything, and also just simply deleting the files will probably mess things up,

leaves you a bunch of registry data and BS? Use Revo, gets everything out and it's safe. It's like universally recommended

over any other uninstaller out there. It's more up to date and less likely to delete things that you shouldn't

or leave a garbled mess. And like everything on this list, it's free, so that's also good.

It's not something you need all the time, nine times outta 10, regular old uninstall, it's fine. But for those specific situations

where something will just not fully remove itself from your PC, Revo is very helpful. At number 16, NanaZip.

Oh boy, if you got a newer PC that uses Windows 11, and just to be clear, that may not be for the better, but with this aspect here, it is.

NanaZip does everything 7Zip does, and especially WinRAR, which is unpack zipped up files, but it's built for modern machines,

you know, because 7Zip and especially WinRAR are not new products. NanaZip is actually just a more up to date fork of 7Zip.

I mean 7Zip is what I use rather than WinRAR. I used WinRAR for a very long time, much longer than I should,

just 'cause it was so lightweight. So NanaZip, guess what? It's the more modern version of that

and it's nice and lightweight. Now you're not doing unzipping stuff every minute of the day.

Only at night if you get my drift here. (Falcon chuckles) No I'm kidding.

It's actually more like when you're modding. So yeah, not absolutely necessary to switch over as soon as possible, but it's good.

At number 15, this is one that, I'm not sure if it's supposed to be an acronym that you say as a word or just an abbreviation.

But I like trying to actually say it. HWiNFO. I like to pretend that they're trying to get you to say it

very hoarsely, very old money I guess. Yeah, I should probably tell you what it does though. It's used for gathering hardware information, right?

It's probably the most secure, clean, and least invasive out of all of those though. It's simple.

It has very, very little overhead, very light, and it's nice and clear, readable information. Not fancy, but it absolutely does what it needs to do,

which is give you a full overview of your hardware performance with real time system monitoring.

Totally free, easy to use, it's reliable too. So if that's something you're looking at, like system temperature, disk usage, RAM usage,

that kind of crap. It's not flashy, but it's free, and it does what it needs to do well.

At number 14 is CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark. I don't usually read those words. I usually just think them.

They actually look like a foreign word that you can't pronounce, but it's literally just Crystal Disk Info.

Like hard drives and SSDs, they only live so long. Hard drives struggle with hardware failure, SSDs have fewer read/writes than your average hard drive.

These things can be storing essential stuff on them, and when they die outta the blue, that really sucks. So having something that can diagnose your hard drives,

both internal and external, giving you overall performance/health information, not that disks can be healthy or not,

just that's the best way to say it here. I mean it's one of those things you're gonna have to figure out with your PC

every couple years or so. But I'd rather find out my hard drive is in the process of failing from a program

than just one day try to access it and all my mid 2000s image macros, they're all gone. That's internet history just up in smoke.

I would no longer have the capability to be as annoying with all of my relatives without my old memes. The website's a little off putting,

I'm not gonna lie to you on that. I don't know why there's versions of this thing with the anime girls on them, which is,

I mean that seems like a wares thing to me. Do people say wares anymore? Jesus I'm old.

And number 13 is Notepad++. Standard Notepad has gotten a lot better, but it's still nothing compared to Notepad++.

It's Notepad but better, supports scripting languages. It's way better than regular Notepad for editing config and INI files,

'cause you get color coding of stuff. It's just way easier to see what's going on. If you're an avid PC gamer, you know about INI files,

and the best way to edit them is Notepad++. There's also lots of other stuff that it's good for. At number 12 is WizTree.

Oh my God is WizTree the shit. I've used WizTree as long as it has existed. And before that I used WinDirStat,

but WizTree is so much faster. Like in all seriousness, disc space is at a premium, and some developers are trying to get game sizes

under control but some aren't. I'm looking at you Activision with your "Call of Duty" installs.

On consoles it's annoying, but on PC, trying to figure out what the hell is so big is even tougher with everything split up and spread all over

various files and folders. That's where WizTree really comes in handy. Scans your PC and gives you a visualization

of what the hell is going on. WizTree gets recommended the most out of this type of thing. Like I said, WinDirStat I used to use,

but it's so much slower than WizTree, also it doesn't push any paid upgrades. I mean the instant I found WizTree and scanned it,

I was like, how is this this fast? After having used WinDirStat. I mean it's such a dumb thing to be this enthusiastic about,

but seriously try it. If you want to clean your hard drive, use one of these programs,

and if you want to use one of these programs, use WizTree. And number 11 is OBS. It's free and open source recording software.

It's probably one of the best tools out there for capturing game footage and streaming. It's super customizable, easy to configure,

it's got a built-in audio mixer, a modular UI, it's really a good piece of software. Sure there's the rare game that doesn't play nice with it,

but if you wanna stream games or even just record clips, this is usually the best option. Like there's no reason to even have FRAPS anymore.

Not unless you get the rare game that doesn't play nice with it, I guess. I didn't really plan on throwing OBS on here,

'cause it's good, everyone uses it for a reason. But I was also curious if there's any other solid video recording options out there,

and there's some decent alternatives, but OBS just annihilates them. And number 10 is MSI Afterburner.

If you need a real time display to appear while playing games, the included RivaTuner is a great addition,

but the real reason I'm putting this on this list is it allows you to adjust all kinds of fan settings. The fan controls are really where the program stands out

against something like HWiNFO, or HWiNFO, as I said earlier. That program tells you how your system's performing, but it can't actually do anything.

This one lets you change a ton about how your fans operate, and honestly, sometimes that's really, really useful. And number nine is GOG Galaxy.

Playnite might be more fun to modify and customize, but GOG Galaxy is a solid alternative that maybe doesn't give you as many tools,

but does make collecting all your games into a single launcher very simple. It's as easy as pressing a button

and all your various collections are unified in a single launcher. Like of course the real reason to get GOG

is for all the DRM free games. When you buy a game off of GOG, it's as yours as a game is going to get right now.

That's an ongoing problem that you can't fix here, but with this you can just download a file and you're good to go.

You don't need the GOG launcher to play it. And if you archive it, it can never be taken away from you. Even Steam isn't that secure.

Now with both Steam and GOG, you're still only buying a license to play the game. You're not buying the game.

But the difference here is that GOG can't shut your game off, because you don't need to go through GOG

in order to launch the game. You could uninstall GOG and play the game. That doesn't change the stupid EULAs

and how licensing works. I mean that's something that needs to be addressed desperately.

Like if you buy something for $60 bucks, it should be yours. But even with GOG it's not. I mean unless the developer decides to do

the opposite of what every other developer does and actually give you the game. But I don't think a lot of developers do that.

Still, it's better for a lot of reasons. Yes, they do take games off of GOG, but that doesn't stop you from playing them

if you have the files. And also their launcher is, it's really simple and very quick.

And number eight is Prism Launcher. Everybody plays Minecraft, right? If you got kids, or siblings,

or maybe you're trapped off the grid for the past 15 years and just getting caught up with everything from 2009 on, you can't just play the base version.

You need the Prism Launcher for Minecraft. The fun of Minecraft is how many mods there really are. Lots of different fans have made so many different mods,

and if you wanna get 'em working you'll need other things. Usually that includes the Curseforge Launcher,

but there's another one that's more streamlined and direct, 'cause it doesn't require the Minecraft Launcher to do the work.

Don't just take my word for it. This one's recommended by the PC Gaming Wiki, which means it has to be the best, right?

I mean, I don't know. Couldn't tell you what's legitimately the best one. I've just found the Prism Launcher to be the easier

and more straightforward one to use. It makes switching up mods and versions of the game pretty simple.

And number seven is CPU-Z. Finding any real information other than the very basics can be annoyingly difficult just using Windows.

So this program can be very helpful for the times where you need to have more than just a serial number and a name.

Along with the basics, this simple program tells you your CPU's code name, processor, package, cache level,

what the main board and chipset are, each core's internal frequency and memory frequency, all sorts of stuff that's very good for diagnosing problems.

Also, let's say you're upgrading, there's necessary information you may need, you will find it here.

It's another informational program that serves a pretty specific purpose, but in this case, it's actually information

that's surprisingly difficult to get when you actually need it. So having something like this available is very helpful.

At number six is Everything. Everyone hates the Windows built in search. It sucks, it's inconsistent, it takes forever.

So use something else. I've brought up Everything before, but there's still nothing else better out there.

So here it is again. It's a program that performs super fast file searching over your entire machine, in all drives

and all connected devices. For things like modding and save file editing it's beyond useful.

Having to manually dig through the files to find something like that can be beyond tedious. So skip it and just use Everything.

It's simple, it's fast, I use it all the time, and I don't think I need to tell you that built-in Windows search sucks.

And number five, Steam. So Steam, yeah, I'm actually talking about Steam for one specific purpose, the controller remap options.

If you're one of those sickos that plays a lot of PC games with a controller, or you're like me and also play on a Steam Deck,

eventually you're gonna run into some issues. Games not recognizing what controller you're using or having garbled nonsensical controls.

The further back you go, the more pronounced these issues are gonna be. But even modern games have some controller issues.

I generally don't use them in complex situations, like a platformer I prefer a controller on, an FPS not so much,

but I can't get away with playing "The Finals" on a steam deck without remapping it. Like I have all my weapons

mapped to those back paddle buttons. Man, is that better. But it's a minefield to do that.

A lot of people end up just giving up on controllers entirely, go back to mouse and keyboard. But there's tools to help you out.

I mean there's one out there commonly recommended called Xpadder, but there's no free version of that. JoyToKey is free, but it's kind of sketchy

and very out of date. Steam just does it. And beyond that, they have also steadily improved

controller support over the last few years. Like, if you want to get a game working with a controller, default it to use Steam settings for the controller

and launch it from Steam, you're probably gonna have better luck than most other programs.

Pretty much anything you can do with those other programs you can do on Steam, only it's better and easier. And number four is the K-Lite Mega Codec pack.

Not really a program, but it's a necessity, particularly to get older PC games to work properly, or even just to watch videos on your computer

in basically obscure formats, for whatever reason you might need to do that. For a lot of older games though, they use formats

that are just no longer used in modern systems. And it's not super old games, it's literally some games that are like 10 years old.

If you don't have the proper codecs to run the videos, they won't run, it'll show a black screen, the video will get skipped, or in the worst cases,

the game will just fricking break. Every game's different in general, because everybody handles this different in general,

and there were different codecs and obviously stuff that people don't use anymore. That's the whole problem.

You're gonna need this if you're playing retro PC games. Also, like I said, very good for video, especially like MKV files.

I don't know where you might find MKV files, but if you need to play them. Nice thing though is that it just adds the codecs

to your computer. You don't need a specific video player. It's just gonna play in whatever video player

you already use, which is very nice. Just download the pack, install it, that's it. All in one fix for pretty much any video codec problem.

At number three is Scum VM, one of the olds out there. Like remember all those graphic adventure games from Lucas Arts, like "Secret of Monkey Island,"

"Day of the Tentacle," "Sam and Max," blah, blah, blah? They were all built on the Scum Engine, and like most games from that era,

they do not work well on modern hardware. That's where Scum VM comes in. It's a modern adventure game engine

that doesn't just allow you to play all those old games from Lucas Arts, but tons of other adventure games from the late eighties,

nineties, and early 2000s as well. Many with lots of new bells and whistles. Let's say you wanna play the adventure classic,

"The Longest Journey," Scum VM's obviously the best way to do it, like it's basically an emulator, but it's used officially by so many re-release

in modern day games, it's kind of its own special category. It's not some outlaw product. It's endorsed and supported by a lot of official sources.

It's only useful for the folks who still like point and click games, but it's well made and it's well supported.

At number two is RetroArch. Stuff like Playnite isn't great for emulation, but RetroArch is.

For people who need some kind of graphic interface to go along with their Amiga emulation while they're playing their very legally acquired backups

then RetroArch is your best option. It's a huge pain to set up and configure, but when you do it, it's great.

There's netplay, you can connect to Retro Achievements, drive yourself nuts trying to complete insane challenges there.

Or you could just waste hundreds of hours of time compiling and organize every little damn game from some long dead console

only to actually play it for about five minutes to make sure it works and then not deal with it anymore. That's the RetroArch experience.

You'll probably spend more time on setup than actually playing anything, but it's really satisfying when it's all nice and organized.

And finally at number one is 86Box. It's a super powerful but complex PC emulator, basically like PCM on overdrive.

It doesn't just emulate the software environments of old PCs, it lets you configure everything down to the type of CPU, the RAM, the sound card,

the hard drive, lets you change pretty much everything. And this is all in service of not just getting old PC games running on your system,

but making them functionally identical to how they would've run on the original hardware. As any PC gamer who's been around long enough knows,

there's just some games that will not work on modern systems no matter what you do. Or if they work, they're really compromised,

they're broken in some unexpected way, or just straight up don't play it like they did originally. It's not every, or even most games to be frank,

but there's always a few that just will not work. PC emulation is the only choice. This is the best way to do it.

It only emulates PCs up through the mid nineties, before DirectX was a thing. But that covers a huge swatch of the PC market

from that era. Getting this thing working is tough, and getting properly configured for your needs is tougher.

But there's a video from a fantastic YouTube channel called Tech Tangents that goes on a deep dive explaining the whole thing and how it works.

And I included the link if you're interested. This is just a fantastic tool to play those games, if you're willing to put the work in to understanding it.

And that's all for today. Leave us a comment, let us know what you think. If you like this video, click Like,

if you're not subscribed, now is a great time to do so. We upload brand new videos every day of the week. Best way to see them first is of course of subscription,

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for watching this video. I'm Falcon, you can follow me on Twitter @FalcontheHero. We'll see you next time right here on Gameranx.