In our never-ending quest to find some of the best free software available, we’ve come up with 7 free programs that we think are awesome! Most of the software I share with you is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. As always, these programs are highly trusted and can perform many of the same tasks as high-priced software.
OBS Studio
First is OBS Studio which is a free and open- Source screen recorder it’s great for recording projects that can be saved to your computer and for live streaming of video games or anything else that you want to stream live I’ve used several screen recorders and OBS studio is the best that I’ve used unlike most free screen recorders OBS does not have any forced watermarks and you can record with up to 60 frames per second
Here is what the program looks like when you first launch it there’s too much to cover in this short video so I’ll just go over a few of the B Basics it’ll show you the screen area that will be recorded you can start live streaming by selecting start streaming or just selecting start recording for a recording that will be saved to your PC
If you go into settings you have several options that can be changed which will vary depending on whether you livestream or you plan on creating projects that will be saved to your computer one thing I’d recommend doing is going into the hotkey settings and adding some hotkeys that will make your life easier
If you plan to try out the software there is a slight learning curve there are several videos on YouTube that will get you started and OBS has an expansive help section on their site the latest release for OBS studio is available for Windows 10 and 11 Mac OS 11 and newer and it’s also available for Linux
Photos Sketcher
Now talk about Photos Sketcher is software that’ll take your pictures and turn them into artwork I find the effects are a lot better than those found in online photo editors let’s Jump Right In Photos Sketcher is really easy to use select the blue folder and then select your picture if you want to zoom in on your image or zoom out
You can use the magnifiers located in the upper right-hand corner and select the paint icon there are more than 20 different drawing styles that you can choose from if you hover your mouse over each style you can see an example for this one I’ll go down to painting effects and select painting six oil painting you can change the strength of the effect along with other settings I’ll just leave them where they are and select draw and then just wait for it to finish
Now you’ll see in the right pane it’s created a cool looking oil painting in the banner at the top you have the options to add text to undo or redo your changes and to save just select the floppy disc photo Sketcher at this time is available for Windows if you’re a Mac User there’s also a link on their download page to download an experimental version of their software
Bleachbit
Now third is to talk about Bleachbit which is a free and open-source disc cleaner privacy manager and can help to optimize your system this is for those people who don’t want to use the built-in tools on their computer’s operating system in Bleachbit you can delete cookies free cash clear internet history delete logs and temporary files plus it can clean thousands of applications including Google Chrome Firefox Adobe Flash among others here’s how you use it first off before making any major changes
It’s always best to back up your system by selecting options in the left pane it’ll show you what it does to the right with Firefox it says it’ll delete backup files delete web cach delete cookies and all sorts of other stuff checked except for passwords don’t check anything in the left pane unless you’re 100% sure that you know what you’re doing
I’ll check off some more stuff here I’ll do Flash and Google Chrome to get that same warning here I’ll select cancel after you’ve made all your choices select preview this will show you everything that Bleachbit will delete shows Here the dis space to be recovered is about 1.3 gigabytes now all you have to do is Select clean and you’ll get a warning are you sure you want to permanently delete files according to the selected operations if you’re okay with that select delete.
I won’t do this now there are a couple of other things I want to show you so I’ll select cancel if you select help you have the options for release notes and system information but if you select help contents and then hit okay it will open a web page with links to view documentation the official Bleachbit form and you can watch video tutorials bleach bit is available for Windows and Linux
Kodi
Cody which is a free and open-source media player software if you’ve ever used Plex it shares some similarities you can use cod to view media directly on your computer or if you have a supported Smart TV or streaming device that also has a Cod app it allows your PC to behave like a media server to be able to stream your movies TV shows music and other media to those devices what brings a lot of people to Cody is the add-ons
There are several categories of add-ons for video or audio to stream internet content they also have add-ons for skins to change the look and feel of Cody add-ons for weather and so many more which are all completely free after you install Cody and first launch if Cody is something that interests you there are hundreds of tutorials on YouTube to check out along with documentation and how-to guides on their site Cody is available for Windows Linux Mac Android iOS and Raspberry Pi next up is
Banshee
Banshee which is an open-source media player it has a ton of features for sorting and organizing your music videos podcasts and audiobook library you can create playlists listen to and rip audio CDs and listen to and organize internet radio stations let’s go take a look at banshee if you’ve ever used the old Windows Media Player or media monkey
Banshee has a similar look and feel to import your media files head over to Media and select import media from here you have the option to import from local folders and files Amazon MP3 purchases in the iTunes media player I’ll select local folders and then choose folders I’ll go find Pink Floyd and import them so I’ll select Pink Floyd and then select Import
I find that it adds the media very quickly Banshee is user friendly so you should have no problem learning how to use it the latest release for Banshee is nearly four years ago but I find it still works great it’s primarily available from any of the Linux dros with a beta quality for mac and an alpha quality pre for Windows
Flux
Flux is a program that adjusts the color temperature of your display according to your location and time of day blue light emitting from your screens in the evening can make it more difficult to sleep flux reduces the blue light levels it’s impossible to demonstrate because the color temperatures can’t be recorded so I’ll just go over some of the settings you can change the 24-hour presets
I prefer reduced eye strain if you click on the sun icon it will show you a 24-hour preview there are also other settings that you can change and it can also be paired with the Phillips Hue Lights many operating systems now have a built-in night mode but none that I’ve used are as good flux is primarily available for Windows and has experimental versions for Mac OS Linux IOS and Android
LMMS
This last one for you is LMMS this one’s not for everyone it’s made specifically for musicians LMMS is a free and open-source digital audio workstation for creating music it comes bundled with an assortment of instrument and effect plugins you can produce music by creating Melodies and beats synthesizing and mixing sounds and so much more when you’re working on a project this is what the overall layout will look like if this is something that interests you I’d recommend checking out their documentation section that has a lot of resources including video tutorials LMMS is available for Windows Linux and Mac thanks for reading…
Learn More About