I always install these 3 free apps on every Windows PC

We all have apps we have to install on Windows—without them, the OS just feels lacking or incomplete. While some of these are paid or freemium apps like Photoshop and Notion, many are completely free and sometimes more powerful than their premium alternatives. Here are three such free apps I consider must-haves on every Windows installation. In fact, two of these are actually made by Microsoft and should've just been included by default.

PowerToys

It makes Windows 11 feel complete

PowerToys is an open-source utility suite developed by Microsoft themselves, which makes it genuinely baffling that it isn't part of Windows 11 out of the box. At the time of writing, it includes 32 utilities, most of which make Windows a pleasure to use.

FancyZones is probably the headline feature for most people—it lets you create custom window layouts and snap windows into them, making multi-window workflows a lot more seamless. Workspaces takes that further by letting you save entire arrangements of apps and launch them all at once with a single click.

Here’s a quick look at some of the other tools I personally love using:

• Command Palette: A macOS Spotlight-style launcher for opening apps, doing quick calculations, finding settings, and even executing terminal commands.
• Text Extractor: Grabs text from almost anything on your screen—images, videos, or apps that won't let you copy text—with a simple keyboard shortcut.
• Awake: Keeps your PC from sleeping without making you dig into the power settings, which is perfect for long downloads or renders.
• Always On Top: Pins any window above everything else, which is incredibly useful when you’re referencing data or copying and pasting between apps.
• Find My Mouse: Spotlights your cursor when you shake your mouse or double-tap Ctrl (you can map it to a different key)—a small thing, but on a large or multi-monitor setup, you'll use it constantly.

And that's not even the full list. There's a lot going on inside PowerToys, and once you've used it for a week, you'll wonder why any of it is optional.

Everything

Because searching for files shouldn’t feel annoying

The default file search in Windows—for lack of a better word—sucks. It's slow, whether you're searching from the Start menu or inside File Explorer. And worse than being slow, it's unreliable—it'll sometimes flatly tell you a file doesn't exist when it's sitting right there on your drive.

Everything, developed by Voidtools, solves this problem completely. It indexes every single file on your system and gives you a simple search window where you can just type the name of a file and watch the results appear instantly. It works by reading NTFS file tables directly rather than crawling your drives the way Windows Search does, which is why the difference feels so dramatic.

My only real complaint is that it doesn't support fuzzy search, so there's no typo tolerance—you need to get the filename roughly right. If it had that, it would be perfect.

Now, Everything isn't a particularly well-known app, and that's a shame because it solves one of the most headache-inducing parts of Windows. That alone makes it a strong candidate for something Microsoft should bundle with Windows by default.

Ideally, I'd prefer Microsoft to integrate this functionality directly into File Explorer. But if that's too much work for the trillion-dollar company, just shipping the app by default would be great as well.

Sysinternals Suite

Task Manager only shows you the surface—this shows you everything

Like PowerToys, the Sysinternals Suite is developed by Microsoft, and once again, I'm at a complete loss as to why it isn't included with the OS. It's a collection of over 50 small utilities that show you exactly what your system is doing under the hood.

Here are some of my favorites from the suite:

• Process Explorer: A supercharged Task Manager that shows you every process, its full hierarchy, and which handles and DLLs it has open. It's great for figuring out what's locking a file or eating up your CPU.
• Autoruns: Shows you everything configured to start automatically with Windows—startup entries, services, scheduled tasks, browser helpers, and more—far beyond what Task Manager's Startup tab reveals.
• Process Monitor: Provides real-time logging of file system, Registry, and process activity. When an app misbehaves and you want to know exactly what it's touching, this is the tool.
• TCPView: Gives you a live list of every TCP and UDP connection on your machine and shows you which process owns it. It's handy for spotting anything unexpectedly phoning home.
• RAMMap: Gives you a detailed breakdown of exactly how your physical memory is being used, page by page.
• Disk2vhd: Converts a physical disk into a virtual hard disk (VHD) that you can use with a virtual machine. It’s a great for creating a testing environment or migrating your Windows install.

These tools give you a level of control over Windows that nothing built into the OS comes close to. My only complaint is that, unlike Microsoft's PowerToys, the Sysinternals utilities look very dated. But then again, these aren't "toys." They're intended for serious technical troubleshooting, where information matters more than appearance—so I'm willing to give them a pass.

It’s not like Microsoft shies away from bloat

You could argue that these apps are targeted at power users, which is why Microsoft doesn't include them by default—if anyone needs them, they can just download them themselves. However, Microsoft actively pushes plenty of bloat in Windows Already. So I personally feel that including a few genuinely useful tools would be better for both the user experience and Windows' reputation.