tag studio It's a file manager designed to use tags instead of files because tags are a much better system. It's still in alpha and I haven't actually tested it yet but I plan to use it instead of regular file managers once it becomes stable and well supported.

SherpaOnnx TTS for Android. There are many different voices to pick from that sound very life like and are totally worth using with GPS apps like CoMaps.

Also, just found out about Medicat recently but haven't used it yet. It looks fantastic though: Medicat is a toolkit that helps compile a selection of the latest computer diagnostic and recovery tools into an easy to use toolkit.

Ventoy is a software you put on a USB stick to make it so you can load as many bootable ISOs as you want on it at the same time and still use the leftover space for normal file storage.

FMD (FindMyDevice) - An absolute necessity, especially if you aren't using Google services.

It allows you to use any device/contact you've approved to send commands to enable/disable various settings on your devices, like bluetooth, do not disturb, camera, GPS, etc. via SMS, a FMD server (self-host optional) or from notifications (i.e. use Signal to send commands). So if you've simply lost your phone in your house you could make it ring no matter what, or if it got stolen you could lock it, use GPS, or factory reset it entirely.

The dev made it after he lost a phone that didn't have Find My Device activated.

LibreOffice - simply the best office suite there is (IMHO). I was a MS-office user for years, but since I switched, I haven't looked back...

VLC (VideoLAN media player): play media files, DVDs, network streams and more. Just works,

Inkscape - the best vector graphics program out there. So easy to use, and so powerful.

Firefox - the original private webbrowser. Even though some people don't like the options in it (like those that let you stream Netflix and other DRM content). If people care about privacy, they use this browser, or one that is made from it...

GIMP - unlike Krita - which is made for drawing - this is made for photo-editing. It's like Photoshop. The learning curve is a bit steep, but it is really powerful.

Krita is a fantastic program for drawing. It's made for making beautiful paintings and animations.

Syncthing: Continuous, private, and encrypted file synchronization across multiple devices without using the cloud.

alternativeto.net is great for finding these

librewolf a privacy-focused fork of the latest stable firefox (win,linux,mac)

qBittorrent: only for your legal torrenting needs from e.g. archive.org :>

Calibre: great e-book manager

KDE Connect: An app for iOS, android, pretty much every flavor of linux, windows, etc. that lets you connect any devices together to share files, show notifications of other devices, use your phone as an input device(keyboard, mouse), control multimedia applications(start, play, stop, etc.), trigger commands, and everything else if you make a plugin for it.

Thunderbird - a brilliant e-mail program, which also handles contacts, newsfeeds, calender and more. It's available for multiple platforms, like Android, Windows, Linux and so forth...

strudel. From the website:

With Strudel, you can expressively write dynamic music pieces.

The best place to actually make music with Strudel is the Strudel REPL

It's really fun to make music in it, I recommend trying it out!

link to repo (codeberg)

Newpipe, an YouTube client, which is:

• ad free

• lightweight

• useful, it allows downloading videos, music, and playing them when screen is locked

• usable without account

• multi-platform, it can also serve as client for the PeerTube, Bandcamp, SoundCloud

KeePassXC: A modern, secure, open-source password manager that stores and manages sensitive information offline.

NextCloud - Self hosted personal cloud solution that you can run on Docker or bare metal.

https://nextcloud.com/

fzf fuzzy finder. Great tool to quickly find those files you were looking for.

Librera (android pdf+ reader).

I spend a lot of time reading pdfs on my phone, this has done an excellent job. Well featured, responsive, and seems respectful of the battery.

Ads or payment if you buy from the playstore, but free on F-droid and source code is here.

LocalSend should be called God Send because it'll save your life. It's AirDrop, but for everything and open source. Works really well, no setup, no server.

Anki (and AnkiDroid):

The gods of learning and studying with flashcards. You will never want another flashcard program, especially if you were still using Quizlet (so enshittified now...) because Anki uses SRS (spaced repetition system) which makes you review things right before your brain forgets it to reinforce the subject material.

Add-ons: Bread and butter of Anki, I use several to make beautiful automatic flashcards of reading material/videos/games when I study Japanese. There's an add-on for literally anything.

Cross platform: Free on desktop, cost $25 on iOS, and free on Android, although Ankidroid is an unofficial app. Still great though!

Cloud: Syncs your anki database across devices. If you don't use anki for a while, will delete from the cloud, but as long as you have your own local database intact, you can reupload again later.

Sharing Decks: If you don't feel like making your own decks, download ones that others shared for free.

Anki is used by language learners, college students, med students, etc. If you need to memorize it, use Anki.

Forgejo: A self-hosted, lightweight software forge offering Git repository hosting with an easy-to-install, low-maintenance platform focused on collaboration, federation, and privacy.

Lichess: A popular free, open-source online chess platform offering play, puzzles, and tournaments.

Immich is a photo/video hosting solution à la Google photos

tmux: A terminal multiplexer that enables managing multiple terminal sessions within a single window, allowing detaching and reattaching sessions to keep programs running in the background.

LibRedirect is an open-source browser extension for Firefox and Microsoft Edge that automatically redirects popular online services like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and others to privacy-friendly alternative websites, enhancing user privacy by avoiding trackers and data collection on the original platforms.

Rustdesk.

It's TeamViewer / AnyDesk without the headaches.

OsmAnd, mobile app for navigation and maps. Offline, based on OSM, can do anything. I use it for checking out and bookmarking places, finding POIs and pubic transport stations, routing (especially for bike and foot), measuring distances, and so on. It can also show and record tracks, do car navigation, edit OSM points, and more stuff that I don't use. Pro/plus/full version free on FDroid

MusicBrainz Picard: superb mp3 tagger with online metadata lookup feature and audio track fingerprinting

Joplin: An open-source note-taking and to-do app with markdown support and end-to-end encryption.

Pandoc: A universal document converter allowing conversion among numerous markup formats including Markdown, LaTeX, HTML, and Word.

Lemmy ^[1]^

Vassal - an open-source (LGPL-2.1) boardgame engine. basically, people build different modules for each game they want to play, then they can play that game over the internet or solo. Mostly focused on "chit-and-hex" style wargames.

• https://vassalengine.org/
• https://github.com/vassalengine/vassal

FairEmail, email app for Android that has every feature I can imagine. Available on FDroid

Zotero: a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF and ePUB files.

and lastly, Tor Browser: anonymous web browser to evade state censorship and surveillance

Tox is easy-to-use software that connects you with friends and family without anyone else listening in. While other big-name services require you to pay for features, Tox is completely free and comes without advertising. Chat, P2P serverless, screen/file sharing, voice, video, groups, encrypted.

https://tox.chat/

https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore