5 Free Software You Should Have on Your PC! 2026

Howdy folks, Brett here. Since our last video in our free software series where we showed you viewer favorites over the years, many of you asked that we do an all-new video with free programs never before shown in this series. So coming up in this all-new edition in our free software series, I'll show you five free programs in a variety of categories you may not know existed until now. Let's get started. First up is Affinity. As I've mentioned in the past, Affinity was the best paid for alternative to Adobe's programs for photo editing, vector design, and page layout. Since then they've been acquired by Canva and now those programs are completely free. They've now combined all three of their programs into an all-in-one program with a ton of customization options to make it your own. It also has 100% compatibility with Adobe's file types including PSD files. It has a fantastic layout. Selecting Vector here in the upper left will be your Adobe Illustrator alternative for graphic design. It has all the tools for vector design and illustration. Selecting Pixel will be your alternative to programs like Photoshop and GIMP. It includes tons of tools for professional image editing. It also has retouching tools and if you select layout this will be your alternative to Adobe InDesign for creating documents like magazines, posters, books, and brochures. Those three I just mentioned are the ones that you used to have to pay for with Affinity that are now completely free. All of the primary tools for all three of them are located on the left with additional tools here on the right including a color picker. What is not free to the right of layout is their Canva AI. To use the Canva AI it requires a premium account starting at $15 per month. Affinity is available to install for both Windows and Mac OS with support for iPad coming soon. And I'll say it here first, these three alternatives included are now the best free alternatives to Adobe's programs. The first of two browsers I have for you in this video is the Zen Browser. It's free and open source and it's based on Mozilla's Firefox. It's focused on privacy with a layout inspired by the Arc Browser which some of you may know is no longer being updated with new features. Zen Browser attempts to minimize distractions to help with productivity. Some of its productivity features include workspaces to organize your tabs, compact mode hides the tab bar when you don't need it to give you more screen real estate, glance makes it quicker to switch between tabs, and split view lets you view two tabs side by side. The layout is quite different. Instead of the toolbar being at the top it has a sidebar on the left which includes the address bar, bookmarks, an area for your workspaces, and your open tabs. Zen Browser at this time is only available for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Next up is Flow Launcher. This free and open source program for Windows only acts as a fast keyboard driven launcher and productivity tool. It allows users to quickly search and open applications, files, and websites, perform calculations, run system and shell commands, and much more through a single customizable search bar. To launch Flow Launcher use the keyboard shortcut which is the alt key and space bar. This is where you can do all those things I mentioned earlier. For example if I wanted to open the Handbrake program to convert a file simply type Handbrake. You can use the arrow keys here if you want to go up and down but since it's the first one listed here I would just hit enter on my keyboard to open it. To customize it it has support for plugins along with the plugin store to enhance the functionality. There are various themes that you can choose from and you can find those here and it also has hot keys to make using it quicker. When installing Flow Launcher you might get this warning that says running this app might put your PC at risk. I assure you that this program has been used by those that work in IT and security professionals for many years and is completely safe. To move forward click more info and then you would click run anyway. As I said earlier Flow Launcher is for Windows only. For those using a Mac Alfred is a free program with the option to pay for enhanced features that's been around a while that is very similar to Flow Launcher. The second of the browsers in this video is Opera Air. Just like Zen Browser it's designed to get people to chill out. As they say to experience a more focused balanced and stress-free web. They claim to be the first browser with mindfulness at its core with mindful breaks smart exercises and guided meditations. They'll set something they call boosts which are binaural beats and sounds to boost creativity stay focused and more. The layout is very basic without too much clutter. The main window has a search bar. Google is the default. This can be changed in settings. The default speed dial has links to sites for people to chill out. You can add other sites here as well. Along the left starting at the top there's workspaces, there's boosts, their take a break feature and other stuff. Opera Air can be installed on both Windows and Mac OS and we also did a review and tutorial of it in an earlier video. To check that out the link to it in the description. Next up is the Microsoft PC Manager for Windows 10 and Windows 11. This includes a collection of tools to clean up your computer and boost its performance. While I prefer doing most of this stuff on my own PC Manager is still better than using Crap Cleaner which in itself turned to crap with numerous issues over the years. Journalists posing as tech experts that don't know anything still recommend using it. Very sad. Then there is Bleach Bit which is an excellent program but for novices can be difficult to use. As of the recording of this video in September 2026 Microsoft has only officially made PC Manager available in a select group of regions. Those include the United States, India, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In unsupported regions their website lists it as coming soon. You can work around those restrictions by changing your region settings in Windows. When you open Microsoft PC Manager its user interface is very easy to figure out. In its home tab you'll see its most popular tools. In the other tabs on the left you'll find other tools that are quite useful. In protection you can do a virus and threat protection scan. In storage you can do a full cleanup scan. In apps you can easily enable and disable programs at startup and it'll offer suggestions. And toolbox includes an assortment of useful tools. So if you're on Windows 10 or 11 and you're still using Crap Cleaner uninstall it and use Microsoft's very own PC Manager which is available from the Microsoft store. We also did a beginner's guide video for it. That link is in the description as well. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up and share it with others. What free programs do you use that you think are amazing? Let us know in the comments. And if you're new to our channel subscribe and make sure to click the bell to not miss out on our latest videos in our free software series and other tech related stuff here on Brettintech.