Favourite software that nobody talks about: your hidden gems

[FrostBear]

Not the obvious answers. Not the software that comes up in every productivity thread. The things you use regularly that you almost never see mentioned, the tools that solve a specific problem so well that you can barely imagine how you managed without them.

Could be free and open source, could be paid, could be something obscure that does one very specific thing perfectly. The criterion is that it is genuinely underappreciated relative to how useful it is.

I will start when I think of the clearest example from my own workflow but I want to hear yours first.

[DodgyCoder]

Syncthing. Peer to peer file sync without any cloud involvement. Runs in the background, always works, never loses anything. I have used it for four years and it has never given me a reason to think about it, which is exactly what you want from infrastructure software.

[Cobalt Pilgrim]

Obsidian for note taking. Not completely obscure but much less used than it deserves. The local markdown files and linking structure has changed how I organise information. The fact that my notes are just text files I own entirely matters to me.

[Craig]

KeePassXC. I know password managers are mainstream but most people use the cloud ones. Local, open source, cross-platform, and I trust it precisely because I can read the code and the community can audit it.

[Policy Cipher]

Bulk Rename Utility on Windows. Does exactly what it says. If you have ever needed to rename 500 files according to a pattern it is indispensable and nothing else comes close for the specific task.

[BrokenDave72]

Calibre for ebook management. The UI is famously ugly but it does things no other software does for managing a large ebook library, converting formats, and syncing to readers. Genuinely irreplaceable.

[Northernah]

Ventoy. Makes a USB drive that can boot from any ISO file you put on it. No more creating one USB drive per operating system. Put all your ISOs in one folder and boot any of them. Changed how I do system work.

[SortedMate]

mpv as a video player. Plays everything, infinitely configurable, uses almost no resources. I have used it for years and it has never failed to play something.

[DudleyBoy]

Ditto as a clipboard manager on Windows. Keeps a history of everything you have copied. Sounds minor until you lose something you copied earlier and realise you needed it. After that you never turn it off.