5 free Windows 11 apps I use to get my boss off my back

For the most part, whenever I sit down in front of my Windows 11 PC, it’s because I have work to get done. While it’s certainly possible to be productive on a tablet or a smartphone, a traditional PC just offers that little bit of additional flexibility that I find to be an enhancing agent in my workflow.

Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system is filled to the brim with programs that are designed to keep up a productive work cadence. While there are plenty of excellent paid apps that are well worth checking out, the platform is also home to many excellent free and open-source (FOSS) alternatives that are no-brainer downloads.

Here are five of my personal favorite free and open-source Windows 11 apps that I rely on to get through my work day, all without having to spend a dime or having to worry about my data being harvested without my knowledge.

LibreOffice

A free and open-source suite of office apps

Big tech companies have a relative monopoly on the digital office suite market, whether it be Microsoft Office, Google Workspace, or Apple iWork. I have my radar on the Swiss-based Proton company’s new end-to-end encrypted alternative, but I haven’t yet had the chance to check it out for myself.

For the most part, I’ve been a fan of The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice suite, which is free, open-source, and community-driven. LibreOffice includes all the essential apps you’d expect, including Writer (for word processing), Calc (for spreadsheets), Impress (for slideshow presentations), Draw (for vector graphics editing), Math (for mathematical expression formula editing), and Base (for database management).

Sure, these included LibreOffice apps aren’t quite as visually up-to-date as their big-tech alternatives, and you also sacrifice online cloud access and live collaboration functions, but these are small prices to pay for a free and reliable set of tools that never ask you to connect to the internet or to log into an account.

Interestingly, many government agencies across the globe are beginning to embrace LibreOffice due to its open nature. Most recently in the news, Austria’s military made the sweeping decision to ditch Microsoft Office in favor of LibreOffice.

Audacity

A powerful audio editor that doesn’t cost a penny

Audacity is an iconic Windows program that brings basic multi-track audio editing to the PC in a free and open-source capacity. The app’s interface is dominated by a timeline that displays audio tracks inline, along with a large assortment of controls and tools that enable the editing and splicing of audio.

Audacity isn’t exactly a looker, but it’s a flexible tool that beginners and experts alike can use for general-purpose audio mixing and non-destructive (non-permanent) editing. The program can also be used for recording audio, for exporting audio into various file formats, and even for spectrum analysis and spectrogram creation.

Perhaps more importantly than anything else, Audacity is compatible with just about everything you might find yourself throwing at it. The app works with WAV, AIFF, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis audio formats out of the box, though others like M4A (AAC) and WMA need to be downloaded separately due to licensing issues.

GIMP

A fully free Photoshop alternative

GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a beloved free and open-source image editor that has called Windows its home for many years. GIMP primarily serves as an alternative to Adobe Photoshop, but it also competes with the likes of Paint.Net, Krita, Inkscape, and other FOSS vector and raster editors available on Windows 11.

As with so many other classic FOSS apps for Windows, GIMP’s user interface isn’t the most visually stunning out there, but it gets the job done and them some. On its surface, GIMP is relatively novice-friendly, but behind the scenes the available editing options are enough for even many power users to get by with.

Everything you might expect to see in a photo editing application is present and accounted for with GIMP, including support for layers, layer masks, plugins, scripts, free-hand drawing, stylus inking, and much more.

OpenShot Video Editor

Video editing without the subscription fees

OpenShot is a classic video editing program for Windows that serves as a free, open-source, and user-friendly alternative to something like Adobe Premier Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro. The app is fairly powerful, with options to trim and slice video, add animation and keyframes, insert video effects and audio waveforms, and more within its timeline interface.

Even with its focus on approachability, it takes a bit of time and patience to acclimate to the OpenShot interface, and this is doubly true if you carry over previous muscle memory from an alternative video editing app. However, if you’re just getting started with video editing, or if you’re looking to swap to a FOSS-style editor, OpenShot gets my recommendation.

7-Zip

Zip and unzip archived digital files

7-Zip is a classic Windows program that serves one purpose and does so solidly: compressing and uncompressing (zipping and unzipping) archived digital files. The app is free and open-source, and it’s compatible with a range of file formats. Aside from the native 7z compression format, 7-Zip can make quick work of ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, and WIM files.

In addition to this, 7-Zip is capable of extracting files from various disk image and installer file formats, including RAR, ISO, WIM, and XZ. While it’s true that Windows 11 supports basic compression tools out of the box, it’s generally thought of as slower, less efficient, and less compatible than 7-Zip and other alternatives like WinRAR and WinZip.

As far as archival utilities go, you simply can’t go wrong with the tried-and-true 7-Zip, and it more than earns its spot within my PC’s ( recently updated) Start Menu.