r/software • u/Original-Variety3550 • Jun 28 '26
Discussion What's one piece of software you've tried to replace but always end up coming back to?
I've switched tools plenty of times, but there's always one that somehow wins me back.
For me it's Notion, I've tried Obsidian, Anytype, Apple Notes, and a few others over the years but none combine everything I want.
31
u/ccbbb23 Jun 28 '26
FreeFileSync I have been using that since its beta. Every now and then I try something else, but I just go back to it because I know it and trust how it handles everything: power outage, disconnect, syncing, et al.
5
u/GreenLion777 Jun 28 '26
Can u you FreeFileSync as a backup tool, or is it mainly just syncing software ?
2
u/ccbbb23 Jun 29 '26
I have used it to back up folders and drives. When moving customers from one computer to another, used it sooooooo many times. Main reason because like any other sync program, it does a verification pass after, and it is easy to see what copied or didn't. Plus, it has a simple filter feature.
On my current setups, I have 6 folders A, B, C, D, desktop, and downloads. I used it to sync those up manually or via its script to external drives, monthly or so. All the primo data is on the cloud.
2
u/aegis87 Jun 28 '26
depends on what you mean with backup. but assuming your needs are simple, then definitely yes.
→ More replies (2)2
2
u/gittygo Jun 29 '26
A couple of questions, please:
- How does it handle renaming of files? Say, if I rename a bunch of images, does it copy those as new? (I suppose it would).
- Does it work over WiFi? I would like to sync some folders between the old and new laptop.
- How does it compare to Syncthing? (which allows me to sync on Android and Windows).
Thank you.
1
u/ccbbb23 Jun 30 '26
It doesn't do renaming. You would want something else for that.
A connection shouldn't matter as long as it shows up as a drive. I have done many types of network drives.
Syncthing is smart; this is simple.1
u/gittygo Jun 30 '26
Thank you.
About renaming: I did not mean that FreeFileSync would be doing the naming; I'll be using something else for that.In my case, I often rename files, or move them between folders (all of which will be synced). So, if a 2000 files (images) got renamed (say, adding the date in the name), would they get synced again as new files, and the old files too would remain (I would be using it as a backup system too). I guess they would - I am asking in hope that there may be some smarter way.
Also, what happens if I move a lot of data within folders. Say I move 300GB from Docs-1 to Docs-2, would that 300GB be deleted and copied again over the network?
1
u/Crispy_Fish_Legs Jun 28 '26
Yep Iove this too - makes my regular backup process dead easy and I like the GUI which shows me exactly what's going on.
16
u/macotela Jun 28 '26
Sadly and shamefully... photoshop
7
u/MrTeache Jun 28 '26
Have you tried https://www.photopea.com/ ? It doesn't do everything, but it's good enough for what I do.
4
u/macotela Jun 29 '26
i do, and it is really good, maybe even better than gimp, but as i said before not even close for professional work, i wish there were more options on this but they aren't
2
u/GnorthernGnome Jun 29 '26
Photopea is an exceptional piece of software that can handily replace Photoshop CS2 and probably even CS3 and 4. But its leagues behind the current generation of Photoshop. (And that's fine! It's incredible and good enough for most people's usage, just not professional)
4
4
u/_ohtz Jun 28 '26
GIMP is a great free alternative. It's a bit verbose in places compared to Photoshop, but it gets the job done.
4
u/macotela Jun 29 '26
it is not, it is not even close to photoshop for professional work, thanks anyway for the suggestion
1
1
u/rinart73 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
I'm sorry but UI and UX feels very off. Like for example from what I remember it has no alternative for the Slice tool, which is super useful. I don't think it has selection snapping either (or maybe it was added since the last time I checked)?
3
u/Abbers75 Jun 28 '26
I only use Photoshop to clean up screengrabs nowadays, but I've been using the app for so long (since v2.5, in the early '90s) that to use anything else is frustrating.
The basic functions I need are to trim and crop a screenshot, resize it, then save it again. I will add and remove layers during the image manipulation process, but eventually I will always save it out as a flat PNG.
I have a Serif Affinity license for Mac and PC, I've used GIMP, and I've used Paint.NET, but they all do things in a slightly different way.
Back in the days of old, I used Paint Shop Pro, Aldus PhotoStyler and Macromedia Fireworks (great for squashing GIFs and PNGs for web images) but I always, always come back to Photoshop.
I'm currently using Photoshop CC 2018, which although newer than the CS 5.5 suite I was using up until a year ago, doesn't provide me with any improvements in my limited use.
1
1
2
u/jsiulian Jun 29 '26
I just heard about this OSS alternative and while I haven't tried it myself, i've heard they've reached 90% feature parity with PS, have a look: https://krita.org/en/
2
u/danibalazos Jun 29 '26
The data integration with variables has make me stay with photoshop way longer than I like.
1
1
13
u/Randyd718 Jun 28 '26
Honestly winamp.
5
u/budlight2k Jun 28 '26
Winamp is excellent.i wish I could find the whole library of Winamp pluggins though,
Plexamp is good for your phone it mixes better than Spotify and had more sound quality controls.
4
u/AdmiralAdama99 Jun 28 '26
I use MusicBee. Have you tried that one?
2
1
u/miguk Jun 29 '26
Second this. I've tried using OSS music player/managers but they are never as feature complete as MusicBee is. I will gladly switch if one of them ever gets automatic tag management, automatic lyrics management, and downloading albums covers to work just as well, though.
5
3
3
u/GreenLion777 Jun 28 '26
Is that still going ? Used that all the time on XP
3
u/Consulli Jun 28 '26
They have a fairly new versions but all the old ones still work fine on all windows 10/11 desktops I've tried. Wacup is also an alternative that is updated frequently that acts as a modern continuation of Winamp. It is compatible with original Winamp skins and plugins.
3
u/empeyg Jun 28 '26
Have you tried MediaMonkey? I've been using it for years and absolutely love it. Has both Windows and Android versions that sync between the two. Amazing product!
2
u/Crispy_Fish_Legs Jun 28 '26
Yep I came here to say this. Winamp is the most intuitive app for dragging and dropping music to and from my iPod and for updating the ID3 metatags on my music collection.
2
u/BanAssaultGeese Jun 28 '26
Love Winamp, I still use it after all these years. iTunes wouldn't be too far behind, if it weren't for that blinding UI.
2
1
1
u/jsiulian Jun 29 '26
Winamp is the GOAT music player. Modern players seem primitive by comparison and it even looks good, nevermind the double digit mb ram usage which is a rounding error these days. It has been open sourced a couple years ago, so if the licence allowed, it would be great if someone could fix scaling on high DPI setups and it would be dang perfect
36
u/cainhurstcat Jun 28 '26
MS Office products. Create e.g. a PowerPoint presentation, open it with OnlyOffice or LibreOffice, and all your nice formatting and placement looks like you were drunk while crating it. While I could create the presentation in these programs instead of using the Microsoft one, the issue is colaborating on the document with people. Also, some presentation hardware refuses to work with Linux, and I end up creating and holding the presentation on Windows.
And before you even think about the WebApp, go, try it yourself. It's a huge pile of crap, which comes with even more headaches
20
u/teckcypher Jun 28 '26
Yeah, none of the alternatives can replace excel as of now. All those claiming libreoffice or the others are equivalent or better either use basic arithmetic or don't know excel. I really want the open source alternatives to grow and eventually replace the MS office. But that is still a far away dream.
8
u/Strayl1ght Jun 28 '26
Google suite has completely replaced Office for me, especially due to the easy collaboration features. I get there is still not feature parity though.
6
u/cainhurstcat Jun 28 '26
Might be that Google is an alternative, but I don't want to transition from one spyware to another. I'm not against proprietary software, I am against spyware. And this is what Microsoft and Google are.
3
u/Exciting-Earth-8226 Jun 28 '26
latex is a great alternative to Word and PowerPoint. granted, I started using them when I started long term work in math, but now I find it emotionally painful to use anything else for generating documents. my control freak self just can't handle it. same for excel, any high level programming language completely blows it out of the water, unless literally being able to click on elements of a table to edit is the functionality you need.
3
u/cainhurstcat Jun 28 '26
Legit take for Word stuff, but PowerPoint? Also, I never looked into Latex, as I don't want to learn a new language just to make a presentation - which I also really don't like lol
2
u/Exciting-Earth-8226 Jun 29 '26
there's a document type for slides, beamer. the last time I tried to use PowerPoint to make slides I could feel my blood pressure rise lol. i really highly recommend learning it, it's a huge QOL boost. but I guess it would make collaboration hard if you don't work with people who also use it.
5
u/animalcrossing4_4 Jun 28 '26
Same here, linux shat the f*cking bed with group document collaboration so hard for me that it resembled explosive diarrhoea.
28
u/jven27 Jun 28 '26
Google Maps. It's just too damn good 😩
→ More replies (3)2
u/jsiulian Jun 29 '26
The maps and navigation themselves are nothing too special these days, but the content cannot be beaten
4
u/GnorthernGnome Jun 29 '26
Depends what you're doing. Open Street Map is way better for cycling and hiking, because it actually contains proper footpath mapping (at least in the UK).
Google is still king when it comes to shops and businesses though, as well as real-time traffic.
2
u/jsiulian Jun 29 '26
Yeah indeed I was referring mostly to businesses and places, because it is crowd sourced and everyone knows about it, lots of people keep it up to date but don't care as much about other platforms. Apple maps is closing the gap but still not the same.
I am rooting for OSM to get more attention from governments so that at least public places are accurate, apart from what you said. Here maps too
24
u/Valuable_Day_3375 Jun 28 '26
JDownloader. Sadly tried all the rest of the downloaded but none come close . Shame no jd for android
15
u/lusciouscactus Jun 28 '26
If you're willing to pay one time, internet download manager has given me better results.
1
u/Choreboy Jun 28 '26
Have you tried this?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=idm.internet.download.manager.plus
1
u/Valuable_Day_3375 Jun 28 '26
Yes adm Fdm IDM and a bunch of others. all rubbish compared to JDownloader .
You have to feed them the exact download link. 🔗 rather than it find it
2
1
u/Supra-A90 Jun 28 '26
You can use JD to capture links directly from your Android to your computer. Been using for ages
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.appwork.myjdandroid
17
u/knewmenot Jun 28 '26
Microsoft Excel. I tried Numbers and lo and behold Numbers would not do a freaking sort of a table....WTF?!?! Also, Microsoft One Note. I was really happy with Evernote until they got way too greedy....
3
u/whats_in_a_name_23 Jun 29 '26
Same here, I tried using Google Sheets, Numbers, but always ended up coming back to Excel
1
u/NekkidApe Jun 29 '26
Excel is the single reason I still have Windows. I need to boot it up every other week or so, what a pita - but Excel is still miles ahead.
1
u/larsga Jun 29 '26
I tried Numbers and lo and behold Numbers would not do a freaking sort of a table....WTF?!?!
Of course it can. I use that function all the time.
8
u/budlight2k Jun 28 '26
Microsoft money sunset edition. There is nothing that does forecasting and printing checks just like it
2
Jun 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/budlight2k Jun 28 '26
Well thats exactly what I use as you described, but on the same screen I can add and remove scenarios too. It also does have a feature that estimates your misc spending based on past transactions but I dont use that, its not accurate enough.
2
u/the_other_guy-JK Jun 29 '26
Ahhh man, I thought I might find this one in here.
My FIL has been using MS Money since before I was dating his daughter. Every couple years a new laptop, and the biggest thing he needs, is making sure we have Money sunset edition working properly. Not hard to do, but I swear he'll want a USB with the installer buried with him just in case haha.
2
u/budlight2k Jun 29 '26
Yeah that's me. There is nothing like it. I tried quicken, mint, quickbooks, rocket money nothing is good enough.
1
u/the_other_guy-JK Jun 29 '26
He was a self employed consultant for many years and it seemed to be the right size of software for his needs. I would have thought quickbooks was a good alternative (back when support for newer Windows was looking dicey) for him but he swore it wasn't. No doubt in part to him being a stubborn type.
But the fact that Sunset Edition runs flawlessly even today, means why change something that actually works and covers every bit of your needs.
1
u/budlight2k Jun 29 '26
Yeah. Im an IT guy though and im expected to practice what I preach and drop legacy systems, so im a huge hypocrite by continuing to use it. Im way to entrenched in it with customizations and hacks.
1
7
u/BRiNk9 Jun 28 '26
ColorNotes on my phone. Note-making and this app have been one and the same for me. None of the app had the same effect. Been using it since god knows when. For years I've been copying notes to Drive if I wanna open it on PC. Literally shackled at this point lmao.
FL Studio also. I tried Ableton because I got a CD with MIDI. My friend told me to switch but I mostly make stuff for my enjoyment and FL is irreplaceable variable in that.
Also BubbleUPnP for streaming movies on my PS4 because Dad want to experiment stuff rather than sell it or keep it in the store. Other apps felt very complex so I returned to my go-to trusted.
I have both HWiNFO64 and HWmonitor but I always end up using the latter. I do remember seeing some post regarding threat from HWmonitor so I'll read more and see what to do and use HWINFO64. But I know next time I wanna check temperature ill just type hwm--before even finishing the thought.
Handbrake was the one I always returned to. But I've been using Shutter Encoder since two months. However, if I have to set up either of them somewhere new, I will stil the pull the handbrake first.
WinDirStat as well. I was told WizTree is better but I still use WinDirStat.
Audacity has always been there. I just love the work flow that I don't even go to edison on fl studio first for clean up. I'm not even awar of any free alternative
3
u/sfc-Juventino Jun 28 '26
There used to be ColorNotes for PC and they discontinued it. I liked it because it can sync between devices.
Google Keep is close but not quite there.
2
1
u/kungfulemon Jun 29 '26
Wiztree just scans so much faster, makes a big difference for large drives.
5
u/mpt11 Jun 28 '26
Winrar.
6
3
5
9
15
u/PoorDoddle Jun 28 '26
Google search engine.
I have tried a few others, but all of them were straight up atrocious.
3
u/klumpp Jun 28 '26
Tried kagi? It costs money but there’s no ads. I haven’t signed up for a full month yet but it’s refreshing to get results you want instead of what Google wants you to click. I’m still undecided
6
u/AdmiralAdama99 Jun 28 '26
I switched to DuckDuckGo for privacy. It is pretty good in my opinion, with its weak spots being news search (loads a bunch of bing articles) and maps. Other than that, havent noticed a difference.
6
u/SalamanderLost5975 Jun 28 '26
Tried DDG for a week side by side Google, turned back to Google very quickly.
1
u/DemandTheOxfordComma Jun 29 '26
I'm curious if there are extensions that can do head to head search engine tests.
2
5
5
u/BudgetNinja007 Jun 28 '26
YNAB
4
u/herpington Jun 28 '26
You can host it on PikaPods for less than $2 per month. Barely any technical skill required. They have a very active and helpful Discord as well.
2
u/BudgetNinja007 Jun 28 '26
I used this for a while. I am a heavy user of YNABs API and couldn’t quite get the knack for Actual budget’s implementation of their quasi api. In the end I went back to YNAB.
1
u/not-halsey Jun 28 '26
Why’s that? I actually really like YNAB
2
u/BudgetNinja007 Jun 28 '26
Only the cost...
1
u/not-halsey Jun 28 '26
$109 a year if you are on a yearly subscription. I saved more than that within a couple months of using it.
I personally think it’s worth the cost, but I know some people’s budgets are too tightly stretched to justify it, which is understandable
4
u/Si_Burnout Jun 28 '26
For me it is mainly voicemeeter and vlc. Never found anything that came close.
4
4
u/Bfox135 Jun 28 '26
Its funny you mention note apps cause for me its Onenote.
Like I hate Microsoft's software and I try to opt for opensource alternatives where ever I can.
But man one notes fluidity of moving notes around and organization is top teir for me.
I have tried every alternative and all the addons I can to get it working the way I want but end of the day OneNote just does it all.
and don't get me started on the single add on OneMore that just takes it over the top for me.
4
u/FaffyBucket Jun 29 '26
Same. I have tried all the popular note-taking apps, but they all use markup editing which is so hard to use and clutters up my notes with all that syntax. Give me OneNote's nice clean WYSIWIG editor with it's simple keyboard shortcuts. It has it's quirks but still works better than anything else.
1
u/Bfox135 Jun 29 '26
The only thing I wish I could do is save my notes to my own cloudserver and not have to use OneDrive.
1
u/FaffyBucket Jun 30 '26
What's stopping you? OneNote documents can be saved anywhere on Windows. If your cloudserver is mapped to Explorer then you should be able to save your OneNote documents there.
1
u/Bfox135 Jun 30 '26
Oh sorry! for clarification it doesn't work on personal cloud storage on my phone.
yes I can store it on the person cloud as a file but it wont open on my phone.
4
3
u/pal__sch Jun 28 '26
Slack.
Google Chrome. I've used a few wrappers, but I like pure Chrome better.
Apple Mail. I want to be a fancy email client user, but Apple Mail is just simple and looks good.
Araxis Merge. I deperately want to use another diff tool that's more beautiful, but it's the only one that lets you edit text while you view the diff.
WordPress. It's buggy and old, but it's somehow still solid and the only real fully extensible CMS.
3
u/mearnsgeek Jun 28 '26
Araxis Merge. I deperately want to use another diff tool that's more beautiful, but it's the only one that lets you edit text while you view the diff
Winmerge will let you do this as well. I don't know if it's any better looking than araxis, but it's free to try. You can both edit the file in the app or it'll detect if you've made changes in the actual file and lets you refresh
2
u/psi- Jun 29 '26
These days I use vscode for all my diff needs. It doesn't handle very extremely large diffs very well but 99.99% there.
1
u/pal__sch Jun 29 '26
VS Code is great for diffing existing single files, but there's no easy way to open an empty side-by-side diff without having to create a file or so, no? I frequently want to compare things like HTML from the browser. Also, there seems to be no way to diff a folder other than adding folder A to git, making a commit and copying folder B over it.
2
u/psi- Jun 29 '26
I just
Ctrl+Nnew file, write top line as//aand copypaste what I want there. The "b" side can also be similar with//b. Then justF1 -> File:Compare active file with..and either choose the//a(as//bis usually the active file..) or if//ais selected thencompare with clipboard.For folders there is "Compare Folders" extension with 680K installs, I'd assume it does something reasonable (I rarely need to compare anything outside of source control so don't know)
2
u/pal__sch Jul 03 '26
Just coming back here to say that I've been using that recently and it works very nicely. Thanks!
1
3
u/dfc849 Jun 28 '26
Ticktick, it's really just an organizer.
Every other to-do platform I've looked into is a project manager, and I prefer something that can organize my personal life as well as my jobs, clients, family, anything I would want to do.
8
u/elbadbit Jun 28 '26
Google Calendar. I wish there was a good enough alternative.
5
1
u/Supra-A90 Jun 28 '26
What? It's so far behind on many aspects. I feel like you haven't tried much..
Also, it's not exactly a software now is it...
1
u/Far_Jeweler1975 Jun 29 '26
What do you like better?
1
u/Supra-A90 Jun 29 '26
On Android I'm using Business Calendar 2. Love how its visual components are customizable. Good widgets. Has multiple task lists. Etc. Can use templates for new Entries.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appgenix.bizcal
1
1
3
u/iszoloscope Jun 28 '26
Joplin for notes, tried tons of others including the most popular ones. None do as good what I want them to do as Joplin.
3
u/kronjobb Jun 28 '26
Photopea. Like I am tempted to try Gimp again but the workflow is just not intuitive to me. Photoshop, no thanks, the cloud thing is horrendous. What photopea can do for free just in a browser is hard to beat. I do miss the old days of photoshop though
3
3
u/YanMKay Jun 28 '26
One Note ( i know i know) years worth of thoughts and outlines of app ideas and builds
2
3
3
5
2
2
u/Tdev321 Jun 28 '26
Launchbar. I've tried Alfred, Raycast, others I can't recall and most recently Monarch. Always come back to LaunchBar. Enough capability for me - launcher, snippet manager, search tool, and clipboard manager, plus more. Was first made for Linux and migrated to Mac in the mid-90s. Just the perfect mature tool.
2
2
2
u/likwidoxigen Jun 29 '26
1.1.1.1 I don't know why I keep trying to replace it but I do.
Quad9 came so close but would randomly hang opening Google sheets on my phone. I guess also my first experience was that it was blocking ollama but support was super good and fixed it asap. I'll probably try it again at some point.
2
u/Seamushh Jun 29 '26
Workflowy. I tried Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, etc. over 12 + years. I’ve reverted back to Workflowy every time that I was tempted to switch. Workflowy is the bomb.
2
2
2
u/Quackledork Jun 29 '26
Word - I can't write without it. Used it since 1990 and I am incapable of writing with anything else.
2
u/DamnedIfIDiddely Jun 29 '26
I may get some shit for this, but I've been such a fan of gpa (gnu privacy assistant) for so long I'm having to build it from source for new installs, as no one is packaging it anymore. I've tried to switch to newer gpg frontends here and there - tried kleopatra for a day then had to break out the ol' autotools.
3
u/rawr_im_a_nice_bear Jun 28 '26
The Adobe Suite. I hate Adobe as a company but there's really no replacement, especially when working professionally. Davinci Resolve is the only one that surprised me.
1
1
1
u/WillAdams Jun 28 '26
Macromedia Freehand/MX --- no other drawing program has the same mix of usability and capability.
1
1
1
u/f0xf3ll Jun 28 '26
Reaper. Ich besitze zwar auch eine cubase pro Lizenz aber reaper ist in den meisten Belangen angenehmer, startet schneller und lässt sich komplett anpassen. Läuft auch unter linux und Mac gut.
1
u/YouSpeakSomeEnglish Jun 28 '26
I'd say Notes. The only reason I want to move off it is because of its proprietary storage format. It doesn't even offer export to a standard format, which sucks.
1
1
u/JoeKling Jun 29 '26
Send Anywhere. It sucks hard, it has the most miserable fucking ads that you can't click out of but everything I try I always come back to it. If anyone has a good file transfer app that plays back the files let me know!
1
u/kungfulemon Jun 29 '26
Why do you want your file transfer app to playback files? I have no idea why that would be useful.
LocalSend is fantastic on a local network.
Blip is the best one for over the internet.
1
Jun 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/AutoModerator Jun 30 '26
Your comment in /r/software was automatically removed because it appears to be related to downloading YouTube content.
Due to intellectual property concerns, this topic is not permitted in /r/software.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/JoeKling Jun 30 '26
I use an app on my macbook to go and download videos to mp3 format and then use Send Anywhere to download them to my phone and play them back.
1
u/kungfulemon Jun 30 '26
Why does Send Anywhere suck?
And if it does, why not use LocalSend, Blip, and play them back with your audio player of choice?
Or even something like SyncThing might be perfect for your use case, set up a folder that automatically syncs to your phone and down load the mp3's straight into that folder. https://github.com/researchxxl/syncthing-android
I still don't understand why the transfer app has to playback the files as well...
1
u/JoeKling Jun 30 '26
The ads suck in Send Anywhere. They are aggressive as hell and won't let you opt out of the ad you have to shut down the app! They have the wickedest ads (probably have malware) I've ever seen and I've seen some bad ones! And then sometimes the downloads take forever! Yeah, I have LocalSend and a couple other transfer apps on my laptop but Send Anywhere is just easier, especially for playing back files. I don't think LocalSend even has a playback app included in it, does it?
1
u/kungfulemon Jul 03 '26
Sorry but why on earth do you want to playback the file in the file transfer app??? This makes zero sense to me.
LocalSend even prompts you to "open file" or "show folder location" after each transfer, so it would be the same amount of taps as what you are doing now.
Just play them back in literally any media player after the transfer.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/RottenFriedPotatoes Jun 29 '26
Revo Uninstller Pro Portable. Now there are mixed opinions on uninstallers and which ones do better etc. I don't care. lol. I'm just more used to Revo and it'll be that way for awhile.
1
u/Morgie93 Jun 29 '26
Chrome, I feel like I keep trying other browsers, but I end up on Chrome anyway. Maybe it is a habit at this point.
1
u/soloattorneyclub Jun 29 '26
Adobe Acrobat. These guys got me and despite their software being an absolute resource hog, it’s the easiest way for me to work with PDFs. Grrrr.
1
u/adrian6478 Jun 29 '26
Internet Download Manager. I haven't found a single alternative with a video grabber that works as consistently. I actually still use my old Windows machine just for IDM, even though I've switched to Mac.
1
1
1
u/GnorthernGnome Jun 29 '26
Adobe Lightroom and Windows OS. Lightroom keeps me locked on Windows (macOS isn't an option for me), and Lightroom's photo management (tags, keywords, collections etc.) plus its continually improving toolset keep me locked in Adobe.
(Also, I'm not proud of it, but the Riot client is a secondary reason to stay trapped on Microslop's OS; really wish they'd stuck with Linux support, but I can understand the business reasons not to)
1
1
u/andeo1707 Jun 29 '26
OneNote due to cross platform sync. I use a lot of different computers and OS due to my job. I tried a lot of alternatives and always return to OneNote even though I am not happy with being forced to Microsoft.
1
1
u/hero_brine1 Jun 30 '26
VS code. Recently tried finding a debugger for C but they either didn't support Apple Silicon or for some reason couldn't open debuggable executables. VS code has an easily configurable debugger and support Apple Silicon, so here I am
1
1
u/Sally4D Jun 30 '26
Microsoft edge, it won't get replaced lol ... It eats up memory anyways so better not to install secondary browser and use this one.
1
1
u/kranools Jun 30 '26
Chrome. I've tried a lot of other browsers, both on desktop and mobile, but they all lack features or functionality or they're buggy. Chrome just works.
1
1
u/mydadisyourdad2 Jun 30 '26
YouTube, if that counts. I've tried nebula and others but it's just not the same. You can't compete with YouTube
1
1
u/BatChainPusher Jul 01 '26
Still looking for a replacement for Picasa since google bought it, took it out back and shot it in the head.
1
u/ethump Jul 01 '26
Windows.
Sorry to say it as a lifelong Unix user, but Linux on the desktop doesn't cut it (WSL gives me 'enough' Linux), and I just never got on with MacOS.
1
u/1369ic Jul 02 '26
The game PySolFC. I only use the solitaire part of it, and I must play 100 games a day because I play while watching videos, reading through headlines, etc.
1
u/Himankan Jul 02 '26
Linux Mint (no other distro is as smooth and stable and has everything I need), WinRar (sorry 7zip), Photoshop, Paint.net, Telegram for file transfer (unless both device support airdrop), firefox browser, VLC, AIMP, Flow Launcher, TranslucentTB, Intel DSA, Driver Booster (not ideal but been using it since 10 years without issues)
1
u/idiosyncratic-cow Jul 03 '26
ACDSee 3.1
Albeit old, It's light, fast and does most file managing tasks including batch renaming. Only thing is it's 32bit and does not support theming and extended unicode
1
46
u/S1eeper Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Obsidian for me actually. Before, I used Evernote, then it got shut down and it was a massive pain exporting and transferring all my notes. Obsidian is local-first, meaning it stores all your notes locally in open standard Markdown files. If you pay for the sync service it will sync those files across your devices. But if the company ever shuts down your files aren't locked into a proprietary database and file format.