Free Utilities, Software Tools and Applications

Useful programs for your computer

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Free Utilities and Software Tools

Welcome to thefreecountry.com's directory of free utilities and software tools, with lists of free software and sites that will help you do various useful tasks with your computer.

Free Multimedia Software

Free Graphics Software

Free Font Software and Fonts

Free Hard Disk Utilities

Free File Management Utilities

Free DVD, CD, Blu-ray Utilities

Other Free System Utilities

Free Productivity and Office Applications

Free Engineering Software

Free Security Software and Sites

Free Accessibility Tools

Free Internet Utilities and Services

Free Programming Resources

Other Resources of Interest

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Keep track of what's new on thefreecountry.com with your news reader by pointing it to thefreecountry.com's news feed . Note: for historical reasons, this What's New column also includes information from thesitewizard.com's news feed and HowToHaven.com's news feed .

28 February 2020

A new compiler has been added to the Free PHP Compilers page. This one can compile PHP 7.1 code into a .NET program that can run on Windows, macOS and Linux systems. Such compilers are useful for people who want to write computer software in the PHP programming language that run on normal desktop or laptop computers.

21 February 2020

New page: How to Stretch a Background Image to Fill an Entire Web Page (or Column) in BlueGriffon. This article deals with how you can use BlueGriffon to stretch a picture that is used as the backdrop of a web page, so that it fills the entire page, column or section.

20 February 2020

A new site has been added to the Free Royalty-Free Stock Photos page. This one provides both free photos and videos which you can use without paying royalties on your own website, presentations, etc.

18 February 2020

A new icon editor for Windows and Linux has been added to the Free Resource Editors, Compilers and Icon Editors page. Icon editors are useful for webmasters wishing to create a favicon for their website as well as programmers who want to make one for their software.

14 February 2020

New page: How to Change the Message Shown Before the Comments Field in WordPress. If you run a WordPress blog, and want to customize the message that is shown in the "Leave a Reply" section of your post (where you visitors enter their comments), this article shows you how, using a method that will allow your changes to persist even when your theme files auto-update.

7 February 2020

New page: How to Use Google Fonts and Other Web Fonts in BlueGriffon. This article describes how you can add Google Fonts and other web fonts to BlueGriffon for use with your website.

4 February 2020

New page: Free Geolocation Services. If you are thinking of customizing your website so that it shows different content for different countries (eg, display prices of goods in the local currency), these free geolocation services may be just what you need.

31 January 2020

A free service has been added to the Free Dynamic and Static DNS Services and Name Servers page. This one provides dynamic DNS for those whose websites are hosted on their own computer and who connect to the Internet with an address that changes each time. To avoid confusion, please note that these are not services that give you free domains. You will still need to obtain a domain name from a registrar. In addition, for the average person who wants to create a website the standard way, you don't need these services.

16 January 2020

Another free service has been added to the Free Web Hosts page. If you want to create a website and don't want to pay for web hosting, take a look at these free hosts on which you can place a site.

9 January 2020

A new site has been added to the Free Mailing List Hosting and Email Newsletter Hosting page. It is useful if you are interested in starting an email mailing list, whether an announcement list or a discussion one.

7 January 2020

A new implementation of Common Lisp for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD has been added to the Free Common Lisp Compilers and Interpreters page. This one can create standalone executables for your programs. (For those wondering, Common Lisp is a general purpose programming language.)

3 January 2020

Updated: How to Make / Create a Website. If you are thinking of designing a website, whether a business or hobby site, read How to Create a Website. The article has been updated with the latest developments on the Internet.

2 January 2020

New page: Can I Change My Website's Address to HTTPS Without Getting an SSL Certificate? This article answers a question asked by a visitor on whether he can simply update all the URLs on his website to "https" without obtaining an SSL certificate, and, if not, why.

20 December 2019

Two more programs have been added to the Free Standard ML Compilers page. Standard ML is a general purpose functional programming language. Both programs added (one is a compiler, and the other an interpreter) are open source.

17 December 2019

New page: How to Make a Button Run a Server-Side Script (eg, a PHP, Perl, or Python Script) (HTML). I was asked by a visitor how he could make a button run a server-side script (such as a PHP, Perl or Python script). This article answers that question.

11 December 2019

A new debugger for Windows DLL and EXE files has been added to the Free Debuggers and Bug Trackers page. (For those wondering, debuggers are software that help programmers track down bugs in their programs.)

6 December 2019

New page: How to Add a (Self-Hosted) Video to Your Website with Expression Web. Find out how you can insert a video into your web page with the free Microsoft Expression Web editor. The video, in this case, will be placed on your website itself (ie, self-hosted) and not on a video sharing site.

28 November 2019

Another lint-type program has been added to the Free Static Code Analyzers page. This one scans your C or C++ program source code for a huge variety of potential bugs/errors. It works on Windows, but can apparently be compiled to run on Linux and other Unix-type systems.

26 November 2019

A new Windows program has been added to the Free Command Line Shells page. This open source software supports backquotes (where the output of a command is inserted into the command line of another), background processing (run programs in the background), aliases, tab completion, extended wildcard/filename-matching, and so on.

22 November 2019

New page: How to Prevent Your Website from being Placed in a Frame. By default, anyone can place your website in a frame or iframe, for the purposes of clickjacking, altering your content, or putting advertisements on your page. This article shows you how to prevent this, using both the older backward-compatible method as well as the modern officially-recommended one.

14 November 2019

New page: How to Move a Website from Dreamweaver to BlueGriffon. I was asked by a visitor how he could move his website from Dreamweaver to the free BlueGriffon web editor. This article answers that question.

7 November 2019

A new program has been added to the Free CD, DVD and Blu-Ray Burning Software page. This one can not only create data discs but also audio CDs, rip (ie, copy) music from CDs, make ISO images, burn ISO images, create multi-session discs, erase discs, etc. It's useful for those who find the built-in facilities provided by Windows too limited.

5 November 2019

Two more software have been added to the Free Programmer's Editors page. These text editors collectively feature things like bracket/brace matching (so that you don't have mismatched brackets in your code), syntax highlighting, project management, search and replace, file comparison, hexadecimal viewing, column editing, code folding, JSON/XML/SQL formatters, etc.

1 November 2019

Another open source program for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux has been added to the Free Secure Password Managers and Password Savers page. Password managers are used to store (and automatically type, if you wish) your passwords for the varous online sites (eg, email, social media, etc) that you are a member of, allowing you to use different, complicated and secure passwords for each site without worrying that you will forget them.

29 October 2019

New page: My Frustrations with Google AdSense. This article details my increasing frustration with Google AdSense. And no, it's not about what you think.

23 October 2019

A new program has been added to the Free Text Search and Replace Utilities page. This open source utility for Windows can search and replace text across plain text files, Word documents, PDFs, using literal queries, regular expressions and even phonetic searches.

17 October 2019

New page: How to Put Rounded Buttons on Your Website. I was asked by a visitor how he could create rounded buttons. This article shows you how to add round corners to your buttons and, if that's what you really want, insert buttons that are completely circular.

11 October 2019

Another web statistics program has been added to the Free Web Statistics and Web Log Analyzers page. If you have created a website and want to see how it is performing (eg, the number of visitors for each page, the browsers they use, etc), the programs listed here will do the trick.

9 October 2019

A new program has been added to the Free File Managers and Graphical Shells page. This one works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD. Although all modern systems have their own file managers (eg, Explorer on Windows), these third party software offer convenient features such as built-in file comparison, the ability to open two folders side by side to facilitate easy copying/moving, and so on.

19 September 2019

New page: How to Close a Browser Tab/Window with JavaScript. This article answers a question on how to close a browser window or tab using JavaScript.

10 September 2019

An open source RSS reader for Mac OS X has been added to the Free Standalone News Feed Readers and News Aggregators page. There are also many RSS/Atom readers for other systems listed on that page (such as Windows and Linux ones).

6 September 2019

New page: How to Prevent a Directory Listing of Your Website Without Using .htaccess. A visitor asked me if there was a way to stop her web server from showing a directory listing of the folders on her site, without having to create a .htaccess file. This article gives 2 alternative solutions.

3 September 2019

If you are looking for a way to scan your PHP source code for potential bugs before you even test it, take a look at the latest program that has been added to the Free Static Code Analyzers page. This one works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-type systems. For those who don't use PHP, that page also lists static analyzers for C, C++, Objective C, JavaScript, Fortran and Java.

30 August 2019

New page: How do I Increase/Decrease the Space Between Paragraphs on a Web Page (CSS). One of my visitors wanted to know how to change the distance between paragraphs on a web page. This article addresses that question. It also deals with what to do when you change the spacing between lines (eg to double-space it), and the gap between paragraphs becomes too wide.

27 August 2019

A new C++ library has been added to the Free Sockets Libraries page. Such programming libraries let you write apps that can connect to the Internet to do various things. For example, you can use it to implement an automatic update facility, or if you write a game, to connect to a game server so that multiple people can play with each other, and so on.

23 August 2019

New page: How Do You Get Access to a Domain Name You Just Purchased? What to Do After You Buy a Domain Name. I was asked by a visitor how he could "get access to a domain" that he had just purchased. This article answers that question.

20 August 2019

A new version control package has been added to the Free Source Code Version Control Software page. (Version control software are typically used by programmers to store multiple versions of their source code in a space efficient manner. You can also use it to store multiple versions of other types of documents and files.)

16 August 2019

New page: How to Redirect Visitors to Another Web Page After a Set Amount of Time. This article answers a query as to whether there is a way a visitor can be given a certain amount of time to read a web page, following which the latter is replaced with a new page.

15 August 2019

New page: How to Solve the 0x80092004 Error When Installing a Windows 7 Security-Only/Monthly Update. If you were unable to install the most recent Windows Update (eg, either the security-only or monthly quality one) on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 because of a stop error 0x80092004, this article shows you how to solve it.