Here's a small list of stuff I use every day and could recommend to you, maybe.
File manager
I use Total Commander. There is nothing quite like it. I started using it when it was called Windows Commander, on Windows 98. It served as a great replacement for Volkov Commander that served me well in MS-DOS/Win95 times.
On Linux, Double Commander exists, and works pretty well. Works like total crap on Mac tho.
On Mac several apps that claim to be a total commander alternative exist. I use [Marta], but it lacks most features. Still better than finder, tho. When I need features like SFTP on Mac I use Midnight Commander. DCommander is a buggy pile of crap, is not free and is not worth your time and money, trust me.
Browser
I use Vivaldi. It is horrible in so many aspects! However, it has several things absolutely essential for me, that other browsers do not bother to implement. And it does NOT have several useless things other browsers insist you to use.
Of course, it does support chrome extensions.
Chrome Extensions
- uBlock origin. Nowadays blocking ads can also save you traffic and CPU (and battery life, essentially). Somehow it started to feel blocking ads is something wrong in recent years. There's nothing wrong in that.
- stylus. It allows to modify styles of websites (It has an option to download pre-made styles as well) to hide some crap from it (or modify stuff to improve usability). Used to use another one, called stylish, but it was popular and turned into bloatware.
- Toggle JavaScript. Everything is JavaScript nowadays, but some websites work without it, and work way faster with it disabled. This extension adds an easy button which disables JS with one click. Helps to make the internet less crappy. And helps me debug things as well.
- Color Eye Dropper allows to pick a color from a webpage. Or an image. Extensions like this one tend to turn into bloatware too by adding features one asked for, so probably this one will need a replacemet too one day. But now I use this one. ColorPick EyeDropper, for instance, asks you if you want to register now (the developer says "developing is not free, so I have to monetize it some way"). Monetization of a simple thing that could be built into browser is straightforward stupid.
- ShowPassword is a simple extension that shows the password when you hover your cursor over a password input field (with asterisks). Usable in many ways.
PhotoPea
Photopea is a web graphical editor. It pretty much replicates all the basic functionality of PhotoShop, with all the hotkeys and stuff.
The problem is there is no decent graphical editor for basic stuff Linux. GIMP is a buggy crap, when I was trying to use it I ended up spending much more time fighting it's "unique" and "one-of-a-kind" user interface more than actually editing something.
On Win/Mac the PhotoShop is very powerful too, true, but most of the times I just need to crop stuff, blend layers, add text and maybe do basic conversion. I don't need a three-gigabyte monster that costs $20 a month (it uses subscription model now!) to do that.
PhotoPea is just perfect for most of my tasks. Also, it is free (at least for now ). There is a handy little chrome extension to remove ads from PhotoPea, too.
Music
On Windows, I still use Winamp (I do that for more than 25 years an it is still good). People tend to say "isn't it dead" and stuff, ignoring it because it's "old" and "unsupported", but that is plain stupid - Winamp works (better than anything else) and has plugins for anything available (some plugins still get updates even, if someone cares). It's not Winamp that has died, but the practice to listen music as mp3's.
I have recently switched to Winamp Modern skin which is 20 years old now ☺.
Btw, recently they have released a new version with bugfixes and improvements and nothing more. It looks like they're going to turn Winamp into something spotify-like soon, but who cares, the app will be still available. And, od course, Wacup exists, which allows to assume Winamp will not actually die anytime soon.
On Mac I use Cog to listen music. It still has a lot to desire, but is way better than pretty much everything I've tried.
Video playback
To watch videos on Mac, I use IINA - yet another mpv wrapper, that actually works, has non-cluttered UI and allows to watch several videos simultaneously (so you can set something long on pause, quickly watch something small without having to re-opening the long thing, for instance). Oh, and also it just closes when you close the last window - a feature you don't see in a lot of Mac apps these days.
For videos on Windows I use Media Player Classic. There is quite nothing like it - most popular players are either bloated (like Potplayer I used to use for some time) or have really awful UI and lack basic features (Like VLC)
The original MPC-HC got canceled somewhere around 2017, so I use clsid2's fork of it.
On android I'm using MX Player Pro (for ages now, since around 2014). It is paid but is cheap. (free version also exists, but has ads...).
Media editing
I use LosslessCut to trim videos. It is a pretty minimalist and free app to do basic audio/video editing. All I need, really. It is also cross-platform. To do all the audio recording/editing I use the old good Audacity - it has never failed me.
Used to use VirtualDub on Windows previously, but it does not support some formats and its interface is somewhat terrible.
IDE
I used to use WebStorm (and PHPStorm before it) a lot in the past, but it has essentially turned into bloatware. Too many features I do not use (and that can not be disabled). Also it does not support other languages except the front-end ones (I think it is done on purpose to force people to use their IDEA Ultimate IDE). Also, it relies heavily on XML files of their own format in its configuration and everything is configured via UI, that has too many options to reconfigure it every time. But the main reason I don't use it now is because it does not work well with our monorepo - infinite indexing drives me nuts. It is a paid tool - no longer worth it for so many reasons...
Now I use VSCode (like everybody else, he-he). After some tinkering it can be made into an actually usable IDE for TypeScript and Rust (I don't care too much for anything else)
Switching was quite painful, because I got used to WebStorm, and some of it's basic features were absent in VSCode (because it is actually more of an advanced text editor than an IDE)
Also the key was disabling the tabs display (completely), setting up the hotkeys and making my own color theme. The color theming options are superb, the themes provided on the marketplace are very primitive - say, I really need function variables and regular variables to be highlighted differently. For almost every task there is an extension now.
Nowadays, I use VSCodium, just because it is free and open-source, and I don't want to rely on micro$oft services too much. I wrote a script to back up/restore all the settings into my dotfiles repo.
I switched to VSCodium after MonkeyPatch/CustomizeUI drama, when microsoft decided to break these extensions by introducing unneeded obfuscation to their code. I realized m$ will probably try to EEE the VSCode at some point - so the only option is to stick with OpenSource alternatives for as long as possible - as my work actually depends on having VSCode, and my productivity depends on having VSCode the way I want it to be (not the way micro$oft wants it to be)
Also, fck telemetry. Also, there's a book on VSCode customization, it costs $40 and has absolutely nothing essential (you can figure stuff yourself), but it's a joy to read. Also, for some features that was missing but now are implemented there are couple You don't need that extension articles, which also might serve as a nice quick list of stuff you can do with VSCode.
Git
For complicated tasks I prefer using a git GUI.
I got so used to IDEA's built-in Git client. It allows to undo commit by automatically switching to other revision and moving all the changes to staged, very easy to switch branches - even when there are staged files - it does stash/unstash them automatically, easy to modify commits and has a very powerful three-panel merge interface.
It's a shame other git clients do not have all this functionality. And it's a shame JetBrains do not consider making a stand-alone GIT client (or probably it is for the best - because they would definitely make it a paid app and strip some of that functionality from it's other apps).
I ended up using PyCharm Edu (it's free) as a git client by disabling all the plugins and inspections and adding most files in a repo to excluded list.
Also, tig repository browser is worth mentioning here, it's pretty awesome. Oh, and also GitUp is pretty sweet, too. Also, GitLens is junk and I hate it.