5 Must-Have Free Windows 11 Apps to Install Before Anything Else

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"title": "5 Must-Have Free Windows 11 Apps to Install Before Anything Else",
"content": "A fresh Windows 11 install, whether on a new laptop or a rebuilt desktop, is both a promise and a problem. Microsoft’s operating system comes with a capable set of default tools—Edge for browsing, Media Player for audio, and a basic PDF viewer in Edge—but power users quickly hit walls. There is no built-in way to edit PDFs, no detailed hardware telemetry beyond the Task Manager’s friendly graphs, and certainly no universal media player that handles every obscure codec. The gaming landscape is fragmented, and Windows itself lacks a suite of productivity micro-tools that macOS users have taken for granted with Spotlight or Quick Look. That’s why, after every fresh installation, a small, focused set of free applications lands on the drive before Chrome or Spotify even make the queue.

The Pocket-lint team recently published their list of “five essential apps I can’t live without on Windows,” and the picks—PDFgear, HWMonitor, VLC Media Player, Steam, and Microsoft PowerToys—mirror what countless Windows forum regulars recommend as their day-one toolkit. But each choice deserves a deliberate, skeptical inspection. These aren’t just random freebies; they each address a specific, persistent gap that Microsoft has left open or only partially filled. And while they are all genuinely useful, they come with their own quirks, privacy considerations, and configuration needs. This deep dive pulls back the curtain on every app, verifying claims against official documentation and community experience, so you can build a fast, flexible, and truly capable Windows 11 PC from the ground up.

PDFgear: The Free PDF Powerhouse That Editors Shouldn’t Overlook

Adobe Acrobat’s free tier is a masterclass in frustration: you can view PDFs, but editing, converting to Word, or even compressing a scanned document for email is locked behind a subscription. PDFgear flips that model on its head. The app, available on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, offers a startling array of features for $0—text editing, image insertion, annotations, OCR for scanned documents, and conversion to and from Microsoft Office formats and image files. Its built-in compression tool is a particular lifesaver when phone scans produce multi-megabyte PDFs that bounce from corporate email servers.

Pocket-lint’s author highlights exactly these use cases: compressing scans, signing documents, and converting to editable formats without paying. Official PDFgear documentation confirms every feature on the list, and independent testing by the community verifies that the OCR is generally reliable for clear documents. However, there are caveats. PDF editors touch some of your most sensitive files—contracts, tax forms, legal letters—and any third-party tool deserves scrutiny. PDFgear markets itself as trustworthy, but users should avoid cloud conversion features for highly confidential material unless they have audited the encryption and retention policies. On a local machine, it works offline for most tasks, which is a plus.

Community reports also note a minor but recurring annoyance: Windows 11 sometimes refuses to list PDFgear in the “Open with” menu or the default apps list. The reliable workaround is to right-click any PDF, choose Properties, and manually change the association under the “General” tab. It’s a one-time fix, but it’s worth knowing before you rely on PDFgear as your daily driver.

Verdict: For anyone who regularly edits, converts, or compresses PDFs and doesn’t want a subscription, PDFgear is the current best-in-class free option. Just keep your sensitive documents local and be ready to force the file association.

HWMonitor: Peeking Under the Hood Without Bloatware

Windows Task Manager shows you when your CPU is at 100%, but it won’t tell you that your processor is thermal throttling because its fan curve is too conservative. That’s where HWMonitor, from CPUID, earns its place. This lightweight utility reads direct sensor data from your CPU, GPU, motherboard, storage drives, and battery, presenting raw numbers without the clunky interfaces of vendor tools like Corsair iCUE or Asus Armoury Crate.

The Pocket-lint author praises HWMonitor for its simplicity and accuracy when tracking temperatures, clock speeds, and battery wear. Official CPUID documentation confirms that HWMonitor reads LPCIO chips, S.M.A.R.T. drive temperatures, CPU core temps, and GPU sensors, supporting the latest generations of AMD and Intel hardware. The PRO version adds remote monitoring and graph logging, but the free tool is fully functional for diagnostics.

The catch is that HWMonitor only reports—it doesn’t control fans or power profiles. For users who want to automate thermal responses, pairing it with a fan-control utility is necessary. Also, raw sensor data is only as useful as your understanding of safe thresholds. A Ryzen 9 7950X running at 95°C under a sustained all-core load is, per AMD, within expected behavior; a prior-gen chip at the same temperature might be in trouble. Newcomers should cross-reference their hardware’s specs before assuming the worst. Battery wear readings are similarly helpful but approximate, varying by manufacturer’s reporting fidelity.

In practice, the workflow is simple: install HWMonitor, take a baseline at idle, then run a stress test or a demanding game and watch the sensors. If you spot consistent thermal throttling (clock speeds dropping sharply as temperatures spike), you know it’s time to dust, repaste, or adjust fan curves. For the price of a trivial download, it’s an indispensable diagnostic that every Windows PC should have, especially before you start overclocking or complaining about performance.

VLC Media Player: The Codec Conqueror That Never Quits

Windows Media Player Legacy was a joke, and the new Media Player app for Windows 11 is fine—until you throw an old DivX file, a .mkv with embedded subtitles, or a high-bitrate FLAC audio file at it. VLC needs no introduction to anyone who’s been on Windows for more than five years, but it remains the undisputed champion of local media playback. The VideoLAN project’s open-source player supports an absurd range of formats: MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, WebM, FLAC, MP3, AAC, DTS, and dozens of niche codecs. It handles subtitles (including .srt and embedded tracks), multiple audio channels, and even broken or partially downloaded files.

Pocket-lint rightfully installs VLC on every machine to preview phone footage before editing, and it’s the go-to for playing media that confuses other players. The official feature list confirms hardware decoding acceleration, streaming capabilities, and even basic video conversion tools. Recent development news has spotlighted an experimental AI-powered offline subtitle generation feature, proving the project is still actively evolving after two decades.

VLC’s weaknesses are mostly cosmetic. Its interface, while functional, looks utilitarian next to modern streaming apps. Casual users who only consume Spotify and Netflix might never need it, and that’s okay. But for anyone who occasionally encounters an old video file from a camera, a disc rip, or a downloaded educational video, having VLC ready prevents the frantic Google search for codec packs. A quick tip: if high-resolution playback stutters, toggle hardware acceleration in Tools > Preferences > Input/Codecs; sometimes the automatic setting picks the wrong GPU decoder.

There are no ads, no bundled junkware, and no hidden costs—VLC is a genuinely free, transparent tool funded by donations. That alone makes it a trustworthy staple.

Steam: More Than a Game Storefront

Steam is often the first thing a PC gamer installs, but Pocket-lint makes a compelling case for it even on non-gaming laptops. Valve’s platform is a massive ecosystem that encompasses a store, a social network, modding workshops, and a library of free-to-play titles that can run on integrated graphics. Titles like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2 (the latter having transitioned to Source 2 and launched publicly in September 2023 as a free replacement for CS:GO) are testaments to how Steam can turn a modest Ultrabook into a weekend gaming machine without spending a dime.

The Steam client isn’t just for buying games. It’s a hub for keeping drivers updated, voice chatting with friends, and streaming your own gameplay. For hardware enthusiasts, Steam’s built-in FPS counter and screenshot manager offer a quick performance baseline comparable to HWMonitor. And for those worried about their machine’s capability, the “Low Spec” tag and the vast library of indie titles—Terraria, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight—mean there’s something for every Intel UHD Graphics chip.

But Steam’s size is also its downside. The client can be bloated, with background processes, auto-updating games, and a flood of notifications. A fresh install deserves a quick settings audit: disable auto-startup, limit download bandwidth during active hours, and turn off community notifications you don’t need. More critically, a Steam account is a valuable target; enable Steam Guard two-factor authentication and never share login details. Platform lock-in is real—your games are tied to your account, so treat that password like your bank’s.

For anyone who might ever play a PC game, Steam is the first stop. Even if you’re not a gamer, grabbing it to claim the occasional free giveaway (there are literally hundreds every year) costs nothing and builds a library for the day you upgrade your hardware.

Microsoft PowerToys: Official Tweaks That Feel Like MacOS Superpowers

The most surprising entry on Pocket-lint’s list might be the only one that comes directly from Microsoft. PowerToys is an open-source suite of utilities that adds functionality Windows 11 should arguably have shipped with. The star attraction, recently rebranded as Command Palette, is a near-clone of MacOS’s Spotlight: press a hotkey, type a few letters, and instantly launch apps, run commands, search the web, or perform calculations. It transforms the Start menu from a mouse-driven chore into a keyboard-first launcher.

But PowerToys goes far beyond search. FancyZones lets you create custom, persistent window layouts—place a browser on the left third of an ultrawide monitor and a code editor on the right two-thirds with a single keyboard shortcut. The Color Picker tool is a designer’s secret weapon, grabbing hex codes from anywhere on screen without opening Photoshop. Peek, a newer addition, brings macOS Quick Look-style file previews to File Explorer, letting you tap Ctrl+Space to see a document’s contents without opening an app. Other utilities like Image Resizer, PowerRename, and Keyboard Manager quietly fix small but persistent annoyances that accumulate over hours of daily use.

Because PowerToys is actively maintained by Microsoft on GitHub, it integrates well with Windows updates, and the latest versions include a redesigned settings dashboard, hotkey conflict detection, and performance improvements. That conflict detection is crucial: as you enable more modules, global hotkeys can clash with other software or even Windows own shortcuts. The community recommends enabling only what you need and spending five minutes customizing key bindings.

The suite is free, requires no account, and runs locally. For anyone who has ever thought, “I wish Windows could do this one simple thing,” PowerToys probably offers a module that does exactly that. It’s the polish that Windows 11 was missing.

Why These Five? A Category-by-Category Breakdown

Pocket-lint’s list stands out because it resists the temptation to recommend five PDF editors or five launchers. Instead, it spreads across the critical pain points of a bare Windows machine:

The Unspoken Conversation: Privacy, Security, and Long-Term Maintenance

These five apps are excellent, but none are without responsibility. PDFgear, despite its offline capabilities, might still phone home with usage telemetry unless you dig into settings. Steam is a known data collector, and its friend-list privacy defaults are permissive. HWMonitor is benign, but running any monitoring tool with admin privileges always carries a theoretical risk—stick to the official CPUID download. VLC is a saint in this regard, being fully transparent and telemetry-free. PowerToys, as a Microsoft project, likely sends standard diagnostic data unless you opt out in Windows Privacy settings.

A practical security checklist for the first hour: review each app’s permissions, disable cloud features you don’t need, enable 2FA on Steam, and set a restore point before going wild with PowerToys hotkeys. Also, keep everything updated. HWMonitor and VLC regularly release compatibility patches for new hardware and codecs; PowerToys gets little-quality-of-life fixes every few weeks; and Steam, well, Steam updates itself whether you like it or not.

Alternatives: When the List Doesn’t Fit

No single toolkit fits every user. If you want a lighter PDF reader, SumatraPDF is shockingly fast but can’t edit. For hardware monitoring, HWInfo64 offers more granular logging and sensor data, though its interface is denser. Media purists often prefer mpv for its scriptability and minimal UI. On the gaming front, the Epic Games Store and GOG Galaxy might appeal if you value regular free game giveaways or DRM-free libraries. And if PowerToys feels too heavy, the Everything search engine alone can replace the launcher, while AutoHotkey can automate nearly anything. The strength of Pocket-lint’s list is its balance—each app covers a distinct domain without overlap, but these alternatives can slide in if one piece doesn’t fit your workflow.

First-Hour Installation Checklist

If you’ve just finished a clean install and the desktop is pristine, here’s a sequence that gets you productive in under 30 minutes:

1. VLC Media Player: Download from videolan.org and set as default for all unknown media types.
2. HWMonitor: Install to establish a performance baseline. Run it, close all apps, note idle temperatures, then fire up a quick benchmark or game to check thermals under load.
3. PDFgear: Grab from pdfgear.com, test its compression on a phone-scanned receipt, and manually associate PDF files if Windows doesn’t recognize it.
4. Steam: Install, create or sign in, immediately enable Steam Guard, and browse the Free-to-Play section to test your machine’s gaming chops.
5. PowerToys: Install from the Microsoft Store. Enable Command Palette, FancyZones, and Color Picker. Set hotkeys that don’t conflict (Ctrl+Shift+Space is a safe alternative to