I can't replace these 4 free Windows tools, and they are better than any paid alternative

Published Sep 4, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT Abhinav pivoted from a career in banking to pursue his first love in writing. Even while working full-time, he continued contributing as an editor-at-large, a role he has held for more than 7 years. A lifelong tech enthusiast who has built three gaming and productivity powerhouse PCs since 2018, his passion for technology keeps him closely following the semiconductor industry, from NVIDIA and AMD to ARM. His MSc dissertation explored how artificial intelligence will reshape the future of work, reflecting his curiosity about the wider social impact of emerging technologies. Over nearly 21 years of using Windows, and over 4 years of using Windows 11 as my daily driver, I've developed numerous habits on the OS, and a lot of my workflow relies on some valuable tools that Microsoft gives away for free. If you, too, are using Windows 11 as your daily driver, chances are you've probably used these tools (and possibly, rely on them) without realizing they are available nowhere else. And if you haven't, I strongly recommend using these 4 tools to make the OS more powerful, convenient, and a lot more capable for your everyday tasks. Windows 11's screenshot tool ruined every other tool for me Perhaps the first time I realized the sheer value Windows 11's Snipping Tool brings me in the time I saved was when I was actually away from my main desktop. I have an old PC running Windows 10 and an M2 MacBook Air that I use whenever I'm away, and on both, taking a screenshot is surprisingly arduous and painful, to say nothing of whatever comes after in the editing phase. On Windows 11, it's completely effortless with the Snipping Tool. Your screenshots are automatically saved to a dedicated Screenshots folder by default, but that's only the beginning. A lot of users like to describe Snipping Tool as a productivity suite in itself, and they're not wrong. It has gotten considerably better over time, with OCR, screen recording capabilities, QR code detection, a color picker, and quick editing tools for highlighting, marking up, and adding shapes. Most other operating systems' built-in screenshot tools pale in comparison, often forcing ou to introduce another step just to do something as simple as editing what you've captured. Microsoft absolutely nailed it with this one. Windows Sandbox It makes virtualization look like child's play Windows Sandbox is one feature that I've written countless times about, and every time that I do, I seem to have a new use-case for it. I often find myself going straight to it without even realizing that Microsoft has been giving me this incredibly useful tool for free all along. It does exactly what the name suggests, in that, it gives you a disposable Windows environment where you can tinker, test, and wreck things without worrying about consequences. As such, all dubious GitHub scripts, suspicious attachments, malware-ridden dodgy executables are all thrown into the Sandbox first, because I'm assured that I can just close the window and leave the mess behind without ever having to think about nuking my Windows installation. There isn't really an equivalent one-click, throwaway desktop environment built into macOS or Linux, which makes it an absurdly good freebie. Photos It has become good enough for me to not need anything else It might seem like I am competing for contrarian Olympics with this one, but Microsoft's Photos app is something that I've unironically come to love. I've reached the point in my workflow where I almost never need another photo editor for 99% of what I do. It comes with Generative Erase now, which means I don't have to wait 20 years to wait for Adobe Photoshop to open just to get rid of a speck of dust on a product image. Like everything else so far on this list, it's also one of the apps Microsoft has continually improved based on loud user feedback. You can access your OneDrive photos, import images from connected devices, and even remove backgrounds and save the results, which has saved me from paying for a one-off charge to an online utility to do the same thing. The PowerToys Suite Need I say more? At this point, if you haven't heard of or used at least one PowerToys utility on your Windows 11 PC, then that's a problem that you have to take care of straight away, possibly right now. The PowerToys Suite is a collection of utilities that have single-handedly made Windows 11 an infinitely better OS than it could ever have been on its own, and I am confident that there is something of value to be found in this massive, almost ridiculous collection of tools for practically every single user. It's not even possible for me to list every tool in its ever-expanding suite without this article reading like a full-length novel, so I'll go with the ones that I personally cannot imagine using the OS without. First and foremost, FancyZones, because it seems like one of the utilities that brought PowerToys to wide renown. It takes Windows' default tiling management and makes it better by letting you customize grid layouts for each apps, so no app gets more desktop real estate than it realistically needs (who wants PowerShell to take up half your screen while coding?). The next one is a personal favorite, because it made me stop using Windows Search, for which I never really had anything good to say about. The utility, of course, is Command Palette, which gets rid of everything you don't need in a search tool (like ads and news feeds and search engine results for your files) and can be run entirely using your keyboard. If you're just starting out with PowerToys and use a lot of special characters, I'd heavily recommend Quick Accent, which made me stop Googling and pasting special characters like the degree symbol and also saved me from having to memorize obscure Alt codes. There's at least two dozen other utilities, and each improves your user experience in one way or the other. The beauty of it is you can choose to deploy them selectively. Microsoft does a rather sloppy job in advertising some of the greatest tools it offers for users of Windows 11. Windows has many gifts for the power user waiting to be discovered When I say "waiting to be discovered", I absolutely mean that Microsoft does a rather sloppy job advertising some of the greatest tools it offers for users of Windows 11, and it really won't be a surprise if you discovered a utility (or an aspect, or a use-case of one) that you hadn't thought of before. For the right user, the desktop experience can be made a lot better, if only one remembers to look in the right places. Windows 11 Pro A USB installation drive and license key for Windows 11 Pro, with additional features like Hyper-V and Windows Sandbox support.