10 Top Windows Software picks for 2022

What better way to end the year with a look back at some of the best programs for Microsoft's Windows operating system that were released in 2022 or updated in a major way.

We would like to encourage you to name your top picks for the year 2022 down in the comment sections. We have surely missed some great new entries or updates due to the limited nature of the listing.

PicPick

PicPick is not a new application, but it received several major updates this year. Up until last year, PicPick supported image captures only; this changed in 2022 with support for screen recording.

Screen capturing is one of the best, as it supports all modes that one expects from a good screen capturing software. You can capture full-screen, region, fixed region, windows, scrolling windows or freehand. The screen recorder supports video captures.

Version 7.0 of PicPick was released in 2022 as well. It introduced support for delayed captures among other things.

RSS Guard

The open source cross-platform RSS reader RSS Guard has received several important updates this year. It is a locally installed feed reader that supports online feed services that users may integrate. It may also be used using local data only, if that is preferred.

RSS Guard supports features such as article filtering, feed groups, website scraping, notifications, downloader and much more.

Several features were introduced or improved in 2022. To name just a few: options to turn off feeds, intelligent sync for Feedly, improved autostart functionality, new network-usage friendly two-way article syncing, fast feed and article refresh rates, customizable skin colours for feeds with new articles, and sample article filters.

IrfanView

IrfanView is a popular graphic viewer for Windows. The application supports all image formats that you can throw at it. Plugins may be installed to increase the functionality further. Some users may dislike the old-fashioned look, but it is the functionality that is impressive.

IrfanView was updated once in 2022. The new version, IrfanView 4.60 includes major feature additions. It supports a new PDF plugin to view PDF documents, can save slideshows as MP4 video, includes options to add images to PDF documents and edit them, and includes a new hotkey to look up GPS information on Google Maps.

Rufus

Rufus is a free tool to create bootable USB drives. It may be used to put ISO images, such as Windows 11 or Linux ISOs, on a USB drive. These may then be used to install the operating system or, in the case of Linux, run live versions.

Rufus was updated several times in 2022. Several of the updates improved the handling for Windows 11. One of the major feature additions was support for bypassing system requirements of Windows 11 during installation or in-place upgrades.

DoNotSpy11

DoNotSpy11 is a tweaker for Windows 10 and 11 systems. The new version is an updated version of the original application that supports Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system.

It may be used to improve privacy on Windows 11 by disabling certain features, changing permissions and more. The new version of DoNotSpy supports Microsoft Office as well, which may also be tamed in regards to privacy.

FastCopy

FastCopy is a file transfer tool for Windows. It can be used to improve the copying of files from one location to another, and for backup purposes. Like TeraCopy and others, FastCopy supports transfer verifications, It may also improve transfers and supports copying files that exceed the 260 character path limit on Windows.

FastCopy introduced support for OpenSSL and SHA-512 verify in 2022. Other new features include reduced CPU usage when using SHA-256 and improved hard drive I/O speed.

Calibre

The ebook reader and management app Calibre has seen several releases in 2022. The developers released Calibre 6.0 in July, introducing full text search capabilities and support for new architectures (Mac and Linux). Downside was the dropping of 32-bit support in the same release.

Other new or improved features in 2022 included metadata downloads from Amazon, more news sources, search for nearby words functionality, and plenty of tag browser improvements.

FastStone Image Viewer

FastStone Image Viewer was updated in 2022 for the first time since March 2020. The developers have added important features to the application, including a new database engine to improve performance, capacity and reliability.

FastStone Image Viewer 7.6 introduced a new rating system, new sorting options, optimizations, and more. Version 7.7, released just a few months after version 7.6, improved GPS and RAW file support, the loading of HEIC and HEIF, and text rendering quality in slideshow.

WingetUI

Winget, the Windows Package Manager, is a powerful tool to install, uninstall or update software on Windows. It is a command line app, which may deter some users. WingetUI offers a graphical user interface for much of winget's functionality.

It can also be used to search for updates for installed applications, install programs from a huge database, or uninstall applications.

Xenia (Ashwin's pick)

For the past couple of years, I've kept trying Xenia's Canary build once every few months hoping to play Red Dead Redemption, but the performance was quite terrible. The Xbox 360 emulator's devs dropped a major update for Xenia in August, which improved the performance significantly. After tinkering with the game's patches, and modifying a couple of other settings, I'm finally able to play RDR at a stable frame rate. Xenia is hands-down my best updated app of 2022.

Now You: what were your favorite programs for Windows in 2022?

10 Top Windows Software picks for 2022