OnyX is a free maintenance program for macOS from Titanium Software. It clears caches, runs the maintenance scripts Apple already ships, rebuilds indexes, and exposes preferences that the System Settings app hides. A new build appears for each major macOS version. Use the one that matches the system you are on. The old one will […]
BleachBit deletes caches, cookies, and leftovers from a long list of programs, and it can overwrite free disk space so a simple undelete does not bring those files back. It is open source, for Windows and Linux. The project is run by Andrew Ziem. It became widely known after it showed up in a US […]
PrivaZer is a free Windows cleaner aimed at traces other tools skip: thumbnail caches, jump lists, USB history, old restore points. The author is a French developer. The program is closed source. You cannot read what the deep scan is doing. That is the catch. A closed cleaner with permission to walk the whole disk […]
PeaZip is an open-source archiver for Windows and Linux, written by Giorgio Tani. It reads a huge list of formats and can encrypt archives. The interface is closer to a normal program than 7-Zip’s file list. It can sit on top of 7-Zip’s engine for some jobs. The options are deep. A wrong setting produces […]
NanaZip is an open-source fork of 7-Zip aimed at current Windows, by the M2Team developer Kenji Mouri. It fixes the Windows 11 right-click menu, adds a dark theme, and can be installed as a packaged app from the Store or from GitHub. Compression and AES-256 sit on the 7-Zip engine, not a new format. It […]
Restic makes encrypted, deduplicated snapshots and can send them to a local folder, SFTP, or object storage such as Backblaze B2 and S3. It is a single program, written in Go, and the same binary runs on the major desktops. The repository format is restic’s, not a pile of zip files you can open by […]
Kopia does encrypted, deduplicated snapshots, like Restic, and it also ships a graphical window and a server mode. Backends include local disks and the usual cloud buckets. It is open source and cross-platform. People who will not live in a terminal can start here. The project is younger than Borg. The GUI hides choices you […]
7-Zip opens almost every archive you will be sent and can create 7z and ZIP files encrypted with AES-256. It is free, by Igor Pavlov, and the Windows program is the one everyone means. It is light and it does not bundle a browser. The window looks old because it is a compression tool. On […]
Syncthing keeps folders the same across computers you own. The devices talk to each other, encrypted, with no account and no company in the middle. It is open source. You approve each device. After that, changes flow. A delete flows too. Syncthing is not a backup. If ransomware encrypts the folder on one machine, the […]
BorgBackup stores encrypted, deduplicated, compressed archives on a disk or a server you control. The tool is aimed at people who will use a terminal. Daily backups stay small because unchanged chunks are not stored again. You can prune old archives and still restore a file from last month. Borg wants Borg on the far […]
BellCrier breach check
Most people are, and never hear about it. BellCrier checks your email against known data breaches for free, then alerts you when it turns up in a new one, with exactly what leaked and how to fix it.
