Over the course of a year, we recommend hundreds of free programs in Computeractive, across our features, workshops, tips pages and Best Free Software section. Although we test all this software to ensure it’s safe, works as promised and deserves your attention, some tools inevitably prove more popular than others.
We’re able to gauge this popularity through our Snipca service. Not only does this shorten long web addresses to make them easier for you to type (and save space on the page), but it also lets us see how many times a URL has been visited. We can then see which programs have received the most clicks – or taps, if you’re reading our digital edition – and devote more coverage to them and similar software in future. After all, there’s little point writing a workshop about a tool that readers clearly have no interest in.
In this feature – thanks to these Snipca links – we can exclusively reveal your favourite free software of 2023. Your top 20 most downloaded programs are an eclectic mix of tools for enhancing your Windows and web experience, which combine familiar names with others we’d never covered before last year.
Here, we present your most-loved software in order of popularity and provide expert tips to help you master each program in 2024.
YOUR FAVOURITE PROGRAM OF 2023…
1 FixWin
FixWin was your favourite program of 2023 by a considerable margin, after we made it the focus of our ‘Never pay for PC repairs’ Cover Feature in Issue 669 (pictured far right, get it from www.snipca.com/48456). Created by Anand Khanse, the webmaster of PC-help site The Windows Club (www.thewindowsclub.com), this powerful free system tool performs more than 100 complex commands and registry tweaks with one click. Although the latest version is called FixWin 11, it also works in Windows 10, or you can download FixWin 10 (www.snipca.com/48628) to repair that operating system specifically.
In our feature, we listed 16 of the most useful PC repairs you can accomplish with FixWin to save you paying for professional technical support. These include fixing corrupt files and Microsoft Store apps, restoring and repairing missing and broken Windows features, and solving problems with your internet and Wi-Fi connection. It can also solve issues with Windows Update, and even mend your antivirus software when it stops working properly.
We attribute FixWin’s incredible popularity among our readers to its simple, no-nonsense interface, which organises its many settings into logical categories, such as File
