Best Windows apps this week
Five-hundred-and-ninety-five in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.
Microsoft is working on a new Start menu feature called Companions. This adds a sidebar to Start that shows dynamic content such as widgets there.
As always, if I've missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email.
Discounts this week
The following list is a selection of the best deals. Make sure you check out the Store for all offers.
Some apps are discounted for more than one week. Only new apps and games are listed below. Check out the previous post in the series for past offers that may still be valid.
- Downloader for IGTV for $3.99
- ePage for $0.99
- Flowshape for free
- Minecraft: Java & Bedrock Edition for PC for $14.99
- PDF Compressor for Windows for $1.99
- TouchMail for $14.99
New or notably improved Windows apps
The first stable version of the archiver since 2023 packs a punch. Notable improvements are support for ZSTD archives, RAR archives created with WinRAR 7.00, speed optimizations, and several new command line switches.
Optimize Game Booster - FPS booster & Lag Reduce
The free application promises to improve the performance of computer games on Windows systems. It does so by freeing up RAM, ending background processes, and "intensifying processor performance".
Should not expect wonders, but it may help somewhat on badly configured Windows systems.
PowerPlan Manager (currently free)
Simple power management tool that switches the power mode from performance to power-saving automatically after about 3 minutes of inactivity to save power.
Reverts the change once the app notices activity on the device.