With the recent surge in remote work, I've been in contact with a lot of testers and developers over the last couple of weeks, and have ended up sending out a list of things I use a few times. Over the years of testing many different things, working with different companies with different budget models, and doing personal projects, I've come up with a set of tools that works for me for almost all of the situations I find myself in.

One thing to note, I do like free tools, but I also like to support the developers of tools that I regularly rely on, so if I list a free tool here, I have probably bought the developer a coffee or two, paid for a support license, or made some sort of donation to them. I am not affiliated with or getting referrals or kick-backs from any of these tools.

software

• VSCodium
• espanso
• ​Greenshot
• Insomnia
• OBS Studio
• Mouse without borders
• PowerToys
• Wally
• slack
• Microsoft Teams
• WhatsApp
• Signal
• ​Foxit
• 7-Zip
• WinMerge
• GnuWin

hardware

• logitech G602
• ZSA Moonlander Mark 1
• logitech c922
• Plantronics Blackwire 725

I've been helping to setup automation for a number of individuals and teams and have decided to publish all of the setups and configs that I've been using. I'll break this down into a couple of parts to focus on each of the steps along the way. If I get ambitious I may even automate the setup...