Keep Windows 10 Organized, Pretty, and Productive

 Microsoft Windows can be a mess. It's not (always) an operating system fault. You download tons of apps and files and create new custom content until your "Downloads" directory looks like a dump of old content. Your desktop is so full of icons that you can't see your pretty wallpaper. Your Start menu looks like a buffet of apps. In short, your operating system is a mess, but it's not beyond repair.

We take spring cleaning very seriously at Lifehacker. Missing out on an opportunity to refresh, reorganize and tidy up life in our homes. We're also pretty in tune to hit the reset button on our technology use, take a close look at our finances, and shake up everyday habits that have gotten a little stale. Welcome to Spring Cleaning Week, in which we clean away the winter cobwebs and prepare the ground for the sunny days ahead. Let's clean things up, shall we?

There are several free apps that you can use to add some much-needed organization to your Windows world. Here are a few of our favorites:

Let it go

Screenshot: DropIt

We covered this app a long time ago, but it's worth resurrecting. DropIt is a great tool to help you stay organized if you're the type of person who puts everything you download (or copy to your computer) into a single folder—one huge, sprawling hub that many files enter but rarely he leaves them.

DropIt lets you set up a bunch of different rules that will run whenever you drag files onto the tool's little icon. For example, you can set the app to always move image files to your primary photos folder, video files to your videos folder, and Word documents to—you guessed it—your documents folder.

This is just the beginning. If you want to be more advanced, DropIt can automatically search folders (such as the Downloads folder) and apply more advanced filters to anything it finds, such as automatically extracting archives, renaming files based on your parameters, or compressing large batches of files that otherwise take a bit of time more space than you want.

Automation is a great way to keep things organized in Windows, and DropIt practically puts a virtual assistant at your fingertips.

digiKam

Screenshot: digiKam

If your vast photo library needs serious organization but you don't want to pay for something like Adobe Lightroom, the open-source digiKam app is a great alternative.

With this app, you can sort your photos and create (or edit) metadata to find exactly what you're looking for in one easy-to-access library. If you're also a bit of a photo perfectionist, you can use digiKam to edit your regular and RAW images to perfection.

This app is a much better solution for organizing your images than just storing them in random Windows folders. Your cluttered hard drive will thank you, and you'll be much less likely to lose (or forget about) pictures in the future.

LaunchBox

Screenshot: LaunchBox

We're not going to ask why you have tons of emulators installed on your system, and we're going to assume that all the ROMs spread out in that nightmare folder structure under the "Games" section of your hard drive are completely legit. Right? Regardless, if you've just spent the last day getting a nostalgia kick by downloading archives of thousands of different retro games that you want to play on your modern PC, keeping those games under control will be overwhelming.

We recommend grabbing LaunchBox, which is a great "game organizer" tool that lets you quickly find and play titles in your giant library. You can tap into the app's crowdsourced database to populate your titles with useful information such as release dates, genres, publishers and images, and you can mark certain games as favorites to make it easier to find a theme when you're pressed for time. kill.

LaunchBox also makes it (somewhat) easier to import games from your favorite distribution services like Steam, Battle.net, and GoG (to name a few). If you're the world's biggest gamer who plays everything you can download and you're always looking for new titles to try from all the major services, LaunchBox is a great way to organize your games under one digital roof.

AquaSnap

Screenshot: Nurgo Software

Everyone knows the Windows Aero Snap shortcuts, right? Press the Windows key + one of the arrow keys on your keyboard to make your active window fly across the screen: minimize, open, shrink to fill a quarter or half of the screen, and completely bounce off the primary display (if you have a multi-monitor setup) .

AquaSnap takes this concept and supercharges it. You can snap windows to different parts of the display, just like with Aero Snap, but you can do a lot more.