Beyond Compare 4 - various types of file comparison and merging operations.
WinDirStat - makes it easy to identify and clean up files taking up your drive space.
Everything - I resisted using this for a long time and wish I hadn't.
Joplin - note taking app with markdown editor.
QTranslate - discontinued freeware, most recent version that I'm aware of is 6.10.0. very useful translation app that supports Google, DeepL, Yandex and others.
RapidCRC (Unicode) - file hash creation and verification
also shout out to Windows Firewall, not really a new thing but many people don't bother learning how to use it properly.