Remember a time when you paid for your music, and your movies, and your software with a one-off payment rather than a recurring subscription fee debited from your bank account each month? Those times are fading into history for most of us. Subscriptions are now king and practically inescapable.

There are so many Windows apps out there, that picking a list of the very best, most must-install software for your desktop or laptop feels daunting. We've pored over pages of recommendations, countless forum posts, and lots of comments to come up with this year's Lifehacker Pack for Windows, a list of software champions across four categories: productivity, internet/communications, music/photos/video and utilities.

The iOS Voice training app Vanido just added an important new feature. It can now help you learn to sing Bohemian Rhapsody (or, if you must, other songs.)

Even before you download an app to help you meditate, or to manage your depression, it's speaking to you. Apps' marketing often implies that everyday stresses should be seen as mental health issues, and that you're on your own (with the help of the app, of course) to fix whatever is wrong with you.

Netflix has offered the ability to download shows for a couple of years now. However, the onus was on the user to manually add episodes into the offline mode. Thankfully, a new software update takes care of the downloading for you. Here's how it works.

The internet is always there, vast and accessible, from wherever you happen to be -\- until it isn't. Maybe you've got a long flight ahead of you and need some reading material, maybe you just want to store something for safe-keeping. Whatever your reason here's how you can download just about anything you come across on the internet with free tricks and tools.

There are plenty of resources that let you download stuff for free - but most of them aren't legal. To save your eternal soul, we've compiled a list of the best (mostly) copyright-free freebies that the internet has to offer - from books and artwork to music and video games.

I'm a journalist. (Kind of.) I have to record calls a lot, to supplement my notes. When I make a call over Skype, I use Ecamm Call Recorder, a simple but full-featured Mac-only Skype extension.

If Hell exists, I will spend eternity being forced to read PDFs on my phone. I'll be pinching and zooming some D&D playbook or work document, struggling to fit the whole page on the screen while making the text big enough to read, then doing the whole thing again on the next page. And I won't have GoodReader, the powerful and customisable iPhone app that makes PDFs less painful, for a reasonable $8.

No virtual whiteboard is perfect for everyone - and every virtual whiteboard service seems to shut down after a few years. While we've recommended several over the years, the only one still around is Twiddla, which is so feature-rich that it might feel too complicated (and ugly) for some projects. If so, try the simpler app RealtimeBoard.

There are plenty of existing soundboard apps (and sites), but the new app Farrago may be the best.

Facebook's mobile-friendly 'Lite' version is finally available in Australia. Boasting an APK of just 252KB and a simplified front end, it is perfect for anyone hampered by poor network coverage or an older Android model. (It will also suit people who just want a faster, less bloated version of Facebook.) Here's how to get it on your phone.

Mac: Some people keep their computer desktop neat. Some people are happy to keep their desktop messy. For those who want a clean desktop but have trouble maintaining it, there's Declutter.

Android/iOS: Podcasting should be stupid easy. The underlying technology isn't much more complicated than blogging. But so far, there's no Blogger or Tumblr of podcasting, to make podcast recording accessible to anyone with a phone. Until last week's release of Anchor 3.0 for iOS and Android.

There are currently over two million apps available for Apple iPhone. Android has even more. When you throw in Windows, Mac, Linux and myriad browser extensions, the number of apps to choose from is truly overwhelming.

To help simplify things, Lifehacker's experts have hand-picked around 200 apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, Chrome and iOS that every technology user should own. Best of all, most of them are completely free!

There is not shortage of free mobile and desktop applications available on the internet. Unfortunately, most of them are either rubbish or trick you into parting with your cash via in-app purchases. But if you take the time to sort the wheat from the chaff, you'll find plenty of excellent apps that truly are free.

We're thankful every day for all the free apps out there that improve our lives (and the developers that make them!). Here are 50 our favourites.

You've stood at a bus stop, or in a line at the supermarket, or you've sat waiting for a movie to start, so you immediately reach for Facebook or Twitter, right? Well, maybe not, because here are seven app categories we've picked out that are a better use of your downtime than scrolling through posts from people you don't even like that much.

Music streaming is the future, apparently, which means the digital download had a bright and brief existence - lasting from the end of the 1990s to (presumably) the end of the 2010s. But before you erase all your carefully collected MP3s from the disk and close down the iTunes Store for the last time, we've got some very good reasons why you shouldn't.

Still using BitTorrent to exclusively download legally acquired content such as operating system images or files you want to share privately with friends? If so, you might want to double-check your security settings to protect yourself from what researchers at Google's Project Zero are calling a "low complexity hack" affecting Transmission and other popular BitTorrent clients. The flaw could leave your computer vulnerable to control by malicious hackers, but you can protect yourself by following a few steps until official fixes are in place.