4 Free Web Apps to Replace Your Desktop Software

A few years ago, trying to move to an online-only existence wasn’t a practical option, but now long-serving web apps have grown more powerful and you can now do almost everything in a browser that you can do on the desktop (albeit in more limited form). Here’s our current picks for the best online apps out there.

Outlook for email

Quite a few options to pick from here but Outlook gets the nod as it’s just been given a fresh lick of paint—the online version of Microsoft’s flagship email application now has a cleaner look, pinned messages, Gmail-style snippets and better contact and calendar integration. Embedded image support has been improved, too.

Google Play Music for music

Google Play Music tends to get overshadowed by the likes of Spotify and Apple Music but it’s actually one of the best options out there, particularly if you don’t want to fork out a monthly subscription fee (though you can if you want). You can upload 50,000 of your local audio tracks to the cloud and play them from anywhere free of charge.

Pixlr Editor for image editing

Pixlr Editor looks like Photoshop and acts like Photoshop, so if you’re familiar with Adobe’s photo editing juggernaut then it won’t take you long to get up to speed with Pixlr Editor. Layers, filters and advanced tools like the clone stamp are supported inside the app, and it’s difficult to find anything better in terms of online apps for serious picture tweaking.

YouTube Editor for video editing

When it comes to video editing, most of us are satisfied with a quick bit of trimming and being able to stitch a couple of scenes together. The YouTube Editor is perfect for the job and lets you add titles, music, photos and more to your videos, and of course everything you’ve ever uploaded to YouTube is ready and waiting for you to work on.