30 Powerful Windows CLI Tools (Command-Line Parameter Support)

Great for building GUIs in AutoHotkey v2. Each links to an official/reliable Windows download source (often portable .exe or zip).

1. mediainfo – Displays detailed technical and tag information about media files.
2. mkvmerge (from MKVToolNix) – Muxes/demuxes video, audio, and subtitles into MKV containers.
3. handbrakecli – Transcodes videos with advanced compression (HandBrake CLI).
4. vlc – Plays/converts media files and streams in CLI mode.
5. optipng – Optimizes PNG images losslessly.
6. jpegoptim – Optimizes JPEG images (see also Windows builds on related repos or SourceForge ports).
7. pngquant – Applies lossy compression to PNG images.
8. gifsicle – Creates, edits, and optimizes GIF animations (Windows binaries often via eternallybored.org/misc/gifsicle).
9. qpdf – Performs structural transformations on PDFs.
10. mutool (from MuPDF) – Cleans, converts, and extracts from PDFs/XPS/Epub.
11. pdftotext (from Poppler) – Extracts text from PDFs (Windows builds via third-party ports or Chocolatey).
12. ebook-convert (from Calibre) – Converts between ebook formats like EPUB, MOBI, PDF.
13. unoconv – Converts office documents using LibreOffice (requires LibreOffice installed).
14. antiword – Extracts text from MS Word documents (older tool, ports available).
15. catdoc – Extracts text from MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint (Windows ports via SourceForge or similar).
16. mp3gain – Analyzes and adjusts MP3 volume without re-encoding.
17. flac – Encodes/decodes FLAC lossless audio.
18. opusenc – Encodes audio to Opus format.
19. httpie – Sends HTTP requests with JSON support (CLI friendly, install via choco/scoop).
20. axel – Accelerates downloads with multiple connections.
21. lftp – Handles FTP, SFTP, HTTP transfers with mirroring (Windows ports available).
22. nc (netcat) – Reads/writes data across networks (often via Nmap’s ncat or standalone ports).
23. socat – Establishes bidirectional data transfers (Windows builds via ports).
24. nmap – Scans networks and ports for security/auditing.
25. tshark (Wireshark CLI) – Captures and analyzes network packets.
26. dot (from Graphviz) – Renders graphs from DOT language descriptions.
27. yq – Processes YAML, JSON, and XML data (Go version recommended for Windows).
28. xmlstarlet – Queries, edits, and transforms XML (Windows binaries via ports or Chocolatey).
29. csvkit – Manipulates and converts CSV files (Python-based, run via python -m csvkit… or install).
30. miller (mlr) – Processes name-indexed data like CSV/JSON/TSV.

Tip: Many install easily via Chocolatey (choco install <name>), Scoop, or are fully portable. Let me know if you want AHK examples for any!