Customization on Windows is good with themes and all, but I was curious to see what programs people use to add to the Windows shell, instead of replacing or theming it.

I use Smart Taskbar, Windows Caffeinated and Windows Toolkit that all add icons to the system tray, in the same style, that do the following:

— Smart Taskbar: Clicking the icon will hide the taskbar automatically, and can be set to show the taskbar when an app is windowed, but hide when maximized.

— Windows Caffeinated: Keeps your PC from sleeping. You can use PowerAwake with MSPowerToys, but I don’t like the icon.

— Desktop Toolkit: A Swiss army knife of utilities. It’s hard to describe but, it has pinned apps, custom folder pins, timers, screen recording, color picker, recent files, etc. I like to pin custom PowerShell scripts here.

— Toggle Desktop Icons: This app lets you double-click the desktop to hide icons, and adds a system tray icon. It’s similar to HiddenMe on macOS.

I hope this leads to a great discussion and sharing of information!

  • nottheengineer@feddit.deEnglish
    341·
    1 year ago

    Powertoys makes using windows at work bearable for me. Having a search that doesn’t just open edge if you press enter too fast and that lets me launch stuff as admin without a mouse is a godsent. So is the ability to paste as plain text.

    • hardypart@feddit.deEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      that lets me launch stuff as admin without a mouse

      Ctrl + Shift + Enter does that, too. I discovered this just recently and I’m using it every day since. Alt + Enter opens the properties of a file, which is also quite nice.

      • HeyJoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Sometimes just holding shift for search objects works as well but your right half the time I choose open folder location first then shift and click to see other user. I have to try your shortcut.

        Edit: I just realized you were only looking for run as admin, I was referring to run as other user. At our job we have normal accounts and admin accounts so we have to run some stuff as a user with higher permissions.

        • hardypart@feddit.deEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          If your normal account doesn’t havr admin rights my shortcut will still lead to the UAC where you can enter your admin account credentials.

  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    281·
    1 year ago

    Windows Caffeinated: Keeps your PC from sleeping.

    Windows already keeps itself from sleeping in my experience, I’d rather have an app that makes it actually go to sleep and stay asleep without randomly waking up.

    • Iridium@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      It’s actually ridiculous how often you’ll put Windows to sleep, and half a second later it turns itself back on.

      • CheshireSnake@lemdit.comEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        My desktop now refuses to sleep automatically since maybe 2 updates ago. I’m so sick and tired of troubleshooting it at this point that I just shut it down if I’ll be gone for more than 10 minutes.

        • Iridium@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Same, I have a shortcut set up on my phone that shuts down my computer when I get in my car just because I know it won’t stay asleep otherwise

      • toybastard@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I had the same experience - apparently it was Intel’s network driver manually triggering a wakeup every few minutes. Had to stalk Event Viewer to find that out & then disable a setting on the adapter properties page (I don’t remember if it was wake on LAN or some sort of “ignore power-on packet” option).

        Might be different for your situation though.

  • hardypart@feddit.deEnglish
    16·
    1 year ago

    Keeps your PC from sleeping.

    You can set this in the power plan settings, no need for an extra application.

    I always install TouchMe Gesture Studio for touch gestures and Touch Mouse Pointer for an optional virtual track pad on my touch devices.

    • AaronStC@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      I think it’s more of a quick toggle if under normal circumstances you do want you PC to sleep.

    • HeyJoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Also adding onto the other comment, if your PC is on a domain they most likely enforce policies that you cannot change which means you won’t be able to change sleep settings. It also may not help if you are also unable to install apps but I use a free app called caffeine64 which is not installed to stop screen from turning off or locking my screen.

  • AnonTwo@kbin.social
    13·
    1 year ago

    gsudo for command line makes it so you can run specific applications in admin mode without having to run the entire CMD window in admin mode

    Edit: “Everything” search engine (voidtools), a local search engine that actually works, includes search parameters and is very fast. Even better than windows search was prior to windows 7 when they broke it.

    • Ohwatafool@lemmy.oneEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Oh you got me excited…Voidtools Everything is an absolute life saver! Trying to get Windows server to index without bogging down our whole network was impossible. Install everything, link to shared drive, let it scan for a few minutes and we have instant search results to any document anywhere on the network. I love how it even filters result as you type. I will never be without it, and have and will continue to donate to them.

    • iks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Everything is an absolute standard for me for indexing all of them, even network shared volumes. My customers love it too.

  • XLRV@lemmy.mlEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    PowerToys adds some nice features StartAllBack to bring back the classic Windows 7 like Start Menu and Taskbar

    • entropicshart@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Have you noticed a drastic different in explorer load times in w11?

      Running an i7-10700k/32gbRAM/nVME that does not have any resource limits, but explorer will take a good 3-5 seconds to open; it is super frustrating

      • SniperFred@feddit.deEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        on my private computer with 5800x3d 32gb and nvme opening a new explorer window is a tad slower. on my work device with i5-8350u and 16gb logging in and loading the core explorer task takes ages, but then during normal use i dont feel any further slowdowns

  • iRyu@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    I use TwinkleTray on my gaming setup. It adds an icon to your tray that will popup with sliders for adjusting brightness on your monitors. The monitors respond very quickly! Eliminates having to go into the menus on the physical monitor to adjust brightness.

  • Lexi Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Back when I used windows still, I liked to use spybot anti-beacon and winaero tweaker to get rid of Microsoft key logging and microphone recording. Then I would use a lot of the tweaks in winaero.

    Windows has a pretty great UI from the jump, so one of the best things to do is to learn all the keyboard shortcuts and some basic powershell commands.

      • TheAmishMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        It’s features are gonna speak to it better than I can.

        I can only say for Windows 10, but it has great abilities with for example setting and scaling wallpapers. It drastically improves the taskbar, and moving things between monitors is a lot easier. You can add extra tabs like ‘Always on Top’ ‘Change window transparency’ and move to next monitor. You can also setup custom work areas. There quiet a lot of features

  • Nix@merv.newsEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    I use Powertoys to switch keys and shortcuts. I swapped alt and ctrl because it’s more comfortable to click alt + t or alt + a etc. I made alt + F4 work with alt + Q.

    I also used powertoy for its Run tool so pressing alt + spacebar lets me search for apps or folders.

    I use Chocolately as a package manager to install calibre, krita, etc and I have set chocolately to update all installed packages on boot. This helps with krita, calibre, qbittorrent and any other program that requires you go to the website and manually download and install every update.

    Yt-dlp to easily download youtube videos (or any video) and i set it up so it automatically downlaods mp4 instead of webm and so it automatically saves to my download folder

  • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.eeEnglish
    41·
    1 year ago

    i’ll edit with more in a short while

    • monitor profile switcher - absolutely invaluable if you use multiple monitor layouts

    • iconviewer - somewhat niche, but an easy way of seeing all icons in multiple dll files

    • pangobright - washes out the desktop so it’s not a real replacement for brightness, but if you have a migraine or something and want your screen darker at any cost this is handy

    • pasteintofile - does what it says on the tin; very handy

    • rbtray - minimise any window to systray (i’m not linking this one as i only have the exe file, and i can’t remember which of the multiple versions available it is)

    • retrobar - i don’t actually use this as it doesn’t work with 7+tt, but it’s a neat idea

    • universal pause button - pause any game (or programme, i guess) from the systray

    • touchcursor - doesn’t quite fit the question, but it’s so good i’m including it. basically dreymar’s colemak extend layer, but without the need for ahk

    • open-shell (was classic shell (was classic start)) - better start menu with a multitude of options, and some taskbar improvements

    • cairoshell - never properly used it, and it doesn’t quite answer the op question; but i want to draw attention to the almost complete shell replacement for windows

    • powertoys - others have mentioned it, but i’m adding it here so it’s a more comprehensive list

    • wox - simple, fast launcher that integrates with everything

    windows store apps: