Software Guide

Customizing the Taskbar

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Navigate to Personalization and select Taskbar.
  3. Adjust the taskbar items (recommend hiding Search, Copilot, Task View, and Widgets).
  4. Select Taskbar behaviors.
  5. Set Taskbar alignment to Left.
  6. Turn Show taskbar on all displays to ON.
  7. Set When using multiple displays, show my taskbar apps on to Taskbar where the window is open.
  8. Enable Show seconds in system tray clock.

Enabling Clipboard History

  1. Press Windows + V.
  2. Click Turn on.

You can now access up to 25 items copied to the clipboard.

Organizing Startup Apps

This is helpful when you accumulate too many apps.

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Go to Apps and select Startup.
  3. Turn off unnecessary software or apps you prefer to launch manually.

Everything

Official Website

A blazing-fast file search tool.

You’ll never use the default file explorer again.

PowerToys

Official Website

A must-have toolset for Windows users.

It includes many features, but these are particularly recommended:

  • Shortcut Guide Displays a list of shortcuts on-screen. Perfect for those who can’t remember shortcuts.
  • Power Rename Bulk rename files, perfect for creating sequential files. Regular expressions supported.
  • Keyboard Manager Customize or disable key and shortcut mappings.
  • PowerToys Run A powerful app launcher, calculator, and search tool all in one. Ideal for minimizing mouse use.

ShareX

Official Website

A screen capture tool with countless features.

While Windows has basic screenshot tools, ShareX provides extended capabilities such as:

  • Uploading to Google Drive.
  • Image editing:
    • Blur.
    • Mosaic.
    • Adding annotations like text and shapes.
  • Reading QR codes directly from the screen (no need to pull out your phone).

Especially for Developers

VSCode

Official Website

A versatile IDE (Integrated Development Environment).

It’s a developer’s Swiss Army knife. While adding extensions can enhance its functionality, adding too many may slow it down.

Windows Terminal

Microsoft Store

A highly customizable terminal application.

Tuning it to your preferences can be a rabbit hole, but it’s worth it.

WinMerge

Official Website

A useful tool for comparing (diffing) text and other files.

It can even compare Excel files, which can come in handy.

WSL - Windows Subsystem for Linux

Official Website

For development, working in WSL is preferable to native Windows.

While not a perfect Linux experience, it offers a much better developer experience compared to Windows.

Git

Download Link

An essential tool. Development simply doesn’t start without it.

If you’re working within WSL, there’s no need to install Git on Windows.

DevToys

Microsoft Store

A software suite packed with tools for developers, including:

  • Image optimization.
  • Format conversion for images.
  • Color blindness simulator.
  • Base conversion for numbers.
  • Hash generation.

And much more.

This concludes my recommendations for settings and software tailored to developers using Windows.