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!
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
I use Powertoys, too, but mostly for the screen split/zones feature, which is super handy.