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!
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.