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