My Laptop Setup

This post goes over how I set up my laptop, such as the software I use, how I configure them as well as the general settings I use on Windows. I used to have a page for my laptop’s software but in case I need to reconfigure my laptop, I can always check this page out. Note that I’ll try to keep this page updated as I add new software to my computer.

General Setup

• Run updates before installing anything
• Remove Windows’ annoying feature’s using Winaero Tweaker.
• Enable Windows’ Clipboard Manager with Win + V. It’s lifechanging, thank me later. I just wish that iOS had one.
• Show hidden files and folders in Explorer as well as show file extensions.
• Enable a pin so that I can use Passkeys and stuff.

Software

Utilities

• Winaero Tweaker lets me remove Window’s annoying features, like:
  • Enabled classic context menus because the one in Windows 11 sucks.
• Scoop which I use to install certain packages not on WinGet, like Dart Sass and various image codecs.
  • vips for image processing. It’s supposedly faster thank Imagemagick, which is still cool. I’m also trying to add HEIF to it which is a bitch.
• Winget Packages for other tools. It comes with Windows now.
  • Hugo which powers this website.
• Chrome Remote Desktop for attended remote assistance.
• Anydesk to remote to the work server since it allows unattended access.
• 7-Zip to compress/decompress files.
• Everything which is way better at searching for files on Windows. Sure it’s because it searches filenames rather than contents but filename search is what I need to do most of the time. After installing, I enable it in the context menu. I’m trying Everything Toolbar which Chris Titus suggested, but it’s pretty slow right now.
• iCloud. It’s pretty shit but I need it to conveniently interact with my iThings.
• NAPS2 for scanning documents.
• PowerToys adds a lot of useful features to Windows, like Awake and Spotlight-like thing, Power Run. They’re so well integrated, you don’t even notice them. It warrants an entire article on it’s own.
• Google Drive for file storage
• KDE Connect is a cross-platform AirDrop type thing. Let’s you send files and even control a computer remotley.
• Apple Devices to sync my computer with my iThings. I hate it though it’s gotten a little better now. You can also try CopyTrans but it might mess with the Apple drivers since CopyTrans requires older versions of them.
• VLC Media Player to watch videos.
• qBittorrent to download torrents. For a better experience, use search plugins with Jackett.
• yt-dlp to download online videos.

Productivity

• Microsoft Office is what I need for work. If I wasn’t getting it from my mom I would use LibreOffice instead but what to do. Excel is fun though.
• Thunderbird as a mail client, because Microsoft Outlook pissed me off.
• PDF24 provides a lot of useful tools for working with PDFs all for free. It works online too. I should write about it someday.
• WhatsApp to receive Whatsapp chats from the work phone. For my own chats I use Whatsapp Web

Programming

• Git for version control. Not very good at it but it seems to do what I want it to do right now. No particular configuration except for using my name and email.
• VS Code is code editor of choice. I started using it because it was way faster than Atom despite being an Electron app. I’d love to use vim but I haven’t gotten around to learning it yet. I enable it with these settings:
  • enable auto-save
  • deactivate compact folders, so I can see the full folder structure in the explorer tab.
  • Add these extensions:
    • Python, for Python development
    • GitHub Actions to work with well…GitHub actions.
    • gitignore for quick access to gitignore templates.
    • Even Better TOML for Hugo, but I just decided to use YAML.
    • REST Client, to test APIs in VS Code.
• Node.js via Fast Node Manager (fnm).
• Python, which was the first programming language I’ve ever used. I’ve also disabled the PATH limit if that matters for anything.
• Notepad++ for quick file editing.
• Local is the recommended way to make a Local WordPress Development Environment. I’ve never used it but I hope to soon.
• DevToys is an Open-Source Swiss Army knife for developers which comes with a lot of handy tools to do things like test regular expressions, encode/decode base64 strings among other things.
• XAAMP for PHP development.
• Composer for PHP dependency manager.

Web

• Microsoft Edge which I’m reluctantly using after Microsoft shoved it down my face.
  • Extensions:
    • Bitwarden is my password manager of choice. It does what it needs to do. I used to use LastPass until the new owners jacked the price up 3×, which I’m glad they did since they’ve really fell off security-wise. I also used 1Password thanks to Canva which gave it to me for a year after being hacked. It was nice, but it’s not worth paying for given how Bitwarden (and even Apple Passwords) is good enough and cost $0.
    • Enhancer for YouTube which makes YouTube a lot more pleasant to use.
    • uBlock Origin to block ads, which are completley cancerous. Not sure how long it’ll work for given how Manifest v3 is finally rolling out and it doesn’t work on Chrome anymore, another Chromium based browser.
    • Apple Passwords I only have this since it was a part of the iCloud app. Doesn’t work at all, like iCloud in general.