Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/scott-hanselmans-2021-ultimate-developer-and-power-users-tool-list-for-windows

by fomine3 • 6 years ago

441 229 6 years ago

abdusco3• 6 years ago

I'd add Directory Opus[0] to that list. It's an incredibly customizable and scriptable file explorer that allows you to fit it exactly to your workflow. It's like IntelliJ of file explorers.

- Tabbed interface with multiple panes

- Every function can be assigned a shortcut

- Every button can be scripted

- Defaults can be overwritten

- Dynamic layouts based on folder contents, path or determined by a script

- Custom file previews, context menus, rename scripts

- Hooks for reacting to different events

- Every corner of the UI is themable

- Virtual filesystem for archiving and bookkeeping

- ...

One disadvantage is that you have to use an ancient version of JScript (ES3 / Microsoft flavor) or VBScript (possibly because of the need for communicating over a COM interface). Or use its own DSL for simpler scripts.

I wish it had support for a more modern / more popular languages for scripting. I wonder if QuickJS[1] can be integrated into it. Or Python. That would be really sweet.

[0] https://www.gpsoft.com.au/

[1] https://bellard.org/quickjs/

Osiris2• 6 years ago

Another robust file explorer is xplorer2.

immigrantsheep• 6 years ago

I've been a dopus user since the Amiga days. Love it

tonyedgecombe4• 6 years ago

It's probably using the Active Scripting interfaces for scripts. I seem to remember that Python supports those interfaces so that might be an option.

yread2• 6 years ago

Or TotalCommander. Directory synchronization, integrated diff, Sftp support, renaming multiple files, lister to intelligently view contents of a file, 10s of years of plugins

rkagerer5• 6 years ago

I tried Directory Opus today. Is there any way I can make the menu bar about half the height?

abdusco3• 6 years ago

Some components are Win32 primitives, and it may not be possible to modify them. You could try asking it in the forum[0]? Lead developer is quite responsive.

https://resource.dopus.com/

fomine33• 6 years ago

I'll replace WinDirStat with WizTree. It loads immediately because of reading local disk MFT.

dspillett2• 6 years ago

I tend to use WizTree for local NTFS volumes where it's MFT analysis benefit is present, it can be so much faster it almost seems like magic.

For everything else on Windows (network mounts, fat/exfat) I currently use Space Sniffer (http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/)

One thing issue with WizTree is that drawing the result is slow for large trees (a volume with a great many files spread over a the structure) compared to other programs. For one of my local volume at work which happens to include an archive copy of a huge (for VSS) source safe repository WizTree is slower despite the MFT shenanigans because drawing the result after takes enough time to undo the advantage. Though this is on SSD - I expect WizTree would reclaim the speed crown for this dataset on a "traditional" disk, where the reduced random access IO requirements of its MFT scan will be even more significant.

Tempest19812• 6 years ago

How slow are you experiencing? For me, I think it rarely takes more than 2 or 3 seconds for the entire drive.

Great program, free, but I donated.

Osiris2• 6 years ago

I used WinDirStat a lot but I've since switched to TreeSize (free edition). WinDirStat is single threaded so you can't really do anything while it's scanning. TreeSize let's you navigate the tree while the scan is still happening.

WalterGR3• 6 years ago

TreeSize is amazing. The free version doesn’t work on network shares, but that’s the only limitation I’ve found.

ziml774• 6 years ago

I love that the MFT makes utilities like that so fast. I couldn't imagine working without Everything Search. I've never found anything similar for Linux. I think I could do something with locate and a cron job, but that doesn't get instant updates to its database like Everything does.

stjohnswarts4• 6 years ago

but updatedb only takes a few seconds to update after it's done a full update, unless you've been fucking around with thousands up thousands of files just recently. Well on ext4, not sure about other filesystems.

Jamie99122• 6 years ago

I would add ClipX (https://bluemars.org/clipx/) to that list, its extremely handy to bring up a small window of my past clipboards with a hotkey. It's also extremely lightweight

JohnCoden• 6 years ago

I use CLCL (https://nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html) which looks quite similar.

Jasonnor• 6 years ago

I think clipboard history (Win + V) in Win10 is completely enough to replace ClipX.

Jamie99122• 6 years ago

I don't like the whole Cloud sync thign

fomine33• 6 years ago

Seeing diff from 2014 is interesting. Maybe this year's list is a bit reduced version.

Also MS' apps replaced some 3rd party apps. Example: Chocolatey -> WinGet, GOW -> WSL, F.lux -> removed (maybe alt: Win10 supports night mode), Notepad2/Sublime -> VSCode

jhvkjhk• 6 years ago

I wonder why the author recommend winget but not scoop. Scoop obviously has more community support and that's the most important part of a package manager (more packages, more frequent update, etc).

runjake• 6 years ago

Winget is the de facto official package manager for Windows. It is or will be included with Windows. I know it’s included in the Insider builds.

timvisee• 6 years ago

It is a mess though, and quite incapable.

cm21872• 6 years ago

But what package list does it have? That’s the primary criteria. A package manager with no package isn’t of much use.

kekebo4• 6 years ago

Any upsides to scoop compared to chocolatey?

pas• 6 years ago

Seems simpler to me. Active community, big directory of buckets and apps.

https://rasa.github.io/scoop-directory/by-apps

tailspin20194• 6 years ago

I'd not heard of Scoop before today but have used chocolatey extensively in the past.

However I'm wary of all these tools (including brew on Mac) as they all feel like a pretty efficient way to main line your own personal supply chain attack into your dev machine!

For that reason I now try to use them sparingly and with a high degree of suspicion.

flohofwoe• 6 years ago

Here's a comparison page:

https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/Chocolatey-Compari...

One advantage is that scoop installs (most) tools into a common place and search path, and thus doesn't pollute environment variables as much.

dukeofharen• 6 years ago

In short, Scoop installs all your apps in the user home dir. Apps are not installed through an installer, but through a .zip file. A pro is that you do not need to be admin on your PC for Scoop to function (handy for PCs that are not in your control). A con I've encountered is that Windows is not very friendly towards apps that are not installed through an installer. I've installed IrfanView through Scoop, but for some reason, Windows restores "Photos" as default app for opening pictures a few times a week, this was not the case when I installed IrfanView with an installer.

badLiveware• 6 years ago

It's a lot faster than chocolatey, choco gets painfully slow with many packages due to being serial. Scoop is considerably faster

Tajnymag• 6 years ago

Scoop installs all the files locally by default and doesn't need to be run through an elevated shell. In junction to this, there's also usually less trouble with leftover files after uninstalling programs.

The official software repo might be smaller than chocolate's, but to my eye, as it is moderated through a single open github repo, it seems much simpler.

tailspin20194• 6 years ago

I wonder why the author recommend winget but not scoop.

Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft and is a prominent advocate for the .NET/Microsoft ecosystem so his recommendations are likely to skew towards native MS tools in the first instance.

Nothing wrong with that as long as you consume his material through that lens!

That said, I'm quite surprised I hadn't heard of Scoop[0]. Looks interesting...

[0] https://scoop.sh

4111111111111112• 6 years ago

Best thing about scoop is that it doesn't need admin privileges. Everything is installed as portables in user directory

jlgaddis2• 6 years ago

... native MS tools ...

I recall that the developer of AppGet claiming [0] that Microsoft effectively "stole" AppGet from him.

[0] https://medium.com/@keivan/the-day-appget-died-e9a5c96c8b22

anonunivgrad• 6 years ago

Scoop tries to swim upstream and change the default install location. In my experience, this ultimately leads to problems and system fragility. Sure, it should work, but that's no comfort when it doesn't work right when you need it. Instead, you should install software to the default place and install it as admin. That's how it's tested by its developers and that's how it's tested for regression and compatibility within Microsoft.

grayhat• 6 years ago

I'd add Far Manager, which has been THE file manager for more than 15 years for me on Windows. BSD license: https://www.farmanager.com/download.php?l=en I wish it was ported to Linux and I'd probably never use midnight commander again

iaml• 6 years ago

https://github.com/elfmz/far2l/

mrweasel3• 6 years ago

Sort of a side note: Exceptional Mac programs are often showcased and awarded. Either by Apple or others in the Mac “community”.

Is there example from the Windows side? Programs that highlight the very best the Windows platform can deliver?

phendrenad2• 6 years ago

I think that there are simply too many to spotlight.

tonyedgecombe4• 6 years ago

I think that Microsoft just don't care.

catchmilk• 6 years ago

Sort of a side note v2: Would like to see a similar article/resource for Mac too.

mrweasel3• 6 years ago

Well, Apple have their design award each year. This year it's mostly iPad and iOS, so that's no fun.

But you do have review like this one from The Verge, reviewing Pixelmator Pro, where they talk, briefly, about using the Core ML API from Apple. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/5/16254300/pixelmator-pro-fe...

I never see things like that for Windows.

wayneftw6• 6 years ago

Showcasing is precisely what's happening in this article. Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft and he's part of the community of people who evangelize Windows, .NET, Xbox and all the cool Microsoft tech...

athms• 6 years ago

Apple's Design Awards has snubbed Mac apps for the last three years and in those years the majority of the awards went to mobile games.

rkagerer5• 6 years ago

What do folks think of the recommended WinMerge and Perforce Visual Merge, over Beyond Compare? I've been using Beyond Compare for years and have yet to see anything I like better.

Total Uninstall should also be on this list, to keep your machine clean if you're like me and try out dozens or hundreds of different software titles per year.

SysInternals belongs up there with NirSoft.

I used Teracopy for a while but found it buggy on occasion and worried about forgetting what I had queued. If it's gotten better I might give it another whirl.

I've got a slew of great utilities I've collected over the years which I find indispensible on Windows. There's a lot of overlap with Scott's, but I think he's missing some gems. Could share my own list if anyone is interested.

abdusco3• 6 years ago

In the same field as Total Uninstall, there's Bulk Crap Uninstaller[0] that helps you stay sane when fixing up a relative's computer. It finds and helps you uninstall applications unattended, also removes leftover files after the uninstallation.

[0] https://github.com/Klocman/Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller

jimbob452• 6 years ago

Shout-out to TortoiseDiff over WinMerge/BC3. I routinely get my best results with it because of its superior usability (and it’s free!).

GordonS2• 6 years ago

Is TortoiseDiff available standalone, or does it only come with/as part of TortoiseSVN?

tailspin20194• 6 years ago

Completely agree on Beyond Compare. This is a fantastic tool. I use both their Windows and Mac versions almost daily. https://www.scootersoftware.com

Also seconding SysInternals - a true secret weapon for Windows ninjas! https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

oxfeed652612• 6 years ago

I enjoy lists like this, so I, for one, would love to see yours.

+1 for Beyond Compare. Fantastic tool. Outstanding support from Scooter Software.

rkagerer5• 6 years ago

Some others I haven't noticed mentioned here yet are Open Shell (classic start menu), QTTabBar (tabs in Explorer), Launchy (like Everything but for your apps), HashTab, Unlocker (SendTo target to see what process has locked your file), UltraMon, USBLogView, sdelete.

WalterGR3• 6 years ago

WinMerge is the best diff tool I’ve found. I haven’t used it for merges, because I prefer four-pane merges (original, left, right, and final) and it doesn’t support that. For that I use kdiff3, though I’d love to find a replacement...

WinMerge is open source - maybe free software, I don’t know. Development halted for years but was picked back up. It’s so solid that I haven’t upgraded in a decade? or more.

Ayesh• 6 years ago

Compared to Windows Terminal, I started to use Fluent Terminal (also on Microsoft store), and it is amazing! It crashed a few times at first, but it's customizable, has a settings UI, and is just as fast and nicer looking compared to Windows Terminal.

X-Mouse button control is another app I absolutely love. It replaced my Logitech Options, and works quite nice, and quietly sits doing just that.

Tempest19812• 6 years ago

Windows Terminal allows some customization, via the settings Jason file. Colors, watermark image. I think they're working on a GUI for settings. That said, the rate of fixes seems to have slowed.

kekebo4• 6 years ago

It seems nice but using WSL(2) Windows Terminal is noticeably faster for me, same compared to most other alternatives including Cmder/ConEmu.

While Windows Terminal doesn't have a settings UI (yet[0]) it does allow for theming, this page[1] features a range of color schemes that you can define and set in your settings.json.

There's also a wrapper that allows for quake style drop down [2] until it's implemented by Windows Terminal itself[0].

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/doc/terminal...

[1] https://windowsterminalthemes.dev/

[2] https://github.com/flyingpie/windows-terminal-quake

turing_complete2• 6 years ago

The year is 2020 and people think a terminal that crashes a few times is "amazing".

That is amazing.

mixmastamyk2• 6 years ago

Terminals are thirty years behind on Windows but catching up fast. I blame Balmer and his ilk.

idiocrat• 6 years ago

I like dnGrep.

It searches inside archives, Excel files and other MS Office documents.

Supports replace.

[0] http://dngrep.github.io/

t00r• 6 years ago

Using dnGrep since years:

Killer features for me:

  - Right-click to search in File Explorer (complete directories w/t subdirectories
  - Open line results in a custom editor, like Notepad++
  - Whole-file preview
  - or: Show some lines before and after the grep finding (configurable)
  - Search-and-replace, including undo

alexis2b• 6 years ago

I am a big fan of BareTail and BareGrep when browsing and making sense of any very large set of log files. The pro versions are definitely worth your money: real-time match, regex-to-table log parsing, grep in tail / tail in grep, and all this in an incredibly minimalist UI and a single small exe.

oxfeed652612• 6 years ago

I love Bare Tail Pro. It is fantastic for working with huge, verbose log files and digging out the tiny portions relevant to whatever issue I am working on.

The product name is, however, unprofessional at best. Quite simply, it embarrasses me.

A partial workaround is to rename the shortcut, executable, directory, etc. to BareMetal Tail.

867-53094• 6 years ago

would like to have seen a debloater / unfudger on the list but am guessing they haven't progressed much

faeyanpiraat2• 6 years ago

What are they for?

867-53094• 6 years ago

getting rid of the adware, spyware and bloatware which come with Windows

meibo• 6 years ago

If you use a prosumer version of Win 10, debloating is maybe 10 clicks after a reinstall and a registry script if you want to get rid of telemetry altogether.

867-53094• 6 years ago

it is still hit and miss, and usually silently undone with Windows Updates

another_kel• 6 years ago

I'd add UELI[0] — probably the best alfred style launcher. Does almost everything including Everything integration. Also this script[1] for AHK to quckly jump from "Save as" window to folder currently opened in file explorer.

[0] — https://ueli.app/#/ [1] — https://pastebin.com/cmLVFdbB

trog2• 6 years ago

Just saw Ueli from the article. Looks really interesting but it seems to be built in Electron. What's its footprint like? I'm currently very happy using the nice lightweight Launchy but it hasn't been updated in a long time. Still works great but requires a bit of tinkering to get it going in Win10, last time I tried.

kekebo4• 6 years ago

Performance wise it's fine for me but it does have some rough edges like:

- Moves across the screen for a while when using custom scaling

- Doesn't sort by most used result hits (always shows same order)

- Hangs for me when I click on results instead of navigating by keyboard

- Doesn't have an option to kill apps like Wox

But apart from these it does a lot of things quite well.

WhoCaresLies• 6 years ago

a browser for an app launcher, we reached new highs, or lows depending on people's taste

jodrellblank5• 6 years ago

Only if you're too young to remember IE/DHTML built into Windows Explorer in Windows 9x, when folders were "web pages".

ayoisaiah5• 6 years ago

I was shocked when I saw that it's 120 MB, but I downloaded it anyway. Looks like a good Wox alternative so far....just skeptical about the performance and impact on battery given its Electron roots.

jijji• 6 years ago

cat ubuntu.iso > /dev/sdb; reboot

cpach• 6 years ago

Or just install WSL…

Stierlitz• 6 years ago

Or just install MX Linux ..

https://mxlinux.org/

jmlucjav2• 6 years ago

I would mention Total commander and Quick Access Popup as two well known ones, but two gems that I see are undiscovered are:

- TouchCursor https://martin-stone.github.io/touchcursor/ the only one I found that allows you to use Space as modifier key, and works flawlesly (with other ahk scripts handling hotkeys running simultaneously). Praying it does not stop working with some Win10 update, as it is not being worked one, it seems

- https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck for more mouse free operation of any program.

porpoise2• 6 years ago

Interesting link about TouchCursor.

Personally I prefer to use left alt key instead of space key, as I can hold down the left alt with minimal effort (right alt takes over the duty of left). For this to cause minimal conflict, I use Sharpkey to remap physical left alt to e.g. F16 at the OS level, then define the desired behavior for F16 in ahk.

DrSiemer• 6 years ago

If you often find yourself renaming files I can highly recommend Flash Renamer. It's $20, but it must have saved me thousands of dollars in production time.

Btw, does anybody know of a modern disk usage manager that uses bright, clear individual colors like Space Monger?

uryga• 6 years ago

WizTree work alright, it generates a nice colourful tile plot

Ennea• 6 years ago

As a free alternative to Flash Renamer, PowerRename[0] from the latest PowerToys[1] collection might be worth a look.

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/powerrena...

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys

diarrhea2• 6 years ago

PowerRename has worked fine for me, can also recommend it.

However, when there's directories and many, many files involved, I just use Python with pathlib. It's a couple lines of code anyone can learn to do, with all the flexibility of Python. PowerShell would maybe also be suitable.

zo1• 6 years ago

For a command-line tool, I absolutely recommend Conemu (https://conemu.github.io/)

garethrowlands• 6 years ago

I used to be a big fan of conemu back when Windows had no terminal support and "console emulation" was the best that could be done. But what advantages does this have over Windows Terminal these days?

kroltan• 6 years ago

Not sure about ConEmu itself, but Cmder (which uses ConEmu behind the scenes) offers a Quake-style dropdown terminal, and this is reason enough for me :)

(If you're on Linux, there's also guake, which I used to use)

molticrystal• 6 years ago

I'll suggest Process Hacker [0] It is the ultimate Task Manger, open source, supports amazing plugins , and has tons of features that sysinternals Process Explorer lacks. Be sure to get the nightly/3.0 branch , the 2.0 branch is several years old. Also I strongly suggest building the plugins extra repo [1], has some great ones, like a terminator plugin that can kill apps various user and kernel ways.

Unfortunately due to a personal dispute with a Webroot employee and Microsoft its signature ended up in antivirus databases, so don't expect any love from Microsoft. They often look at the APIs PH uses and use signature checks and other ways to block/discourage PH from using them. Also expect having to whitelist it with anti-virus products, but the source code is open and you can build it yourself if you don't trust what you are getting. [2]

[0] https://wj32.org/processhacker/nightly.php

[1] https://github.com/processhacker/plugins-extra/

[2] https://github.com/processhacker/processhacker/issues/454#is...

heroprotagonist• 6 years ago

This is a beautiful piece of software.

I once configured Process Hacker to automatically pin a crappy piece of corporate software to a specific CPU whenever it started to prevent it from starving the rest of the system.

Set-and-forget is so much better than having to constantly deal with the downsides of software you're required to run.

proactivesvcs• 6 years ago

Homepage: https://processhacker.sourceforge.io/

nickjj2• 6 years ago

I'm surprised Dexpot[0] isn't listed. It's a really great virtual desktop management tool and has a number of things included that's not included with the Windows 10 default virtual desktop feature.

Then there's VcXrv[1] to share your clipboard between WSL and Windows, it also lets you run Linux GUI tools in WSL. Essential IMO, if only for clipboard sharing.

Sizer[2] is another great tool for quickly resizing and positioning windows programmatically. Amazingly useful for spinning up specific sets of apps quickly.

IrfanView[3] is IMO one of the best quick image viewers / editors. It also has handy dev features (batch processing, quickly getting a hex value from an image, etc.).

I keep a list of dev related tools I use on Windows too at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use.

[0] https://dexpot.de/?lang=en

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/

[2] http://www.brianapps.net/sizer4/

[3] https://www.irfanview.com/

porpoise2• 6 years ago

Dexpot still works fine even though it hasn't been updated for years. And I love being able to have 9 virtual desktops arranged in a 3x3 grid and a semi-permanent transparent "minimap" of what's on each desktop as well as my current location in the 3x3 grid. But it has an issue which makes it unusable for me, something which may or may not be a bug, i.e. on switching to a desktop, if that desktop contains more than one window, all of them are brought to the front one after another, causing considerable delay if there are >3 windows present. The native win10 virtual desktop feature doesn't seem to have that issue.

jmlucjav2• 6 years ago

I see you use multiple monitors, does Sizer play well with them? I discarded it cause I thought it did not support multimonitor setups well. My main use case is setting up some complex layout (in multimonitor), and be able to save it, and restore it when needed.

nickjj2• 6 years ago

I see you use multiple monitors, does Sizer play well with them?

It supports them well.

It has a drop down box where you can define the monitor you want for a specific entry and then window positions will be relative to that monitor.

Alternatively you can also set a window's position to any X / Y coordinate. So if you had let's say 2x 2560x14440 monitors and you wanted to position a window to the 2nd monitor you can tell Sizer to move it to X coordinate 3050 and it would be +500 pixels into the 2nd monitor. You just need to enable the checkbox "allow move outside screen bounds". That could be useful I guess if you wanted a window to span more than 1 monitor and you have super thin bezels.

daemoens• 6 years ago

Thanks for the recommendations

jaharios• 6 years ago

For mouse power users I would recommend StrokesPlus [0] , at first I used mouse gestures as a browser extension but with StrokesPlus you can do it on OS level. You can map everything you want as a gesture and even use multiple key modifiers. You can map the each gesture per app group or global. An ignore list is also there.

[0] https://www.strokesplus.com/

etlandis2• 6 years ago

On a similar vein, but also works for multitouch gestures on the trackpad and on touchscreens is GestureSign: https://gesturesign.win/#/

CraigJPerry4• 6 years ago

AutoHotKey finally fell off my list, to be replaced by... powershell. After about 8 years of utter disdain for the mistake that is powershell, I’m actually enjoying giving it a proper test drive.

I can’t quite believe it myself but i chsh’d to pwsh on my mac and linux boxes too.

Goodbye 30 lines of AHK just to capture and parse the output of a RunWait (in practice it was better to create a WSH com object and exec the command from there since it’s only 3 lines of code to grab stdout then).

AnonymousPlanet• 6 years ago

How did you finally get into it? I was stoked about it 15 years ago when I first read about it, but using it never clicked with me. Every now and then I enthusiastically try to embrace it, just to eventually be annoyed by all the clumsiness, lack of speed, or about having to wade through layers of objects just to get to the information I need. It just does not have the feeling of a tool for shell users honed by shell users, but a soulless navigation tool for a Byzantine object structure.

I finally decided Powershell is not so much a shell but rather an environment good for scripting.

What direction did you come from when embracing it? Did you have a strong background of Unix admin / developer use of shells?

CraigJPerry4• 6 years ago

It’s early days on my test drive. I don’t know how well it’ll fare for fairly common actions in bash like “here documents” or what the equiv of shopt extglob is in pwsh.

My usual cli usage is what i’d call “text manipulation” - slicing and dicing command output or converting csv-like data in some way or another.

My toolset is the usual suspects - bash, sed & awk but beyond a certain complexity i’ll switch to python.

The key thing for me is i can still use grep, sed, awk and python in pipelines as before but i’m attracted by the easy data access in pwsh.

The idea that Get-Process returns an object and i can just query each process’s WSS attribute for example is appealing right now (as opposed to explicitly manipulating text to suit, e.g. grep resident /proc/*/statm or ps -o rss or whatever approach)

majkinetor6• 6 years ago

AHK is not comparable to powershell. They overlap in some segments but generally, what AHK can do, you would have to reimplement in Posh and it would be slow as hell.

notretarded• 6 years ago

Such as?

CraigJPerry4• 6 years ago

Aha! A folder full of .ps1’s (that were .ahk’s) begs to differ on this point :-)

Some random examples i use all the time:

* i have a bunch of apps (i think of it like a workspace) that i open for specific tasks - e.g. when playing ham radio i’ll open a tool that lets me duplicate traffic to/from a serial port (com0com) so that multiple apps can share 1 physical port, a tool that lets me control my radio (flrig), a tool that lets me route audio between devices and software without a mess of cables doing it in hardware (voicemeeter banana), a tool that encodes/decodes messages (wsjtx), a tool that shows what grid squares i’m hearing (gridtracker) and a tool for logging (home brew). They all need to be arranged in fairly bespoke ways across a couple of screens to let me work effectively - bind the shortcut to the .ps1 to a keyboard shortcut and i’m done.

The same idea exists for my other workspaces (dev work - there’s different flavours for this one by task, photo editing, researching, presenting, etc. Etc.)

Things like sending “PS1;” CAT control command to my radio (this turns it on) are actually less lines of code in .ps1 than .ahk. My .ps1’s are about 2/3 the size of the .ahk’s in practice.

Before .ahk i was using python2 with the win32 module, .ps1 is comparably expressive to python2 - which surprises me.

Other .ahk’s i use all the time are basically glorifed macros for common actions i perform. Again shorter to express in powershell.

yardshop• 6 years ago

The AutoHotKey programming language is quirky and weird, even when compared to Powershell's quirkiness, but there are classes of things that AutoHotKey can do that I don't know how you would do on Powershell:

    prepend or append selected text to what's already on the clipboard with Ctrl+[ or Ctrl+]

    find all windows with specific text in the title and resize them in a custom way (Window+])

    insert custom strings or large blocks of text in other programs triggered by a keypress (its original reason for being)
    eg: ]s inserts the current date and time: 2020-12-25 11:57:07

    define a keypress to start Putty with a given profile, enter logon credentials, CD to a folder and start Midnight Commander

(these are my own keypress definitions)

I once wrote an AHK script to start VLC streaming a local radio station at a specific time, then start Audacity to record audio, then stop the recording and streaming at the end of the program and save the audio as WAV and MP3. This let me go for a bike ride in the late afternoon before dark, then come home and listen to my favorite radio show later in the evening. It's not necessary anymore, but back in 2008 this was an amazing thing to put together.

CraigJPerry4• 6 years ago

This was a good list, just for fun i had a bash at #1 (an excuse to learn as much as anything...):

prepend-selection.ps1:

    $before = Get-Clipboard
    [void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('System.Windows.Forms')
    [System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys]::SendWait("%({TAB})")  # when launched, a powershell.exe opens and steals focus, this alt+tab takes focus back to the app that has the text selection
    [System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys]::SendWait("^(c)")  # ctrl+c
    $after = Get-Clipboard
    Set-Clipboard -Value ($after + $before)

Now for the impossible bit - perform this action on ctrl+[ keypress... I created a new shortcut on the desktop (in the start menu would also work) with a target of:

    powershell.exe -executionpolicy bypass -noexit -file prepend-selection.ps1

And the "start in" was set to the dir containing prepend-selection.ps1

Lastly the "shortcut key" of the shortcut was set to CTRL+SHIFT+[ -- i couldn't use CTRL+[

... and it works. Open an app like notepad, put something on the clipboard, select some other text then ctrl+shift+[ with notepad still having the focus and... wait far too long but then eventually powershell.exe opens and i have the selected value prepended to my clipboard.

0 out of 10. Would not do again, AHK definitely beats powershell for this use case :-)

For #2 i know how to do that already - create a Shell.Application com object and then cycle through the window list and set width / height / top / left to suit.

For #3 i didn't try it but i wonder if there's a mechanism where i can insert a function to be called back into window's message processing loop. Like how i imagine AHK does it. This is just a thought, i'd just use AHK before i actually tried this.

For #4 this suffers the same issue as #1 with the "define a keypress" limitation but otherwise it's just an exec + focus window + send keys (likely with some hacky sleeps in between).

majkinetor6• 6 years ago

AHK language sux. Shame it is not Lua instead of it.

But tool is awesome, and community is great.

sixothree2• 6 years ago

I write code all day and I can't be bothered to learn AHK. I tried but it annoyed the heck out of me.

trm423• 6 years ago

Funny, how big part of the list are Linux-origin projects or WSL. How about really making the switch to Linux instead of trying to make Windows function like Linux?

c048• 6 years ago

Both OS's have up and downsides. What's wrong with emulating parts of other OS's you like, in the OS you like?

trm423• 6 years ago

Imagine, how much further Linux would be if people (and Microsoft) had used all the energy of trying to make Windows work like Linux instead of actually improving Linux.

There has been lots of projects with that goal like Cygwin, Mingw, WSL*. Different virtualization glue layers etc.

For most of the part there has been lots of effort to different runtimes (PHP, Python, Docker etc) to make them work better with Windows and the end result usually is that it's a lot more easier to have the same stuff running on top of Real Linux instad of different kind of kludges the Windows versions require.

eknkc4• 6 years ago

I've been using WSL and a lot of unix tools on Windows. I have a simple reason: Windows is a much better desktop environment.

I tried to switch from macOS to Linux. I've found workarounds / alternatives to almost all of my issues on Linux. One issue seems to be unfixable though;

I have a 4K monitor and pretty much required to use fractional scaling. Windows and macOS does it perfectly. I had good luck with Pop!_OS but 1.5x scaling is always blurry on Linux. Apparently it can not do non integer scaling so the current hack is to scale 3x and then resize the framebuffer to half the size. Nope.

So I switched to the next best thing: Windows with WSL.

diarrhea2• 6 years ago

This is the exact reason I switched back as well (next to Lightroom). It just works.

But it is extremely sad to ditch an entire OS for lack of what seems a manageable issue, fractional scaling. I wish it wouldn't be necessary.

0-_-0• 6 years ago

I do 2x scaling on a 4K monitor (on Windows).

square_usual• 6 years ago

I'm on Pop! 20.10 and, the fraction scaling option is available. I don't use fractional scaling, though, not even on my mac. Integer scaling is always going to be sharper and less resource intensive, no matter the DE.

wayneftw6• 6 years ago

I actually switched to XFCE a couple years ago because I think it's a much better desktop environment than Windows with regards to activities that I do for work like running lots of Docker images.

XFCE has features that you need 7+ Taskbar Tweaker for on Windows, like being able to middle-click a taskbar button to close it's window. Any feature XFCE didn't have such as "move a window to another monitor with a hotkey" were easy to script with xdotools or other similar utilities. With the recent release of XFCE (4.16 I think?) we got fractional scaling as well.

I also found it easier to add custom commands to Thunar's context menu than Windows Explorer. Thunar also has tabs and so does the XFCE terminal emulator.

Beyond that, I'm no longer constantly fighting with Windows Updates, Windows Firewall or Windows Defender or navigating the fragmented landscape of shells (PowerShell, Cmd, Git-Bash, Cygwin, etc.) just to get my job done.

When I setup a Linux workstation (Manjaro is my preferred distro), it stays the way I configured it without Microsoft constantly changing things out from under me - so I feel like I actually own the system.

trm423• 6 years ago

Haven't used desktop Linuxes or Windows for about decade as macOS + Linux servers has provided useful common ground for both use cases. But even ten years ago KDE was a lot more nicer to use than Windows and I would assume they have gone a lot further in the mean time. For HiDPI stuff that sound real PITA if that hasn't been yet worked out :/

jpeloquin• 6 years ago

I have a 4K monitor and pretty much required to use fractional scaling.

On Linux, another workaround is to set the font scaling to 1.5× (or whatever) but leave the display scaling at 1×. This leaves everything sharp with big enough text to read easily.

asutekku• 6 years ago

Then i would need to emulate windows software on linux to do my job. And for me, borrowing features beats emulating software which may or may not work.

boxmonster2• 6 years ago

I prefer the Windows desktop over the various Linux desktops I've looked at. I've got Ubuntu 20 in a VMWare machine when I need it.

ayoisaiah5• 6 years ago

Recently switched from Linux to Windows after WSL2 came out. I grew tired of the various shortcomings in Linux, hence the switch.

Windows has its quirks, but I can say I prefer it at this point. And still do all my development in WSL, so win win.

dcpit• 6 years ago

Mouse ?

turing_complete2• 6 years ago

VS Code is fine and I actually use it quite a bit. Whoever says, it is "hella fast" either never used a really fast text editor or only compares it to Atom.

bsenftner2• 6 years ago

That "hella fast" comment renders his recommendation list suspicious.

k4rli• 6 years ago

VSCodium (https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium) is a better alternative. Same but no Microsoft branding and telemetry.

WalterGR3• 6 years ago

It’s highly improbable that telemetry slows Code down enough (or even by a perceptible amount) that a user would find it “slow” vs. VSCodium.

g8oz• 6 years ago

Exactly, try Notepad++ and then get back to us.

snthd• 6 years ago

https://pathcopycopy.github.io

Path Copy Copy is an add-on for Windows Explorer that adds contextual menu items on all files and folders allowing the user to copy the path(s) in various formats.

And of course https://alternativeto.net

olig15• 6 years ago

You can do this already (built into windows), by pressing SHIFT+Right Click (shift or alt, not at my PC to check). The context menu will show some extra options, one of which is ‘copy path’

giu• 6 years ago

Perfect timing. After having used Linux full-time in private and at work for the past 13 years, I had to switch to Windows 10 at my new job. I miss the hell out of my shell, my .zshrc file, and the general "easy" customization of Linux, but I'll be more than happy to see how I'll better adapt to Windows 10 thanks to this list and the tools provided in the comments here.

Edit: First thing I'll install is most probably the Windows Subsystem for Linux :)

hans1729• 6 years ago

was about to ask "how are you not running wsl yet" :) if you have any questions, hmu, I switched deliberately to windows 10 from macos on my worklaptop, because wsl + vscode is evil black magic

netfortius• 6 years ago

... took the cygwin path, instead, in a similar situation (company imposed Win10 laptop), albeit my macbook w/macos + homebrew is still the best combo, which I am also trying to leverage as much as possible for work.

agustif• 6 years ago

You might want to checkout the new Windows Terminal app too for it.

You can basically keep your unix/zsh env for windows, I even make aliases for things like open = explorer.exe, ls = dir, etc...

etlandis2• 6 years ago

A nice chunk of unix tools get installed with git (if you select the option to) - you could just add it to your path and it saves on a fair chunk of that aliasing work

I think my biggest annoyance with powershell in particular is that curl is aliased into this awkward powershell function by default

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

WSL is good for for running Linux on top of Windows with convenient but not always efficient interop, but if you just want Zshell for Windows, you can do that too:

https://medium.com/@borekb/zsh-via-msys2-on-windows-3964a943...

shash7• 6 years ago

Can I suggest my own tool? pulltherope.app - Nothing even comes close to how productive this makes me.

jodrellblank5• 6 years ago

In the video, why does pulling the rope go through the reminder times 40 minutes, 1 hour, 1 hour 20 minutes, 1 hour 40 minutes, 22 hours, 23 hours, 23 hours 30 minutes, 1 hour 50 minutes, 2 hours?

jankoprowski• 6 years ago

I'm recommending ScreenPresso [1] great screen capture with rich, useful edition options.

[1] https://www.screenpresso.com/

frankietaylr• 6 years ago

Everything[0] search is a great file search utility on Windows. This is one sure productivity booster.

[0] https://www.voidtools.com/

RinTohsaka• 6 years ago

+1 for this. Works soo much better than Window's search.

boxmonster2• 6 years ago

I put this on my father's machine and he thinks it's magic because it finds his files instantly. He still comments on it every once in awhile.

ukyrgf• 6 years ago

Everytime I use this I expect my coworkers to react with "how did you find that so fast!?" and I can share the magic with them, but they're probably just thinking about what to order for lunch.

ffpip• 6 years ago

This is the one app that keeps me from switching to linux as my primary OS

stjohnswarts4• 6 years ago

can you say what the difference between this and locate/updatedb is? well other than the gui?

ayoisaiah5• 6 years ago

One of the tools I kept hearing about while on Linux. Really impressed at how fast it is!

joshschreuder2• 6 years ago

I recommend WizFile [0] as an alternative (same developer of WizTree, which is a far better WinDirStat alternative).

[0] https://antibody-software.com/wizfile/

shadowfox• 6 years ago

Are there features in WizFile that make it better than Everything?

binaryman1• 6 years ago

I recommend Directory Report as an alternative http://www.file-utilities.com

sixothree2• 6 years ago

Between Everything and Astrogrep, I can find what I'm looking for.

rkagerer5• 6 years ago

If you don't want an index built, I use FileLocator Pro as my F3 / CTRL+F handler. Very fast, I think it reads MFT directly or something.

the_only_law• 6 years ago

Am I the only one not a fan of the Office-esque ribbon look on the new WinDbg?

mech422• 6 years ago

I hate these flat, 'phone style' interfaces on desktop apps.. I've never really used Macs but I think my favorite window style/chrome was the old OSX Aqua look.

bsenftner2• 6 years ago

The last mention: Windows Sandbox, has anyone got that to work? I have a monster i9, and Windows Sandbox grinds my system to a halt, and is completely unusable - 10 to 30 seconds to recognize a mouse click or key press. Useless.

dblohm7• 6 years ago

I use it to run Ghidra. I haven’t seen anything like what you’re experiencing.

ourmandave• 6 years ago

Does anyone have a tool that can do "grep like" searches on a folder of text docs from windows explorer?

Right click shelling out and using the FIND command is what I've resorted to so far. =(

soverance• 6 years ago

Check out Binary Fortress' FileSeek

MeinBlutIstBlau• 6 years ago

Notepad++ and kate text editors can do that

GordonS2• 6 years ago

If you want a GUI tool, I like GrepWin[0] - you can have it install an Explorer context menu item, right click, hit GrepWin, then you can search. Supports simple text searches as well as regex. You can filter by filesize too. Been using this for years, really useful tool.

On the command line, I just use grep (a cygwin version of it, installed with Git for Windows, I think).

[0] https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html

yread2• 6 years ago

If you use TotalCommander it's just selecting the folders and Alt+F7 for advanced find/grep combination

khalilravanna• 6 years ago

Semi-related: Has WSL2 fixed the issue where trying to do anything in the host Windows filesystem is interminably slow? Running something like “git status” takes legitimately like 15 seconds if the repo is outside the linux filesystem.

agf• 6 years ago

No, but they're actively working on it. You can mount it as a CIFS share to get somewhat better performance; I believe there are some other hacks to fix specific things like "git status".

https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197

veesahni• 6 years ago

VSCode+WSLRemote plugin works really well with code on linux. Full speed command line, full speed code search.

contradictioned• 6 years ago

Is 7zip really a good format for sharing data? I also use the program for unpacking and I like the context menu integration. However when I send files, I prefer zip because I feel like this is easiest for the recipient to open (no matter if they are using windows, linux, osx, Android...).

joshspankit• 6 years ago

Yes, with one caveat: There are times where you need to send a zip file to someone who does not or cannot install additional tools. I. this case, 7z can cause a “I don’t know what this file is and can’t open it” reply. Of course you can always counter that with “Here’s a zip instead”

wayneftw6• 6 years ago

You can change the context menu to default to `.zip` instead of `.7z`.

CamperBob2• 6 years ago

No, IMO. Nobody cares about saving "2-10%" if it means risking a hassle at the customer/user site due to a nonstandard format. If they do care that much about a minuscule incremental win, they probably shouldn't.

See the endless flame wars between DjVu advocates and .PDF die-hards for another example. Stick with the standard unless the improvement being offered by the newcomer is drop-dead amazing.

n4r9• 6 years ago

I use 7zip the app for all (de)compression tasks, and use the format itself when the recipient is tech savvy.

ilyagr• 6 years ago

I just had to decompress a 7z file on linux. It is really confusing -- there is no 7unzip command. A random third-party tool decompressed the archive incorrectly. The official p7zip package consists of three or more different command-line tools that are meant to handle any operation you could imagine, with different and weird options. Slogging through them takes quite a bit of manpage reading, and there are hidden gotchas. For example, the "simple interface", p7zip, is optimized for .tar.7z files, and deletes the original archive when decompressing. It is supposed to only do it only if there's one file in the archive, but it happened for me regardless.

The correct command is '7z x <file>'.

It's quite a contrast from the good experience I had with 7zip on Windows.

orev• 6 years ago

7zip is an amazing decompression tool that can handle many formats. You can even use it to extract installer exe files for otherwise difficult situations (like where a firmware blob is only available in a Windows exe download). It’s also free and hassle free. When sending to other people though, it can create zip format.

tug0fwar• 6 years ago

Sandboxie[1] is a really handy tool for running isolated processes on Windows.

[2] https://www.sandboxie.com/

xaduha• 6 years ago

https://github.com/Fleex255/PolicyPlus

ziml774• 6 years ago

I found Directory Opus a couple years ago and I love it as a file manager. One of those tools that I didn't mind paying for. I know there's other 2-pane file managers, but this was my favorite after testing them.

https://www.gpsoft.com.au/

DethNinja• 6 years ago

I literally can’t work without Fences:

https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

It is an amazing feature, I still can’t believe no major OS includes something similar as default.

sidpatil• 6 years ago

I like TidyTabs [1] and AquaSnap [2] (both by Nurgo Software). They both make window management so much easier.

What I'd prefer is an open-source tiling window manager like i3. I've tried bug.n [3], but couldn't get it to work consistently for some reason.

[1] https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/tidytabs

[2] https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap

[3] https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n

Miner49er• 6 years ago

I always had problems with bug.n too. The best tool I've found like a tiling wm on Windows is PyleWM: https://github.com/GGLucas/PyleWM

segfaultbuserr• 6 years ago

For day-to-day development, WSL is definitely better.

But I think MSYS2 [0] still deserves a mention in the age of Windows Subsystem for Linux. It's a complete mingw-w64 distribution with a friendly package manager (ArchLinux's pacman). If you suddenly need to use some CLI tools on a Windows machine, MSYS2 can be quicker - no need to enable virtualization or upgrade Windows 10, just download a 91 MB installer and you can start right away. I recently needed to use wget on Windows to solve a problem for someone, instead of MSYS2, I made the mistake of downloading a random Windows build at SourceForge, later I was hit by a bug...

[0] https://www.msys2.org/

mixmastamyk2• 6 years ago

Indeed I still use git bash on a secondary Windows box, lots faster and more functional in a few ways with a VM.

com2kid2• 6 years ago

Switcher, let's you change to a window by typing its name.

By far the best utility for navigating open apps.

ayoisaiah5• 6 years ago

Do you mean Switcheroo? That's the one I use

com2kid2• 6 years ago

Also a great app!

I have switcher on my desktop, switcheroo on my laptop. Both work quite well.

pyrophane• 6 years ago

Once Windows 10 supports linux GUI apps by default in WSL 2, that will be huge. At that point it should be easy to develop completely in Linux, only on Windows.

I've gotten this working with some extra tools, and the experience is pretty good, but it is still a bit too fiddly for me to consider it as a primary solution for everyday development.

kjaftaedi• 6 years ago

You probably have a solution that works for you, but you could configure vscode to develop against a linux instance in the cloud over ssh.

Then you could test the gui apps with xwindow forwarding over ssh. I use putty/xming for this.

_zamorano_• 6 years ago

Missing TortoiseGit in that list. Everytime I see someone struggling with Git I wonder why they don't take the easy way.

ayoisaiah5• 6 years ago

My suggestion: O&O ShutUp10 [1]

It allows you to control your privacy by deactivating various Windows functions, and you don't even need to install it.

[0] https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

elrostelperien• 6 years ago

Surprised no one suggested AllDup. It's the best tool I've seen for working with duplicates: http://www.alldup.info/en_download_alldup.php

Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

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