How to personalize your PC

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy, Joseph Campbell

To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so, Robert Orben

Customizing your operating system is a handy way tooptimize your workflow, make your regular life a little more enjoyable and your computer experience more personal, and empower you to use the computer the way you like and need.

Personalize your Windows

• First, you can change the desktop wallpaper: Open Settings, navigate through Personalization, Background, and select Picture, Solid color, Slideshow or Windows spotlight.

Windows spotlight is a cool feature in Windows 10/11 which delivers a daily wallpaper provided by Microsoft for your desktop and lock screen. Lively Wallpaper is a free and open-source software that allows users to set animated and interactive desktop wallpapers.

• Enable dark or light mode: Settings, Personalization, Colors, select Light, Dark, or Custom in the Choose your mode drop-down menu.

   

• Turn on or off the transparency effects: Setting, Personalization, Colors, and turn on or off the Transparency effects toggle switch.

• Set an accent color: Setting, Personalization, Colors, Accent color.

• Customize the lock screen: Settings, Personalization, Lock screen, select Window spotlight, Picture or Slideshow in the Personalize your lock screen drop-down menu. Disable the Get fun facts, tips, tricks and more on your lock screen checkbox.

• Set a new theme, i.e., a combination of wallpapers, sounds, and colors together to give your desktop a different look and feel: Settings, Personalization, Theme, click on Browse themes, select a theme, and smash the Get button.

   

• Set a new account picture: Settings, Accounts, Your info.

• Hide some taskbar icons: System, Personalization, Taskbar, set the toggle to OFF to some bloatware and unnecessary apps, e.g., Search, Widget, Chat, Taskbar corner overflow (Microsoft Teams, XBox, Windows Explorer). I also like enabling Automatically hide the taskbar to give me a little more space in my desktop: Taskbar behaviors, Automatically hide the taskbar.

• Use a launcher. Wox is an effective launcher for Windows. Launch it: Alt + Space. It searches for files, folders, and programs on your computer using Everything, just type a filename, e.g., default.yml. It allows you to perform web searches: google (g search_term), wiki (wiki search_term), duckduckgo (duckduckgo search_term), youtube (youtube search_term), etc.; run commands directly from the Wox interface (replace Windows-R) (e.g., > ping www.google.com, > ipconfig), and do mathematical calculations (5*2-7). It provides system related commands: settings (you can tweak the launcher Wox), shutdown, restart, sleep, etc.

  Everything is a search engine that locates files and folders by filename instantly for Windows.

• Winaero Tweaker is a free app for all versions of Windows that lets you adjust, i.e. tweak, hidden secret settings that Microsoft does not let you adjust from the user interface.

• Rainmeter is a free and open-source desktop customization utility for Windows. It allows you to display highly customizable skins on your desktop, from hardware usage meters to fully functional audio visualizers.

   

  Download and install Rainmeter from its site and some skins. I have download the Sonder - Rainmeter skin. It is a “.rmskin” file, double click on it, and it will install the skin. Right-click the Rainmeter icon in your system tray, select Skins, and pick the skin you have just downloaded and installed.

• PowerToys is a set of utilities for power users to tune and streamline their Windows experience for greater productivity, e.g. FancyZones and PowerToys Run.

FancyZones is a window manager utility for arranging and snapping windows into efficient layouts to improve the speed of your workflow and restore layouts quickly; PowerToys Run is a quick launcher: Alt+Space.

• Organize and clean your desktop. 1. Hide system icons on your desktop: Settings, Preferences, Themes, click the Desktop icon setting link, and uncheck all desktop icons. 2. Right click an empty space on your desktop, View, and uncheck Show desktop icons to hide all your desktop’s icons (it does not delete your apps or files, just your desktop’s icons will not show up). Besides, you can select Auto arrange icons or Align icons to the grid. 3. Avoid using shortcuts and use a launcher like Vox, ueli or Cortana. Otherwise, use Fence. It automatically organizes your desktop apps, files, and folders on Windows 10 and 11.

Personalize your macOS

• Change your wallpaper and screen saver: System Preferences, Desktop and Screen Saver. Desktop, click +, and choose a custom image. Switch to the Screen Saver tab, Flurry/Shell/Vintage Prints/…. At the bottom, choose when the screen saver should be activated: Start after: (e.g., 10 or 20 minutes), and check Show with clock.

  Unsplash Wallpapers is a free wallpaper app for Mac which gives you breathtaking photos for your desktop every day.

• Set up a new mode and color scheme: System Preferences, General, and pick a Light, Dark or Auto mode under Appearance, and new colors under Accent color and Highlight color.

• Change your login picture: System Preferences, Users & Groups, click the lock at the bottom left to unlock the preference pane. Select your user account on the left, then click the user’s picture on the right. It is normally a good idea to disable the guest account: System Preferences, Users & Groups, click the lock at the bottom left to unlock the preference pane. Select Guest User on the left, and uncheck Allow guests to log in to this computer.

• Alfred is an application launcher for macOS. It is free, but there is a premium version with more advanced features. First, disable Spotlight: System Preferences, Keyboard, Spotlight, disable Show Spotlight Search, and we are going to reuse the Spotlight’s hotkey for Alfred. Open Alfred’s settings, General, Alfred Hotkey: ⌘ + Space, and make sure that the Launch Alfred at login checkbox is enable. Installation: brew install ‐‐cask alfred. To change Alfred’s appearance, open Alfred’s settings, Appearance.

   

• Change the look and feel of your dock and de-clutter it. Just right click the app that you want to remove from the dock, Options, Remove from Dock. Automatically hide and show the dock: System Preferences, Dock & Menu Bar, click the checkboxes next to Automatically hide and show the Dock and Automatically hide and show the menu bar, and uncheck Show recent applications in Dock.

  Show path and status bars in Finder. Open Finder, select View, Show Path Bar and View, Show StatusBar.

• Make the interface not so transparent: System Preferences, Accessibility, and select Display from the lef pane, then tick the Reduce transparency checkbox.

• Change the look of your cursor: System Preferences, Accessibility, and select Display from the lef pane, then switch to the Pointer tab, and set a new pointer size, and new pointer outline and fill color.

• Besides, you can add cool widgets to your desktop using Übersicht Widgets.

GNU/Linux

• Variety is a multi-desktop wallpaper manager for Linux systems. It can use local images or automatically download wallpapers from online sources (Flickr, Wallhaven, Unsplash, Bing, etc.). It allows you to rotate them on a regular interval, and displays quotes or a nice digital clock on the desktop. An alternatives is Wallch. Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install wallch variety  

  Launch Variety. Follow the wizard to set up Variety: 1. Welcome to Variety! 2. Privacy Notice (Accept and Continue). 3. Variety Preferences, General: Start Variety when the computer starts, Change wallpaper every 30 minutes. 4. Variety Preferences: Effects: Show random wise quotes on the desktop, Show a nice big digital clock on the desktop, displaying the current time and date.

• Picom is the most popular and widely used compositing window manager for GNU/Linux. i3’s configuration (gedit ~/.config/i3/config)

exec_always picom --config ~/.config/picom/picom.conf

• Nitrogen is a fast and lightweight background browser and setter. Pick up some wallpapers from Derek Taylor’s repository: git clone https://gitlab.com/dwt1/wallpapers.git ~/Pictures/wallpapers. The ‐‐random argument selects a file from the specified folder and applies this file as a wallpaper using the zoom fill size (‐‐set‐zoom-fill) setting. Nitrogen will choose random backgrounds from the ~/Pictures/wallpapers directory. i3’s configuration (gedit ~/.config/i3/config)

exec_always nitrogen --set-zoom-fill --random ~/Pictures/wallpapers

• Install Pop GTK and Material theme, Pop and Papirus icon themes, and lxappearance (a program to change GTK+ themes, icon themes, and fonts): sudo apt install pop-gtk-theme materia-gtk-theme pop-icon-theme papirus-icon-theme lxappearance. Launch it and select in Widget & Icon Theme (Pop) and Default font (Ubuntu, 12).
• Conky is a free system monitor for the X Window System.
• Plank is a simple and lightweight dock. Install: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/docky. sudo apt-get update. sudo apt-get install plank. Configure it: plank ‐‐preferences, Appearances (Icon Size; IconZoom: 200), Docklets (Applications, Desktop). If you install Plank, you may want to remove Ubuntu’s default dock: sudo apt remove gnome-shell-extension-ubuntu-dock. Dash to Dock (a GNOME extension) and Cairo are two alternatives.