Microsoft has made installing Python much easier

Now, if you type in “python” or “python3” in the Windows 10 May 2019 Update search box, you’ll be taken directly to the Microsoft Store app if Python isn’t yet installed (once Python is installed, typing “python” opens a command prompt running Python

Source: Learning to code? With Windows 10 May 2019 Update, Microsoft has made installing Python much easier

For years, the Terminal has been one of the things that made me appreciate OS X/macOS so much as an operating system. Giving me access to powerful command line tools that I could customize to suits my own needs, while embedding them in a damn good operating system that was so well thought, and that wasn’t ugly.

Windows may not be the cool kid yet, but Microsoft is doing some serious work in this regard: this new Python installer (which is working great), VSCode (which is my default editor), Linux running natively on Windows, a great new Terminal (video demo), open sourcing more and more of their own apps. And so on.

Fences, a nice utility to (de)organize your Desktop at will, that could easily be made amazing

I won’t go into the details of everything Fences can do, here is a short video from its developers, showing all of its features:

What I mostly use it for is to have my desktop always clean-or-messy, and as a shortcut to whatever project I’m working on. Let me explain. Continue reading Fences, a nice utility to (de)organize your Desktop at will, that could easily be made amazing

Disappearing icons in the Start menu?

Do you have Tiles missing their icon in your Start menu? I do, all the time. Making the Start menu slightly less useful:

The good news is that there is a simple workaround. The bad news is that you still need it, after all these years—it’s so irking it feels like the bug has been around for a million years or so.

Continue reading Disappearing icons in the Start menu?

Make the content of Markdown files searchable in Windows

If you use a custom file extension for your Markdown files—like .md, or .markdown, or whatever—instead of .txt, Windows will only index their filename, not their content even though they are still text files. So, any Windows search will completely ignore their content.

It’s silly, but the good news is that it’s easy to change this by telling Windows that your .md or .markdown files are to be treated like standard text files.

  1. Press the Windows key and start typing “Indexing” until it suggests “Indexing option”. Open it.
  2. A small old looking window appears. Click on Advanced, in the bottom:
  3. Another window opens, click its File Types tab to see the list of all the file extensions used on your PC. Scroll this long list until you find your own Markdown file extension (md, in my case):
  4. Click your extension once. Then look at the bottom of the window and check Index Properties and File Contents.
  5. Click OK.

Done. Windows will need a few moments to rebuild its index but now the content of your Markdown files will be searchable too. Yeah.

10 best ways to free up hard drive space on Windows 10

Great recap on Windows Central.

Some of them are obvious, others not so. If I was to select a few, I’d say points 2, 3, 4, 6 and 11 are the most interesting if you’re new to Windows, while still avoiding being too geeky.

2 & 11 have nothing to envy to macOS own “Recommandations” (in About this Mac->Storage management).

The Dictionary app on Windows?

Why the macOS Dictionary?

As a writer, Dictionary is one of my favorite apps under macOS. It’s also one of the most underestimated.

It includes English, French, German dictionaries, and a few others. It comes with an integrated French-English dictionary, and others I don’t use. You can use it as a front-end to search Wikipedia. Add to that a tight integration to macOS—you can invoke it from almost any app containing text, with a gesture or a right-click on a word—it’s hard not to love this app.

The Mac Dictionary, with a partial list of dictionaries.

Continue reading The Dictionary app on Windows?

Old vs New Windows: the contextual menu

Microsoft is slowly pushing Fluent, its new design philosophy, through Windows and all of its other apps. It’s doing it too slowly to my taste, but I do like this design very much.

If you’re not familiar with Windows, here is a screenshot of a standard/non-Fluent contextual menu, it’s a right-click on some file on the desktop:

Continue reading Old vs New Windows: the contextual menu