Killer Apps & Hacks for Windows 10

Did the UX people at Microsoft ever test Windows 10? Here are some must have apps and hacks I’ve found to make life on Windows 10 quick and easy.

Set Hotkeys for Apps

Sometimes you just want to launch an app from your keyboard. Using a method on Laptopmag.com, you can do this for most any program.

I use this in combination with macros like those noted below.

Quick Switch to VPN

VPN Macro

If you’re a smart and secure Internet user, you probably already use a VPN service to encrypt the data and web requests you send over the Internet (especially while on public wif-fi networks). But Windows 10 makes connecting to your VPN service a bit of a chore (I use Private Internet Access, by the way).

It’s weird because Windows actually placed the Connect to VPN in the Communications Center, but you still need to click into that, then click the VPN you want and then click Connect…that’s 3 clicks if you’re counting.

I’ve tried two methods to make this at least a little easier.

One caveat on all of this: if you log in with an administrator account (which I don’t because I’m concerned about security after all!), you could have your VPN client launch at start, but you’d still need to click the connect button and anytime you put the machine to sleep, it would disconnect (why they do that is beyond me).

With both methods, you need to manually add a VPN account to Windows built-in VPN feature.

Anyway, here are my two methods:

Macro Method

You can record actions as a “macro” and then save it as an executable program. You can then save the program to your desktop, start or taskbar. It’s a bit of a chore and in the end, the best you get is two-click access to your VPN connection…not the one-click you would get on a Mac. If my memory serves, this method only works if you log-in with an administrator account. Otherwise, you’ll be prompted for an administrator password each time…an who wants that?

• Create shortcut to Settings page
• Add a hotkey to shortcut:
• Create Macro using something like JitBit that uses the new hotkey.
• Save as executable
• Create a shortcut to the desktop and pin to Start
• Optionally, change the icon to look pretty

Pin the Communicator VPN app to your Start pane.

This is actually how I ended up going in the end. To do this, you need to ‘hack’ a shortcut that points to your VPN settings panel (where the Connect button resides).

1. On your desktop, right-click and select New > Shortcut
2. A Shortcut wizard will open
3. Paste ms-settings:network-vpn into the form
4. Now pin the shortcut to your Start and you have quick access to the Connect dialog for your VPN

Switch between Audio Devices

Sometimes I want to jump between my speakers and my headphones and because I hate clicking and loath jumping out of Windows 10’s Metro design into the old-school looking Audio Device Controller, I followed the advice from The Windows Club. Their solution uses freeware called Audio Switcher to assign a hotkey to different audio devices.

I added Audio Switcher to my startup to make this a little more automated. Unfortunately, because I normally work in a non-administrator account on Windows 10, I get asked for an Admin password to launch this app at Startup. Egads!

In my case, I can now click the F1 (Headphones) and F2 (Speakers)  keys to switch playback devices for sound.

Overcoming the Windows Education or Windows Pro watermark

Windows embeds a horrible little Windows Education or Windows Pro watermark over the lower right corner of your desktop if you use one of those versions. There are two solutions to removing this remarkably distracting bit of text.

1. Use a white background to “disappear” the white text
2. Or, have an app sit over that space. I use MusicBee (recommended by LifeHacker) and set position the mini-version over that spot.
3. Supposedly there’s a Regex trick where you delete the text but that’s a bit much work for me for such a slight annoyance.

Other Tricks

There are a couple other tricks that I’ve used to clean up Windows.

1. Removing Metro Apps. This allows you to remove all the built-in apps that are there simply to confound your privacy and peddle your identity to Microsoft’s advertising partners. Remove them.
2. Removing default folders from Explorer. If you’re like me and want better performance, you use a separate hard disk drive for your music, video and images and another drive (probably an SSD) for your OS and programs. Windows 10 is confusing for people with this kind of set up by placing folders in the File Explorer to your Images, Documents, etc. on your C Drive. In my case, that’s not the right drive. So I used the method linked above to remove those from Explorer.

Life Hacks, Then, Now and Beyond

The Huffington Post published another one of their lists, this one on 20 things that became obsolete this decade. This got me thinking about my life hacks before they were life hacks…that is, my means of living in Y2K compared to today.

Back in 2000, I was living on a remote island in Japan, Osakikamijima, population 3,000. The Internet was available at one location on the island back then, in the library at the Maritime College where I taught English classes. It would be another few months before Prime Minister Mori’s call to bring Japan up to date on Internet use would result in every town office and public school in the country to be connected. That’s how they do change in Japan: top-down, when I say go. Pretty cool.

Anyway, unlike my manner of travel today, I couldn’t just check the Internet, let alone keep in touch with my friends spread around the world. There was no Skype, so calling home was a prohibitively expensive undertaking. There was no YouTube or streaming video to keep up with American culture. In every sense, I was living in Japan…period. In fact, so total was my eclipsing from the non-Japanese world during my two years there, that even ten years later, I still find myself in conversations about what would otherwise be common cultural experiences, in which I have no idea what people are talking about. This usually elicits: “Wait, you’ve never heard of Office Space???”

That was the world in 2000: just seconds past the Y2K non-happening, and a good 20 months shy of the 9/11 ultra-happening.

In my apartment, I owned items like those below (with their contemporary replacement in parentheses):

• A Sony Minidisc (Pandora)
• A VHS player, connected by an analog line to my analog TV. (A DVD Player collecting dust jealously eyeing my Netflix-enabled laptop).
• A CD boombox (A dusty CD collection converted to MP3s on my Network-attached Storage device).
• A landline telephone with a fax and answering machine built into it (iPhone)
• A shelf of books (dusty boxes on the back porch containing my library, replaced by Google Reader)
• A Nikon FM2 fully-manual camera (iPhone)
• A subscription to the English version of the Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper (Huff Post, Google News, various blogs)
• Piles of xeroxed zines which I edited and published with some other foreigners (my blogs)
• Oh, and I was saving up for one of those new $1,000 min-DV camcorders (iPhone)
• Friends (Facebook)

Right away you’ll notice that the iPhone has pretty much replaced many of my old life hacks. Which brings me to….da da da! The Future!

What will my life hacks likely become by 2020? Some thoughts (likely to be blown away by concepts and gadgets undreamed of in 2010). Here are some ideas:

• iPhone (iGoggles, possibly Android “Googles”)
• Pandora (Pandora on the iGoggles with the possibility of earphone-less, sensory sound inputs)
• Networked Attached Storage (myCloud hosted digital home with feeds to your iGoggles)
• Netflix (the death of Hollywood and entertainment commodification through a YouTube-like distribution channel composed of hyper-realistic, CGI-enabled, user-generated movie-making tools).
• Google Reader (text to podcast voice…all your news read by William Burroughs!)
• iPhone camera (iGoggles with telescopic super spy zoom, mashed up with maps, augmented reality services and games)
• Facebook (At least two other iterations of social networking that will come and go like the whims that they are, leaving us with some kind of service that mixes the real world with the virtual…like personal QR Code badges viewable through iGoggles that can call up your public profile. And networks that allow you to place barriers between your many social circles at work, play and that dark hole where nobody knows your name.)
• Additionally, the consequences of burning too much fuel and running up too many debts will earn everyone additional life hacks such as personal carbon meters and a dynamically-generated, on-demand tab of your share of your personal and public debts.

Enjoy the future.